Despair's Last Journey

by David Christie Murray

He was tarred with the literary brush, which is to say that he was eternally bent upon the examination of all human symptoms, whether they displayed themselves in himself or in another. He had made it the business of his life to analyze those symptoms, though he was but as yet a chemist’s apprentice, wandering and wondering through the vast laboratory of the world. Yet, apprentice as he was, he had learned enough of the secret of his own craft to know that the professional analyst of emotion quickens perception at the expense of sensation. The man who is always pulling emotion to pieces as a part of the day’s work grows to a philosophic indifference about it, as a vivisector becomes dead to a sense of pain. Yet neither the anatomist of the living soul nor the anatomist of the living body becomes insensible in any appreciable degree to the exigence of his own pains, and the memories of a thousand triumphant operations will not hinder the start and outcry of the greatest of surgeons if you stick an unexpected pin into any part of his anatomy.

Paul had laid his hand upon the handle of the door of the study, and with his disengaged hand was fumbling in his pocket for a match, when he heard a tripping footstep on the stairs behind him, and he was hailed by the Baroness’s Parisian maid. Madame la Baronne, so the maid explained, had let fall a valuable ornament in the salon; had Mr. Armstrong seen it, and, if not, would he give orders that it should be sought for and returned? Paul felt the precious object in his pocket.

‘I do not know Madame’s arrangements,’ he said, ‘but I have the bracelet, and, if it were possible for her to receive me, I should like to hand it to her personally.’

‘Oh, but yes,’ said the maid. Madame la Baronne had her little suite of rooms, and was quite in position to receive. M. Armstrong’s desire should be named to her, and the maid would bring an answer.

She fluttered upstairs with swashing petticoats and a flutter of ribbons, and Paul waited in the corridor below. On the waxed floor of the salon Annette’s feet still moved to a rhythmic, half-dancing walk, and her bird-like voice soared to—

‘Tons les deux, la main dans la main,
Nous poursuivions notre chemin,
Sous la celeste voûte.’

‘Under the celestial vault,’ said Paul; ‘and bent on the discovery of what infernal regions?’

The maid came back, pruning herself with coquettish graces, to answer that Madame la Baronne would have pleasure in receiving M. Armstrong in five minutes, and, having delivered her message, rustled rapidly upstairs again. She paused at the turning of the stair, and leaned over to say:

‘Numéro quinze, the fifth door to the right of monsieur.’

‘Thank you,’ Paul answered, and, turning into the darkened study, struck a light and consulted his watch. It was ten minutes past nine, and he sat still to await the quarter hour. There was a clattering of pots and pans in the distant kitchen, and Annette was still singing and walking in the near apartment An occasional murmur of voices, a click of billiard-balls, and even the faint noise made by the shuffle of a set of dominoes in the café over the road reached his ears, but save for these slight signs of life the world seemed asleep. Annette suddenly ceased to sing in the middle of a bar. He heard her open the door of the salon. She passed the little corridor in silence, and ascended the stair. He heard the key turn, first in the lock of one door and then in that of another. He consulted his watch once more by the flickering light of a lucifer match. He was within a minute of the appointed time, and he began to ask himself with a fluttering heart what he was to say, and how he was to bear himself in the coming interview. Upstairs outraged purity and dignity were waiting for him, and he himself, innocent as he had meant to be, was yet in a sense the author of the outrage. The minute crawled. It ticked its final second out at last, and he arose holding the bracelet in his hand. He mounted the stair, knocked at the door the maid had indicated to him, and was bidden to enter. The Baroness was seated in a sea-green dressing-gown ornamented by many pretty devices in lace of priceless fabric, which had taken a coffee tint by reason of its age. A book was lying on her knees, and she was toying with an ivory paper-knife which had its haft in a silver embossed rhinoceros tooth. She nodded Paul to a chair which had evidently been placed for him.