Despair's Last Journey

by David Christie Murray

So he grew to be something of a hermit; and all on a sudden he resolved to cut himself adrift from England, and to live abroad. Before his wanderings were over, he was destined to know Europe pretty thoroughly; but at this time his knowledge of it was limited to Paris, and here and there a bit of Northern France. He would break new ground. Antwerp would do as well as any other city for a starting-place, and within a day or two of the hour at which the fancy first occurred to him he was ready to start He crossed by the Baron Osy, took rooms in a hotel on the Groen Plate, and lived and worked there for a month or two under the dropping music of the cathedral chimes. The outfit of a man of letters is the simplest in the world. With a ream of writing-paper, a pint of ink, and sixpennyworth of pens, he is professionally provisioned for half a year. Paul had no need to be in personal touch either with publisher or stage-manager, and he knew his absence from England to be unmarked and unregretted. Annette and he seemed to get on well enough together. There was no real communion between them. Paul was all on fire about his work, and she had no more comprehension of his thoughts than a canary-bird would have had. But it was not possible for a man of his temperament to live constantly under the same roof, and to sit daily at the same table with anybody, male or female, without developing some kind of camaraderie. Mrs. Armstrong seemed to like the life fairly well, and to find a pleasure in the fleeting society of the birds of passage who went and came. She had dresses to her heart’s content, and in her pretty gelid way enjoyed a good deal of popularity; but by-and-by, as summer again drew near, she wearied of her surroundings, and incited Paul to move. The work on which he had been engaged was finished and disposed of; there were a good many loose hundreds at the bank, and more were coming. He was ready for a holiday, and for Annette’s sake was willing to persuade himself that he was in need of one. So in May weather they set off to make a round of the old Flemish country—Ghent, and Bruges, and Aix, and Mechlin. Thence they slid on to Namur, working slowly towards Switzerland in Paul’s fancy, but stopping by mere hazard at Janenne, and being by a very simple accident enticed some four or five miles from the main line of their route to Montcourtois. They had been drawn aside in the first place to visit the famous grottoes of Janenne, and the jolly old doyen of Montcourtois was their fellow-passenger in the brake which conveyed them to the station. The old priest was a man of learning, and in his day he had travelled, and had known the world. Paul and he fell into animated converse, and struck up an immediate liking for each other. It turned out, curiously enough, that, though the old gentleman had lived for twenty years within half a dozen miles of the wonderful grottoes, he had never been prompted to visit them until now. He was on the way to wipe out his reproach, and by the time the sight-seeing was over Paul found himself so fascinated by his simplicity, his bonhomie, and the charming, varied stream of his talk, that he must needs invite the old gentleman to dinner at the Hotel of the Three Friends, where preparations for his own reception for the night had been made. The old priest accepted the invitation at once, and early evening found them the only occupants of a great salon in which a hundred people might have dined with case. A brass lamp, suspended by chains from the ceiling, illumined their corner of the’ centre table, and at the far end of the room a big stove bloomed red-hot all round like a magnified cherry. These preparations were scarcely needed, for the air was balmy, the windows were open, and the sky was yet full of the evening light of early summer. The voice of a stream not far away ran on with a ceaseless, light-hearted babble, and through the open windows the one street of the village was visible until it swerved away to the left There are a thousand villages like Montcour-tois; but it was the first of its genus Paul had known, and he found a quiet charm in it The Hotel of the Three Friends stood in the Place Publique, dominated by a brand-new town-hall; but all the rest of the place was quaint and old-fashioned. All the houses were distempered in various colours, and all their architects had worked after the decrees of the destinies, so that the street-line itself was full of gable-ends, and the edifices faced in as many directions as was possible. A sturdy, thick-set village girl, neat as a new pin, with cheeks hard and red, and shining like hard red apples, brought in the soup—a soupe à la bonne femme, and admirable of its kind—brought in a dish of fresh-caught trout excellently fried; followed this with veal cutlets; with a tart, and a local cheese which, though it had no fame beyond its own borders, was a surprise for an epicure. With the fish came a dusty, cobwebbed bottle in a cradle, and at the sight of it the doyen lifted his eyebrows, and faintly smacked his lips. Paul, in ordering dinner, had asked the square-built Flemish waitress:

‘You have Burgundy?

‘But yes, sir,’ the girl had answered, ‘and of the best.’

‘Bring me a bottle of your best,’ Paul had said, and had thought no more of the matter.

But when the venerable cleric so twinkled at the sight of the dusty flagon in the threadbare bid wicker cradle, he was tempted to ask if they had anything very special before them.

‘My dear sir,’ returned the doyen, ‘it is a wine for an Emperor, and if I may be permitted to tell you so, its appearance is attributable to my presence here.’

It was a noble vintage, and the doyen grew eloquent over it.

‘It is here in the Ardennes,’ he said, ‘that you find the best Burgundy of the world. We have no vineyards of our own, though, if tradition can be trusted, they grew a good grape here hundreds of years ago; but we have cellarage, and here beneath our feet is a vault cut out of the living rock, the temperature of which does not vary one degree Reaumur on the hottest day in summer and the coldest night in winter. That is the right harbour for such a craft as this to sail into.’ He touched the bottle affectionately with the tips of his beautifully-trimmed white fingers. ‘You must not take me for a wine-bibber,’ he said smilingly, ‘but all gifts of God are good, and this is the best that Heaven affords in this direction.’

Paul rang the bell no great time later, and called for a second bottle. The doyen protested, but with a discernible faintheartedness. He talked of vintages as the twilight fell and the lamp beamed more brightly on the snowy napery. Well, he had travelled, he had seen the world, he had been young. Of all wines in the world for him Johannesberg. One bottle, one truly imperial bottle, he remembered.

‘It was a physician of Paris, the most eminent, who travelled for his pleasure, and whose acquaintance I made in Rome. It is very long ago. The Holy Father was suffering agonies, and he endured them like a hero. But everybody feared that he was dying, and our Roman doctors could make nothing of the case at all. It occurred to somebody to speak to His Holiness of the doctor Gaston. The physicians in attendance were glad to invite him, and by a very simple and almost painless operation he removed the seat of trouble, and in a week His Holiness was himself again. His Holiness was full of gratitude, and would gladly have paid any fee the doctor had chosen to name. But he would have no fee at all. He was not a good son of the Church, but he was an excellent Christian all the same, and it was his pride to have restored so valuable a life. Gaston told me the whole story. “My child,” said the Pope, “some souvenir of your own skill and kindness you shall accept from me; I insist upon it.” Then the good doctor hardened his heart, and he said: “I am for these many years a collector of wines, and I have in Paris my little cellar, which is without its rival for its size. But there is one treasure which I cannot buy, nor beg, nor steal. It is the Imperial Johannes-berg. It goes alone to the crowned heads of Europe and to your Holiness. Rothschild cannot buy it with his millions. If I may beg but a bottle——” And His Holiness laughed, and “My good son,” he said, “you shall have a dozen.” And Papa was better than his word, for he sent thirteen. Gaston,’ continued the ancient priest, laying a hand on the listener’s sleeve, ‘had six friends in Rome, of whom I was one. He resolved that the thirteenth bottle should be expended, and that he would store the rest We assembled—ah! my son, we assembled. There were little glasses of fair water handed round and cubes of bread like dice, and we sipped and nibbled, that our palates might be clean. Then the bottle was brought in with the tray of glasses, the right Rhine wine-glasses of pale green, with the vine-leaves and grape-bunches about the stem. And the bottle was opened, and—— You know your Scott? Do you remember how the bottle of claret “parfumèd ze apartment”? Oh, it was so when that cork was drawn! Odours of flowers and old memories! It was nectar when we came to taste it It was of the kingliest, the most imperial.’