Claudia’s introduction served so well that Paul was allowed to show what
he was made of in rehearsal at the Mirror Theatre, with a prospective
salary of fifty shillings a week. He had been a personage of late, and
Darco had delegated to him a good deal of his own authority. He was not
a personage any longer, and he was not altogether happy in his fall from
dignity. But Claudia was coming. He and Claudia would be in the same
house together, and playing at the same theatre. He would see her at
breakfast, at luncheon, at dinner; he would escort her from the theatre
and home again. That would be happiness enough to atone for anything.
This prophecy was not quite realized. Claudia chose to breakfast in her
own room, and she was a woman of many friends, and lunched out and dined
out so often that Paul hardly saw anything of her. The Sundays would
have been Elysian days, but ladies and gentlemen of fashionable aspect
drove to the house in handsome equipages, and spirited Miss Belmont away
to revels at Richmond and elsewhere in which Paul had no part. He moved
sadly about the house, in the streets, with no heart for study, or for
the writing of the new comedy on which his mind had been set so warmly
only a few weeks before. His old companions were travelling about the
country, meeting old friends and making new ones, and he wished himself
back amongst them many a time. He could have written to Claudia, and
have looked forward to the time when he could have met her again on
equal terms. They were not equals any longer. Miss Belmont was starred
in big type, and was leading lady, at a biggish salary; for her first
real chance had come to her, and she had charmed the town. Paul was a
walking gentleman with a part of fifty lines, and not a solitary critic
named his name.
Sometimes, but very rarely, Claudia shone upon him. On fine evenings,
and on those sparse occasions when she and Paul dined at the same table,
she would walk to the theatre and accept his escort Then, for a brief
half-hour, life was worth the living again. But there was one nightly
hour of torment. His work was over early, for he had nothing to do after
the opening of the third act of the piece then playing. He would dress
and wait in his room, and wonder whether that idiot, that dolt and fool
incomparable, Captain the Honourable John MacMadden, was waiting at the
stage-door. Captain MacMadden belonged to the Household Brigade, and
was a bachelor of five-and-thirty. He parted his hair in the middle, and
wore a moustache and weeping whiskers of the jettiest, shiny black. He
smiled constantly, to show a set of dazzling white teeth. In his own
mind Paul loaded this exquisite with savage satire. He was a tailor’s
dummy carrying about a barber’s dummy, and the barber’s dummy was
finished with a dentist’s advertisement He carried a very thin
umbrella--the mere ghost of an umbrella--he was gloved and booted with
the fineness of a lady, and he was always delicately perfumed. He was
reported to be wealthy, abominably wealthy, and three nights a week or
more he would present himself at the theatre, and take Miss Belmont out
to supper. But so discreet was that lady, and so careful of her good
report, that Captain MacMadden never came without a guardian dragon in
the person of another young lady of the theatres, who was accompanied by
a gentleman who was in all points tailored and barbered and gloved and
booted like Captain MacMadden himself.
Paul would wonder if the splendid warrior were below until he could
endure himself no longer. Then he would descend and hang about the
stage-door, to find his enemy or not to find him, as the case might be,
but in either event to eat his heart in jealousy and impatience. When
he found him he burned to insult him by asking him what tailor he
advertised, or by addressing him as the Housemaid’s Terror or the
Nursegirl’s Blight. He ground tegmenta of ‘Maud’ between his teeth as
he looked at him. ‘His essences turn the live air sick,’ and ‘that oiled
and curled Assyrian bull, smelling of musk and of insolence.’ And it
happened one night that Captain MacMadden, arriving late, and in a
mighty hurry and flutter lest he should have missed the lady, tapped
Paul upon the shoulder, and said:
‘My boy, can you tell me if Miss Belmont has left the theatre?’
Paul, who was at that instant bending all the force of his mind upon
Captain MacMadden, and punching his head in visioned combat, turned
on him with a passionate ‘Damn your impertinence, sir!’ which set the
startled gentleman agape with wonder. At this instant Claudia pushed
through the swinging door which led from the stage to the corridor, and
she ran in between the belligerent Paul and the object of his rage.
‘What is this?’ she asked.
‘This gentleman,’ said Paul, ‘is sadly in want of a lesson in
good-breeding. I shall be happy to offer him one.’
‘Upon my word,’ returned Captain MacMadden mildly, ‘you’re devilish
peppery. Hadn’t the slightest intention to affront anybody, upon my
word. Nothing further from thoughts. Can’t say moah.’
‘Mr. Armstrong,’ said Claudia, ‘I have never seen you display this
ill-bred brutality before. I had not expected you to show it in my
presence to my friend.’
Paul felt for the instant that he had been brutal and ill-bred. Claudia
judged him so, and whatever Claudia said must needs be just But when she
had swept by him to the waiting brougham and the fashionable escort had
followed her, he stood in a choking rage, and felt like Cain. A thick
drizzle was falling, and he swung out into the night, glad of the wet
coolness in his flaming face, and the wet wind that fanned him. The
streets were heavily mired and the drizzle grew to a fast downpour.
He turned up his coat-collar and ploughed along, growing more and more
resolutely angry, and more and more resolved to fight his case out with
Claudia. The house in which they lived was dark when he reached it,
except for a single gas-jet in the hall at which guests bound bedward
lit their candles. He walked into the dining-room and sat down to wait,
with nothing but the winking jet on the wall and his own thoughts for
company. The fire in the grate had died, and its cooling ashes made
a crisp, faint noise from time to time. The clock on the mantelpiece
ticked irritatingly, and sounded the quarters at intervals which seemed
curiously irregular. At times one quarter seemed to follow close on
another’s heels, and the next seemed to lag for hours. Paul was soaked
to the skin, and had violent fits of shivering, but he would not leave
his post lest he should miss Claudia.
Cabs rolled by, and every one brought Claudia to his fancy, but scores
of them passed without pause. One o’clock sounded and no Claudia. Two
o’clock, and no Claudia. Then the rumble of a lonely hansom, a slippery
stoppage of a horse’s feet, and Claudia’s voice crying, ‘Two doors
higher up.’ Then a renewed motion, a pause, the scrape of a latchkey at
the lock, and Paul was on his feet, candlestick in hand.
‘Mayn’t I come in?’ asked the hateful voice of Captain MacMadden. ‘On’y
a moment, upon my word.’
‘Certainly not,’ Claudia answered curtly. ‘Good-night.’
‘You’ll think of what I asked you?’
‘Indeed,’ said Claudia, in a voice of scorn, ‘I will do nothing of the
kind. I have never been so insulted in my life, and I shall be obliged
if you will put an end to your attentions.’
The heart of the involuntary listener glowed within him, but Captain
MacMadden’s drawl broke in and chilled him horribly.
‘Well, look here, Claudia, damn it all! Will you marry me? I’ll go that
far, if nothing else will do for you. I will, upon my word.’
‘You may ask me that question in a week’s time,’ said Claudia. ‘At
present I have no more to say to you than just “Good-night.”’
The door closed and there was a silence. Claudia laughed quietly
to herself, and rustled towards the gas-jet. Paul stepped out and
intercepted her, the unlit candle in his hand, his hair disordered, and
his face stained with the dye the rain had soaked from his hat His
teeth were chattering noisily and rapidly, and he and Claudia faced each
other. Paul lit his candle mechanically, and set it on the hall table,
below the jet, which blinked with a faint intermittent hum.
‘Are you spying upon me, Mr. Armstrong? asked Claudia, with a touch of
the manner of the stage.
‘Not I,’ Paul answered bluntly; ‘I waited up to speak to you. Are you
going to marry that grinning nincompoop?’
‘You presume,’ said Claudia, with yet more of the manner of the stage.
‘You presume abominably. Allow me to pass, sir.’
‘The man has offered you a life of shame,’ said Paul. ‘You mean to
listen to him after that? She looked at him scornfully and defiantly.
‘Well,’ he said, shivering strangely from head to foot, ‘you’re not the
woman I took you for. It’s good-bye to Claudia.’
He stood aside for her to pass. She lit her candle and swept by him. He
heard her door close, and the key turn in the lock. He stood shuddering
in the hall, the chance-held candle dropping grease upon the oil-cloth.
He gave one big dry sob and mounted to his garret-room. There was no
sleep for him, and he did not undress. The candle burned down in its
socket, the light flared up and died, and the nauseous stink of wick and
tallow filled the room. His mind was strangely vacant, but even in the
darkness and the silence he found a thousand things in which to take a
leaden interest: as the swaying of the window-curtains where a slight
draught caught them; the faintly-seen progress of the rain-drops down
the window-pane; the wet glints of light where the street gas-lamp dimly
irradiated the windows and the houses on the opposite side of the way;
a ticking insect in the wall-paper; sounds of night traffic in the great
thoroughfare a quarter of a mile off; the squashing tramp of a policeman
on his rounds; the moaning voices of wind and rain; the very beating of
his own pulses in his head; the very stupor of his own intelligence.
It was still raining when the dismal dawn crept up, and he was chilled
to the marrow. He rose stupidly from the chair in which he had passed
the night, and began to change his dress, stiffly and with difficulty.
During the greater part of the night he had been sitting in a drooping
posture, and he found without trouble or interest that he could not
change it. There was an aching weight upon his loins, but he had no
interest in that either. He sat in his room all day. The chambermaid
came to the door and tapped, and receiving no answer, entered. She
stared to see him sitting at the window and the bed undisturbed, but she
went away again. Somehow the day crawled on, and as the darkness fell he
crept downstairs, and crawled, an aching stoop, to the theatre. He
was an hour before the time, but by hazard he met the manager at the
stage-door.
‘Why, great God, Armstrong! what’s the matter?’
‘I got wet last night,’ Paul answered, in a voice which startled him and
pained his throat.
He had not spoken a word since he had said good-bye to Claudia.
‘You’ve no right to be out like this,’ said the manager brusquely; ‘it’s
suicide. You’re no good here, you know,’ he added, in a kinder voice.
‘Here, you, Collins; call a cab, and help Mr. Armstrong into it.’
‘Can you do without me?’ Paul asked, in that strange voice.
‘Do without you? Yes. I’ve a man at hand that will swallow your lines
and biz in half an hour. Get a fire in your bedroom; have a good stiff
glass of rum as hot as you can drink it. Get somebody to make you
cayenne pills--cayenne-pepper and bread-crumbs. Take three or four, and
have ‘em hot. Why, man alive, you’ve got an ague!’
The cab was brought, and Paul was helped into it and driven home. He
could not lift his hand above his head to pay the fare, and the cabman
descended grumblingly to take it; but seeing how his fare’s feet fumbled
at the steps, got down a second time to help him to the door. Paul
walked into the dining-room, hat in hand, and bent The boarders were at
dessert, and Claudia for once was with them.
‘No beggars allowed in this bar,’ said one of the professional boarders
jocularly, thinking the entrance a bit of playful masquerade.
‘I’m not very well,’ said Paul, with a frog-like roop. ‘I’ve been down to
the theatre, and Walton has sent me home again. I’m afraid I can’t quite
manage to get upstairs.’
He did not look at Claudia, but he was conscious of her gaze, and he
knew somehow that there was fright in her eyes.
Two of the boarders engineered him to his room, and one undressed
him whilst the other ran for rum and cayenne-pepper. They were all
theatrical folk in the house, and kindly in case of trouble, as their
tribe is always. Paul was put to bed, and had extra blankets heaped
upon him, and a fire was lit in the grate. He was dosed with hot
rum-and-water and the cayenne pills, and was then left, first to grow
maudlin, and next to fall into a sleep which was full of monstrous
dreams. At one time he lay in a great cleft between two hills, and
stones rolled down upon him, causing him dull pain; then the stones
formed themselves into a fence--a kind of rough arch on which other
stones battered without ceasing till he was walled in thickly. At
another time he had to climb up an endless hill, with hot chains about
his loins and knees.
Somebody came into his room with a candle, and the light awoke him. It
was one of his fellow-boarders back from the theatre, with news that it
was nearly midnight. He forced more hot rum on the patient, and sat with
him until he was sound asleep. The liquor did its work, and he slept
without dreams until daylight. He strove to rise and dress, but the task
was beyond him, and there was nothing left but to lie and stare at the
ceiling, and to say to himself over and over again, without a touch of
interest or feeling: ‘It’s good-bye to Claudia.’ The landlady came to
see him, and found him burning and shivering, and complaining of the
bitter cold. She went away, and came back again with a doctor, who told
him cheerfully that he was in for rheumatic fever, big or little, as
sure as a gun.
‘But he’s young, ma’am,’ said the doctor--‘he’s young, and we shall pull
him through.’
‘Can he be moved?’ asked the landlady.
‘Moved? No, possibly not for weeks.’
‘Have you any money, Mr. Armstrong?’ said the landlady, ‘or shall I
write to your friends?’
‘There’s fifty-one pounds in my dressing-bag,’ croaked Paul. ‘When
you’ve buried me and paid your bill, send the balance to my father.’
‘Buried you?’ said the doctor. ‘You don’t suppose you’re going to peg
out, do you?’
‘I hope so,’ said Paul.
‘Oh,’ said the doctor, casting a shrewd, good-humoured eye at him,
‘you feel like that, do you? But you’ve got me to reckon with, and the
British Pharmacopoeia. When did you eat last?
‘Day before yesterday.’
‘All right, young man; I’ll fettle you, and if you think you’re going to
slip your cable, you’re mightily in error.’
‘Well,’ said Paul, ‘it doesn’t matter to me one way or the other.’
The time went on, and a day later he was light-headed, and babbled, as
he learned afterwards, of Claudia. Sometimes he upbraided her savagely,
and sometimes he made tragic love to her. He had intervals of complete
sanity, in which the thought of her was like an inward fire; then he had
a five weeks’ spell of madness, and awoke from it free from pain, but a
mere crate of bones which felt heavier than lead. He remembered some of
his own delusions clearly, but lost count of whole weeks of time, and
had yet to learn how long he had lain there. When he awoke he knew that
somebody was in the room, and made an effort to turn his head. That
failed, but the somebody heard the faint rustle he made, and the first
face his eyes looked at was the face of Darco.
‘Ah!’ said Darco, ‘you haf got your prains pack again. You know me, eh?’
Paul tried to nod, but succeeded only in closing his eyes in sign of
assent.
‘I am a bid of a dogtor,’ said Darco; ‘led me veel your bulse.
Goot--goot, ant your demberadure is normal. It is now begome your
business to ead and trink.’ He waddled across the room, and came back
with a tin of jelly and a spoon, and fed the invalid ‘That is enough,’
he said, after the fifth spoonful. ‘Liddle and often; that is the came
to blay.’
Paul was too weak to wonder at anything, or he would have wondered at
Darco’s presence; but Nature was too wise to let him waste his forces on
any such unprofitable exercise as thinking, and sent him to sleep again.
When he awoke he was ravenously hungry, and in a day or two he began to
abuse the nurse who tended him for stinting his victuals. But the nurse
was a good-humoured old campaigner.
‘Why, bless your heart, Mr. Armstrong,’ she said, when in an interval
of contrition Paul apologised, ‘it do me good to hear you swear that
hearty! Most gentlemen does it when they’re picking up a bit.’
There was in his mind barely a thought of Claudia; the one fever seemed
to have burned the other out of him.
‘The heart,’ said the doctor--‘the heart’s the thing we’re always afraid
of in rheumatic fever, and the heart’s as sound as a nut.’
Paul stretched feebly, and thought he had his jest wholly to himself;
but the doctor undeceived him.
‘It wasn’t always so, my young friend.’
Paul blushed like fire.
‘Have I been babbling? he asked guiltily.
‘A bit,’ said the doctor; ‘enough to justify those gloomy hopes of
yours.’
Paul hung his head in a transient shame, and murmured that he was sorry.
‘Pooh, pooh!’ cried the doctor; ‘you’re all right now. You can bear to
hear a little bit of news about the lady?’
‘Yes,’ said Paul, ‘anything.’
‘She’s married,’ said the doctor--‘married to the Honourable Captain
MacMadden, and has left the stage.’
‘Did she ever come to see me?’ Paul asked.
‘No,’ said the doctor.
The passion of the youth went to join the calf-love of the boy, and the
man accomplished looked on them both with a half-humorous wonder. He was
learning his world, he thought. It would not be easy to fool him in that
way again.
He sat propped up with pillows in an arm-chair now, and could hold a
book; but the lubricant at his joints had all been licked up by the
fever, and it was slow to come back again, so that he had hideous
twinges when he moved. He had plenty of society now that he was fit for
it, for the fellow-boarders were idle during the day, and spared time to
sit and talk with him.
‘You recognised old Darco when you saw him, didn’t you?’ one of them
asked.
‘Oh yes,’ said Paul, ‘I knew him. What brought him here? I behaved very
badly toold Darco.’
‘Well, to tell you the truth,’ said the other, ‘he said so. “Ant I nefer
forgive an incradidude,” says he, and proved it by paying the doctor’s
bill.’
Every man in the profession had a more or less plausible imitation of
old Darco’s ‘leedle beguliaridies.’ He was as well known as the Strand,
and loved and hated as few men are.
‘I treated Darco very badly,’ said Paul. ‘I can’t rest under that sort
of obligation to him. How much did he pay?’
‘You’d better ask the doctor.’
Paul asked the doctor next time he saw him, but elicited nothing.
‘But I can’t allow it,’ Paul cried; ‘I can’t endure it I behaved
abominably to Darco; I behaved like a beast and a fool. I’d take his
scorn and hatred if he thought I was worth either; but I can’t accept
his benefits after the way in which I served him. I left the kindest
friend I ever had, the man who took me out of the gutter--and that’s
God’s truth, doctor; and I left him to follow that----’
He ground his teeth hard on the word he was fain to use.
‘Steady!’ said the doctor--’ steady!’
‘That Ignis Fatuus,’ groaned Paul. ‘Is that mild enough for you?’
The doctor knew everything. There was no further shame in making a clean
breast of it.
‘It’s better than what you were going to say,’ the doctor answered,
‘whatever it was. I hate vulgarity as the devil hates virtue. It’s a
pretty sex; I know something about it You seem to have lighted upon a
pretty sample.’
Just at this instant there came a tap at the door, and the voice of the
maid was heard saying, ‘This is the room, sir.’ The door opened, and in
walked Armstrong the elder.
‘Dad!’ cried Paul
His father held his hand and looked at him.
‘I’ve been sore troubled by your silence, lad,’ he said. ‘I’ve had hard
work to find ye. Ye might have written.’
‘I was coming to see you,’ said Paul, ‘so soon as I could travel. When
will that be, doctor?’
‘In a fortnight’s time, perhaps,’ the doctor answered--‘not much
earlier.’
The doctor went his way, and the father and son were together.
‘You’re out of Darco’s service, I understand?’ said Armstrong. ‘He wrote
kindly about ye, but he said you’d parted. Why did you leave him, Paul?’
Paul was penitent and feeble of body, and his father was his dearest.
Bit by bit he told his story, or as much of it as he could be told.
‘Man,’ said Armstrong, ‘ye’re beginning airly.’