Despair's Last Journey Part 55

'I am afraid I must bid you good-afternoon, sir,' said Paul. 'And if you will permit a stranger to intrude in your affairs, I would suggest that you should make that c.o.c.ktail your last.'

'Wha-at?' asked the Colonel, placidly smiling, and eating his cigar.

'Should we have made it four-and-twenty if you had been in Noo Yawk City at the time of that banquet.'

'I beg your pardon, sir,' Paul answered stiffly. 'I don't care to continue this conversation, and I will take the liberty to end it.'

'I say,' said the Colonel, 'wait there. I never began a quarrel in my life, Mr. Armstrong, but I have ended--lemme see----' He began to count upon his fingers with an inward look. 'I have ended eight,' he said.

'Do you wish to quarrel now?' Paul demanded.

'Why, no, sir, no,' said the Colonel; 'I am a man of peace. But when you presoom, sir, to dictate what a man shall drink, and when you presoom to object to the theme upon which he chooses to converse--why, don't you see?'

'No,' said Paul, 'I do not see. If you choose to renew this conversation to-morrow, that is my hotel, and I shall be pleased to meet you there at any hour before noon.'

'Now,' the Colonel answered, taking him by the sleeve in alcoholic friends.h.i.+p, 'you are becoming s.h.i.+rty, and your tone is warlike. And that, Mr. Armstrong, is unreasonable. Perhaps you know now that I am an old traveller. I'm a little bit of an explorer, sir, and I have never objected to being guided over a bit of country that I didn't know, if I happened to meet a man that knew it Now, that's enough said, Mr.

Armstrong. If you find my conversation distasteful, just d.a.m.n my eyes and go. But don't you let me hear you. You can curse outside to your heart's content, and, you see, that needn't breed a quarrel.'

'Very well,' said Paul. The Solemn drunken man made him laugh in spite of his own anger and bewildered misery of mind. 'Whatever cursing I may have to do shall be done outside.'

'Good,' the Colonel answered, and having by this time eaten his cigar to its burned ash, he ejected the remnant and permitted Paul to escape.

As he came out upon the mild widespread suns.h.i.+ne of the street at the close of the afternoon, he seemed to realize himself for the first time in his whole life. He did not trouble himself to curse the Colonel, but he cursed Paul Armstrong soundly, and, striding rapidly towards his hotel, resolved on instant action. He mounted to his own room, and there he wrote a letter.

'I must see you,' it ran, 'and I must see you to-day. I must catch to-morrow's train for London, and I cannot guess when I may be able to return. I have neglected both work and business too long, and I must shake myself awake. On the whole, perhaps the kindest and best thing you could do for me would be to send me away for good and all. I have lived in a fool's dream too long.'

There was much more, but this was the gist of it, and the writer sealed and despatched it, not daring to tempt himself to a new effort by reading it over. The answer reached him in an hour:

'What is it, my poor friend, which has so disturbed you as to prompt you to the writing of such a letter as I have just received? I had thought myself safe in counting upon your esteem. If you are really called to London by affairs of urgency, I must not keep you, and, of course, I should be hurt if you went without telling me good-bye. It happens that I have engaged to dine at table-d'hote tonight with pa.s.sing friends, but I shall be free at ten o'clock. Ask for me then.'

Paul had been conscious and jealous of a good many small rivalries since he and the Baroness had first set up that platonic communion of soul in which they had now lived so long, but on the whole he had to confess that Gertrude had acted with complete discretion in these matters, and he had been repeatedly forced to admit to himself that he had been unable to find any real ground for his tremors. He had never once felt himself in actual danger of being deposed from his position of high priest in that ridiculous temple. When a man is in love with a woman, he cannot be expected to judge her actions or her meaning wisely, and the Baroness's platonics, with the little flashes of earthly fire in amongst them here and there, had always seemed to him to indicate a nature throbbing with fervour which was held in restraint only by a delicacy of equal charm and beauty, and a lofty moral sense. But he was easily open to the influence of other men's opinions, and he had never been able to think of Ralston's smile without an inward twinge which had sometimes amounted to an actual tenor. Suppose he were merely being played with by a heartless woman, who found it minister to her vanity to have him perpetually dangling at her heels in public and burning incense in private before her day by day? Suppose he were throwing away the best and freshest years of his manhood in the pursuit of such a mocking shadow? These, of course, were a sort of lover's blasphemies against his idol, and he resented them with all his heart and soul, exactly as any other wors.h.i.+pper would resent the insinuations of the devil against the powers and perfections of his deity. His resentment could not lead him to oblivion, and his memory of Ralston's humorous and mischievous enjoyment was with him often. And now came this American man, this boozing Colonel, with none of Ralston's reticence, and apparently with none of his respect for the character of a lady whom he had known long and well, and the coa.r.s.er accusation travelled on the same lines as the other, and only differed from it in going a good deal further.

'I will know to-night,' Paul said to himself savagely a hundred times in the course of that afternoon and evening, and when at length the slow hours had rolled themselves on to the time of his appointment, he presented himself in the vestibule of the Baroness's hotel in a condition of tragic resolve.

Gertrude was there in the very act of saying farewell to her _pa.s.sagere_ American friends, and he thought to himself, with as much of anger as admiration, that he had never seen her look altogether so charming as she did at that instant. The vivacity of colouring which commonly distinguished her was softened, and the unaccustomed pallor of her face lent a tender softness to her whole aspect. Her eyes, too, had lost something of their brilliance, and seemed faintly humid. He could have sworn that she had been crying, but when she turned to meet him after the departure of her friends, there was a gentle sparkle of welcome in her face, and she held out her beautiful jewelled little hand with a charming frankness.

'I am so glad you are here,' she said, 'and I was so much afraid that those dear tiresome people were going to overstay their time, and that I should have to keep you waiting.'

She had a hooded opera-cloak thrown over her left arm, and she held this out to him, and turned away so that he might adjust it about her shoulders.

'It is a lovely night,' she said, 'like a night in our Indian summer in dear old Ma.s.sachusetts. Let us talk in the garden, Paul.'

He walked by her side, still half saturnine, but in part conquered already by the soft seduction of her voice and face. He did not speak a word until they reached the garden terrace, and then only in answer to her question:

'You must really go, Paul?'

'Yes,' he answered gloomily, 'I must really go.'

For the season of the year it was a wonderful night even for Naples.

The air was like balm, and was loaded with the scent of flowers. Lights twinkled here and there about the garden, and the moon shone broad and bright almost at the zenith, half drowning the l.u.s.tre of the stars in the haze of light it spread. Scattered about the gardens were a dozen parties, more or less, all chattering gaily, and here and there disposed to frolic Their presence jarred on Paul, but there was no removing it He allowed Gertrude to lead the way, and she; strolling in pensive silence, brought him to a shaded avenue on the western side of the garden, where a gentleman and lady were promenading slowly arm-in-arm away from them.

Gertrude laid a hand upon his arm, and stood still until the couple in front had strayed out of hearing, and then resumed her pensive march.

'How came you, Paul,' she asked, looking suddenly up to him, 'to write so strange a letter?'

'I had to write it,' Paul answered in a constricted voice, in which a certain note of anger sounded. It disturbed him to find that his resolve was melting away from him, and he felt that he must needs harden his heart if be were but partly to fulfil his purpose. 'What is there in the letter,' he asked therefore, 'which you find strange?

'You have never told me,' she responded, 'one word of your purpose until this afternoon, and you are leaving me tomorrow. Is not that a little strange, Paul?'

Her voice trembled and almost broke upon his name.

'I knew nothing of it myself until yesterday,' he answered 'I have had letters of the most urgent importance, and must answer them in person.'

'How long do you expect to be away,' she asked.

'The one wise thing,' he answered, 'I could do would be to stay away altogether.'

'Ah, Paul,' she half whispered, wreathing her arm through his, 'there is your "fool's dream" again. What do you mean by the "fool's dream"?

Haven't we been happy for a time?'

'Is it happiness,' Paul asked, 'to pay for a week's emptiness and longing with one minute of delirium? Is it a happy thing to be so set on one unattainable hope as to be able, dreaming or waking, to think of nothing else? A man is not to be made happy by the life I live.'

'Paul,' she whispered, 'what more can you ask than I have given you?'

'Everything,' he answered.

She drew her arm away lingeringly. He let it go, and for a minute they walked in silence side by side. They reached the avenue, and turned back again.

'Can you tell me anything,' she asked after this pause--'do you care to tell me anything about your business in England.'

'That's simple enough,' he answered. 'I am within some few months of poverty, and I must get to work again. I have had a tremendous letter from old Darco, slanging me for breach of faith, and for having sent him a piece of intolerably bad work. I have deserved every word he has to say, and now I must make amends to him.'

'You have not been fortunate in your work lately?'she asked.

'I have not been fortunate,' he answered; 'I have been so far from fortunate that' I have been writing like an untrained schoolboy. I could have done better before I was fifteen.'

'But why is that? she asked. 'Your mind should only just now be ripening. Your time is all your own.'

'There is not one minute of my time my own,' he answered in a smouldering wrathfulness.

'Why not?' she questioned.

'Come,' said Paul, 'isn't that just a little disingenuous? Don't you know why not? Here am I,' he went on, 'as I do most solemnly believe, as madly in love as ever man was in the history of the world; petted, encouraged, and caressed, and ignored, and repulsed, until in the insane weakness of my own nature I have let all manhood ooze out of me. I am unlike Hamlet, my dear Gertrude. I am both to be fretted and played upon.'

'Played upon?' she said reproachfully.

'Played upon,' he repeated with what sounded like a weighty deliberation.

Gertrude began to cry, and set a dainty handkerchief to her eyes, but she said nothing, and Paul's only resource was to go on talking, to keep himself in sight of his own injuries.

'You and I made a bargain, Gertrude: we were to be friends, and no more than friends. You have known all along how much it cost me to keep within those limits; and have you helped me? I put that to your conscience.'