Despair's Last Journey Part 52

If ever a woman had laid the pure recesses of her heart and soul open to the inspection of a human eye, Gertrude had done so. He was confident that he knew her, and it seemed to him that no two hearts had ever lived together in an intimacy at once so chaste and fiery. Gertrude a flirt?

The tenderness she had shown him that night a pretence? The thing was so incredible and ridiculous that it was not worth while to bother one's brains with it for even the fraction of a minute. He had found his soul's partner--the twin Half of the Pear--and he was more than content with his discovery.

Whether Ralston meant much or little, whether, indeed, he virtually meant nothing or anything, Paul could not guess; but he was uneasy beneath the humorous gravity of the elder's eye, and he changed the theme. They had a good hour together, and shook hands and parted with a mutual liking, and at the instant at which he reached the street Paul was free to take up his station at his end of the telepathic wire and to call Gertrude to the other. He walked miles and miles whilst engaged in this wholesome and reasonable enterprise, and at length, without in the least knowing how he had got there, found himself, dog-tired, in a strange quarter of the city. He rambled on until he met a gendarme, who put him upon his way, and within ten minutes of this encounter he awoke with a start to the fact that he was pacing the pavement of the thoroughfare in which he had first seen Annette. The interregnum of fatigue which had come in between his pa.s.sionate dreams and this reminder of the sordid realities of his lot went for nothing. The dream and the truth flashed together like the electric opposites in clouds and awoke a rare thunderstorm within doors. But by the time he had got to his hotel this was over, and he crawled wearily upstairs to a fireless room, the air of which struck chill and lonely. The apartment in itself was well enough, and not many years before he would have thought it palatial in its stateliness and luxury; but he would have given a thousand pounds at that instant if he could have translated himself to the old kitchen hearth at home and into the sight of the old familiar faces. He had taken a little champagne before dinner, a moderate allowance of wine in the course of the meal, and two rather liberal tumblers of whisky-and-soda with Ralston. This was not the direction in which he was accustomed to approach excess, but he remembered gladly that he had a carafe of brandy in the room. He was chill and tired, and in that contradictory condition of discomfort in which a man is at once painfully sleepy and distressfully wide awake. He poured a quant.i.ty of spirit into a tumbler, filled the gla.s.s to the brim with water, undressed, blew out his candles, and went to bed, and the demons of a sleepless night came to him and tormented him. The opening line of Tennyson's 'Love and Duty' got into his brain and ticked there: 'Of love that never found its earthly close, what sequel?' It recurred with a d.a.m.nable iteration. He tried all the devices for wooing slumber he had ever heard of. He a.s.sembled an innumerable flock of sheep, for he had the knack of making pictures in his mind, and he set them one by one to leap through a gap in a hedge, counting them as they went by. He had not counted a dozen when the words were back again: 'Of love that never found its earthly close, what sequel?'

He repeated the experiment scores of times, but it was always interrupted by the same query. He set an unending line of soldiers on the march, all as like each other as peas in the same pod. He resolutely denuded his mind of thought; he repeated the multiplication table. It was all of no service; the question came back remorselessly, and at last he set himself to face it. It was dismal enough to look at To think of the world without Gertrude was to conceive a barren waste in which it was worth no man's while to dwell. To antic.i.p.ate a life-long continuance of the experiences and emotions of the past three months was scarcely to invite a more cheerful prospect To hint, even in his own thoughts, at any attempt to draw her from her own height of purity was a profanation.

The quarters and the hours chimed, until the gray spring dawn crept through the interstices of the blinds, and fatigue grew more leaden than ever. But the devil of insomnia was unconquerable. He relit his candles, found a book, and tried to read; but that was as hopeless as the rest.

He had no claim to call upon Gertrude again until he learned that it was her goodwill and pleasure he should do so; but he was not forbidden to write, and there at least was an occupation to which he could bend his mind. He dressed and sat down, dull and haggard, to the task. He wrote page on page, feeling as though he dipped his pen in his own heart's blood; but when he came to read what he had written, it was no more what he had meant it to be than a Hortus Siccus is a living garden, or a mummy a live Prometheus. He wrote at last: 'I cannot bear this banishment in nearness, and if I am not to see you I must go away. I have had a night of fever, and have not slept I dare not trust myself to write, but for pity's sake let me have an answer by the messenger who brings this.'

He fixed in his mind ten o'clock as the earliest possible hour at which he could venture to have the note delivered, and until then he must needs have patience. When he went to place his missive in the hands of the concierge, with instructions for the time of its delivery, the servants had only just begun to stir about the house. He had come down great-coated and gloved, as if for an early walk, but the walk was no more than a pretext to allay some remotely imaginable suspicion on the part of the concierge.

'Imust leave this with you now,' he said, 'because it must be delivered at ten o'clock precisely, and I shall probably not be able to return till later. The messenger will wait for an answer.'

The man promised that his instructions should be obeyed, and he walked into the streets feeling quite aimless and forlorn, and with the fatigues of the night still heavy on him. He had not gone far when he found a fiacre, and bade the man drive to the Bois and back, and fill up two hours with the journey. Now, the chill morning air and the bright light falling on tired eyes began to work upon him, and in a little while he was peacefully asleep. The cocher awoke him at the door of his hotel. He looked at his watch, and it was ten o'clock to the minute. His heart turned a somersault as he thought that this was the hour at which Gertrude would receive his letter. Breakfast was out of question, but by this time either the Bodega or the English bar would be open, and he needed a stimulant of some sort before he could face an interview if such a favour were to be accorded him. It would be unreasonable to expect that the messenger would return in less than half an hour, and he spent that time in the society of a gla.s.s of well-watered absinthe and the English newspapers of yesterday. He read industriously, but the only printed words which reached his consciousness were those of the theatrical advertis.e.m.e.nt which told him that the joint work of Messrs.

George Darco and Paul Armstrong was still being played nightly to crowded houses. That did not interest him in the least, and the news of Parliament and the police courts might as well have been written in Sanscrit for all the impression it made upon him.

He endured his own impatience resolutely for the stated time, and then walked back to the hotel. His messenger had not yet returned, but there in the vestibule was Ralston, in his brigandish sombrero and his black velvet jacket, looking so fit and wholesome that Paul envied him.

'I have just met two of the boys,'said Ralston, 'and we are going to breakfast at the Poule d'Or at twelve o'clock. Will you make one of us?

I can promise you good talk, and honest fare, and wholesome wine.'

'I should like it,' Paul answered awkwardly; 'but the fact is, I can't tell whether I am free to go. I dare say I shall be able to give you an answer in an hour, if that will do?'

'We must make it do,' said Ralston, and at that instant Paul's messenger returned, and handed to him a large envelope of faint saffron tone.

It bore an armorial device on one side in gold and scarlet, and on the other a superscription in a handwriting which had been so trained to affectation that it was recognisable at a glance to anyone who had once seen it.

'You will excuse me,' said Paul; 'I may have to answer this at once.'

He stepped a little on one side and broke the envelope open with the certainty in his mind that Ralston had noticed his eagerness and saw how his fingers trembled. The thick embossed notepaper held three words only, or, rather, two words and an initial: 'Breakfast, noon.--G.' His face flushed with triumph, and he turned impulsively on Ralston.

'I find,' he said, with a vivacity in strong contrast with his previous manner, 'that I can't come to-day, but I hope you'll give me another chance. Supposing you and your friends are at liberty for this evening, will you bring them to dine with me? I can trust the Poule d'Or; I know it of old.'

'Good,' said Ralston. 'If they are at liberty, we'll be there. What time shall we say? Seven?'

'Seven,' Paul answered brightly.

But a new confusion fell upon him. Not a muscle of Ralston's swarthy clear-cut face or the full-bearded lips moved, but there was a dancing little demon of not more than half-malicious humour in his eyes.

'Seven,' Paul repeated. 'You'll excuse me now? You won't think my haste unfriendly?'

'My dear fellow!' cried Ralston, the fun rioting in his eyes by this time, though his features were as still as those of a graven image.

'Well,' said Paul, with a desperate, fruitless effort to recover himself, 'until seven.'

Ralston shook hands and went his way, and Paul raced upstairs two steps at a time and burst into the room he had left less than three hours ago in a mood so cheerless and despondent He kissed the letter and clapped it to his heart, and strolled up and down exulting. He was not to be dismissed; he was not to be sent into the desert, after all.

And, then, what about Ralston? It was really a most unpleasant, a most unlucky, chance which had brought him there at that particular instant. There was no blinking the fact that Ralston had enjoyed Paul's discomfiture, and his talk of the previous night came back to mind--the fun he had made of the Isolated Soul; his good-humoured allowance for the one foible in the character of a lady whom he had known from childhood, and for whom he professed both affection and esteem. It matters not how impossible a suggestion of this kind may seem to a lover's mind. His rejection of it with a natural scorn is of no manner of consequence except inasmuch as it confirms his loyalty. The suggestion will stick and will worry, and it will stick the longer and worry the more because it will make the sufferer suspicious of himself.

'Trust me not at all, or all in all,' is a native motto for the man of candid soul, and for him an implanted mistrust will not touch his mistress, though it may anguish him with a sense of his own unworthiness.

But--for the time, at least--these things were no more than mere trickeries of self-torment for Paul's mind, and he was on fire to meet the mid-day. He got out his handsomest morning raiment and brushed it with his own hands, and made a second toilet lest there should be a speck on cuff or collar after the morning's drive, and then he promenaded the streets at a snail's pace to kill the hour which intervened between himself and heaven.

Heaven was a trifle chilly when, after all this patient waiting, he reached its portals. Gertrude was like frozen honey. She met him in an exquisite morning confection of the latest Parisian design--a something, to the uninstructed male eye, between a peignoir and a tea-gown, but of costly simplicity, and of colours cunningly suited to match Madame's complexion in the daylight. The table was exquisitely appointed, but to Paul's dismay the couverts laid upon it were as for apart as the length of the table would permit. He looked so comically discomfited at this discovery, and his face so easily expressed his disappointment, that Gertrude laughed and relented.

'Well, M. Paul,' she said, still laughing, 'I will make a side-dish of you,' and with her own pretty hands she re-arranged the table, a.s.signing him a position with great demureness in the exact centre of it.

Paul would have made at least an effort to break through the crust of sweet ice which enveloped her this morning but for the presence of a piquante small brunette of a waiting-maid, who stood on guard, as it were, over a service-table at the end of the apartment.

'My maid,' said Gertrude, 'neither speaks nor understands a word of any language but her own, but I can a.s.sure you that she has eyes, and can use them. She invariably attends me at breakfast, and to send her away would be----'

She paused.

'What would it be? said Paul. 'Surely Madame la Baronne de Wyeth has the right to choose what form of service she pleases at her own table?'

'Madame la Baronne,' replied the lady, with a slight curtsey, 'has chosen.'

'But surely, Gertrude----' Paul began.

She stopped him with a significant gesture of the hand.

'Not my Christian name this morning, if you please. And remember,' she added, 'my little watch-dog there has eyes, as I have already told you, and though she knows nothing of English, I should guess her to be a very fair judge of tone. Come now, you stupid boy,' she continued in a voice so level and cool that no one who did not understand her words could have guessed their purport, 'I will make a bargain with you. If you will be kind to me, I will be kind to you. If I receive here a distinguished and handsome young Englishman all alone--if in order to receive him I make a marked alteration in my household appointments---- Come, now, is it worth while to go on with that?'

'No,' said Paul, calling his stage practice to his aid, and following her lead,' it is not worth while; but,' he added with a ceremonious bow, 'I shall not break my heart if I must needs go on with Madame la Baronne. The right which you have given me to use a dearer name is so precious to me '--he drew out his watch and pretended to compare it with the fairy pendule on the mantel-shelf--'is so precious,' he continued, 'that I cannot resign it, and if I am absolutely driven to it in self-defence, I shall have to invent a dearer name.'

'Now, that, M. Paul,'said Madame, with her tone and face of chill sweetness, 'is excellently well done, except for the one little circ.u.mstance that you do not disguise your ardour. I read in your eyes,'

she said as calmly as if she were announcing a trifle of news she had read in the morning's papers, 'all the fervour of your mind, and I do not wish to read it there--that is to say, I do not wish my little maid to read it there.'

'Well,' said Paul, 'I will try. If you will let me say what I want to say, I will keep a straight face over it.'

'Within measure,' said the lady, with a pa.s.sing touch of gaiety--'within measure.'

'Most things have their measure,' Paul answered, 'until you come to the crucial matters of the heart, and they go beyond measure.'

The maid broke in at this point to ask if Madame la Baronne would be served.

'At once,' said the mistress, and waved Paul to his place. He bowed and took it. The maid served a number of elegant kickshaws, and the grave serving-man who had superintended the dinner-table on the previous evening entered with a bottle of hock in a cradle and stealthily withdrew.

'You gave me but little time,' said Gertrude, 'to prepare for you, but I think you will find that we have done very well. Try that hock, M.

Paul.'

Paul looked down his nose, and in a dry-at-dust voice recited the first verse of old Ben's immortal lyric. His voice quavered a little on the last lines--

'But might I of Jove's nectar sip, I would not change from thine!' and Gertrude broke in with a laugh and an airy little wave of her hand.

'Now, my dear M. Paul,' she said, 'you are really and truly admirable.

That is quite perfect, and if you will promise me, upon your sacred word of honour as a man, not to betray me by a word or a look, I will tell you something I never told you before. I have never admired you so much, or loved you so dearly, as I do at this hour. You must believe me,' she continued, pus.h.i.+ng her plate away and beckoning the maid with a slight backward gesture of the head, 'I hate this tone of persiflage, but what is there left for us if we would be blamelessly alone, and yet speak our hearts to each other?'

'Madame,' said Paul, 'I find it a masterstroke of genius.' Their tones were ice on both sides, but their words were fire. The maid most probably thought her mistress bored, and the guest a dullard. She had seemed at first interested in the new arrival, but she lapsed now into an att.i.tude of indifference, and the dangerous pretence went on. In this intoxicating whirl of pa.s.sion, when interchange of vows was offered under the necessity of constant watchfulness and self-guardians.h.i.+p, the meal was not an important matter.