CHAPTER XVII

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 thes