The work thus abruptly begun lasted for weeks, and Darco’s enthusiasm drove Paul before it as if it had been a hurricane. Pauer lounged for a day or two, and then betook his golden visage and saffron eyes to London, leaving the pair to their labours. Paul and Darco worked on an average twelve hours a day, and it happened occasionally that a group of terrified commis voyageurs would assemble in the passage outside the study anticipating murder, whilst Darco, in Alsatian English, declaimed the passion of his heroine. There were deep wells of laughter here and there in the course of that dramatic pilgrimage.

‘Now, vat I want,’ said Darco, ‘is just this: It is Binda’s endrance. She is a leedle vat you would call distraught, not mat, but ankrished. She is very pretty, she is very bale. She stands at the door, and Raoul does not see her. She is there for vive zeconds to a tick, not more, not less—vive zeconds; write it down. Enter Binda, pause, unobserved, vive zeconds. Have you got it down? She is priddy, she is bale, a leedle touch of colour under the eyes; she is tressed in vite, some filmy kind of stuff, with a plue bow at the throat and a bit of scarlet ribbon, or red flower, or zomethings, in her hair. And zo she stands at the door and she looks at Raoul, and he toes not know she is there, ant vor just those vive zeconds there is no music, not a note, and then—— Look here, I am Cheorge Dargo; I can write a blay, and stage a blay, and baint the zeenery for a blay, and I can gompose the music for a blay, and I can berform on every damned inztrument in the orghestra. And this is vod Binda does: Bale and bretty, do you zee? at the door for vive zilent zeconds, and then with all her zoul one great appeal, she crosses to Raoul at his desk petween zecond and third O.P., ant she coes like this.’

The fat, brief-statured man waddled in his enthusiasm from Binda’s imaginary entering-place towards Paul with an allure of comedy-pathos so piercing in its effect that the amanuensis cast both hands in the air with a shriek of helpless mirth, and, losing his balance, wallowed on the floor amidst untidy heaps of books, newspapers, and manuscript.

‘Vod is the madder?’ Darco cried, rushing towards Paul, and leaning over him with instant solicitude.

Darco’s collaborateur was smitten with a sudden shame and repentance.

‘A kind of spasm,’ he said breathlessly—‘a pain just here.’

Darco helped him to his feet.

‘You are too emotional, tear poy,’ he said; ‘you are too easily vorked upon. I will rink the pell for a prandy-ant-zoda, ant you shall lie town vor a leettle while.’

It was the thick-set Evariste who brought the syphon bottle and the small carafe of brandy and the tumblers, and it was she who caught Paul on her broad Flemish bosom when the drink, which he had accepted soberly, went the wrong way, and with a wild snort into his tumbler he fell backwards.

‘Le bauvre cheune homme À dombÉ zupidement malade.’

The poor young man was horribly afraid at first of having irredeemably hurt Darco’s feelings, but that excellent enthusiast had not even the beginning of an idea that it was possible for anyone to laugh at him unless he chose of purpose aforethought to be laughable. Thus the episode passed lightly enough, but Paul was continually in danger of a reversion to it whenever the distraught heroine appeared upon the scene.

He saw but little of Annette during the weeks of labour to which Darco’s new enterprise enforced him. She slept alone, and was rarely accessible before the mid-day breakfast or later than the dinner-hour. Laurent visited her almost daily, and she seemed to submit to his attentions with a better grace than she had shown at first; but she was still subject to those rapid and violent alternations of mood which had already perplexed and alarmed her husband. She had apparently conceived an aversion to being seen abroad, and it was with the greatest difficulty that she could be persuaded to take an occasional carriage drive.

‘I shall venture to advise you,’ said Laurent to Paul ‘You tell me that your work is almost finished, and that in a day or two you are setting out for London.’

‘Yes,’ said Paul.

‘You will do well to take Mrs. Armstrong with you,’ Laurent said. ‘She is in need of change and distraction. This quiet, dead-alive existence is not good for her. You must insist upon her shaking herself free of the habits of seclusion into which she is falling. I should urge you very strongly to find some good creature of her own sex who would be a companion to her. She is living too much alone; she has too few interests.’

‘Well, of course,’ Paul answered, ‘that is very largely my fault; but the press of work is over now, and I shall be able to give more time and care to her.’

‘You will find it advisable,’ said Laurent, with a certain meaning in his face and voice which Paul at the moment could not fathom.

Something occurred to put an end to their conversation, and it was not resumed before Paul’s departure with Darco for London. When it came to the point Annette flatly refused to go to England. She averred that she was not strong enough to travel, that she was altogether better and happier where she was than she hoped to be elsewhere.

‘You will be back in a month’s time,’ she urged. ‘You will be busy all the while you are away. The theatre will claim you day and night, and I should be moping in some great hotel without a soul to speak to. I am quite at home amongst the people here, and they are used to me and to my ways.’

Paul urged Laurent’s suggestion upon her, and she received it with an unexpected anger.

‘What? A companion? And may I ask you why?’

‘For no other earthly reason than that you should have a friend at hand—somebody who might on occasion be useful to you.’

‘Oh no,’ said Annette, tossing her head, and then looking askance at him, with half-veiled eyes: ‘you would like to have me watched and spied upon, and to have a report of my conduct sent to you, as if I were a prisoner or a maniac.’

‘My dear child,’ said Paul, in sheer amazement, ‘what extraordinary dream is this? What has put so strange a fancy in your mind?’

‘Tell me,’ cried Annette, suddenly whirling round upon him, ‘what is it you suspect? What intrigue? What plot? What secret?’

‘Come, come,’ he said, ‘there is no plot—no secret But you know that you are not quite yourself of late, and it is not right or kind to leave you here in your present delicate health without some responsible person to look after you.’

‘Has M. Laurent been poisoning your mind against me?’ she demanded, with a curious slowness. She advanced a foot as she spoke, and moved forward towards him with a something between fear and anger in her eyes.

‘My dear child,’ he answered, ‘what strange illusions are you nursing? Intrigues and plots, and watching and reports! Don’t believe in any such nonsense, I implore you.’

‘What has Laurent been telling you about me? I insist—I will know.’

‘Laurent has been telling me that he thinks you are likely to find a change beneficial, and that you ought not to be left here alone.’

‘Why not?’ she asked, with a flash of rage. ‘Why am I incapable of taking care of myself?’

‘You are not strong or well,’ said Paul. ‘You are not quite mistress of your own emotions.’

‘Ah!’ she cried, ‘now we are to have the accusation. I am going mad! Is that it? You would like to get rid of me on that ground? Do I understand at last?’

Paul would have been blind if he had failed to see that beneath the air of scorn she strove to wear there was some real terror in her mind, and he did his best to soothe it.

‘All these things are the merest fancies,’ he began.

‘Oh yes,’ she broke in. ‘Delusions! That is step number one. We suffer from delusions.’

‘If you believe in anything of the sort that you suggest, you are mistaken. If you wish to be happy, you must banish all that nonsense from your mind. It is pure nonsense, dearest. Why should Laurent try to poison my mind? He likes you very well. He takes a warm interest in you, to the best of my belief. But you are really very fanciful and strange to-day, and you have been giving yourself up far too much to solitude for two months past. It is your duty to yourself and me to accept Laurent’s advice. You must not be left here alone. You may choose your own companion. She shall be entirely at your orders. You shall engage her yourself; you shall pay her salary; she shall be at your own control.’

‘I know,’ she answered, tapping her foot upon the floor. ‘I know. The truth is, you never really cared for me, and now you have grown tired. You want to be rid of me.’

‘Now, that,’ said Paul, ‘is not only nonsense, it is very wicked nonsense, and I will not permit it The whole matter lies with yourself. If you continue to nurse those wrong and foolish thoughts, you will make it necessary for me to insist upon your obedience. If you will behave like a sensible creature, I may feel justified in yielding to your wish, and leaving you behind. But if I have any more of these absurd suspicions I shall not venture to leave you here.’

He spoke with a purposed sternness, but with something of a heartache, too. There was no escape in his own mind from the belief that the whole change which had of late revealed itself in Annette was due to the fact of approaching maternity, and he had a man’s natural pity for her sufferings. He bore her fancies with patience, but he thought it best for her that he should feign some anger at them.

The plan seemed to act for the time being at least, for after a moment’s incertitude, in which she seemed to battle with herself, she turned her humid brown eyes upon him, and said softly:

‘I am very foolishly suspicious sometimes, Paul. I know—oh, I know that I am not the girl I used to be. Bear with me, dear. I shall be different by-and-by.’

‘I am sure of that,’ he answered, and she approaching him with an appealing languor in her eyes, and in the carriage of her whole figure, he took her into his arms, and for a minute or two she cried quietly upon his shoulder. He patted and caressed her, and she looked up with a quivering face.

‘I will never think or say those things again. I know how wrong they are, but, Paul, they come into my mind, and I cannot resist them sometimes. But I will—I will in future. You shall never hear them any more. But I want you to believe me, dearest, in just this one little thing. It will be the best and kindest thing that you can do for me to leave me here alone whilst you are away in London. I am not without friends here, when I can find the courage and the strength to see them. M. Laurent will look after me. You will write to me every day, won’t you? I shall not be lonely. But the idea of having a stranger about me, fussing and inquiring, is horrible. I can’t bear it.’

‘Very well, dear,’ said Paul, greatly relieved at the turn things had taken, ‘you shall have your way. But you must remember, dear ‘—he spoke as soothingly as he could—’ it is my duty to see that you are cared for properly, and I must not leave you to yourself unless I am quite assured beforehand that you are certain to be bright and brave when I am gone.‘He placed his hand beneath her chin, and coaxed her eyes to meet his own. ‘You won’t nourish these distressing fancies any more, will you?’

‘No,’ she answered, clinging to him; ‘they are all gone. They are all done with. You will be kind and good to me, Paul—I know you will. It isn’t a very great favour for a grown-up woman to ask to be allowed to take care of herself, is it, Paul, darling?’

‘That must depend,’ he answered gaily, ‘whether the grown-up woman is well enough and strong enough for the task.’

‘Ah, well,’ said Annette with an equal brightness, ‘you shall see.’

There were still two days’ work to be done at the comedy, and Darco was resolute not to leave for London until all was finished. The first two acts were already in rehearsal at the Congreve, and Pauer, who was one of those old stagers of the profession who know their business upside down and inside out, was in superintendence until Darco should arrive to mould the whole production to his own exigent fancy.

The change in Annette was remarkable. She had evidently made up her mind for a struggle with herself, and she kept her inequalities of mood in astonishing control, all things considered. She became interested in the work in hand, and took some trifle of needlework to the study for the final reading of the piece between Darco and her husband Paul, with the manuscript before him, acted the whole comedy as brilliantly as an arm-chair rendering could go, and Darco with notebook and pencil listened in keenly attentive silence, note-taking here and there.

‘Id is a gread vork,’ he announced solemnly when it was all over. ‘Id is peautifully written, and that is your affair, younk Armstronk. But the goncebtion is clorious, ant that is my affair. Vot? Not? I am Cheorge Dargo, and I know my trade.’

They were both up at four o’clock next morning to catch the mail to Calais, and Paul was able to leave Annette without severe misgiving. Laurent had promised to look after her, and the improvement in her own hopes appeared so manifest that he felt safe about her, except for those slight inevitable uneasinesses which occur at such a time. But he was only to be away for a month at the outside, and he had Laurent’s assurance that he might make his mind easy. Annette herself rose to see Paul away, in spite of his remonstrances. She nestled by him whilst he stood to drink his coffee in the gray dawn of the morning, in the great, empty, echoing salle À manger, with Darco rolling about the house like an exaggerated football impelled by unseen influences, and roaring tempestuous orders like a ship’s captain in a squall.

Never in his life had Paul felt so wholly tender as he did then towards Annette. He had begun to read so many new meanings into her of late. She seemed no longer the molluscous little creature he had once thought her, but a woman, capable of much suffering, of some determination, of real affection. He was leaving her at the very time at which she most needed his guardianship and care, and at the hour, too, when she seemed first really to confide in him and cling to him. His eyes were moist when he held her in a last embrace, and ran into the street in answer to Darco’s final call. His collaborateur was already seated in the voiture, glossy silk hat, astrachan cuffs and collar, gold-rimmed eyeglass, and all The cocker’s whip cracked stormily, and the fat Flemish horse started off at a pace of four miles an hour.

‘Mark my vorts,’ said Darco, as they rolled along the country road towards the station at which they were to intercept the northward travelling Malle des Indes, ‘you are dravelling to vame ant vorchune.’

‘Well,’ said Paul, ‘that’s pleasant to know, isn’t it, old Darco?’

‘It is very bleasant,’ returned Darco. ‘You ant I are an iteal gouple. We fit each other like the two halves of a pear. I am a boet. Do you hear me, younk Armstronk? I am a boet I am a berson of imachination. I can invent. I can gontrive. There is nopoty in the vorlt who can gonstruct a blot like me. But I gannot egspress myself. Now, you gan egspress me; that is your desdiny. You will egspress Cheorge Dargo. You will descend to future aitches as the dranslader of Cheorge Dargo.’

‘It is a happy lot, old chap,’ said Paul, ‘and I am so proud of it that I am going to sleep.’

‘Lacy tewle!’ said Darco, ‘give me the script. I haf been thinking of somethings.’

How Darco worked, stormed, domineered in the ensuing month, nobody outside the limits of the Congreve knew. He appalled the timid and maddened the courageous. He was up all night for half a week together, seeming to live with a teaspoon in one hand and a tin of some nutritive meat essence in the other, and always administering doses to himself as if he were a patient in danger of imminent exhaustion.

Mr. Warr was here, under solemn articles not once to varnish the work of art until the run of the piece was over.

‘A dreadful circumstance, truly, Mr. Armstrong,’ he complained. ‘I am deprived of the consolation of one device which has hitherto upheld me at such times of trial. The piece might run, sir, for a year; it might even run for two. There is no looking forward to a definite date of relief, sir. It is like being imprisoned at Her Majesty’s pleasure. A painful prospect, Mr. Armstrong—-a period of unassuaged incertitude, sir.’ Daroo burst down upon him like a stormy wind.

‘Don’t stand jattering there. Co ant do somethings.’

‘I have nothing at this moment which calls for my attention, I do assure you, Mr. Darco.’

‘Then find somethings. There is always blenty for efery-boty to do about a theadre.’

Mr. Warr drifted before the storm, and found a harbour in the painting-room, whence he was blasted five minutes later half shipwrecked and wholly demoralized. But Darco was a general who could spare his forces, and three days before the play was announced for production he addressed his army:

‘Laties and chentlemen, I nefer pelieve in worrying peoples. You haf all done noply. Tomorrow there will be no call. Next day at eleven sharp, eferything as at the broduction. Then it will debend upon yourselves whether you are galled upon to rehearse again or no.’

With this all engaged dispersed well pleased, and Darco announced his intention of dining and going to bed. He ordered dinner for two, and ate his double portion through seven courses, after which he went tranquilly home to his hotel and slept the clock round.

The rehearsal next day was so completely satisfactory that he was content to leave it on its merits, and on the following evening the first production of the new management at the Congreve went with a roar of triumph. There was no mistaking the verdict of the house, and the Press was as emphatic as the first night’s audience.

‘Vod did I dell you?’ Darco asked. ‘Vame and vorchune are at your veed. It vos a luggy day for us to meet. Vot? Not? I am Cheorge Darga!’

Paul was tired, excited, and elated all at once. He had promised to start for Belgium so soon as the verdict of the public was made clear, but he could afford to snatch the journey down to Castle Barfield, and to get a glimpse of the old father. He slept on the journey, and took the last five miles by cab. Armstrong was in his accustomed place amongst the dusty and neglected stock when Paul broke in upon him, somewhat grayer than ever, a little more bent, perhaps, but with just the old look of wise patience in his face, the shaggy eyebrows fringing just the old quiet twinkle in his eyes. He declined to express the least atom of surprise.

‘It’s you, Paul, is it?’ he asked tranquilly, rising to shake hands. ‘You’ve had a grand success, I’m learning. I read the notice in the Times.’

‘The play’s all right,’ said Paul. ‘And how’s all here?’

‘Oh,’ said his father, ‘we have our dwallin’ in the middle parts of fortune. We’re neither uplifted nor cast down. Come in, lad. Well all be glad to see ye.’

The old place was exactly as it always had been in his memory, and yet it was all shrunken and narrowed, and had grown meaner and more poverty-stricken than it had used to seem.

He settled down in his old place by the fireside, lit his pipe, listened to the local annals, and prepared to be questioned with respect to his own prospects and affairs.

‘You’ll be growing pretty well to do, Paul?’ said Armstrong.

‘Well, yes,’ said Paul, feeling at a pocket-book which lay at the right side of his tweed coat. ‘I’m getting pretty well-to-do.’

‘Yell be getting married one of these fine days?’ his father asked, twinkling dryly at him.

‘Well, the fact is, sir,’ Paul answered in some embarrassment, ‘I am married.’

‘Holy Paul!’ said Armstrong, and dropped his pipe upon the patchwork rug. Paul stooped for it to cover his own confusion.

‘Yes,’ he said hurriedly, ‘I am married. And I felt such a beast for not having written to tell you all about it that I made up my mind to be my own messenger. The truth is it was all rather hurried, and unexpected—in a way. There had been an attachment for some time, but there was no immediate thought of marriage, and Annette—that is my wife’s name—Annette fell ill, and was not expected to recover, and it was really, to both our minds, a sort of death-bed ceremony, and now she is quite recovered.’

There was such a sense of awkwardness upon him that he boggled the simple story altogether. There was no amazement in his mind at all when his father spoke next. He could have foretold his words.

‘Man, ‘said Armstrong, ‘had ye led the gyirl astray?’

He had never meant to lie about the matter, but at this point-blank thrust he lied.

‘My dear old dad!’ he said, ‘what are you thinking of?’

‘I beg your pardon, Paul,’ said Armstrong—‘I beg your pardon.’

They seemed at once to have a gulf between them, though the simple, honest elder, who had probably never lied in the whole course of his life, did not perceive it. Before Paul it gaped unbridgable.

‘She’s a dear, good little creature,’ Paul boggled along, with a disastrous facility of words which had no guidance. ‘She’s French by descent, but she speaks very good English—very fair English. I taught her. I’ll bring her down to see you. We’re living in Belgium at present, at a little place called Montcourtois, a charming little place. She likes the quiet of it, and it’s very favourable for work. If one lives in town there are so many calls upon one’s time. You can’t get really settled down to the development of an idea, you know.’

‘Ay,’ said Armstrong, ‘I can imagine that. But, Paul, lad, I could have wished ye’d written.’

‘Don’t make it harder than it is, sir,’ Paul appealed. ‘I ought to have written. I’m very sorry that I didn’t, and I’ve come down purposely to explain it all.’

‘Well,’ said his father, ‘better late than never. What kind is she like, lad?’

‘Well,’ said Paul, ‘you can’t expect a man to describe the girl he’s in love with so as to satisfy anybody else She’s slight and not very tall; she has brown hair and brown eyes; she has a very pretty voice, and very dainty ways.’

‘Ay, ay, lad!’ said Armstrong; ‘but her soul—her intelligence?’

‘She’s bright and clever,’ Paul cried, rather protestingly. ‘She takes a keen interest in my work. We’re dearly attached to each other, and I am looking forward to a happy life.’

‘What like are her people?’ Armstrong asked.

‘Well, I don’t know a great deal about her people. She’s an orphan. She has an elder sister, and an aunt and an uncle or two.’

‘She’ll be a Catholic, will she?’

‘No,’ said Paul; ‘her family is Huguenot. I think I should rather have shrunk from marrying a Catholic. There’s a sort of prejudice of which it isn’t easy to free the mind.’

He was sinking clean out of sight of his own esteem; but it was his sole business for the time being to save his father as far as possible, and he had grown reckless of himself.

‘She shall come to see you,’ he went on, ‘and you wont be able to help making friends with her. I’ve to be back in Montcourtois to-morrow night, or she’ll be worrying her life out. That means I must catch the one o’clock express for town, and that, again, means that I’ve only four hours to spend at home this time.’

‘Ye’ll have a glass of whisky, Paul?’

‘I will, sir,’ Paul answered, ‘with all the pleasure in life.’

So Armstrong went to the cupboard and brought out a bottle and the sugar basin, and set the kettle on the fire, and then sat down and loaded up his pipe in silence.

‘There’s much I’d like to say, Paul,’ he began at length.

There was nothing in the act which could have moved a stranger to anything but a smile at the oddity of it, but it touched Paul almost to tears when the gray old man lugged out of his coat-tail pocket a whole newspaper, and having pinched from it a most economical fragment, singed his fingers at the bars in the act of lighting it. He had laughed at that little quaintness a hundred times as a lad, and it was somehow the first thing that had come home to him as a real reminder to be in want of reformation.’

They grew more at ease. Armstrong took up the subject he had broken a few minutes earlier.

‘I don’t guess,’ he said, ‘whether you’re believe these thoughts for yourself, but there’s a gap between you and me, Paul. Ye’ve had grave troubles.

‘I have, sir,’ said Paul.

‘I’ve known it,’ said his father. ‘I’ve thoughts in my mind when ye’re away: “Paul’s blythe,” or I thenk of ye, lad; I sit here in the auld arm-chair and think of ye, and eh, man, I’m just as certain of myself as if I were aware of every fact in your existence. Promise me this. I’m wearing we meet this last time for ever, and I want ye to keep the auld feelings from time to time. Write a little more regularly, about ye. Take me into confidence when ye’re gone.

Paul promised, and all the estrangement seemed to melt away. This was to be their last meeting, both or them guessed it, and when at last it grew to the time Paul must go, the father went down the long hall the front-door. Paul fumbled for the pocket-book in the darkness of the passage found a piece of paper, and kissed the old man at parting he thrust this into his hand.

Arrived at the station nearest to Montcourtois; then the voiture from the hotel with the grinning Victor on the box, and Laurent waiting.

‘No bad news’ asked Paul.

‘Things are not quite what they might be or what they should be,’ Laurent answered. ‘But get in, and we will talk as we drive. Do you remember,’ he asked, whilst Victor filled the night with the noise of a fusillade of whip-crackings—‘do you remember that I told, you some time ago that a man should have no secrets from his physician?

‘Yes,’ said Paul. ‘Well?’

‘Have you had any secrets from me in respect to Madame Armstrong?’

‘No; nothing that I can think of. I don’t quite see what you are driving at.’

‘Do you remember,’ Laurent asked, ‘the evening on which you first called me to attend her—the night on which she cried out that they were dancing in the wood, and that their bones were white? Do you remember?’

‘Good God!’ cried Paul; ‘do I remember?’

‘Did you ever diagnose that case? the doctor asked.

‘No. Do you mean to say that her mind is affected, that——

‘You never guessed?’ asked Laurent, leaning across to him and grasping him by the arm—‘you never guessed? Upon your life and honour?’

‘Guessed? Guessed what?’

‘Now,’ said Laurent, ‘I am going to hurt you, and I cannot help it. I am sorry, but it must be.’

‘Speak out, man!’ gasped Paul—‘speak out!’

‘That,’ said Laurent, ‘was delirium tremens.’

They had three miles to travel, and not another word was spoken on the road; but as they passed the doctor’s house a voice called out to him, and the driver pulled up.

‘Stay with me a moment, Mr. Armstrong,’ said Laurent ‘I will but give this man an ordonnance for the pharmacien, and I will be with you. Drive home, Victor!’

The carriage rattled off; the doctor, the messenger, and Paul stood at the kerb for a minute or so. The carriage rumbled into the distance; a window was heard to open and to dose. Laurent took Paul’s arm, and they walked together without a word until they came in front of the window of the room which Paul had used as a study. The blind was up, a lamp was lit, and the whole room was visible from the roadway.

‘Mon Dieu!’ said Laurent in a whisper.

Annette was there in her nightdress, looking from side to side like a hunted creature. A decanter stood upon the table. She approached it crouching, seized it with one hand, took a tumbler in the other, and three times poured and three times drank as if the draught were water; then she glided away and closed the door behind her.