JOHN was late next morning. He had not slept for many nights, and the heavy slumber of entire exhaustion fell on him towards dawn. It was nearly midday when he re-entered the sitting-room where he had sat up so late the night before.
He went to Archie's room to see whether he had come in; but it was empty.
He was impatient to be gone, to get away from that marble-topped side-table, and the horsehair chairs, and the gilt clock on the mantelpiece. At least, he thought he wished to get away from these things; but it was from himself that he really wanted to get away—from this miserable tortured self that was all that was left of him in this his hour of weakness and prostration; the hour which inevitably succeeds all great exertions of strength. How could he drag this wretched creature about with him? He abhorred himself; the thought of being with himself was intolerable. It seems hard that the nobler side of human nature, which can cheer and urge its weaker brother up such steep paths of duty and self-sacrifice, should desert us when the summit is achieved, leaving the weaker to wail unreproved over its bleeding feet and rent garments till we madden at the sound.
An overwhelming sense of loneliness fell on John as he sat waiting for Archie to come in. He had no strong, earnest, steadfast self to bear him company. He felt deserted, lost.
Who has not experienced it, that fierce depression and loathing of all life, which, though at the time we know it not, is only the writhing and fainting of the starved human affections! The very ordinary sources from which the sharpest suffering springs, shows us later on how narrow are the limits within which our common human nature works, and from which yet irradiate such diversities of pain.
Alphonse disturbed him at last to ask whether he and "Monsieur" would dine at table d'hôte. "Monsieur," with a glance at Archie's door, had not yet come in.
John said they would both dine; and then, roused somewhat by the interruption, an idea struck him. Had Archie, in the excitement of the moment, gone back to England without telling him?
He went to the room, but there were no evidences of departure. On the bed the clothes were thrown which Archie had worn on the previous day. The gold watch John had given him was on the dressing-table. He had evidently left it there on purpose, not caring, perhaps, to risk taking it with him. All the paraphernalia of a man who studies his appearance were strewed on the table. There was his little moustache-brush, and phial of brilliantine to burnish it. John knew that he would never have left that behind. Archie had evidently intended to return.
In the mean while hour succeeded hour, but he did not come. That Archie should have been out all night was not surprising, but that he should be still out now in his evening clothes in the daytime, began to be incomprehensible. After a few premonitory tremors of misgiving, which, man-like, he laughed at himself for entertaining, John took alarm.