Despair's Last Journey Part 32

He went out, banging the door behind him, and Paul was left alone feeling strangely mean and foolish. It seemed that Darco had come to an explanation of his movement, and Paul did not care to think that he had found the real reason for it The real reason was a sacred thing whilst it was hidden away in his own breast; but, held out to the inspection of others, it had a gawky, unfledged sort of look. It lost dignity. The dove that cooed in his bosom was a live bird; but once under Darco's eyes, and it was a moulted rag--a thing dead and despicable.

He had to face Darco again, and he had little taste for the meeting.

'I haf found oudt vat you are coing to London for,' said Darco. 'You are a tarn fool. I haf never seen such a tarn fool in all my tays ant years--nefer: nefer since I gave up peing a tarn fool myself. You can vork; you haf got prains; you haf cot a gareer in front of you; you are one-ant-dwenty. My Cott! you are one-and-dwenty; ant you haf prains, ant intustry, ant jances, and you juck them all into the gudder for liddle Jarlie Prown.'

'Who is Jarlie Prown?' asked Paul.

'Jarlie Prown is Glautia Pelmond,' said Darco. 'She has kebt her initials. C stands for Glautia, just as veil as it stands for Jarlie; and P stands both for Prown and Pelmond. She has ruint as many men as she has does and vingers. It is no pusiness of mine. Co your vays, you silly itiot 'Id is your dime of life to be an itiot, and it is my dime of life to laugh at you.'

'I have never heard a man breathe a word till now against Miss Belmont's virtue,'cried Paul.

'Firtue?' cried Darco, with a snorting laugh; 'what is firtue? Let me dell you this: Your Miss Glautia Pelmond is a volubtuous ice-woman; ant that is the most tangerous of all the taughters of the horse-leedge. Ant zo, my younk donkey, goot-night ant goot-bye. I am Cheorge Dargo, ant I nefer forgive an incrat.i.tude.'

This contemptuous parting wounded Paul to the quick, and the strange statements about Claudia maddened him. In one respect, at least, Darco, in his treatment of women, was chivalry incarnate; he would speak no scandal--no, nor listen to it. Paul tossed and tumbled throughout the night--a prey to shame and pa.s.sion and cold doubt. Darco, who had so well deserved his grat.i.tude, had accused him of the contrary--the one vice of all others which had seemed most repugnant to his nature. Darco was right, and Paul was bitten by shame. Then his mind flew to Claudia, and he thought how tender she had been that afternoon, how confiding, how warm, yet how delicately reticent in conduct Then he flamed and held his arms out in the darkness, and swore to be constant to that lovely creature, that maddening, dazzling, priceless idol, for ever. Then, like a stinging douche to a man in ardent heat of blood, came Darco's saying.

Darco was a true man, and to think of him as a scandalmonger was mere folly. He had quarrelled with Claudia, to be sure, and there was a loophole out of which a hopeful doubt might pa.s.s. And yet to think so was an insult, for Darco was the last man in the world to take a revenge so base. But Darco honestly and mistakenly disliked her. That was another matter. He was a headstrong man, impetuous, p.r.o.ne to leap to conclusions--a very walking heap of favourable and unfavourable prejudice. Thus, neither Claudia nor Darco was dethroned. The headlong, stammering, vivid man had made a mistake--the fat, unwieldy, diamond-hearted creature, all crusted with slag and scoria. Paul could have cried to know that Darco dreamed him ungrateful.

'Who knows him as I do?' he thought. 'People laugh at his boasting, and run away from his blundering thunder; but the man has the heart of an angel.'

He thought of all those underground benefactions in which he himself had acted as almoner--the bank-notes to poverty, the Sandeman's port and the evaporated turtle-soup to sickness. And the pity of it that such a man should so misjudge his Claudia! 'Voluptuous ice-woman.' He could fathom the meaning of the phrase, but the wave it would fain have spouted over his Claudia left her angel raiment dry. Neither one nor the other of the far-parted spumings of the wave touched her. Was that ice when her lips were so tenderly laid on his, and their hearts beat close together? Was that voluptuous when she held him to a brother's part, and soothed his pa.s.sions into slumber with quiet talk of sweet and sober things? And yet in Darco's face, to one who knew him as well as Paul did, there had been a mournful look when he had spoken of the most dangerous of all the daughters of the horse-leech. Out with the thought--out with it 'trample it down! Poor, dear old Darco had been abused. Claudia was spotless as the snow, soft as the dawn, sweet, sweet and sweeter than the honey or the honeycomb. Thus round the clock of the dark hours ran Paul's thoughts, with never a definite hour to strike.

He packed his portmanteaux before leaving his room next morning, and even in that simple act he found reproaches. He was carrying away from Darco's service a far different kit to that he had brought into it. The three or four coa.r.s.e homemade shirts, and the rough and scanty supply of underclothing, were exchanged for linen and silks and woollen stuffs of the finest. There were trees for his boots; there was a dandy dressing-case; there were many things of the mere existence and use of which he had not known two years ago. They were all mementoes of Darco's generosity. Surely no man had ever found so open-handed an employer.

But, for all these reflections, Paul could not surrender Claudia.

He heard the clatter of the breakfast apparatus, and smelt the odours of coffee and the savoury meats the soul of which Darco loved; but he dared not face the man to whom he felt he had behaved so badly.

'Are you gomink in to pregfast?' Darco trumpeted.

Paul entered and took his seat, and swallowed a cup of coffee; but he had no heart to eat.

Darco took his prodigious breakfast in cold gloom, and Paul was as sure of his bitter resentment as of his own useless regret for having wounded him. It was a trying hour for both of them.

'I am going out now,' said Darco, 'ant you will pe gone before I am pack again. Shake hants.' You are going to be very zorry before I see you again.'

Paul took the proffered hand, and was nine-tenths inclined to beg himself back again into Darco's friendship; but he could not bring himself to speak, and in a second or two Darco was in the street, and the opportunity had gone. But Paul had his marching-orders, at least, and, calling a fly, he saw his luggage set upon it, drove to the railway-station, deposited all his belongings in the cloak-room, and then started to give Claudia his news. Claudia sent out word that he might call again in an hour, and, glancing disconsolately at the window of her sitting-room as he walked away, he saw Miss Pounceby giggling behind the curtains with her head in a bush of curlpapers. He paced the streets until the hour had gone by, and then returned.

'What brings you here so early?' Claudia asked.

She looked ravishingly fresh and pretty to Paul's fancy.

'I told Darco,'Paul answered, 'that I was going to London, and that I wanted to leave at the end of next week. He was hurt and angry, and he said that, if I had made up my mind about it, I had better go at once.'

'You have behaved very foolishly, Paul,' said Claudia--' very foolishly indeed.'

'I did it for your sake, Claudia.'

'For my sake?' said Claudia, raising her eyebrows. 'Why, my dear child, how am I supposed to profit by it?' The question took his breath away.

'I certainly never asked you, or advised you to do anything so very silly. You have very likely ruined your whole career. At least, you have thrown away such a position as you won't see again for years to come.

How many people do you think there are in the world who will give you the salary Darco gave you, or treat you as he treated you? Oh, you needn't look at me in that way, Paul, as if I were responsible. It is none of my doing, and I wash my hands of it.'

'But, Claudia,' cried Paul, 'I told you what I was going to do.'

'You certainly told me some nonsense of the kind,' she answered, 'and I remember the very words I used. I told you that you must not dream of following me to London. I said--I remember my very words distinctly--that I could not bear to think of your imperilling your prospects.'

'Claudia,' said Paul, 'I thought you would be glad.'

'Why should I be glad to see you making a fool of yourself?' Claudia asked disdainfully. 'I thought you had more sense.'

'I shall find work in London,' Paul said rather helplessly. 'I have saved more than fifty pounds.'

Possibly the sisterly lady had thought Paul very much poorer than he was, and had been in fear that he might in some way become a burden to her. The fancy did not touch Paul at the time, but he remembered afterwards how swiftly the acerbity of her manner faded.

'Well,' she answered, 'you are sillier than I thought you were; but it's of no use crying over spilt milk. You must make the best of things.'

'I shan't care for anything,' said Paul, rallying a little, 'so long as I'm not parted from you, Claudia.'

'That's all very well, Paul dear,' returned Claudia, 'but this is a practical world, and the people who live in it have got to be practical too.' She pinched his cheek as she said this, and laughed at him in quite the old delicious way. 'What makes you so absurdly romantic, Paul?'

'I don't know,' said Paul, 'that I'm more romantic than other people.

I'm not the only man who ever fell in love, and I'm sure n.o.body ever had a better excuse than I have.'

'Upon my word!' cried the lady, 'you have a very nice way of saying things. Do you know, Paul, if you go on like this, you'll begin to be dangerous--in a year or two.'

'I don't belong to the dangerous cla.s.ses,' Paul answered. 'I'm much likelier to suffer myself than to make you suffer.'

'Oh, I'm not talking about me,' said Claudia. 'I'm thinking of the other ladies.'

'There are no other ladies,' Paul declared. 'There never will be any other ladies. There is only one lady in the whole world for me.'

'Now, seriously, Paul, how long do you think this ridiculous infatuation for me is going to last?'

'For ever!' cried Paul boldly. 'For ever and ever. And it isnt an infatuation, Claudia. It's a perfectly reasonable thing to fall in love with you. Why, you can't walk down the street without half a dozen men doing it I know how they turn round to look at you.'

'Oh, you outrageous little flatterer! Wherever did you learn to tell such fascinating fibs?'

'They're not fibs, Claudia. You know it as well as I do And I'll tell you something. You ask me why I love you. I'm a judge of character.'

'Oh, you dreadful boy! You're not going to judge my character, I hope!'

'I did that long ago,' said Paul, 'and that is why I fell in love with you. No,' he broke off, blushing and stammering, 'that is not why I fell in love; but that is why I never wanted to climb out again.'

'Well,' said Claudia gaily, 'if you didn't fall in love with my character, I'm sure I don't know what else there is.'

'You,' said Paul rapturously. 'Your beauty, Claudia. Don't you ever look in the gla.s.s?'

'How do you think I am to do my hair?' she asked, laughing. 'But seriously, now, Paul, you don't think I'm a beauty? You never told me that before.'

'Claudia,' he said, reproaching her, 'I've told you a thousand times.'