Despair's Last Journey

by David Christie Murray

‘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 sunshine 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’hôte tonight with passing 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 worshipper 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 coarser 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 passagère 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.