Despair's Last Journey Part 36

The rest of the words had no duelling in his memory, though he was sure they had been made and written; but they were meant to say that all labour conceived and executed in a land of fire should be remodelled in the land of frost at the risk of being cast away in its pa.s.sage from one to the other. This in plain English meant the union of hot zeal and cold diligence, which is a worthy recipe for any worker in any craft It served Paul's turn for six prodigious weeks, from the rising of the sun until long after the going down of the same. The book was done in a quarter of the time he had apportioned to it. For six weeks the forces of every waking minute had strained fiercely forward to one purpose, and at seven o'clock on an autumn Friday he wrote the words 'The End,'

and, looking up, saw the sunlight in dazzling strips between the green painted laths of the blind, and found that his lamp was pale. He drew up the blind and opened the window, and the sweet air bathed his head.

There was a deep sadness in his heart, and when he arose and by chance saw his face in the gla.s.s it was the face of a ghost If the halest of young men will live in alternations of frost and fire for six weeks on end, he must expect to pay for it.

Paul paid dearly in la.s.situde, and broken sleep, and loss of appet.i.te, and afterwards in six weeks of idle waiting in poverty, for there was no work or power of thought left in him for the time. He p.a.w.ned the dressing-case old Darco had given him and the dress-suit which he had not worn for four years, and he had his meals, such as they were, at a cabman's restaurant, and his last penny went, and tobacco famine set in; and his landlord, who was a maudlin man with a cultured turn for drink, would come in at night to his sitting-room and cry, and say that the water-rates were going to cut the supply; and the butcher had said, 'No more credit after Sat.u.r.day.'

And whilst he was thus agreeably engaged on one occasion a knock came to the door, and a slattern slavey came in with a plate in her hand, and on the plate a wet and flabby oblong something crusted with dirt and slime.

'I can't quite make it out, sir,'said the slavey, 'but I think as this is a letter, and it hasn't been opened, sir, and I fancy it's addressed to you.'

And within the slimy envelope was a soaked letter, in which the ink had so run as to leave it scarcely legible, and being diligently pored upon, the letter was found to indicate that the recipient of the story had read it with great charm and interest, and was willing to purchase the serial rights of the same for the sum of 250, 150 on the author's signature to terms, and 100 on the day of the publication of the first number.

'It's 'ard for a poor working man to be kep' out of his money like this, sir,' the landlord moaned.

'd.a.m.n you!' said Paul. 'Listen to this.' He read the letter, and with a start reverted to the date: 'September 27th, and this is October 27th!

I haven't tasted food these three days, or had a pinch of tobacco, and this has been waiting for me--this--this--for a whole month! Explain, you execrable! or, as sure as the brother of the sun reigns over the Heavenly Empire, I will brain you with the poker. Sh.e.l.l out, you villain!--sh.e.l.l out, to your last halfpenny! 'Ard for a poor working man to be kep' out of his money, is it? Somebody in this infernal house has kept me waiting and half starving for a month, whilst I have two hundred and fifty pounds to my credit. What are you worth, you h.o.a.ry inebriate?

Speak, or die!'

'Seven and eight,' said the landlord, 'and a bogus thrip-penny.'

'Give me five s.h.i.+llings!' cried Paul, s.n.a.t.c.hing up the poker, and the landlord pottered out the money.

Away tore Paul to the house round the corner. There were sausages there frizzling in a metal-pan with a little row of blue gas-jets below it.

There was brandy there; there was beer. There was tobacco of a sort, and there was an admirable whisky, not the diluted vitriol common to the outlying London house before the pa.s.sing of the Adulteration Act, but honest whisky, mellow and old.

Paul, full of meat, and singing to himself behind his pipe, walked homeward with a flask of that good liquor in his pocket, and there behind was the landlord clinging to the railings at the bottom of the area-steps and maundering to a policeman.

'Five s.h.i.+llings--'storted by threats. Tha's the man,' said the landlord.

'Come in, officer, and have a drink,' said Paul, and the officer, after an upward and downward look along the street, marched into the house.

Paul gave him a drink instantly, and whilst the landlord hiccuped ''Started by threats 'he explained the situation. 'Of course, I made him sh.e.l.l out,' said Paul. 'Wouldn't you?

'Well, I'm a guardian of the peace, myself, sir,' said the officer; 'but it wouldn't ha' been more than five bob and costs if you'd ha' dressed him down. Speaking as a man of uniform, as I may say, I should ha'

thought that cheap at the money.'

''Storted by threats,' said the landlord.

'Take another,' cried Paul, 'and go to bed. You'll be paid in the morning, and you can stick up "To Let" as soon as you like. I'm off to the Continent.'

There was still a cab fare in Paul's pocket when he awoke and dressed in the morning, and he booked away to the publisher's office and received his cheque. Then away to the bank, and away from the bank with fifteen ten-pound notes of the Bank of England. Then a breakfast at a restaurant, and a pint of champagne to drink his own health in--the first wine tasted for nearly five years. Next to 'my uncle's' to redeem the dressing-bag and the dress-suit, and next home to stagger the landlord with that pile of wealth. Then to pack, singing; to drive back to town; to lunch late after the purchase of a suit of reach-me-downs, new hat, boots, gloves, and paletot; and last, away to the Continental train for a first look at Paris. And all the while it was richly comic to himself to feel how he exulted, and to say within doors demurely to the shopman, to the waiter, the ticket clerk, the porter: 'I am an author, sir, an accepted author, with the first fruits of my first book in my pocket I am on the way to Paris and distinction.' The four years of lost prospect and horizon looked nothing, less than nothing. But the Channel waters were rough, and he was chilled by the solemn gentlemen who sat battened down with basins in their laps, turning green and yellow in the sickly light; and the railway journey beyond was cold and uncomfortable, and Paris in the gray fog of a late October morning was less gay than he had expected. What little he knew of the language seemed to be recognised by the natives of the land, but what they had to say to him was as rapid as the clatter of a running boy's hoop-stick on a row of railings, and as intelligible. An English-speaking tout seized him, and he was grateful to be decoyed into a dirty hotel on the other side of the river, where people understood him more or less when he asked a question. Here he entered himself in the guest-book, and under the head of 'Profession 'wrote the world 'Literature 'with great pride.

He ate his cutlets and chipped potatoes at breakfast with an unwonted relish, in spite of a revolting table-cloth, encrusted with mustard and spilt sauces, and blue with wine-stains, over which salt had been spilled to restore the whiteness of the fabric in case it should ever have the good chance to be washed. The yard of bread was a novelty. The distempered houses opposite--pink and green and blue--were novelties.

The jalousied windows gave the street a delicious foreign look. The little cavalry officer who came clanking in with his baggy trousers and his spurs and dangling sword, almost as long as its wearer, was a delight. Paul went to the window to look at the middle-aged _bonne_ who went by in her Alsatian cap and flying coloured ribbons.

At five-and-twenty a night of wearisome and broken sleep makes small difference to the spirits, and when he had washed as well as he could by the aid of a cream-jug full of water and a saucer, and a towel handkerchief, and without the aid of soap, he dressed, and sallied out with the intent to lose himself in Paris. There is nothing so exhilarating as the first sight of a foreign city, and Paul wandered on and on, past the Palace of Justice and over the bridge, and, turning to the left, made along the Rue de Rivoli, pa.s.sed the far-stretching facade of the Louvre, and so went on till he reached the Place de la Concorde.

There, staring into the basin of one of the fountains, as if he had been waiting for Paul to come to him, was Darco, fur-coated and silk-hatted as of yore, and looking neither older nor younger by a day than when they had parted.

'Darco!' said Paul, with his heart in his mouth. 'How glad I am! You dear old Darco!'

Darco stared a moment, for the young man's beard and moustache were fully grown, and they disguised him.

'Oh!' he said at last. 'Id is Armstronk. How do you do?' He held out his hand somewhat laxly, but Paul took it in both his and wrung it fervently.

'I can't tell you how glad I am to see you. I can't tell you how bitterly sorry I've been for the brutal way in which I paid you for all your kindness. Try and forgive me, old chap. Do now. It wasn't ingrat.i.tude, Darco, though it looked like it It was a boy's infatuation for a woman.'

'I dold you,' said Darco--' I rememper as if it was yesterday. I said: "You are a tarn fool, and you will be zorry."'

'I _have_ been sorry this five years or nearly,' said Paul, still clinging to his hand. 'Make it up, old chap, and come and have lunch somewhere.'

'Zo pe id,' said Darco, stolid as an ox. 'Do you vant a virst-gla.s.s restaurant, or a second-gla.s.s, or vat?'

'The best in Paris!' cried Paul gaily, though he had to blow his nose and to cry 'Hem!' to clear his throat, the sight, of old Darco touched his heart so.

'Gome along, then,' said Darco, and rolled off st.u.r.dily like a barrel on barrels in the direction of the Boulevards. 'Rue Gasdilione,' he said, playing guide as he walked along. 'Blace Fendome. Golumn Fendome. Rue de la Baix. You haf not been in Baris until now?

'I got here this morning,' Paul answered.

'I am here four tays,' said Darco. 'I shall be here four tays longer. I am puying a gomedy, ant a blay in five agds.'

'Buying?' said Paul 'I thought the one recognised custom was to steal'

'That's a vool's game,' Darco declared. 'If you sdeal, and if what you sdeal is worth sdealing, anypoty can sdeal from you. If you burchase it, it is yours, and nopoty can take it away. Honesty is the best policy.

And, pesides that, I am Cheorge Dargo. I know my way apout.'

Paul could have hugged him for sheer joy at hearing the familiar brag again: 'I am Cheorge Dargo.' The old countersign was like music.

'Where are we going?' asked Paul.

'Ve are koink,' said Darco, 'to the Hareng d'Or, where they haf a dry champagne, and where they can give you such a preakfast as you cannot get in the world. Ant I shall have a Cloria with a zeventy-year-old Gogniag in it. Ant the Blat de chour is a Navarin de mouton. I saw that as I pa.s.sed the house two hours aco. I shall haf two boitions, mind you.'

'Twenty!' cried Paul.

'No,' said Darco. 'I could not ead twenty.'

They reached the restaurant, one of those jolly little houses which are all down now--short as is the time since that in which they flourished--where the host knew almost all his guests, and luxury went hand in hand with a sort of camaraderie which cannot breathe in our new palaces. The chef was a treasure, but as yet no American millionaires strove to coax him across the Atlantic. There were no better wines in the world, there was no better coffee, and, by way of a wonder, there were no better cigars. Darco shook hands with the host, and broke out at him in a brash of Alsatian French, which to Paul's ears was like a rolling of drums. He caught his own name in the torrent of noise, and distinguished the words 'un homme lideraire, cheune, gomme fous foyez, mais deja pien tisdangue.' The host bowed, and Paul bowed, and blushed a little, and Darco ordered a dejeuner at the host's discretion, stipulating only for his own double portion of the Navarin de mouton. So there came oysters, with a cobwebbed bottle of old hock in a cradle, and an unknown delicate fish with burnt b.u.t.ter, and then the Navarin with champagne in an ice-pail, and fruit, and delicate foreign cheeses, and coffee which is a dream to the man whose unjaded palate first tries it in perfection. The seventy-years-old cognac was there also, and Paul's head was humming ever so little before the feast was over.

'And the dopacco?' said Darco lazily--' eh?'

'The true believer smokes it in Paradise,' said Paul; and Darco translated the saying to the host, who bowed and smiled.

'How did you know that I was _un homme litteraire?_' asked Paul, stumbling at the unaccustomed words.

'I haf seen your name to half a tozen short stories,' said Darco.

'It was no mere gomparison of names to me. I know your sdyle. It has changed. It has changed for the petter, but I know id. You gannot deceive me apout a sdyle. I am Cheorge Dargo. I know my way anywhere.'

They smoked and sipped their coffee in a splendid contentment 'Vat prings you to Baris?' Darco asked lazily.

'I sold a book yesterday,' said Paul--'my first I had worked hard; I thought I deserved a little holiday--I have got to learn my world. And I was beastly hungry the day before yesterday.'

'I have been there,' returned Darco. 'There was an English Duke--he is dead now--I did a liddle service in Puda Besth. He vanted to bay me.

I said "I am Cheorge Dargo. I do not take money excebt in the way of business." Ven I was ruint in the United States I game back to England, and I hat not one benny. I galled on the Duke. He was at bregfasd. He got ub, ant he took me py the shoulders begause he was glad to see me, and he said, "My tear Dargo, you are wet"; and I said: "You would be wet if you had slept in the rain in St Chames's Bank."'