Despair's Last Journey

by David Christie Murray

This prophecy was not quite realized. Claudia chose to breakfast in her own room, and she was a woman of many friends, and lunched out and dined out so often that Paul hardly saw anything of her. The Sundays would have been Elysian days, but ladies and gentlemen of fashionable aspect drove to the house in handsome equipages, and spirited Miss Belmont away to revels at Richmond and elsewhere in which Paul had no part. He moved sadly about the house, in the streets, with no heart for study, or for the writing of the new comedy on which his mind had been set so warmly only a few weeks before. His old companions were travelling about the country, meeting old friends and making new ones, and he wished himself back amongst them many a time. He could have written to Claudia, and have looked forward to the time when he could have met her again on equal terms. They were not equals any longer. Miss Belmont was starred in big type, and was leading lady, at a biggish salary; for her first real chance had come to her, and she had charmed the town. Paul was a walking gentleman with a part of fifty lines, and not a solitary critic named his name.

Sometimes, but very rarely, Claudia shone upon him. On fine evenings, and on those sparse occasions when she and Paul dined at the same table, she would walk to the theatre and accept his escort Then, for a brief half-hour, life was worth the living again. But there was one nightly hour of torment. His work was over early, for he had nothing to do after the opening of the third act of the piece then playing. He would dress and wait in his room, and wonder whether that idiot, that dolt and fool incomparable, Captain the Honourable John MacMadden, was waiting at the stage-door. Captain MacMadden belonged to the Household Brigade, and was a bachelor of five-and-thirty. He parted his hair in the middle, and wore a moustache and weeping whiskers of the jettiest, shiny black. He smiled constantly, to show a set of dazzling white teeth. In his own mind Paul loaded this exquisite with savage satire. He was a tailor’s dummy carrying about a barber’s dummy, and the barber’s dummy was finished with a dentist’s advertisement He carried a very thin umbrella—the mere ghost of an umbrella—he was gloved and booted with the fineness of a lady, and he was always delicately perfumed. He was reported to be wealthy, abominably wealthy, and three nights a week or more he would present himself at the theatre, and take Miss Belmont out to supper. But so discreet was that lady, and so careful of her good report, that Captain MacMadden never came without a guardian dragon in the person of another young lady of the theatres, who was accompanied by a gentleman who was in all points tailored and barbered and gloved and booted like Captain MacMadden himself.

Paul would wonder if the splendid warrior were below until he could endure himself no longer. Then he would descend and hang about the stage-door, to find his enemy or not to find him, as the case might be, but in either event to eat his heart in jealousy and impatience. When he found him he burned to insult him by asking him what tailor he advertised, or by addressing him as the Housemaid’s Terror or the Nursegirl’s Blight. He ground tegmenta of ‘Maud’ between his teeth as he looked at him. ‘His essences turn the live air sick,’ and ‘that oiled and curled Assyrian bull, smelling of musk and of insolence.’ And it happened one night that Captain MacMadden, arriving late, and in a mighty hurry and flutter lest he should have missed the lady, tapped Paul upon the shoulder, and said:

‘My boy, can you tell me if Miss Belmont has left the theatre?’

Paul, who was at that instant bending all the force of his mind upon Captain MacMadden, and punching his head in visioned combat, turned on him with a passionate ‘Damn your impertinence, sir!’ which set the startled gentleman agape with wonder. At this instant Claudia pushed through the swinging door which led from the stage to the corridor, and she ran in between the belligerent Paul and the object of his rage.

‘What is this?’ she asked.

‘This gentleman,’ said Paul, ‘is sadly in want of a lesson in good-breeding. I shall be happy to offer him one.’

‘Upon my word,’ returned Captain MacMadden mildly, ‘you’re devilish peppery. Hadn’t the slightest intention to affront anybody, upon my word. Nothing further from thoughts. Can’t say moah.’

‘Mr. Armstrong,’ said Claudia, ‘I have never seen you display this ill-bred brutality before. I had not expected you to show it in my presence to my friend.’

Paul felt for the instant that he had been brutal and ill-bred. Claudia judged him so, and whatever Claudia said must needs be just But when she had swept by him to the waiting brougham and the fashionable escort had followed her, he stood in a choking rage, and felt like Cain. A thick drizzle was falling, and he swung out into the night, glad of the wet coolness in his flaming face, and the wet wind that fanned him. The streets were heavily mired and the drizzle grew to a fast downpour. He turned up his coat-collar and ploughed along, growing more and more resolutely angry, and more and more resolved to fight his case out with Claudia. The house in which they lived was dark when he reached it, except for a single gas-jet in the hall at which guests bound bedward lit their candles. He walked into the dining-room and sat down to wait, with nothing but the winking jet on the wall and his own thoughts for company. The fire in the grate had died, and its cooling ashes made a crisp, faint noise from time to time. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked irritatingly, and sounded the quarters at intervals which seemed curiously irregular. At times one quarter seemed to follow close on another’s heels, and the next seemed to lag for hours. Paul was soaked to the skin, and had violent fits of shivering, but he would not leave his post lest he should miss Claudia.