Diana Tempest Volume Iii Part 16

"There will be no necessity for this reckless generosity," said John, wondering why he did not writhe, as a man might who watches a knife cut into his benumbed limb. It gave him no pain.

"And you shall have a hunter," continued Archie. "By Jove, what hunting _I_ shall have! I shall get the governor to add another wing to the stables; and I will keep Quicksilver for you, John. You mustn't turn rusty because the luck has come to us at last. You know I knew all along I ought to have been the heir, and I put up with your being there, and never raised a dust."

"I think I can promise I shall not raise a dust," said John, dispa.s.sionately, watching the knife turn in his flesh.

"And--and," continued Archie--"why, I need not marry money now. I can take my pick." New vistas seemed to open at every turn. His weak mouth fell ajar. "My word, John, times are changed. And--my debts; I can pay them off."

"And run up more," said John. "It is an ill wind that blows n.o.body any good."

"I don't call it much of an ill wind," said Archie, chuckling; "not much of an ill wind."

In spite of himself, John laughed aloud at the _navete_ of Archie's remark. That it was an ill wind to John had not even crossed his mind.

It would cross Di's, John thought. She would do him justice. But, alas!

from the few who will do us justice we always want so much more, something infinitely greater than justice--at least, John did.

The early _table d'hote_ dinner broke in on Archie's soliloquy, and, much to John's relief, that favoured young gentleman discovered that a lady of his acquaintance was dancing at one of the theatres that evening, and he determined to go and see her. He could not persuade John to accompany him, even though he offered, with the utmost generosity, to introduce him to her.

"Well, if you won't, you won't," said Archie, seeing his persuasions did nought avail, and much preferring to go by himself. "If you would rather sit over the fire in the dumps, that's your affair, not mine. Ta-ta. I expect you will have turned in before I'm back. By-the-by, can you lend me five thick 'uns?"

John was on the point of refusing when he remembered that the actual money he had with him was more Archie's than his.

"Thank'ee," said Archie. "You part easier than you used to do. I expect it'll be the last time I shall borrow of you--eh, John? It will be the other way about in future."

"Will it?" said John, as he put back his pocket-book.

Archie laughed and went out.

Oh! it is good to be young and handsome and admired. The dancers pirouetted in the intense electric light, and the music played on every chord of Archie's light pleasure-loving soul. And he clapped and applauded with the rest, his pulse leaping high and higher. A sense of triumph possessed him. His one thorn in the flesh was gone for ever. He rode on the top of the wave. He had had all else before, and now the one thing that was lacking to him had come. He was rich, rich, rich. There was much goods laid up for many years of pleasure.

Archie touched the zenith.

It was very late, or rather it was very early, when he walked home through the deserted streets. A great mental exaltation was still upon him, but his body was exhausted, and the cool night air and the silence, after the babel of tongues, and the shrieking choruses, and the flaring lights of the last few hours, were pleasant to his aching eyes and head.

The dawn stretched like a drawn sword behind the city. The Seine lay, a long line of winding mist under its many bridges. The ruins of the scorched Tuileries pushed up against the sky. Archie leant a moment on the parapet, and looked down to the Seine below whispering in its shroud. He took off his hat and pushed back the light curling hair from his forehead, laughing softly to himself.

An invisible boat, with a red blur coming down-stream, was making a low continuous warning sound.

A hand came suddenly over his shoulder, and was pressed upon his mouth, and at the same instant something exceeding sharp and swift, pointed with death, pierced his back, once and again. Archie saw his hat drop over the parapet into the mist.

He tried to struggle, but in vain. He was choking.

"It is a dream," he said. "I shall wake. I have dreamt it before."

He looked wildly round him.

The steadfast dawn was witness from afar. There was the boat still pa.s.sing down-stream. There was the city before him, with its spires piercing the mist. _Was_ it a dream?

The hot blood rushed up into his mouth. The drenched hand released its pressure.

"I shall wake," he said, and he fell forward on his face.

CHAPTER XIV.

"The earth buildeth on the earth castles and towers; The earth sayeth to the earth, 'All shall be ours;'

The earth walketh on the earth, glistering like gold; The earth goeth to the earth sooner than it wold."

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 n.o.bler 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'hote_. "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.

Evening fell, and still no Archie. And then a hideous night followed, in which John forgot everything in heaven above or earth beneath except Archie. The police were informed. The actress at whose house he had supped after the play was interviewed, but could only vociferate between her sobs that he had left her house with the remainder of her party in the early hours of the morning, and she had not seen him since.

Directly the office opened, John telegraphed to his colonel to know if he had returned to London. The answer came, "Absent without leave."

John remembered that he had only three days' leave, and that the third day was up yesterday. Archie would not have forgotten that.

A nightmare of a day pa.s.sed. John had been out during the greater part of it, rushing back at intervals in the hope, that was no longer anything but a masked despair, of finding Archie in his rooms on his return.

In the dusk of the afternoon he came back once more, and peered for the twentieth time into the littered bedroom, which the frightened servants had left exactly as Archie had left it. He was standing in the doorway looking into the empty room, where a certain horror was beginning to gather round the familiar objects with which it was strewed, when a voice spoke to him.

It was the superintendent of police to whom he had gone long ago--the night before--when first the horror began. Alphonse, who had shown him up, was watching through the doorway.

The man said something in French. John did not hear him, but it did not matter much. He knew. They went downstairs together. Alphonse brought him his hat and stick. The other waiters were gathered in a little knot at the _table d'hote_ door. A fiacre was waiting under the archway. John and the superintendent got into it, and it drove off at once without waiting for directions. They were lighting the lamps in the streets. The dusk was falling, falling like the shadow of death. They drove deeper and ever deeper into it.

Time ceased to be.