Paul was in clover, and had sense enough to know it.
‘I regognise the zymptoms,’ said Darco, when they had been on tour a week. ‘I am not going to haf my insbirations in the tay-dime any longer. All my crate iteas will gome to me now for some dime in the night. You haf got to be near me, young Armstrong. You must sday vith me in the zame lotchings.’
This meant that Darco paid his whole expenses, and that his salary came to him each week intact. He began to save money and to develop at the same time an inexpensive dandyism. He took to brown velveteen and to patent leather boots. He bought a secondhand watch at a pawnbroker’s, but disdained a chain. His father had inspired him with a horror of jewellery; for once, when he had spent the savings of a month upon a cheap scarf-pin, the elder Armstrong had wrathfully asked him what he meant by sticking that brass-headed nail in his chest, and had thrown the gewgaw into the fire. But the watch for the first week or two was a token of established manhood, and it was consulted a full hundred times a day, and was corrected by every public clock he passed.
His occupation was no sinecure, for Darco was running half-a-dozen companies, and kept up a fire of correspondence with each. He had dramas on the anvil, too, and dictated by the hour every day. Often he woke Paul in the dead of night, and routed him out of bed, and gave him notes of some prodigious idea which had just occurred to him.
Darco had an unfailing formula with his landladies: ‘Prek-fasd for three, lunge for three, tinner for three; petrooms and zidding-room for two,’ He worked for three and ate for two.
‘I am in many respegs,’ he told Paul, ‘a most remarkaple man. I am a boet, and a creat boet; but I haf no lankwage. My Vrench is Cherman, and my Cherman is Vrench, ant my Enklish is Alsatian. My normal demperadure is fever heat. I am a toctor; I am a zoldier. I haf peen a creat agdor in garagder bards—Alsatian garagder bards—in Vrance and in Chermany. I can write a blay, ant I can stage id, ant I can baint the scenery for id. I am Cheorge Dargo, ant vere I haf not been it is nod vorth vile to co; and vot I do not know apout a theatre it is not vorth vile to learn. Sdob vith me, and I will deach you your business.’
The company played a week within five miles of Castle Barfield, and Paul snatched an hour for home. There the brown velveteen and the patent leathers and the watch made a great impression, and the eight sovereigns Paul was able to jingle in his pockets and display to wondering eyes.
‘There’s danger in the life, lad,’ said Armstrong wistfully. ‘I know it, for I saw a heap of it in my youth. Keep a clean heart, Paul. High thinking goes with chaste and sober living. There’s nothing blurs faith like our own misdeeds.’
Paul was thankful for the dusk which hid his flaming cheeks at this moment. His mother had taken away the candle, and the old man had chosen the instant’s solitude for this one serious word.
‘I’m not denying,’ said Armstrong, ‘that it is a good worldly position for a lad of your years, but what’s it going to lead to, Paul, lad? What’s the direction, I’m asking?