Chapter XXXI

[Henry Gastonard sends Paddy O’Connell some account of his labours in Paris.]

Hôtel St. Paul, Paris,
October 19th, 1905.

Dear Paddy,--Your letter speaks of a good heart and a true friendship. In your own words, God bless you for it.

I cannot tell you what I have suffered during these terrible days. There are few to whom I would speak of it. Sometimes I wish to God that I could wake no more. The world moves about me as a rushing sea of which I am afraid. I fear for my very reason.

Consider it all and bear with me. I was the happiest man in Europe before this trouble came. Nothing in life but Mimi mattered then. Oh, Paddy, if I could tell you what it was to have her always with me--to wake each day and find her head upon my pillow, to sleep with her white arms about my neck. None of us knew her a little bit in the old days. But, Paddy, I learned to know her; I learned the truth which few men learn--the secret was mine--the sweetness of it past belief.

And to say she is gone from me! If she were dead, the bitterness of the truth could not be more poignant. I think of every city as her prison; I pass no house in Paris that I do not say, If Mimi were there! A thousand suppositions of life and death torment me every day. Does she know what I suffer? Is it not possible that she will send a message to me? Day answers nothing--the nights are silent. I can but wait and pray.

You say that you arrived in London upon the morning after my departure. I do not ask you to come to me in Paris, because I know not whether Paris will be my home to-morrow, or some other city to which destiny may lead me. Be sure that I am prepared for anything. I work with Jules Farman literally from the rising of the sun until midnight. We have visited more dens in Paris than I would have numbered for all the slums of France. And we know no more than the meanest servant of the police, who writes his theories in five folios, where my wife is hidden, or what this stupendous mystery may be.

You will have read my letter in the English papers, and I have little to add to it to-day. It was my purpose to remove the cowardly suspicions which hover about the name of one of the purest of women, and this I believe that I have done. Is it not monstrous to see how ready the world is to doubt a woman’s honour, how willing to anticipate her guilt. No reason governs the tongue of scandal, nor does justice curb it. Here was a pretty French girl--she is immoral, says slander. A man visits her--a man she has never seen before--he is her lover, says the multitude. He is foully murdered in her house--she must be the murderess. An English police, never clever when any gift of subtlety is demanded, will accept no story but the one which ministers to its love of the commonplace. A French police, readier to look further afield, still believes that the Count was Mimi’s lover. And I am alone against these. My love can but speak in a voice which the clamour of conviction would drown. Ah, Paddy, if I could but call these slanderers one by one before me; could compel them to answer me; could wring a cry of justice from their throats. For I alone knew what Mimi was, and alone I must defend her.

I have told you that we visited many of the dens upon the further side of the Butte. Our reward is some story of the disappearance of the notorious ruffian, Jean-le-Mont, and of his aforetime accomplice Bar-le-Duc the apache. This was learned at the old Café des Assassins when we visited it the second time. If we risked much, you will believe how little any thought of personal danger deterred us. Indeed, I do truly believe that a ruffian there was within an ace of drawing a pistol upon us both--but Farman is the master of such men as these, and I am never afraid in his company.

I should tell you that it was mid-day when we visited the Café and found no one in charge but a very pretty and very ragged little French girl sitting before a charcoal stove in the outer room. She knew Jules Farman well, and asked him pointedly why he came there a second time in as many days. When he answered her evasively she ran away to tell someone else, who proved to be a dirty and unwashed ruffian, by name Rogers--for he was an Englishman long known to the English police and well watched by the French. This fellow was already drunk--a bottle of spirits stood by the side of his filthy bed; a revolver lay close to his hand. Had he been sober, there would have been civility enough; but in his mad state he flourished his pistol wildly upon our entrance and would have shot us for a word. In the end Farman frightened him thoroughly, and he told us somewhat abjectly to follow the giant Jean-le-Mont and to put our questions to him.

It is possible that this is a clue; it may be mere coincidence. You will not have forgotten my letter to you in which I told you of the robbery at the Quat-Z-Arts ball, of Mimi’s recovery of my gold cigarette-case from this very ruffian, and of his subsequent threats against her. But I find it hard to believe that a monster, whose one ambition of the day is to steal money for his drink to-morrow should remember so pitiful an incident, much less the name of one of the thousand friendless girls who haunt the Butte and its vicinity.

In this Jules Farman agrees with me--but he asks the pertinent question, Is it not possible that this fellow may be the agent of others unknown, and that all he has done has been done for money which comes to him from this undiscovered source? I hope that it may be so. The police of London are searching Soho and other haunts of Frenchmen for any news of him--the police here are not less diligent.

You will not be angry with me, Paddy, for speaking of another matter, and one of which you will hear with little pleasure. Yesterday I had a letter from Lea d’Alençon inviting me to her house, and assuring me that Monsieur le Capitaine was heartily ashamed of his treatment of me. There has been, I understand, something resembling a reconciliation between the pair, though God knows how long a woman will be content to be the amiable companion of a man who prefers to go to bed at eleven o’clock at night and considers a dinner at Armenonville as the first instalment of his purgatory. I shall not go to her house, be sure--nor could I contemplate such an infamy as any renewal of this acquaintanceship would imply. None the less, I am troubled--for she speaks in a postscript of her ability to help me, and declares that my happiness may depend upon a prompt response to her invitation.

You say that you are in London awaiting my return. I can give you no definite news of this, but I could wish it rather sooner than later. Everything here reminds me of Mimi and the happy days. I visited the old Maison du bon Tabac the other day and spent an hour in its empty rooms. Not a scrawl upon its shabby walls, not a broken pane in its windows but spoke to me of my little wife and the golden days which are no more. And just as it is tumbling into decay, so, Paddy, is the house of my own life falling. I see the great city of Paris below me--it speaks of eternal things and of the darkness which is eternal. The green woods rise beyond, and I remember that they gave me Mimi in the days of the springtime, even as their falling leaves may hide her to-day from my sight.

All that is here, the voice once musical of Paris, the glare of her lights, the rolling traffic in the streets, the unceasing business of pleasure--all this has no meaning for me. I pass by as a man who has no place in such a pageant, who must walk apart until the end. Even the memory of the golden days has become an evil thing. I shut the old pictures from my eyes, but they rise up to mock me. Ah, Paddy, the day is dark indeed, when a man’s youth stands to him for an evil memory, and he would blot the yesterday of life from the book he has written.

Write to me often, old friend. Remember how very much I am alone. If circumstances seem to promise a continued stay here, I will beg you to come to me. Meanwhile, find me, as always, dear Paddy,

Your friend,
Harry Gastonard.