Joanna sighed. "I can"t understand you."
"Is there any necessity?"
"You belong to a time when one wanted to understand everything. Now nothing much matters. But curiously in your case the desire has returned."
"You understood me well enough to be sure that when you wanted me I would be at your service."
"I don"t know," she said. "It was a desperate resort to save my husband"s reason. Oh, come," she cried, moving to the chairs by the fire, "let us sit and talk for five minutes. The other times you came and went and we scarcely spoke a word. Besides," with a forced laugh, "it would not have been _convenable_. Now Mr. Asticot is here as chaperon. It doesn"t seem like real life, does it, that you and I should be here? It is like some grotesque dream in which all sorts of incoherences are mixed up together. Don"t you at least find it interesting?"
"As interesting as toothache," replied Paragot.
"If it is pain for you to talk to me, Gaston, I will not detain you,"
said Joanna, rising from her chair.
"Forgive me," said he; "I suppose my manners have gone with the rest.
You may help me to recover them if you allow me to talk to you."
He pa.s.sed his hand wearily over his face, which during the last minute or two had been overspread by a queer pallor. He looked ghastly.
"Tell me," said he, "why you come to that boozing-ken of a place? A note would reach me and I would obey."
She explained that there was no time for letter-writing. The Comte"s attacks came on suddenly at night. To soothe him it was necessary to find the chief actor in the absurd comedy at once, at any cost to her reputation. Besides, what did it matter? The only person who knew of her escapade was the coachman, an old family servant of the Comte, as discreet as death.
"How long have these attacks been going on?" asked my master.
Joanna poured out her story with the pathetic eagerness of a woman who has kept hateful secrets in her heart too long and at last finds a human soul in whom she can confide. I think she almost forgot my presence, for I sat modestly apart, separated from them by the wide cone of light cast by the shaded lamp.
The first symptoms of mental derangement, she said, had manifested themselves two years ago. They had gradually increased in frequency and intensity. During the interval the Comte de Verneuil went about the world a sane man. The attacks, as she had explained, came on suddenly, always at night, and his fixed idea was that he had killed Gaston de Nerac. Before Paragot had appeared they lasted two or three days, till they spent themselves leaving the patient in great bodily prostration.
When she had met me taking the Spring outside the Hotel Bristol, a wild idea had entered her head that the confrontation of the Comte with the living Gaston de Nerac might end his madness. On the occasion of the next attack she had rushed in eager search for Paragot, had brought him to the raving bedside, and the result had been magical. She had thought the cure permanent; but a fortnight later the attack returned, as it had returned again and again, and as it had returned to-night.
"It is charitable of you to have come, Gaston," she said, in her sweet way, "and I must ask you to forgive me for anything unkind I may have said."
He made some reply in a low voice which I did not hear, and for a little time their talk was pitched in the same tone. I began to grow sleepy. I aroused myself with a jerk to hear Joanna say,
"Why did you play that detestable tune from "Orphee aux Enfers"?"
"To see if you would recognise it. Some mocking devil prompted me. It was the last tune you and I heard together--the night of our engagement party. The band played it in the garden."
"Don"t--don"t!" exclaimed Joanna, putting up her hands to her face.
This then was why each had cried out at Aix-les-Bains against the merry little tune. It was interesting. I saw however that it must have jangled horribly on tense nerves.
She dashed away her hands suddenly and strained her face towards him.
"Why, Gaston--why did you?"
He rose with a deprecating gesture and there was a hunted look in his eyes. During all this strange scene he was no longer Paragot, my master, but Gaston de Nerac whom I did not know. His wild, picturesque speech, his dear vagabond manner had gone. The haggardness of some desperate illness changed his features and I grew frightened. I came to his side.
"Master--we must take a cab. Have you any money?"
"Yes," he said faintly, "let us go home."
"But you are ill! You look as white as a ghost!" cried Joanna, in alarm.
"I had a dinner of herbs--in the liquid form of absinthe," said my master with a clutch at Paragot. "How does it go? Better a dinner of herbs where love is----"
"Ah! Monsieur has not yet gone," said the nurse, hurrying into the room.
"Monsieur le Comte begs me to give this to Monsieur."
She held out a letter.
"Monsieur le Comte made me open his despatch box, Madame," she added apologetically.
She left the room. Paragot stood twirling the letter between his fingers. Joanna bade him open it. It might be something important Paragot drew from the envelope half a sheet of note-paper. He looked at it, made a staggering step to the door and fell sprawling p.r.o.ne upon the carpet.
Joanna uttered a little cry of fright, and, as I did, cast herself on her knees beside him. He had fainted. Abstinence from food, drink, his tremendous effort of will towards sobriety, the strain of the interview, had brought him to the verge of the precipice, and it only required the shock of the letter to send him toppling over. We propped his head on cus.h.i.+ons and loosened his collar.
"What can we do?" gasped my dear lady.
"I will call the nurse from Monsieur le Comte"s room," said I.
"She will know," said Joanna hopefully.
I went to the Comte"s room, opened the door and beckoned to the nurse.
She gave a glance at her sleeping patient and joined me in the corridor.
On my explanation she brought water and sal-volatile and returned with me to the drawing-room. It was a night of stupefying surprises. The _quartier_ would have called it _abracadabrant_ and they would not have been far wrong. There was necromancy in the air. I felt it, as I followed the nurse across the threshold. I antic.i.p.ated something odd, some grotesque development. In the atmosphere of those I loved in those days I was as sensitive as a barometer.
Paragot lay still as death, his wild hairy head on the satin cus.h.i.+ons, but Joanna was crouching on her knees in the midst of the cone of light cast by the shaded lamp, reading, with parted lips and blanched face, the half sheet of note-paper. As we entered she turned and looked at me and her eyes were frozen hard blue. The nurse bent over by my master"s side.
Joanna stretched out her arms full length towards me.
"Read," she cried, and her voice was harsh with no silvery tone in it at all. I took the paper wonderingly from her fingers.
Why she should have shown it to me, the wretched little pasty-faced gutter-bred art student, I could not conceive for many of the after years during which I wrestled with the head- and heart-splitting perplexities of women. But experience has taught me that human beings, of whichever s.e.x they may be, will do amazing things in times of spiritual upheaval. I have known the primmest of vicar"s churchwardens curse like a coal-heaver when a new inc.u.mbent chose in his stead a less prim man than he.
I was just a human ent.i.ty, I suppose, who had strayed into the sacred and intimate sphere of her life--the only one perhaps in the world who had done so. She was stricken to the soul. Instinct compelled my sharing of her pain.
She commanded me to read. I was only nineteen. Had she commanded me to drink up eisel or eat a crocodile, I would have done it. I read.
The address of the letter was Eaton Square: the date, the 20th of June thirteen years before. The wording as follows:--
"In consideration of the sum of Ten thousand pounds I the undersigned Gaston de Nerac promise and undertake from this moment not to hold any communication by word or writing with Miss Joanna Rushworth for the s.p.a.ce of two years--that is to say until midnight of the 20th June 18--.
Should however Miss Joanna Rushworth be married in the meantime, I solemnly undertake on my honour as a gentleman not of my own free will to hold any communication with her whatever as long as I live, or should circ.u.mstances force us to meet, not to acquaint her in any way with the terms of this agreement, whereof I hold myself bound by the spirit as well as by the letter. GASTON DE NeRAC."
My young and unpractised mind required some minutes to realise the meaning of this precious agreement. When it had done so I stared blankly at Joanna.