Despair's Last Journey Part 34

'Indeed,' said Claudia, in a voice of scorn, 'I will do nothing of the kind. I have never been so insulted in my life, and I shall be obliged if you will put an end to your attentions.'

The heart of the involuntary listener glowed within him, but Captain MacMadden's drawl broke in and chilled him horribly.

'Well, look here, Claudia, d.a.m.n it all! Will you marry me? I'll go that far, if nothing else will do for you. I will, upon my word.'

'You may ask me that question in a week's time,' said Claudia. 'At present I have no more to say to you than just "Good-night."'

The door closed and there was a silence. Claudia laughed quietly to herself, and rustled towards the gas-jet. Paul stepped out and intercepted her, the unlit candle in his hand, his hair disordered, and his face stained with the dye the rain had soaked from his hat His teeth were chattering noisily and rapidly, and he and Claudia faced each other. Paul lit his candle mechanically, and set it on the hall table, below the jet, which blinked with a faint intermittent hum.

'Are you spying upon me, Mr. Armstrong? asked Claudia, with a touch of the manner of the stage.

'Not I,' Paul answered bluntly; 'I waited up to speak to you. Are you going to marry that grinning nincomp.o.o.p?'

'You presume,' said Claudia, with yet more of the manner of the stage.

'You presume abominably. Allow me to pa.s.s, sir.'

'The man has offered you a life of shame,' said Paul. 'You mean to listen to him after that? She looked at him scornfully and defiantly.

'Well,' he said, s.h.i.+vering strangely from head to foot, 'you're not the woman I took you for. It's good-bye to Claudia.'

He stood aside for her to pa.s.s. She lit her candle and swept by him. He heard her door close, and the key turn in the lock. He stood shuddering in the hall, the chance-held candle dropping grease upon the oil-cloth.

He gave one big dry sob and mounted to his garret-room. There was no sleep for him, and he did not undress. The candle burned down in its socket, the light flared up and died, and the nauseous stink of wick and tallow filled the room. His mind was strangely vacant, but even in the darkness and the silence he found a thousand things in which to take a leaden interest: as the swaying of the window-curtains where a slight draught caught them; the faintly-seen progress of the rain-drops down the window-pane; the wet glints of light where the street gas-lamp dimly irradiated the windows and the houses on the opposite side of the way; a ticking insect in the wall-paper; sounds of night traffic in the great thoroughfare a quarter of a mile off; the squas.h.i.+ng tramp of a policeman on his rounds; the moaning voices of wind and rain; the very beating of his own pulses in his head; the very stupor of his own intelligence.

It was still raining when the dismal dawn crept up, and he was chilled to the marrow. He rose stupidly from the chair in which he had pa.s.sed the night, and began to change his dress, stiffly and with difficulty.

During the greater part of the night he had been sitting in a drooping posture, and he found without trouble or interest that he could not change it. There was an aching weight upon his loins, but he had no interest in that either. He sat in his room all day. The chambermaid came to the door and tapped, and receiving no answer, entered. She stared to see him sitting at the window and the bed undisturbed, but she went away again. Somehow the day crawled on, and as the darkness fell he crept downstairs, and crawled, an aching stoop, to the theatre. He was an hour before the time, but by hazard he met the manager at the stage-door.

'Why, great G.o.d, Armstrong! what's the matter?'

'I got wet last night,' Paul answered, in a voice which startled him and pained his throat.

He had not spoken a word since he had said good-bye to Claudia.

'You've no right to be out like this,' said the manager brusquely; 'it's suicide. You're no good here, you know,' he added, in a kinder voice.

'Here, you, Collins; call a cab, and help Mr. Armstrong into it.'

'Can you do without me?' Paul asked, in that strange voice.

'Do without you? Yes. I've a man at hand that will swallow your lines and biz in half an hour. Get a fire in your bedroom; have a good stiff gla.s.s of rum as hot as you can drink it. Get somebody to make you cayenne pills--cayenne-pepper and bread-crumbs. Take three or four, and have 'em hot. Why, man alive, you've got an ague!'

The cab was brought, and Paul was helped into it and driven home. He could not lift his hand above his head to pay the fare, and the cabman descended grumblingly to take it; but seeing how his fare's feet fumbled at the steps, got down a second time to help him to the door. Paul walked into the dining-room, hat in hand, and bent The boarders were at dessert, and Claudia for once was with them.

'No beggars allowed in this bar,' said one of the professional boarders jocularly, thinking the entrance a bit of playful masquerade.

'I'm not very well,'said Paul, with a frog-like roop. 'I've been down to the theatre, and Walton has sent me home again. I'm afraid I can't quite manage to get upstairs.'

He did not look at Claudia, but he was conscious of her gaze, and he knew somehow that there was fright in her eyes.

Two of the boarders engineered him to his room, and one undressed him whilst the other ran for rum and cayenne-pepper. They were all theatrical folk in the house, and kindly in case of trouble, as their tribe is always. Paul was put to bed, and had extra blankets heaped upon him, and a fire was lit in the grate. He was dosed with hot rum-and-water and the cayenne pills, and was then left, first to grow maudlin, and next to fall into a sleep which was full of monstrous dreams. At one time he lay in a great cleft between two hills, and stones rolled down upon him, causing him dull pain; then the stones formed themselves into a fence--a kind of rough arch on which other stones battered without ceasing till he was walled in thickly. At another time he had to climb up an endless hill, with hot chains about his loins and knees.

Somebody came into his room with a candle, and the light awoke him. It was one of his fellow-boarders back from the theatre, with news that it was nearly midnight. He forced more hot rum on the patient, and sat with him until he was sound asleep. The liquor did its work, and he slept without dreams until daylight. He strove to rise and dress, but the task was beyond him, and there was nothing left but to lie and stare at the ceiling, and to say to himself over and over again, without a touch of interest or feeling: 'It's good-bye to Claudia.' The landlady came to see him, and found him burning and s.h.i.+vering, and complaining of the bitter cold. She went away, and came back again with a doctor, who told him cheerfully that he was in for rheumatic fever, big or little, as sure as a gun.

'But he's young, ma'am,' said the doctor--'he's young, and we shall pull him through.'

'Can he be moved?' asked the landlady.

'Moved? No, possibly not for weeks.'

'Have you any money, Mr. Armstrong?' said the landlady, 'or shall I write to your friends?'

'There's fifty-one pounds in my dressing-bag,' croaked Paul. 'When you've buried me and paid your bill, send the balance to my father.'

'Buried you?' said the doctor. 'You don't suppose you're going to peg out, do you?'

'I hope so,' said Paul.

'Oh,' said the doctor, casting a shrewd, good-humoured eye at him, 'you feel like that, do you? But you've got me to reckon with, and the British Pharmacopoeia. When did you eat last?

'Day before yesterday.'

'All right, young man; I'll fettle you, and if you think you're going to slip your cable, you're mightily in error.'

'Well,' said Paul, 'it doesn't matter to me one way or the other.'

The time went on, and a day later he was light-headed, and babbled, as he learned afterwards, of Claudia. Sometimes he upbraided her savagely, and sometimes he made tragic love to her. He had intervals of complete sanity, in which the thought of her was like an inward fire; then he had a five weeks' spell of madness, and awoke from it free from pain, but a mere crate of bones which felt heavier than lead. He remembered some of his own delusions clearly, but lost count of whole weeks of time, and had yet to learn how long he had lain there. When he awoke he knew that somebody was in the room, and made an effort to turn his head. That failed, but the somebody heard the faint rustle he made, and the first face his eyes looked at was the face of Darco.

'Ah!' said Darco, 'you haf got your prains pack again. You know me, eh?'

Paul tried to nod, but succeeded only in closing his eyes in sign of a.s.sent.

'I am a bid of a dogtor,' said Darco; 'led me veel your bulse.

Goot--goot, ant your demberadure is normal. It is now begome your business to ead and trink.' He waddled across the room, and came back with a tin of jelly and a spoon, and fed the invalid 'That is enough,'

he said, after the fifth spoonful. 'Liddle and often; that is the came to blay.'

Paul was too weak to wonder at anything, or he would have wondered at Darco's presence; but Nature was too wise to let him waste his forces on any such unprofitable exercise as thinking, and sent him to sleep again.

When he awoke he was ravenously hungry, and in a day or two he began to abuse the nurse who tended him for stinting his victuals. But the nurse was a good-humoured old campaigner.

'Why, bless your heart, Mr. Armstrong,' she said, when in an interval of contrition Paul apologised, 'it do me good to hear you swear that hearty! Most gentlemen does it when they're picking up a bit.'

There was in his mind barely a thought of Claudia; the one fever seemed to have burned the other out of him.

'The heart,' said the doctor--'the heart's the thing we're always afraid of in rheumatic fever, and the heart's as sound as a nut.'

Paul stretched feebly, and thought he had his jest wholly to himself; but the doctor undeceived him.

'It wasn't always so, my young friend.'

Paul blushed like fire.

'Have I been babbling? he asked guiltily.