There was an abject appeal in the bloodshot eyes, a desperate tenacity in his clutch. He looked at me as if he dared look nowhere else. Some horror seemed pressing upon his confused and weakened brain, and I thought I could soothe him best by staying.
"Very well--there, I"m not going," I said, rea.s.suringly.
Still he did not relax his grip upon me, but his eyes closed again, and he seemed satisfied. I sat down on a chair at the bedside and waited.
The sun poured brighter and brighter through the blinds and touched up the mantelpiece.
The photograph of Faina"s sister, surrounded by some others of her set, was propped up in the centre of it, on a couple of paper volumes. My own head was aching violently now, and after a time the woman"s figure on the glossy, sun-flecked surface of the card began to sway and swim before my eyes as I looked lazily at it.
The minutes pa.s.sed by and Howard did not move. At last, I ventured to try and withdraw my stiffening arm without rousing him, but at the first movement his fingers tightened and his groans recommenced.
After a time my hunger pa.s.sed into drowsiness. I leant forward gradually, and at last my head sank down on the edge of his bed, and I drifted into oblivion.
CHAPTER IV.
May had come round again. The days and weeks had glided by in a monotony of work, varied by feverish blanks when I could do nothing, and the pile of ma.n.u.script lay growing dusty in its corner. Then at last the day arrived when the final line was written and the whole despatched. That was three months back, three months of anxious waiting, in which Howard had chaffed me daily on my looks and health.
"You"re dwindling to a most interesting skeleton, Vic," he used to say.
"Catch me bothering myself about anything I wrote in the same way."
Now, however, it was over. I had just left the publisher"s office. The book had been accepted, and I was a free man. A gush of fresh life ran through me and stirred in my veins in response to the fresh life of spring that seemed in the sunny air, in the green leaves fluttering round the Bourse, in the white b.u.t.terflies that floated across the dusty asphalt.
When I got back I found Howard half asleep in the armchair. He sat up as I came in, and regarded me with a confused stare. I saw he had been drinking, but his brain was still tolerably clear.
"Rejected, by Jove!" he remarked as he saw the MS.
"No," I answered, throwing it on to a side table and myself into the chair opposite him--"no, thank heaven, it"s all right now! They"ve accepted it. Congratulate me!"
"But what on earth have you brought it back for, then?" he said, blinking his heavy eyes and looking at me resentfully, as if he suspected I was playing some practical joke.
"Oh, there are a few things they want altered, that"s all," I answered.
"I am to let them have it again the day after to-morrow."
"And what about terms?" he continued, getting out a roll of cigarette papers and beginning to roll himself some cigarettes.
He was wide awake now, and had shaken off his intoxicated stupor. His face was bent slightly as he made the cigarettes, so that I could hardly see it. I sat watching his trembling fingers rolling the papers in an absent silence.
"Oh, terms?" I said at last. "Fairly good, I think. They pay me a small sum and reserve me one-third of all profits from the book. I really don"t care much about the terms. Once the book is out my name is made, and the money will come in all right in time. They"ve taken it; that is the main point. If you knew the glorious relief it is to me!"
Howard laughed. He flung himself back in the chair and propped his feet up against the support of the mantelpiece.
"I think you are very lucky," he said. There was silence, then he asked abruptly--"How much are they going to give you for it?"
"Three thousand francs."
Howard paled suddenly and fixed his eyes upon me.
"And what will you do with it?" he asked, after a minute.
"Well," I answered, without reflection, "I thought you would like two thousand to send home and get rid of that half-yearly interest."
The blood dyed all his face suddenly crimson, and he brought down his feet upon the fender with a crash.
"I wish to h.e.l.l you"d wait till I asked you for it!" he said savagely, springing up and crossing to the window.
There he stood looking out with his hands thrust deep into his pockets.
I was fairly startled, and the colour rose uncomfortably in my own face.
It seemed, I almost felt, as if I had done something excessively ill-bred. But Howard and I were on such intimate terms, and made so little account of what we said to each other, that I had expressed the thought uppermost in my mind at the moment of his question as a matter of course. Then, too, he borrowed so constantly and so freely from me that the idea of offence over money matters or mentioning them seemed quite impossible.
"No," I thought, glancing at him as he still stood between me and the light; "there must be something else in his mind," and I wondered.
He was seldom out of temper, and seldom made himself disagreeable to me. In conversation, in all our life together, he generally yielded to me with an almost womanly compliance. His present tone and manner were absolutely new to me. I did not understand them, and I liked him well enough to take the trouble to get up after a second and follow him to the window.
"Howard," I said gently, "what is the matter? I am sorry if I have annoyed you."
He turned upon me suddenly from the window.
"Did I ever say I wanted the money you might get from your cursed book?" he said, pa.s.sionately. "Do you suppose I couldn"t get as much for something of my own if I chose?"
Now, considering Howard was always in want of money, and perpetually lamenting his inability, real or imagined, to get it, the last remark seemed rather odd, and the vehemence with which he spoke against me was altogether incomprehensible.
"Of course," I answered quietly, looking down into his excited face. "I merely offered the money as a convenience, pro tem, as it happened to be at hand, that"s all. But surely it doesn"t matter. Perhaps I should not have done. I apologise. Doesn"t that make it square?"
I thought he was out of health, irritable, disappointed that he had not made more of his own work, and jealous of my success, and I was willing to say anything to soften his feelings.
Howard simply turned away from me again, and I caught a mutter of "d.a.m.ned impertinence."
Seeing it was useless to say anything further at the moment, I strolled back into the centre of the room again, called Nous to me, and sat down.
"Jealous!" I thought, with contemptuous amus.e.m.e.nt; "how extraordinary!"
Then my thoughts rushed away in a sudden stream to Lucia, and I saw her face, glowing with delight, look out upon me from the blank surface of the wall.
"How soon now shall I possess you?" was my one thought. "How long to our marriage?"
I began by allowing three months, but I shortened and shortened the time till I cut it down to a fortnight.
"Could I persuade her to let it be in a fortnight?" and I thought I could.
A quarter of an hour pa.s.sed, and Howard had not moved from his position in the window. A very little day-dreaming is enough for me, especially about a woman. I yawned, stretched, and finally got up.
"Howard," I said, "I"m going out for a turn with Nous, but I will came back in time for dinner."
I lingered, but he said nothing. I put on my hat, called the dog, and went out. I started to walk to the Arc, and the distance there and back would have taken me, as I had said, till our dinner hour, but half way there the inclination failed. I felt tired and turned back.