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.

CHAPTER XVIII

For any and every episode of his life save this, Paul, when he chose to think about it, could make a fairly expressive picture in his mind, and could bring back something of the emotion of the time. Here he could remember only that Laurent clutched him by the arm, and that he turned on Laurent with something of the vague appeal for aid which might be imagined in the mind of a frightened child. He saw that a thousand signs which he should have recognised had escaped him, and in the flush of real apprehension which followed this thought he seemed to himself to have been almost wilfully blind to the truth. There were so many things which might have guided him, and he had taken warning by none of them.

'I beg your pardon, old chap,' he said to Laurent, speaking unconsciously in English, 'but I'm a little bit upset. You would not mind lending me your arm inside?'

'a.s.suredly not,' cried Laurent, still supporting him; and the two men entered the hotel together.

The Solitary still remembered how his clumsy footsteps seemed to fumble at the stone stairs, and the very pressure of Laurent's arm upon his own shoulder was still a living sensation with him; yet for the actual moment thought and sensation alike seemed to have been abolished.

Laurent, when the study had once been reached, helped Paul into a chair, and stood over him with a look of friendly solicitude.

'A little stimulant, I think,' he said at last, in a tone of commonplace, and set a hand on the decanter which Annette had so recently laid down.

'Not that, Laurent!' cried Paul, with a gesture the other was swift to interpret.

The doctor left the room with a meaningless, friendly tap on Paul's shoulder, and came back a few instants later with a bottle of brandy.

'I insist,' he said commandingly, in answer to Paul's rejecting wave of the hand.

When Laurent insisted there were few people who said him nay, and Paul took the potion which was poured out for him.

He could remember it all, from this point onward, as if he had been a mere disinterested spectator of the scene. He could see his own figure straightening itself mechanically in the chair in which it sat. He could see himself mechanically throwing one leg over another, and a.s.suming an att.i.tude of indifference and ease. He could see himself distinctly in the act of knocking out the ashes of his pipe upon the grate; in the refilling and lighting of it; in the numberless little gestures which seemed to indicate an entire possession of himself And all the while something was booming in his mind as if the word 'lost 'were only half articulated there--a scarcely uttered word that carried doom with it.

'I do not know,' said Laurent, speaking, for a man of his experience and authority, rather brokenly--'I do not know whether it was my duty to have spoken earlier. I have not known you very long; but we have learned to like each other, and I would have done you the service to tell you what I knew a month or two ago if I could have found the courage. But I will ask you to believe that I was much perplexed, and that I could not resolve in my own mind whether or not you knew already. It would have seemed a cruel thing to intrude upon such a secret.'

'Yes,' said Paul, breaking silence for the first time since he had entered the house, 'I understand that' He pulled gravely at his pipe, and sipped again at the gla.s.s Laurent had poured out for him. 'What's going to be done?' he asked; and then, with a sudden petulance, 'What have I got to do?'

'In a patient so young,' said Laurent, 'unless there is some hereditary taint to combat, there should be no impossibility in establishing a cure. What of Madame Armstrong's heredity?' What did Paul know of Madame Armstrong's heredity? Save for a casual glimpse of her sister, who had seemed to him as commonplace as candle-light, he had no knowledge of any person of her name or family. He sat silent, not knowing how to express his ignorance without compromising Annette and himself. But Laurent pressed him.

'Do you know of anything,' he asked, 'which should make the task of cure difficult?'And, being thus pressed, there seemed nothing for it but for Paul to say that he knew nothing. 'Then,' said Laurent, 'we must not despair. I have already spoken to your wife, and have pointed out to her the very serious nature of her danger, and she has promised me amendment. With what result,' he added, throwing his arms abroad, 'you see.'

'You think it a serious danger? Paul asked him.

'My G.o.d!' e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Laurent--'serious! But an instant, my dear Armstrong. We are not thinking of a male inebriate; we are thinking of a woman--a question so different that there is barely any comparison to be made.'

'Is that so? said Paul, in a voice of little interest, though he felt for the moment as if his heart were breaking.

'That is so,' returned Laurent, with emphasis; 'and I can a.s.sure you that, if you desire to effect a cure here, you must betake yourself--and betake yourself at once--to heroic measures. Your wife must be placed, without delay, in competent hands, and no restraint must be placed upon those who undertake to treat her.'

'Very well,' said Paul dully, 'I understand all that We'll have another talk in the morning, if you don't mind.'

Laurent forbore to speak further just then, but he kept Paul in silent company for an hour, and was more useful in that way than he could have been if he had poured out the gathered knowledge of an encyclopaedia upon him. He gave that dumb sense of sympathy which, in hours of deep distress, is so very much more potent than the spoken word. Paul at last rose and shook him by the hand.

'Good-night,' he said, 'and thank you.'

Laurent accepted his dismissal, returned the grip, took up his hat and moved away. It would appear that he had not gone far, for when an instant later Paul poured out a second or third gla.s.s of cognac for himself, there came a tap upon the study window, and Laurent's face was visible there dose to one of the lower panes. Paul threw the window open and looked out at him.

'You have something to say?' he asked.

'Yes,' said Laurent, with a grave and tender face, 'I have this one thing to say: Do not follow that sorrowful example.'

'Oh,' said Paul, 'have no fear there; my temptation does not lie in that direction.'

'My dear young friend,' said Laurent, 'no man until he is tempted knows in what direction his temptation lies.'

They shook hands again through the open window and then parted definitely for the night.

Paul sat long in the silence, not thinking of anything in particular or conscious of any particular emotion. The cafe on the opposite side of the _place_ had long since closed. When Laurent's footsteps had faded out of hearing there was no sound abroad for which it was not necessary to listen, except when a distant dog barked now and then, or the slow rumble of a far-off train came once into hearing and disappeared in the valley with which the railway clove the low hills beyond Janenne. The dark air of night flowed in through the open window, cool and sweet, bringing with it the familiar odours of the pine plantations in which the countryside abounded. Paul smoked pipe after pipe, and he knew very well that if anybody had been there to look at him, he would have seemed unmoved, and yet he seemed to himself more than once to be playing the mountebank with his own trouble, as when, for instance, the lines came into his mind:

'Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears, That grief has shaken into frost'

But all the while there was a slow anguish rising within him or around him. It seemed to reach his breast quite suddenly and almost to stop the beating of his heart. Then it ebbed away again, and he found himself crooning unemotionally, 'For years--a measureless ill--for ever, for ever!' The pain came back, and once more ebbed away. What was it? he asked in the self-torturing way which besets the a.n.a.lyst of his own nature. Self-pity, he answered. Self-pity, pure and simple. He, Paul Armstrong, furnished with heart and brains and social powers, with fortune at hand, and fame to be had for the beckoning, had slid into this sickening quagmire thus early in his life's pilgrimage, and had come to an arrest there.

Then, out of this profound despondency he arose to a sudden resolution.

This was not a matter to be despaired of. It was a thing to fight against, an ill not to be endured, but to be cured. Laurent would help, but the main share of the conflict must fall upon himself. Almost for the first time in his life he was conscious of a clear and definite call to manhood. He was entered for a real strife with Fate--a fight to a finish. Well, he would not shrink from it He set himself to ask what weapons he could use. Patience, tact, determination, sleepless vigilance--they all seemed as if they were to be had for the asking. He resolved upon them all, and so, having closed the window and put out the lamp, he walked heavily up to bed.

Annette's doors were locked, both that which gave upon the corridor and that which communicated with his own little room. He could but remember how often they had been closed before, and what varying reasons he had been forced to seek and find for her isolation of herself. That riddle was read now. There would be a stormy scene in the morning when he came to tell Annette that he had solved it, and thinking of how he should face it, and of what means were the likeliest to lead to ultimate victory, he lost something of the sickness of his pain. He undressed and lay down in the dark, but there was no sleep for him until long after the window-blind had grown amber-tinted with the gleam of the level sun upon it.

When he awoke his watch told him that it was near ten o'clock. He rang for his bath, dressed, breakfasted, met the people of the house, and answered their friendly inquiries as to his journey all pretty much as if nothing had occurred to change the whole horizon of his life. He made no inquiries as to Annette, and no news came to him with regard to her.

It was near noonday when Laurent came into his study, very grave and gray, and looking as if he, too, had had a night of severe trouble.

Paul read the sympathy in his face, and rose to meet him. The two shook hands, and from that moment there was a real friendship between them.

'You have seen her? Laurent asked.

'Not yet,' said Paul

'You have thought over what I was compelled to tell you--what you saw?'

'Yes; I have thought it all over.

'And your conclusions?'

'To ask the aid of your experience, and to abide by your advice.'

'Thank you,' said Laurent gravely. 'I, too, have been thinking, and perhaps, in my judgment, it may be better that I should first see her alone. In my capacity of physician I can speak impersonally.'

'I am in your hands,' Paul answered, 'and I shall accede to whatever you think is best.'

'Well,' returned Laurent, with a gray smile, 'I do not commonly advocate eavesdropping, but I think perhaps it may be as well for you to hear our talk together. It will guide you as to what you may say or do hereafter.

I will send up my name now, and when I am admitted you may follow to your own small room. Is that espionage? I do not very greatly care myself, for I shall warn her from the first that I shall faithfully report every spoken word so far as I can remember it.'

'I will come,' said Paul. 'I have the right And the more I know the better I can use it.'

Laurent twirled the milled b.u.t.ton of the call-bell which stood upon the desk.