Despair's Last Journey Part 44

'Yes,' he said hurriedly, 'I am married. And I felt such a beast for not having written to tell you all about it that I made up my mind to be my own messenger. The truth is it was all rather hurried, and unexpected--in a way. There had been an attachment for some time, but there was no immediate thought of marriage, and Annette--that is my wife's name--Annette fell ill, and was not expected to recover, and it was really, to both our minds, a sort of death-bed ceremony, and now she is quite recovered.'

There was such a sense of awkwardness upon him that he boggled the simple story altogether. There was no amazement in his mind at all when his father spoke next. He could have foretold his words.

'Man, 'said Armstrong, 'had ye led the gyirl astray?'

He had never meant to lie about the matter, but at this point-blank thrust he lied.

'My dear old dad!' he said, 'what _are_ you thinking of?'

'I beg your pardon, Paul,' said Armstrong--'I beg your pardon.'

They seemed at once to have a gulf between them, though the simple, honest elder, who had probably never lied in the whole course of his life, did not perceive it. Before Paul it gaped unbridgable.

'She's a dear, good little creature,' Paul boggled along, with a disastrous facility of words which had no guidance. 'She's French by descent, but she speaks very good English--very fair English. I taught her. I'll bring her down to see you. We're living in Belgium at present, at a little place called Montcourtois, a charming little place. She likes the quiet of it, and it's very favourable for work. If one lives in town there are so many calls upon one's time. You can't get really settled down to the development of an idea, you know.'

'Ay,' said Armstrong, 'I can imagine that. But, Paul, lad, I could have wished ye'd written.'

'Don't make it harder than it is, sir,' Paul appealed. 'I ought to have written. I'm very sorry that I didn't, and I've come down purposely to explain it all.'

'Well,' said his father, 'better late than never. What kind is she like, lad?'

'Well,' said Paul, 'you can't expect a man to describe the girl he's in love with so as to satisfy anybody else She's slight and not very tall; she has brown hair and brown eyes; she has a very pretty voice, and very dainty ways.'

'Ay, ay, lad!' said Armstrong; 'but her soul--her intelligence?'

'She's bright and clever,' Paul cried, rather protestingly. 'She takes a keen interest in my work. We're dearly attached to each other, and I am looking forward to a happy life.'

'What like are her people?' Armstrong asked.

'Well, I don't know a great deal about her people. She's an orphan. She has an elder sister, and an aunt and an uncle or two.'

'She'll be a Catholic, will she?'

'No,' said Paul; 'her family is Huguenot. I think I should rather have shrunk from marrying a Catholic. There's a sort of prejudice of which it isn't easy to free the mind.'

He was sinking clean out of sight of his own esteem; but it was his sole business for the time being to save his father as far as possible, and he had grown reckless of himself.

'She shall come to see you,' he went on, 'and you wont be able to help making friends with her. I've to be back in Montcourtois to-morrow night, or she'll be worrying her life out. That means I must catch the one o'clock express for town, and that, again, means that I've only four hours to spend at home this time.'

'Ye'll have a gla.s.s of whisky, Paul?'

'I will, sir,' Paul answered, 'with all the pleasure in life.'

So Armstrong went to the cupboard and brought out a bottle and the sugar basin, and set the kettle on the fire, and then sat down and loaded up his pipe in silence.

'There's much I'd like to say, Paul,' he began at length.

There was nothing in the act which could have moved a stranger to anything but a smile at the oddity of it, but it touched Paul almost to tears when the gray old man lugged out of his coat-tail pocket a whole newspaper, and having pinched from it a most economical fragment, singed his fingers at the bars in the act of lighting it. He had laughed at that little quaintness a hundred times as a lad, and it was somehow the first thing that had come home to him as a real reminder to be in want of reformation.'

They grew more at ease. Armstrong took up the subject he had broken a few minutes earlier.

'I don't guess,' he said, 'whether you're believe these thoughts for yourself, but there's a gap between you and me, Paul. Ye've had grave troubles.

'I have, sir,' said Paul.

'I've known it,' said his father. 'I've thoughts in my mind when ye're away: "Paul's blythe," or I thenk of ye, lad; I sit here in the auld arm-chair and think of ye, and eh, man, I'm just as certain of myself as if I were aware of every fact in your existence. Promise me this. I'm wearing we meet this last time for ever, and I want ye to keep the auld feelings from time to time. Write a little more regularly, about ye.

Take me into confidence when ye're gone.

Paul promised, and all the estrangement seemed to melt away. This was to be their last meeting, both or them guessed it, and when at last it grew to the time Paul must go, the father went down the long hall the front-door. Paul fumbled for the pocket-book in the darkness of the pa.s.sage found a piece of paper, and kissed the old man at parting he thrust this into his hand.

Arrived at the station nearest to Montcourtois; then the voiture from the hotel with the grinning Victor on the box, and Laurent waiting.

'No bad news' asked Paul.

'Things are not quite what they might be or what they should be,'

Laurent answered. 'But get in, and we will talk as we drive. Do you remember,' he asked, whilst Victor filled the night with the noise of a fusillade of whip-crackings--'do you remember that I told, you some time ago that a man should have no secrets from his physician?

'Yes,' said Paul. 'Well?'

'Have you had any secrets from me in respect to Madame Armstrong?'

'No; nothing that I can think of. I don't quite see what you are driving at.'

'Do you remember,' Laurent asked, 'the evening on which you first called me to attend her--the night on which she cried out that they were dancing in the wood, and that their bones were white? Do you remember?'

'Good G.o.d!' cried Paul; 'do I remember?'

'Did you ever diagnose that case? the doctor asked.

'No. Do you mean to say that her mind is affected, that----

'You never guessed?' asked Laurent, leaning across to him and grasping him by the arm--'you never guessed? Upon your life and honour?'

'Guessed? Guessed what?'

'Now,' said Laurent, 'I am going to hurt you, and I cannot help it. I am sorry, but it must be.'

'Speak out, man!' gasped Paul--'speak out!'

'That,' said Laurent, 'was delirium tremens.'

They had three miles to travel, and not another word was spoken on the road; but as they pa.s.sed the doctor's house a voice called out to him, and the driver pulled up.

'Stay with me a moment, Mr. Armstrong,' said Laurent 'I will but give this man an ordonnance for the pharmacien, and I will be with you. Drive home, Victor!'

The carriage rattled off; the doctor, the messenger, and Paul stood at the kerb for a minute or so. The carriage rumbled into the distance; a window was heard to open and to dose. Laurent took Paul's arm, and they walked together without a word until they came in front of the window of the room which Paul had used as a study. The blind was up, a lamp was lit, and the whole room was visible from the roadway.

'Mon Dieu!' said Laurent in a whisper.