Despair's Last Journey Part 50

And Gertrude was a married woman also, and Paul--who had not too rigidly obeyed the precepts of morality in his day--was bent on honour in this instance. He wrote reams of letters, all of which might have been printed without harm to anybody; but by-and-by his pa.s.sion began to carry him off his feet, as pa.s.sion has carried stronger men than he, and the fever of his pulses got into his ink, and he began to make love, but with a dreadful guardedness and a deadly fear lest he should offend the susceptibilities of this creature of the skies. She rebuked him by implication and in a parable. She had had a mournful letter from a friend in Boston, an old and valued correspondent, a lady whose domestic relations were of the saddest sort, who had long believed herself to have established a pure and tender friendship with a person of the opposite s.e.x, and who had now been shocked and horrified beyond measure by a proposal of elopement How rare a genuine friendship between men and women seemed to be! How happy was she in the security she enjoyed in the solidity of his character, in that delicacy of mind and heart which permitted the most delightful intimacies of thought without danger. He wrote back fiercely that he was unworthy of the confidence she reposed in him, that he loved her pa.s.sionately, adoringly, and without any dream of hope.

'I will not soil my worship of you by even asking for your forgiveness,'

so he wrote. 'I have told you what I had to tell. There is no longer any power in me to hide it And now I know that it is good-bye indeed. In the sorrow and the loneliness which are rightly mine--since I earned them with much foolish painstaking--I shall never cease to love you, but I shall not presume to write to you again.'

'My poor Paul,'she wrote back to him, 'what madness!

And how great a cruelty to s.n.a.t.c.h from me the solace of your friendship 'Forget the madness, dearest friend. Undo the cruelty. Let us bury the memory of this outburst, let us go back to the past. Alas! did ever man or woman return to the past? But we must not part in this way. You must write to me at times. You must let me know of your artistic hopes. You must give me news of your career.'

He was amazed to find that he was answered at all, and even in his misery he joyed to find himself reprieved from the sentence his own conscience had pa.s.sed upon him. He was still free to write, and he wrote almost every day, though he sent off his budget only once a week. He did not make love in the sense of seeking to persuade his G.o.ddess to descend to him, but he made no further disguise of himself, and he was not again reproved.

This all led to a long s.p.a.ce of infertility, and it was stretched still further by the departure of the Baroness to Paris. There, she wrote Paul, she would be much in society, and if he should find himself in the gay city at any time during her stay, she could introduce him to charming and useful people. But she was very round in her warnings to him.

'You must not come,'she told him, 'unless you are absolutely sure that there is no danger of making me absurd in the eyes of my friends. Dearly as I esteem you, I should never forgive you that. You have been so very outspoken of late, and I have permitted you to write your heart so freely, that I should be guilty of the foolishest affectation if I were silent on this one matter. We cannot control our affections. It is not given to us to love and dislike at discretion, but we can control our language and our conduct, and I must exact your promise ere you meet me.

And I will tell you this once, and I will never breathe it any more: Had we met under happier conditions, had we both been free to choose, I know that I could have loved you. I am thus candid with you because I wish you to know how entirely I rely upon your discretion and respect. We may have happiness denied us, and to choose it now would be to suffer miserably, but we have each a personal esteem to guard. Ah, Paul! be kind to me. Do not make it hard to see you again.'

If all this were written, as Paul came most devoutly to believe in later days, with the single-minded desire to enslave him yet more completely, it was truly heartless, but that was certainly the end it gained. It seemed to him the most pathetic and womanly of effusions, for what woman would write that she could have loved a man in happier conditions unless she did truly love him? She suffered as he suffered. Without her warrant it would have been c.o.xcombical to believe it But the belief made her altogether sacred in his eyes, and he vowed a thousand times that no word or tone of his should ever offend that angel delicacy and tenderness. A curious part of this maniac experience was his estimate of himself as it proceeded. He was in a mood entirely heroical. The Baron de Wyeth, who was making money to supply the most whimsical needs of the absent Gertrude, never entered into his head. It did not offer itself on any single occasion to his intelligence to think that there was anything to be reprehended in this sterile dalliance.

As for Annette, she had grown to be impossible. She resented the guardianship exercised over her with an increasing fierceness. When she could smuggle her contraband through the enemy's lines, she locked herself in her room, and remained there until the supply was exhausted She would emerge blotched, pale, and haggard, and companionship between herself and her husband was out of question.

At the time at which the letter just cited reached Paul Annette's cunning had been unequal to the war for at least a fortnight, and her const.i.tution was still youthful and strong enough to enable her to return to something of her earlier aspect after a few days of abstinence.

'I have business which will take me to Paris in a little while,' her husband told her.

'Very well,' she said indifferently.

'Do you prefer to come with me, or to stay here?' he asked.

'To go with you?'she demanded. 'Under what conditions?'

'Under the conditions I have always offered,' he returned: 'that you are accompanied by a female companion of my choice.'

'I shall stay here,' Annette said curtly.

'As you will.'

He was relieved by her decision, not merely because the last thread of comradeship between them was broken, but because he dreaded the exposure of the cupboard skeleton, which was always putting out a ghastly head at him. In a great city like Paris there might arise an occasion of escape from control at any moment, and Heaven alone knew what _esclandre_ might ensue upon a single escapade.

He made his preparations for departure. Laurent promised his most careful supervision of affairs, and Paul left him with plenary powers.

There were no adieux to make, for Annette declined to see him. He travelled to Brussels, and thence to Paris, going away with a relief which was made the more complete by the latest intelligence the doctor had brought him: there was to be no child of Annette's and his. That hope or fear--and he had barely known which to think it--was over.

At Montcourtois Madame la Baronne de Wyeth had been content to live in extreme simplicity, and her account of her own surroundings at Veryiers did not express any dose approach to luxury; but in Paris she occupied apartments of great splendour, had a considerable entourage about her, and entertained a limited number of charming people, who were all more or less celebrated. Her music was as fine as anything that could be got in Paris, for she knew all the great singers and instrumentalists, and though the season was about at an end, there was still enough genius in the basket to pick and choose from.

It was with a wildly beating heart that Paul alighted at her door, and as he stood awaiting her in the luxuriously furnished salon which was the centrepiece of her apartments, his knees trembled with agitation.

He was there to meet for the first time the woman he loved. That was strange and yet true. When he had last seen her he had not yet grown to love her, or, if he had, he had granted himself no knowledge of it. But now he loved, and he had confessed his love, and what was potentially a return avowal had been made by her. And they were to meet just as friends. There was to be no word spoken of all the pa.s.sion which thrilled and filled his heart and tingled through his veins.

She came at last in a gentle silken rustle, dressed already for the reception of the guests who were expected to arrive an hour later. She had accorded him this one _tete-a-tete_--this and no other. She was transfigured in his eyes, and did indeed show to her best advantage in full toilette. The lucent rosy whiteness of arms and shoulders seemed to dazzle him.

He extended both hands to her, and she came forward with her lithe gait and a smile of great sweetness, and took them in her own.

'Gertrude!' he whispered, and she answered with the one word 'Paul!' and had his life depended upon it, he could not have spoken further at that instant.

'I am very glad to see you, Paul,' she said, 'very glad indeed.' She released one of his hands, and by the other led him to a causeuse near one of the splendidly curtained windows. 'But what has happened to you?

she asked. 'My poor Paul, you are ill! You are not yourself at all.

There are brown circles round your eyes, and your cheeks have fallen in, and you are growing positively gray at the temples.'

'I am not ill,' Paul answered, trying to smile. 'I have had a somewhat trying experience of late, and I am here to forget it.'

'May I know of it?' she asked

'No,' said Paul; 'the topic is forbidden.'

She laughed gaily and blushed a little.

'Now, that is very clever, and very wicked of you,' she purred. 'That topic is not to be approached even elliptically. But really and truly, my poor Paul, you are not well, and I shall see that you take proper care of yourself. You will take a gla.s.s of wine at once.'

'No,' he said, waving a hand against her as she made a motion to rise.

'You used not to contradict my orders,' she told him, 'and you shall not do it now. I can give you a really excellent gla.s.s of champagne--not a lady's champagne, be it understood, a man's wine--a connoisseur's.'

He made no further protest, and she rang a small silver bell near her hand. A grave serving-man appeared in answer to this summons, received his mistress's order, and glided away again.

'I have all your news?' the Baroness asked, turning to her guest again.

'All,' he answered--' all there is to tell.'

He had known perfectly well at one time that she was not strictly a beautiful woman. He had been able to a.n.a.lyze her, to admit very fine eyes and teeth, and a clear, if somewhat florid, glow of complexion. He had granted, further, fine hair, and very beautiful hands and arms. But he wondered at himself, and could have laughed at his own blindness. The power of a.n.a.lysis had gone out of him because he was in love. She was merely a soft, dazzling splendour in aspect now, and every look and tone and att.i.tude was a witchery and a wonder.

'I have not seen you in evening dress before to-night, Paul,' she said.

'I like you in evening dress. It is a great test of a man's distinction.

It is cruel to all but the few. It is distinctly not cruel to you.'

'I am proud to be approved of,' he answered, trying to speak lightly.

The grave serving-man brought in the wine, which proved worthy of the hostess's praise. Paul was grateful for it, for it helped to steady his shaken nerve. He felt pretty much as he imagined a man might feel who was learning to stand under fire.

'It was kind of you,' he said, 'to give me this one hour to myself. I shall try to learn my lesson in it I want to a.s.sure you how much I have laid your injunction to heart, and to promise you that from this time forth you shall be implicitly obeyed. When I wrote that wild letter to you at Venders I had not the faintest hope of your forgiveness. I need not tell you how I thank you for it, how I shall strive to show my grat.i.tude. But, indeed, you are my Anthea, Gertrude, and may command me anything.'

'Another man would not have found forgiveness, Paul,' she answered, turning away her head, and looking downward. 'I do not deny to you now that I was deeply amazed, and, at first, humiliated. Then for a time I was angry, and I had to ask myself of what indiscretion I had been guilty to lay me open to the receipt of such a letter from my dearest friend. But we women are weak creatures where the affections are concerned, and I felt that I could not afford to lose you, Paul. You will not make it necessary for me to lose you?'

'No,' he declared. 'No spoken word of mine shall hurt you. G.o.d knows what you have been to me since first I met you.' She raised her hand against him and looked up with a glance of appeal. 'Oh, surely I may say this!' he urged. 'I have been through dark days, Gertrude. I am young, and reputation and fortune are calling to me, and I have put a millstone about my neck, and but for your friendship I should have broken my heart.'

'Paul,' she said, 'my poor boy! My poor, dear boy! I think I would give my life if I could comfort you.'

'You do comfort me,' he answered. 'You are the one comfort I have. I shall learn in time to think of you as if you were a saint in heaven.'

'Oh!' she purred, 'you dear, simple-souled enthusiast! Don't you know yet--haven't you found it out, that simple truth?--that when a man has relegated a living woman to the position of a saint in heaven he has ceased to care about her? I am not going to turn _you_ into a sanctified figure.'

'I should scarcely look for that,' said Paul, with a momentary gleam of humour.