There was no answer for the letter of the heart-wounded Gertrude. He was not quite sure whether he were a mere insensate brute or no, but he packed, and took the homeward train without a word of farewell. If Gertrude’s friendship were a real thing, he was a beast unspeakable. If it were a selfish sentimental sham—why, then—anything. He began to taste life with a very nausea of weariness.
But when London was reached, and the physical fatigue of travel shaken off, and the tornado of Darco’s energies had engulfed him as of old, he found himself another man. Darco was terrible at their earliest interview.
‘Led me haf a look at you,’ he said, dragging Paul to his study-window. ‘What haf you peen doing with yourseluf? I have known an Armstrong for some years who was rather a glever vellow. Vot? Ant now I gome agross an Armstrong who is a plithering impecile. Eh?’
‘Now, my dear Darco,’ Paul answered, ‘I dare say that your criticism of the stuff I sent you is quite just I haven’t, indeed, the remotest doubt about it But I have been out of health and worried, and now I am here for work. You shall have the best I can give you.’
‘I shall speag to you,’ said Darco, ‘with an egsdreme blain-ness. I haf not forgotten our first parting. You did not dreat me well.’
‘I know I didn’t,’ Paul said.
‘Ant now,’ continued Darco, refusing to be mollified all at once, ‘you haf wasted months of valuable dime, ant you ant I are both the poorer by hundrets ant hundrets of pounts. I will haf your bromise, your sacred wort of honour, before I will gollaborate again, that you will no more blay with me these farces. I like you, yourself, Armstrong. I am very font of you. I haf a very creat atmiration for your worg. But you haf not been reliaple. You haf no right to resent what I am sayink.’
‘I have some excuses, of which I can’t talk,’ said Paul; ‘but I don’t resent what you are saying. I am very sorry to have kept you waiting. I promise you that you shall have all my time and all my best energies for this one spell of work in any case. After that——’
‘Veil,’ said Darco, ‘afder that?
‘Heaven knows!’ Paul answered. ‘Don’t say any more just now, Darco. Let us go to work.’