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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/34428-8.txt b/34428-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7f0205a --- /dev/null +++ b/34428-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,17056 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Alas!, by Rhoda Broughton + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Alas! + A Novel + +Author: Rhoda Broughton + +Release Date: November 24, 2010 [EBook #34428] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALAS! *** + + + + +Produced by Meredith Bach, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +book was produced from scanned images of public domain +material from the Google Print project.) + + + + + + + + + + ALAS! + + A Novel + + BY RHODA BROUGHTON + +AUTHOR OF 'COMETH UP AS A FLOWER,' 'RED AS A ROSE IS SHE,' 'SECOND +THOUGHTS,' 'GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!,' 'NANCY,' 'DOCTOR CUPID,' ETC. + + + _A NEW EDITION_ + + LONDON + RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON + Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen + 1891 + [_All rights reserved_] + + _TO + MRS. ANDREW SPOTTISWOODE_ + + + + +ALAS! + + + + +PART I. + +Amelia. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +"If you will allow me, I shall have the pleasure of reading aloud to you +some passages from 'Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings,' by Charles Dickens. I do +not know much about the book myself, as I have never read it. I dare say +that you know more about it than I do; but I am given to understand" +(with a glance at the page before him) "that Mrs. Lirriper was a +lodging-house-keeper, that she kept lodgings in London. She was a very +good sort of woman, I believe" (another hasty glance), "but she +sometimes had trouble with her servants. I am told that servants are +troublesome sometimes" (a slight nervous laugh, the more nervous because +it does not seem to be followed by any echo from the audience). "If you +will allow me then, as I say, and if you think it will amuse you, I will +read you a little of what she says about these troubles." + +The foregoing remarks are uttered in a loud, shy, dogged voice by James +Burgoyne to the "Oxford Women's Provident Association." His voice is +loud because, being quite unused to public reading, he does not know how +to modulate it; it is shy from the same cause of unaccustomedness; it is +dogged because he is very much displeased with his present occupation, +and has not been successful in concealing that displeasure. When a man +runs down to Oxford for a couple of nights, to see how the six years +that have passed since he turned his undergraduate back upon the old +place have treated her--runs down to a college chum unseen for the same +six years--this is certainly not the way in which he expects to spend +one of his two evenings. + +"I hope you will not mind, Jim"--ominous phrase--the college friend has +said; "but I am afraid we shall have to turn out for half an hour after +dinner. It is rather a nuisance, particularly as it is such a wet night; +but the fact is, I have promised to read to the 'Oxford Women's +Provident Association.' Ah, by-the-bye, that is new since you were +here--we had no Provident Women in your day!" + +"On the other hand, we had a great many improvident men," returns Jim +dryly. + +"Well, the fact is, my wife is on the committee, and a good deal +interested in it, and we give them a sort of entertainment once a month +through the winter terms--tea and buns, that kind of thing, sixpence a +head; they enjoy it far more than if we gave it them for nothing; and +after tea we get people to recite and read and sing to them. I am sure I +wish them joy of my reading to-night, for I do not see how I am to make +myself audible; I am as hoarse as a crow." + +"I know those Oxford colds of old," returns Burgoyne, with that +temperate compassion in his voice which we accord to our neighbours' +minor diseases. He is sorry that his friend has a cold; but he little +knows how much sorrier he will be in the course of the next hour as he +adds: "Do not distress yourself about me; I shall be quite happy in your +den with a book and a cigarette. Mrs. Brown does not object, does she? +And I dare say you will not be very long away." + +As he speaks he realizes, with a sort of pang--the pang we pay sometimes +to our dead pasts--that, though it is only three hours since he was +reunited to his once inseparable Brown, he is already looking forward +with relief to the prospect of an hour's freedom from his society--so +terribly far apart is it possible to grow in six years. But, before his +half-fledged thought has had time to do more than traverse his brain, +Brown has broken into it with the eager remonstrances of a mistaken +species of hospitality. + +"Leave you behind? Could not hear of such a thing! Of course you must +come too! It will be a new experience for you; a wholesome change. Ha! +ha! and we can talk all the way there and back; we have had no talk +worth speaking of yet." + +Again it flashes across the other's mind, with the same pensive regret +as before, that talk worth speaking of is for ever over between them; +but, seeing that further attempts at evasion will seriously hurt the +good-natured Brown, he acquiesces, with as fair a grace as he may. + +While putting on his own mackintosh, he watches, with a subdued wonder, +his friend winding himself into a huge white woollen comforter, and +stepping into a pair of goloshes (he had been rather a smart +undergraduate in his day), while outside the opened hall door the rain +is heard to swish, and the wind to bellow. + +"Had not we better have a hansom?" suggests Burgoyne, blinking, as the +slant gust sends two or three stinging drops into his eyes. + +"A hansom! nonsense!" returns the other, laughing, and with difficulty +unfurling an umbrella in the teeth of the blast. "It is all very well +for a bloated bachelor like you; but a man whose family is increasing at +the rate mine is cannot afford himself such luxuries; come along, you +are not sugar or salt." + +Burgoyne feels that at this moment he can at all events conscientiously +disclaim affinity with the first of the two. + +It is indeed a wet night, wet as the one immortalized by Browning in +"Christmas Eve and Easter Day;" and who ever brought a wet night and wet +umbrellas "wry and flapping" so piercingly home to us as he? The talk so +cheerfully promised by Burgoyne's sanguine friend is rendered absolutely +impossible by the riot of the elements. It is a good step from the +suburban villa, which is the scene of Brown's married joys, to the room +in the heart of the town where the Provident Matrons hold their +_sabbat_; and by the time that the two men have reached that room there +is, despite his mackintosh, little of Burgoyne left dry except his +speech. They are under shelter at last, however, have entered the +building, added their umbrellas to many other streaming wrecks of +whalebone huddled in a corner, and exchanged the dark blustering drench +for a flare of gas, a reek of tea, and a sultry stream of wet clothes +and humanity. The tea, indeed, is a thing of the past--all its apparatus +has been removed. The rows of chairs are all set to face the platform, +and on those chairs the Provident Women sit, smiling, if damp, with here +and there a little boy, evidently too wicked to be left at home, +comfortably wedged between a couple of matronly figures. + +The entertainment has already begun, and an undergraduate--damp, like +everyone else--is singing, in a booming bass voice, something of a +vaguely boastful nature about what he once did "In Bilboa's Bay." +Burgoyne has for the moment lost sight of his chaperon, and remains +standing near the door, looking upon the scene around him with an eye +from which philanthropy is all too criminally absent. About him are +grouped a few ladies and gentlemen--more of the former than the +latter--who are obviously about to give their services, judging by their +rolls of music and the books in their hands. His look passes over them +indifferently--he has no acquaintance among them. He had never known +many of the Oxford householders, and there is no place where a man +becomes superannuated after so short a lapse of years. + +Here are new arrivals. He turns his head mechanically as the opening +door reveals the advent of more umbrellaed and mackintoshed waterfalls. +Two men and a lady. As his eye alights on the woman, he does not +start--we Anglo-Saxons are not apt to make our slow grave bodies the +indexes of our emotions--but he is conscious of an odd and puzzling +sensation. Where has he seen that face before? + +"Bilboa's Bay" has come to an end without his perceiving it. He is +putting his memory through her paces, trying to find some niche in his +three happy Oxford years in which to place that strangely known yet +unknown figure. There is no such niche. It is not an Oxford memory at +all. What is it then? An earlier or a later one? His eyebrows are drawn +together in the effort of recollection, making him look, if possible, +crosser than before, when he is made aware of the return of Brown by +finding his arm seized, and his friend's voice--a good deal hoarser even +than when they left home--in his ear, "Jim, do you feel inclined to do a +very good-natured thing?" + +"Not in the least," replies Burgoyne promptly; "if anyone wishes to +borrow £5 from me, I should advise him to choose a moment when I am +drier about the legs." + +Burgoyne has very often stood up to and over his knees in water for +hours, watching for ducks among whistling reeds on winter mornings, and +never thought himself at all to be pitied; but he is thoroughly vexed +now at his moist trousers. Brown, however, is not so easily rebuffed. + +"I should be awfully obliged to you," he says croakily; "you would be +laying me under a very real obligation if you would----" He stops to +cough. + +"If I would what?" returns the other curtly, and looking apprehensively +at a book which Brown is expanding before his eyes. + +"If you would read instead of me." + +"I!" + +"Why, the fact is"--coughing noisily again as if to show that there is +no imposition--"I suppose the fog must have got down my throat; but I +find I cannot speak above a whisper. I should not be heard beyond the +front row; come, old man, do a good-natured thing for once in your +life." + +There is a pause; Burgoyne is not very fond of being asked to do a +good-natured thing. He can do a big one every now and then, but he is +not particularly fond of being asked to do a small one. + +"Surely there must be many people here much better suited for it than I +am," he says presently, looking uncomfortably round in search of the +little group of booked and musicked persons whom he had seen but now +standing near him, but it had melted. + +"That is just what there are not," rejoins Brown, pressing his point +with the more eagerness, as he thinks he sees signs of yielding; "we are +very short of hands to-night, and my wife has just heard that the girl +upon whom she was counting for a couple of songs is in bed with +influenza." + +"Happy girl! I wish I too was in bed with influenza," says Jim +sardonically, for he sees his fate about to overtake him. + +And so it comes to pass that, five minutes later, as described at the +opening of this chapter, he is seated on the platform with "Mrs. +Lirriper's Lodgings" before him, rows of Provident Matrons' eyes +fastened expectantly upon him, and horrid qualms of strange shyness +racing over him. + +Brown has indicated by a dog's-ear the page at which he is to begin; so +he is spared indecision on this head. But has Brown indicated the page +at which he is to stop? He is gnawed by a keen anxiety as to this point +all through his performance. It is hot upon the platform, the smell of +tea potent, and the naked gas-jets close above his head throw an ugly +yellow glare upon his book. + +Having offered his prefatory observations in the manner I have +indicated, he rushes _in media res_. "Girls, as I was beginning to +remark, are one of your first and your lasting troubles, being like your +teeth, which begin with convulsions, and never cease tormenting you from +the time you cut them till they cut you, and then you do not want to +part with them, which seems hard, but we must all succumb, or buy +artificial." (Do his ears deceive him? Is there already a slight titter? +Have the simile of the convulsions and the necessity for a _râtelier_ +already struck a chord in the matrons' breasts?) "And, even where you +get a will, nine times out of ten you get a dirty face with it, and +naturally lodgers do not like good society to be shown in with a smear +of black across the nose, or a smudgy eyebrow!" (Is he managing his +voice alright? Is he mumbling, or is he bellowing? He rather inclines to +a suspicion of the latter. Why did not they laugh at the "smudgy +eyebrow"? They ought to have done so, and he had paused to give them the +opportunity. Perhaps it is among them too familiar a phenomenon to +provoke mirth.) "Where they pick the black up is a mystery I cannot +solve, as in the case of the willingest girl that ever came into a +house, half-starved, poor thing; a girl so willing that I called her +'Willing Sophy;' down upon her knees scrubbing early and late, and ever +cheerful, but always with a black face. And I says to Sophy, 'Now, +Sophy, my good girl, have a regular day for your stoves, and do not +brush your hair with the bottoms of the saucepans, and do not meddle +with the snuffs of the candles, and it stands to reason that it cannot +be.'" (Ah! what welcome sound is this? "Willing Sophy" has produced an +undoubted giggle, which Burgoyne hears spreading and widening through +the room. Heartened by this indication, he goes on in a more emphatic +and hilarious voice:) "Yet there it was, and always on her nose, which, +turning up, and being broad at the end, seemed to boast of it, and +caused warning from a steady gentleman, an excellent lodger, with +breakfast by the week." + +There can be no mistake about it now; the giggle has changed into a +universal resonant laugh, which goes on swelling and rising, until, in +the final roar of approbation which greets the concluding paragraph, the +reader's voice is drowned. The matrons have all along been ready to be +amused; it is only that, owing to the gravity of his face and solemnity +of his manner, it was some time before they recognised that his +intention was comic. As soon as they do so, they reward that intention +with more than adequate mirth. Burgoyne has reached the second +dog's-ear, that dog's-ear which his eye has been earnestly searching for +throughout. His task then is ended. He heaves a deep sigh of relief, +and, with a reflection that, after all, he is glad he was obliging, is +preparing to shut the volume, when he feels the inevitable Brown's hand +on his shoulder, and his husky voice in his ear. + +"Capital! you got on capitally! Could not be better; but you will not +mind going on a little longer, will you? You have only read for ten +minutes. I want you to try something different this time--a little +pathos, for a change. I have marked the page. Here!" + +What is there to do but acquiesce? Burgoyne, complying, finds himself at +once in the middle of a melancholy tale of a poor young woman left +ruined and deserted in Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings, and only rescued from +suicide by the efforts of that good lady, who, however, is unable to +save her from a tragic and premature death. The reader has reached the +point at which Mrs. Lirriper has met the poor creature on her way to the +river. + +"'Mrs. Edson, I says, my dear, take care! However, did you lose your +way, and stumble in a dangerous place like this? No wonder you're lost, +I'm sure.'" (What is this sound? Is it possible that the giggle is +rising again? the giggle which he was so glad to welcome a little while +ago, but which is so disastrously out of place here. He redoubles his +efforts to put an unmistakably serious and pathetic tone into his +voice.) "She was all in a shiver, and she so continued till I laid her +on her own bed, and up to the early morning she held me by the hand and +moaned, and moaned, 'Oh, wicked, wicked, wicked!----'" + +What can the Provident Matrons be made of? They are laughing +unrestrainedly. Too late Burgoyne realizes that he had not made it +sufficiently clear that his intention is no longer comic. The idea of +his being a funny man has so firmly rooted itself in his hearers' minds, +that nothing can now dislodge it. Such being the case, he feels that the +best thing he can do is to reach the end as quickly as possible. He +begins to read very fast, which is taken for a new stroke of +facetiousness, the result of which is that the last sigh of the poor +young would-be suicide is drowned in a storm of hilarity even heartier +and more prolonged than that which greeted "Willing Sophy's" smudged +nose. In much confusion, greatly abashed by the honours so mistakenly +heaped upon him, Burgoyne hastily leaves the platform. Twenty thousand +Browns shall not keep him there! + + + + +CHAPTER II. + + "Tell me now in what hidden way is + Lady Flora the lovely Roman? + Where is Hipparchia, and where is Thais? + Neither of them the fairer woman. + Where is Echo beheld of no one, + Only heard on river and mere? + She whose beauty was more than human, + But where are the snows of yester-year?" + + +"There is no reason why we should not go home now; are you ready?" cries +Brown, bustling up to his friend, who has not waited for this question +to make straight, as the needle to the pole, for the corner where the +collected umbrellas stand in their little area of lake. + +Burgoyne would probably have laughed at the unconscious irony of this +inquiry if he had heard it; but he has not, his attention being +otherwise directed. On the same umbrella quest as himself, being helped +on with her mackintosh by one of the two men who had accompanied her, a +pepper-and-salt-haired, sturdy gentleman of an obviously unacademic cut, +is the lady whose face had flashed upon him with that puzzling sense of +unfamiliar familiarity. Since they are now in close proximity, and both +employed alike in struggling into their wraps, there is nothing more +natural than that she should turn her eyes full upon him. They are very +fine eyes, though far from young ones. Is it a trick of his imagination, +or does he see a look of half-recognition dawn in them, such as must +have been born in his own when they first alighted on her? At all +events, if there is such a look of half-recognition in her eyes, she is +determined that it shall not have a chance of becoming a whole one. +Either he is mistaken, and she has not recognised him, or she is +determined not to acknowledge the acquaintance, for she looks away again +at once, nor does she throw another glance in his direction. Indeed, it +seems to him that she hurries on her preparations with added speed, and +walks out into the night accompanied by her double escort before him. + +The weather has changed, and for the better. The rollicking wind has +lulled, the pattering rain ceased. Between the ragged, black +cloud-sheets star-points shine, and a shimmering moon shows her wet face +reflected in the puddles. Talk, which had been impossible on their way +to the meeting, is not only possible but easy now, and Brown is +evidently greatly inclined for it. Burgoyne, on the other hand, had +never felt more disinclined. It is not so much that he is out of humour +with his tiresome friend, though he is that too, as that his whole mind +is centred on making his memory give up the secret of that face that has +come back to him out of some vague cavern of his past. + +Who is the woman whom he knows, and who knows him (for on reflection he +is sure that that look of hers was one of half--of more than +half--recognition), and yet whose place in his history, whose very name, +he seeks so vainly? She does not belong to his Oxford days, as he has +already ascertained. He has learnt from Brown that she does not belong +to the Oxford of to-day, being apparently a stranger, and, with her +husband, a visitor to the Warden of ---- College, in whose company they +had arrived. He explores the succeeding years of his life. In vain; she +has no place there; in vain he dives and plunges into the sea of his +memory; he cannot fish up the pearl he seeks. He must hark back to +earlier days--his school-time, the six months he spent in Devonshire +with a coach before he came up to New. Ah! he has it--he has it at last! +just as they have reached Brown's door, while he is fumbling with his +latch-key for the keyhole, imprecating the moon for withdrawing her +shining at the very instant he most needs her, Burgoyne has come up with +the shy object of his chase. It is conjured back into his mind by the +word Devonshire. + +"I have it," he says to himself; "her hair has turned white, that was +why I did not recognise her; it used to be raven-black. But it is +she--of course it is she! To think of my not knowing her again! Of +course it is Mrs. Le Marchant." + +What a door into the distance that name has opened!--a door through +which he passes into a Devonshire garden, and romps with rose-faced +Devonshire children. The very names of those children are coming back to +him. Tom and Charles, those were the schoolboys; Rose and Miriam, +and--Elizabeth. He recalls--absurd trick of freakish memory--those +children's pets. Tom and Charles had guinea-pigs; Miriam had a white +rat; Rose--what had Rose? Rose must have had something; and Elizabeth +had a kangaroo. Elizabeth's kangaroo was short-lived, poor beast, and +died about hay-time; the guinea-pigs and the white rat have been dead +too for ages now, of course. And are Tom and Charles, and Rose and +Miriam, and bright Elizabeth dead also? Absurd! Why should they be? +Nothing more unlikely! Why, it is only ten years ago, after all. + +He is roused from his meditations by Brown's voice, to find himself in +Brown's study, where its owner is filling himself a pipe, and festally +offering him whisky-and-water. But it is only an abstracted attention +that Burgoyne lends, either to the whisky or the whisky's master; and +his answers are sometimes inattentively beside the mark, to talk, which +indeed is not without some likeness to the boasted exploits in Clement's +Inn, and the affectionate inquiries after Jane Nightwork, of a more +famous fool than he. + +It is a relief to the guest when, earlier than he had expected--a +blessing he, no doubt, owes to Mrs. Brown--his host breaks up the +séance, and he is free to retire to his own room. At once he is back in +that Devonshire garden, he is there almost all night, between sleep and +wake. It is strange that persons and circumstances banished from his +memory for ten long years should rush back with such tyrannous +insistence now. + +Such silly recollected trifles crowd back upon his mind. The day on +which Tom nearly choked himself by swallowing a barley beard; the day on +which the lop-eared rabbit littered--ah, rabbits, of course! those were +what Rose had!--the day on which Tom pushed Miriam into the moat, and +Elizabeth fell in, too, in trying to fish her out. Elizabeth, the +eldest, the almost grown-up one, embarrassed by her newly lengthened +petticoats, so harassing at cricket, in races, in climbing apple-trees. +Elizabeth was sixteen; he remembers the fact, because her birthday had +fallen two days before his own departure. He had given her a gold +thimble set with turquoises upon the occasion; it was not a surprise, +because he recalls measuring her finger for the size. He can see that +small middle finger now. Elizabeth must now be twenty-six years of age. +Where is she? What is she--maid, wife, or widow? + +And why has Mrs. Le Marchant's hair turned snow-white? Had it been +merely gray he would not have complained, though he would have deplored +the loss of the fine smooth inky sweep he remembers. She has a fair +right to be gray; Mrs. Le Marchant must be about forty-six or +forty-seven, bien sonné. But white, snow-white--the hue that one +connects with a venerable extremity of age. Can it be bleached? He has +heard of women bleaching their hair; but not Mrs. Le Marchant, not the +Mrs. Le Marchant he remembers. She would have been as incapable of +bleach as of dye. Then why is she snow-haired? Because Providence has so +willed it is the obvious answer. But somehow Burgoyne cannot bring +himself to believe that she has come fairly by that white head. + +With the morning light the might of the Devonshire memories grows +weaker; and, as the day advances, the Oxford ones resume their sway. How +can it be otherwise, when all day long he strays among the unaltered +buildings in the sweet sedate college gardens, down the familiar "High," +where, six years ago, he could not take two steps without being hailed +by a jolly fresh voice, claiming his company for some new pleasure; but +where now he walks ungreeted, where the smooth-faced boys he meets, and +who strike him as so much more boyish than his own contemporaries had +done, pass him by indifferently, unknown to the whole two thousand as he +is. He feels a sort of irrational anger with them for not recognising +him, though they have never seen him before. + +Yes, there is no place where a man is so quickly superannuated as in +Oxford. He is saying this to himself all day, is saying it still as he +strolls in the afternoon down Mesopotamia, to fill up the time before +the hour for college chapel. Yes, there is no place where men so soon +turn into ghosts. He has been knocking up against them all day at every +street-corner; they have looked out at him from every gray window in the +Quad at New--jovial, athletic young ghosts, so much painfuller to meet +than rusty, century-worn old ones. They are rather less plentiful in +Mesopotamia than elsewhere; perhaps, because in his day, as now, +Mesopotamia on Sundays was given over to the mechanic and the +perambulator. Oh, that Heaven would put it into the head of some +Chancellor of the Exchequer to lay a swingeing tax upon that +all-accursed vehicle! But not even mechanic and perambulator can hinder +Mesopotamia from being fair on a fine February day, when the beautiful +floods are out, the floods that the Thames Conservators and the Oxford +authorities have combined to put down, as they have most other beautiful +things within their reach. But they have not yet quite succeeded. +To-day, for instance, the floods are out in might. + +Burgoyne is pacing along a brown walk, like a raised causeway, with a +sheet of white water on either hand, rolling strong ripples to the bank. +Gnarled willows stand islanded in the coldly argent water. A blackbird +is flying out of the bushes, with a surprised look at finding himself +turned into a sea-bird. No sun; an even sweep of dull silver to right +and left. No sun; and yet as he looks, after days of rain, the "_grand +décorateur_," as someone happily called him, rides out in royalty on a +cleared sky-field, turning the whole drenched country into +mother-of-pearl--a sheet of opal stretched across the drowned meadows; +the distance opal too, a delicate, dainty, evanescent loveliness +snatched from the ugly brown jaws of winter. + +Burgoyne is leaning over the wooden bridge beneath which, in its normal +state, the water of the lasher rushes down impetuously; but it is now +raised to such a height that it lies level, almost flush with the +planking. He is staring across the iridescent water-plain to where, in +the poetic atmosphere of sun and mist, dome, and schools and soaring +spires stand etherealized. + +"Dear old place!" he says, under his breath, "everybody is dead; and I +am dead; and Brown is deader than anyone. I am glad that you, at least, +are still alive!" + +Are these more ghosts coming round the corner? A man and a woman ghost +strolling along, and looking about them as strangers look. When they are +within a pace or two of him the woman says something--something about +the floods--to her companion, and at the sound Burgoyne starts. + +"She did not speak last night; if she had spoken I should have known her +at once. She always had such a sweet voice." + +He raises his arms from the bridge-top, and, turning, meets them face to +face, eye to eye, and in an instant he has seen that both recognise him. +At the same instant he is aware of a simultaneous inclination on the +part of man and wife to avert their heads, and pass him without claiming +his acquaintance. Perhaps, if he had had time to reflect, he would have +allowed them to do so, but the impulse of the moment forbids it. Why +should they wish to cut him? What has he done to deserve it? Ten years +ago, they were his very good friends, and he was the familiar comrade of +their children, the daily guest at their table. What has the unavoidable +lapse of those years done to make him less fit for their company at +twenty-nine than he was at nineteen? There must be some misconception, +which a moment will set right. + +"I am afraid that you do not remember me, Mrs. Le Marchant," he says, +lifting his hat. + +This is not quite true, as he is perfectly convinced that they are as +much aware of his identity as he is of theirs. But what formula has a +man to employ in such a case? They both look back at him with a sort of +irresolution. To his astonishment, in their eyes is a velleity of +flight, but apparently she--women's minds moving more quickly than +men's--is the first to realize that flight is out of the question. + +"I am sure that you have no intention of cutting me," Jim goes on, with +a smile, seeing that she is apparently struggling with a difficulty in +utterance; "at least, you must be very much changed from what you were +ten years ago if you have. My name is----" + +"I know--I know!" she interrupts, finding speech at last--speech low and +hurried. "I remember perfectly. You are Mr. Burgoyne." + +Her confusion--she used always to be such a placid, even-mannered +woman--is so patent, born of whatever unaccountable feeling it may be, +that he now heartily wishes he had let the poor woman pass unmolested. +But such repentance is too late. He has arrested her; she is standing on +the gravel path before him, and though he feels that her extraordinary +shyness--_mauvaise honte_, whatever it may be--has infected himself, he +must make some further remark to her. Nothing better occurs to him than +the obvious one: + +"It is a long time--it is ten years since we met." + +"Yes, ten years; it must be quite ten years," she assents, evidently +making a great effort to regain composure. + +She does not feign the slightest pleasure in the meeting, and Burgoyne +feels that the one thought that occupies her mind is how she can soonest +end it. But his roused curiosity, together with the difficulty of +parting without further observation after having forced his presence +upon them, combine to prevent her succeeding. + +"And how is the Moat?" he asks, reflecting that this, at least, is a +safe question; a brick and mortar house, at all events, cannot be dead. +"How is Devonshire?" + +Apparently it is not so harmless a question as he had imagined; at +least, Mrs. Le Marchant is obviously quite incapable of answering it. +Her husband, for the first time, comes to her rescue. + +"The Moat is let," he says, in a dry voice; "we have left Devonshire a +long while--nine, nine and a half years ago." + +The Moat let! Judging by the light of Burgoyne's recollections, it would +have seemed less surprising to him to hear that Windsor Castle had been +turned into a Joint Stock Company Hotel. It is probably, then, some +money trouble that has turned Mrs. Le Marchant's hair white--snow white, +as he now sees it to be. But no; he rejects the explanation as +insufficient. She is not the woman to have taken a diminished income so +much to heart. + +Good manners forbid him to ask, "Why is the Moat let?" so all that he +says is, "Nine and a half years ago? Why, that must have been very soon +after I left Devonshire." + +He addresses his remark involuntarily rather to the wife than the +husband, but she does not answer it. Her eyes are fixed upon the bubbles +sailing so fast upon the swollen river, which is distinguishable only by +its current from the sameness of the surrounding water. A lark--there is +always a lark in Mesopotamia--a tiny, strong-throated singer, that never +seems to have to stop to take breath, fills up the silence, shouting +somewhere out of sight among the black clouds, in and out of which the +uncertain sun is plunging. Whether of a moneyed nature or not, there is +evidently something very unpleasant connected with their leaving their +native county and their immemorial home, so he had better get away from +the subject as fast as possible. + +"Anyhow," he says, with a rather nervous smile, "I hope that the world +has been treating you kindly--that things have gone well with you since +those dear old days when you were so good to me." + +There is an instant's pause--perhaps he would not have noticed it had +not his suspicions been already roused--before the husband, again taking +upon him the task of replying, answers, with a sort of laboured +carelessness: + +"Oh, yes, thanks; we do not complain. It has not been a very rosy time +for landlords lately, as you are aware." + +"And _you_?" cries the wife, striking in with a species of hurry in her +voice--a hurry due, as his instinct tells him, to the fact of her fear +of his entering into more detailed inquiries. "And _you_? We must not +forget you. Have you been well, flourishing, all this long time? Do you +still live with your----" + +She stops abruptly. It is apparent that she has entirely forgotten what +was the species of relation with whom he lived. There is a little tinge +of bitterness in his heart, though not in his tone, as he supplies the +missing word "aunt." After all, he had forgotten _her_ name; why should +not she forget his aunt? + +"With my aunt? Well, I never exactly lived with her; I made, and make my +headquarters there when I am in England, which is not very often. I have +been a rolling stone; I have rolled pretty well round the world since we +parted." + +They do not care in the least where he has rolled, nor how much nor how +little moss he has collected in the process. They are only thinking how +they can best get rid of him. But the past is strong upon him; he cannot +let them slide out of his life again for another ten--twenty years +perhaps, without finding out from them something about his five merry +playmates. His inquiry must needs be a vague one. Who dares ask +specifically after this or that man, woman, or even child, when ten +years have rolled their tides between? + +"And you are all well?" he says, with a certain wistfulness lurking in +the indifferent _banal_ phrase. "Dear me, what a jolly party we used to +be! I suppose that--that they are all out in the world now?" + +His eyes are fixed apprehensively upon the mother of those young +comrades, to whom he thus cautiously alludes. Perhaps, carefully as he +has worded his question, he may have touched some terrible raw. Her face +is turned aside, presenting only its profile to him, but she answers +almost at once: + +"Yes; we are all scattered now. Charlie is planting oranges in +Florida--he does not mind the heat; you know he always said no weather +could be too hot for him; and Tom has an ostrich farm in Australia; and +Rose has been married two years--she has a dear little baby; and Miriam +is married too; we have just come down from her wedding." + +"Miriam married!" repeats Burgoyne in a tone of wonder. "Miriam with a +husband instead of a white rat!" + +The mother laughs. It is the first time that he has heard her laugh, and +she used to laugh so often. + +"I think she likes the exchange." + +There is another little pause, again filled by the lark's crowding +notes. There are two words battering against the gate of Burgoyne's lips +for egress--two words that he dares not utter. + +"And Elizabeth?" She was the eldest. She would naturally have been +mentioned first; but neither first nor last is there any speech of her. +She must, then, be dead--dead long ago, too; for there is no trace of +mourning in her parents' dress. Elizabeth is dead--bright Elizabeth, the +beauty and the pet! Charles Lamb's tender lines come pensively back to +him-- + + "My sprightly neighbour gone before + To that unknown and silent shore, + Shall we not meet as heretofore, + Some summer morning?" + +Is it only fancy that he sees in the eye of Elizabeth's mother a dread +lest he shall ask tidings of her, as she says, hastily, and with a +smile, "Well, I am afraid we must be going; it has been very pleasant +meeting you again, but I am afraid that the Warden will be expecting +us"? + +She adds to her parting hand-shake no wish for a repetition of that +meeting, and he watches them down the Willow Walk with a sort of sadness +in his heart. + +"Elizabeth is dead! Elizabeth is undoubtedly dead!" + + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +"Do you know that Willy has been sent down again?" + +Six weeks have passed since Burgoyne's eye followed his quondam friends +down Mesopotamia, and he is not in Oxford now. He left it, indeed, +twenty-four hours after the rencounter described; left it with something +of a determination never to revisit it. This, too, in spite of the good +Brown's vociferously reiterated invitation to him to run down for +another Sunday, whenever he should feel inclined, and which he accepted +civilly, knowing that he should never feel inclined. + +At the present moment he is pacing up and down the still wintry, +north-windswept walks of a country-house garden in Shropshire, in the +company of a lady whom he has known as long as he can remember; a lady +who would have been a friend of circumstance, even if she had not been +one of choice, since her home has been in the immediate neighbourhood of +the only one he has ever had; a lady whose friendship he has tested by +letters on thin paper from New Guinea and Central Africa all about +himself; at whose feet he has laid on his return more heads, and skins, +and claws than she has well known what to do with; whose husband he +thought a very good fellow, and to whom he wrote a very nice letter on +that husband's death; lastly, concerning whose only child has been made +the communication that opens this chapter--"Do you know that Willy has +been sent down again?" + +"I did not know it; but I am very sorry now that I do know." + +"You need not be," returns she cheerfully; "he does not mind it in the +least; indeed, happily for him, most of his friends have been sent down +too." + +"What has he been doing this time? Putting the porter into the fountain? +or screwing up the Dean? or what other playful little pleasantry?" + +"You need not speak in that nasty sarcastic voice," says she, half +laughing and half vexed. "After all, you must know that young men will +be young men, or, at least, if you do not know it now, you must have +known it once." + +"If you take that tone to me," retorts Burgoyne, smiling, "I shall have +to souse your gardener in your fountain, to prove my juvenility; but +come, what has he done?" + +"Absolutely nothing, as far as I can make out," replies she, spreading +out her hands as if to emphasize the statement. + +"Do you mean to say that the authorities have sent him down _de gaieté +de coeur_, without any provocation at all?" asks Burgoyne, in a tone +out of which he is unable to keep a shade of incredulity. + +"I mean to say," replies she, nettled, "that he had a few men to supper, +and I suppose they were making a little noise; did you ever in your day +hear of an undergraduate supper where there was not noise? However, in +this case, from what he tells me, Willy was taking positively no part in +it." + +"He was sitting in a corner, with cotton-wool in his ears, reading +Aristotle," suggests Burgoyne teasingly. + +"And it seems," continued she, not deigning to notice the interruption, +"that the Proctor came in, and was very rude, and Willy was told to go +to the Dean next morning, and he either was a little late, or mistook +the hour, or some trifle of that sort; and when he did go he was told +that he was sent down. However"--with some triumph in her voice--"it did +not matter in the least--he did not mind; in fact, he was rather glad, +as he has long wanted to go to Italy in the spring." + +"To Italy? Then perhaps we shall meet; I too am going to Italy." + +"Are you?" she says. "Why should you go to Italy? There is nothing to +kill there, is there? Is not it at Naples that they go out in full +chasseur uniform to shoot tomtits?" Which speech is her revenge for his +sarcasms upon her son. + +But Burgoyne's face has taken on a rather careworn look; and her little +arrow misses its mark. + +"You see, Amelia is at Florence," he says explanatorily; "her father, +Mr. Wilson, had a clergyman's throat in the autumn, and was obliged to +give up duty, so they all went abroad. They have been abroad all the +winter; you know that I have not seen her since I came back from the +Rockies." + +They are now walking in a winding shrubbery path, whose laurels protect +them from the pinching wind. They have turned several corners, and +traversed half a quarter of a mile before either again breaks silence. +It is the lady who does so finally. + +"Jim, how long have you been engaged to Amelia?" + +There is a sigh mixed with his answer. + +"Eight years--eight years this next June; it was the second summer term +after I came up." + +"And as far as you can see, you are likely to be engaged for another +eight years?" + +"As far as I can see--yes; but then I cannot see far." + +Perhaps his companion is a fanciful woman; but she notices that this +time he does not sigh. + +"Poor Amelia!" she says, half under her breath. + +"Poor Amelia!" repeats he sharply; "why poor?--for being engaged to me? +You are not very complimentary, Mrs. Byng." + +She looks up friendlily at him. "For being engaged to you, or being only +engaged to you?--which? I leave you a choice of interpretation." + +But either Jim is too ruffled by the pity expressed in her tone towards +his betrothed, or her remarks have provoked in him a train of thought +which does not tend towards loquacity. The loud rooks, balancing +themselves on improbably small twigs above their heads, and, hoarsely +melodious, calling out their airy vernal news to each other, make for +some time the only sound that breaks the silence of the cold spring +afternoon. It is again Mrs. Byng who at last infringes it. + +"If you and Willy are both going to Italy, why should not you go +together?" + +Jim does not immediately answer; the project is sprung upon him with +such suddenness that he does not at once know whether it is agreeable to +him or the reverse. + +"You do not like the idea?" continues the mother, trying, not very +successfully, to keep out of her tone the surprise she feels at his not +having jumped at a plan so obviously to his own advantage. + +"I did not say so. I did not even think so." + + +"Willy is an ideal fellow-traveller," says she, "excepting in the matter +of punctuality; I warn you"--laughing--"that you would always have to +drag him out of bed." + +"But," suggests Jim slowly, "even supposing that I embraced your design +with the warmth which I see you think it deserves, how can you tell that +it would meet with his approbation? He has probably made up a party with +some of the other innocent victims of a corrupt University system." + +"No, he has not; the friend with whom he was to have gone has thrown him +over; at least, poor man, that is hardly the way to express it, for he +has broken his leg; but anyhow he is _hors de combat_. If you went with +Willy," she adds, after a pause, and with a rather wistful air, "I +should be sure of knowing if anything went wrong." + +"I am to dry-nurse him, in fact, only I stipulate that, if he brings you +home a Contadina daughter-in-law, or 'commits himself with a countess,' +like the commercial gentleman at Todgers's, you are not to hold me +responsible." + +And so it came to pass that a fortnight later, while April is still +young, Burgoyne, _en route_ to his Amelia, is standing at a window of +the Hotel de Gênes at Genoa, noisiest of hotels, though, to be sure, +that is its only fault. He is looking out at the gay market that is held +in the piazza below--the gay market that is over and gone by nine +o'clock. + +It seems odd that so many women, so many umbrellas, so many baskets, so +many oranges and lemons--each lemon with a glossy green leaf still +adhering to its inch of stalk--so many fresh vegetables can be swept +away in so short a time. But they are; all the gay kerchiefs are fled, +and have been replaced by a row of fiacres with sad droop-headed horses, +a good hour before Byng appears--appears radiantly well washed and +apologetic. + +"How many morning chapels did you attend last term?" asks Burgoyne with +some dryness. + +"It is a vile habit," replies the other sweetly, sitting down at a +little table, and unfolding his breakfast napkin. "I do not mean going +to chapel, but being so late; however, I really am improving. I am a +quarter of an hour--twenty minutes earlier than I was yesterday, and, +thank God, we have no train to catch to-day." + +Burgoyne is rather inclined to echo the thanksgiving a little later in +the day, as they stroll with the pleasant vagueness with which one +strays about a little-known foreign town, not exactly knowing whither, +through the streets of the queenly city, with which neither of them has +much acquaintance; Byng's twenty-two years of school and college, of +cricket, and grouse, and stalking, having left not much margin for aught +else; and Burgoyne being in the case of some widely-wandered shots and +explorers, to whom the Nyanza Lake and the Australian Bush are more +familiar than Giotto's Campanile or the Lagoons. There is a +grayish-looking English sky, with now and then little sprays of rain, +and now and then flashes of warm sun. + +Neither of the young men knows much Italian, and such as they possess +they are ashamed to air before each other in asking their way, so they +wander wherever chance or fancy leads them. They look curiously into +churches, they walk down deep narrow streets, whose houses have for +three centuries been threatening to embrace each other across the strait +sky strip far, far above their heads. They glance at palace-fronts, and +wonder at the sculptured portals where fresco and fruit garland and fine +tracery speak of a time at more leisure for delicate work that has no +end but beauty, than this breathless one. Everywhere in the gardens they +see budding green, untrained roses making bowers, ripe oranges hanging +over the walls. They jostle against women, each made charming, even the +ugliest of them, by the black lace kerchief tied about her head. + +"Henry James says that an English crowd is the best-looking in the +world," says Byng, in a tone of strong dissent, following with his eyes +a little tripping figure, and with an expression of pronounced +approbation in those eyes, which gives Burgoyne a momentary twinge of +misgiving as to his chaperonship. "I should put it the other way up, and +say that they are the ugliest." + +"All crowds are ugly, and most individuals," replies Burgoyne, +misanthropically looking up from his guide-book. + +They are sauntering down the Via Garibaldi, street of palaces that +deserves an antiquer name than that of the somewhat shoddy and recent +hero who has god-fathered it. Noblest Via, down whose stately length +great towering bulks succeed each other in solid majesty on either hand; +bulks on whose high fronts, lofty-portaled, o'errun with fresco, +glorified by brush and chisel, strength and beauty take hands in +unending wedlock. Into the noblest of all, up the echoing stone stairs, +down which the feet of the masters have for ever ceased to tread, they +enter. As we all know, it has been given to the city of Genoa--lovely +queen-city meriting so great a gift--by the dying hand of its latest +possessor, the last of that high and beautiful race--if we may judge of +the dead by their pictures--who paced its floors, and went forth in +final funeral pomp through its worthy-to-be-imperial portals. + +Burgoyne and Byng are standing before the great Vandyke. The custode, +opening a shutter, and throwing wider a door, casts a brighter ray of +light for the staring Britons--several others have joined themselves to +our friends--to gape at it by. What does the stately gentleman on his +great white horse, whom Vandyke has made able to set at naught death's +effacement, think of them, as the custode slowly swings him forward on +his hinges, so that the day-beams may bring out more clearly still the +arresting charm of his serious face, his outstretched arm, and grave, +gallant bearing? Looking at him, whose heart among us is not besieged by +an ache of longing that that "young and princely" gentleman on the brave +white charger should ride down to us out of his frame, and bring back +his world with him? probably not a better world than ours, but surely, +surely a handsomer one. + +After awhile the other tourists drift away, but the two men still stand +and gaze. Into Burgoyne's mind has come a sense of disgust with the +present, a revolt against steam trams and the Cromwell Road--most +perfect symbol of that bald, unending, vulgar ugliness, which, in some +moods, must seem to everyone the dominant note of nineteenth-century +life. The light-hearted Byng, who always takes his colour from his +surroundings, is hushed into a silence that is almost reverent too. + +"What a difference there is between his Italian and his English +pictures," he says presently. "Do you remember the Marchesa Balbi, and +those divine Balbi children in the Grosvenor, last year? Oh, no! +by-the-bye, you were in America. The fog seemed to get into his brush +whenever he painted an Englishwoman, always excepting Henrietta Maria, +who was not an Englishwoman, and whom he was obviously rather in love +with." + +"Is that a piece of scandal of your own invention, or is it founded on +fact?" asks Burgoyne, rousing himself, and looking over his shoulder +towards the entrance to the next frescoed, mirrored, pictured room, +whence he hears the sound of approaching voices. In his eye is an idle +and mechanical curiosity, mixed with vexation that his short respite +from his fellow-countrymen is ended; in this case, it is +fellow-countrywomen, for the tones that are nearing are those of a +woman, a woman who is saying in a key of satisfaction, "Oh, here it is! +I thought I remembered that it was in this room." + +At the same moment the speaker, as well as the person addressed, came +into sight; and in an instant out of Burgoyne's eye has raced away the +lack-lustre curiosity, and has given way to an expression of something +beyond surprise, of something more nearly verging on consternation; and +yet, after all, there is nothing very astonishing in the fact that it is +Mrs. Le Marchant who is the woman in search of the Vandyke. There is +nothing more surprising in her being at Genoa than in his being there +himself. At that mart of nations it can never be matter for wonder to +meet anyone; but who is this to whom her observation is addressed? It is +not Mr. Le Marchant, it is not a man at all; it is a slight woman-- + + "White as a lily, and small as a wand"-- + +like Lance's sister, dressed with that neat, tight, gray-tinted +simplicity, severe yet smart, which marks the well-bred Englishwoman on +her travels. Is it one of the younger ones, who has grown up so +startlingly like her? Miriam? Rose? or is it, can it be, the dead +Elizabeth? + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +In a ripe civilization such as ours there are formulas provided to meet +the requirements of every exigency that may possibly arise; but amongst +them there is not one which teaches us how to greet a person come back +from the dead, because it is held impossible that such a contingency can +occur. Perhaps this is the reason why Jim Burgoyne, usually a docile and +obedient member of the society to which he belongs, now flies in the +face of all the precepts instilled into him by that society's code. At +the sight of Elizabeth Le Marchant entering the room, clad in a very +neat tailor gown, instead of the winding-sheet with which he had +credited her, he at first stands transfixed, staring at her with a +hardness of intensity which is allowed to us in the case of Titian's +"Bella," or Botticelli's "Spring," but has never been accounted +permissible in the case of a more living loveliness. Then, before he can +control, or even question the impulse that drives him, it has carried +him to her. + +"Elizabeth!" he says, in that sort of awed semi-whisper with which one +would salute a being plainly returned from the other side, fearing that +the fulness of a living voice might strike too strongly on his disused +ear--"is it really Elizabeth?" + +Had Burgoyne been quite sure, even now, of that fact; if he had had his +wits well about him, he would certainly not have addressed her by her +Christian name. But from the dead the small pomps and ceremonies of +earth fall off. We think of them by their naked names--must we not then +appeal to them by the same when they reappear before us? + +The girl--for she does not look much more--thus rudely and startlingly +bombarded, drops her Baedeker out of her slim-gloved hand, and with a +positive jump at the suddenness of the address, looks back +apprehensively at her interlocutor. In her eyes is, at first, only the +coldly frightened expression of one discourteously assailed by an +insolent stranger; but in a space of time as short as had served him to +note the same metamorphosis in the case of her parents, he sees the look +of half--three-quarter--whole recognition dawn in her eyes, +followed--alas! there can be no mistake about it--by the same aspiration +after flight. There is no reason why she should not recognise him again +at once. He has fallen a prey neither to hair nor fat--the two main +disguisers and disfigurers of humanity. His face is as smooth and his +figure as spare as when, ten years ago, he had given the pretty tomboy +of sixteen lessons in jumping the ha-ha. And as to her identity, no +shadow of doubt any longer lingers in his mind. + +The violence and shock of his attack have made her crimson, have matched +her cheeks with those long-withered damasks in the Moat garden, with +which they used to vie in bloomy vividness. But even yet he does not +treat her quite as if she were really and veritably living; he has not +yet got back his conventional manners. + +"I thought you were dead," he says, his voice not even yet raised to its +ordinary key, some vague awe still subduing it. + +It must be a trick of his excited imagination that makes it seem to him +as if she said under her breath, "So I am!" + +But before he has had time to do more than distrust the testimony of his +ears, Mrs. Le Marchant strikes in quickly-- + +"We cannot help what Mr. Burgoyne thinks," says she, with a constrained +laugh; "but you are not dead, are you, Elizabeth? We are neither of us +dead; on the contrary, we are very much alive. Who can help being alive +in this heavenly place? And you? When did you come? What hotel are you +at? Have you been here long? Do you make a long stay?" + +She pours out her questions with such torrent-force and rapidity, as +gives to her auditor the conviction that it is her aim to have a +monopoly of them. + +After one look of unbounded astonishment at his companion's onslaught, +Byng has withdrawn to a discreet distance. + +"You never mentioned her when I met you in Oxford," says Burgoyne, +disregarding her trivial and conventional questions, and turning his +eyes away with difficulty from his old playfellow. + +Mrs. Le Marchant laughs again, still constrainedly. + +"Probably you never asked after her." + +"I was afraid," he says solemnly; "after ten years one is afraid; and as +you did not mention her--you know you mentioned all the others--I +thought you had lost her!" + +A sort of slight shiver passes over the woman's frame. + +"No, thank God! No!" + +During the foregoing little dialogue about herself, Elizabeth has stood +with her eyes on the ground; but at the end of it she lifts them to +smile lovingly at her mother. They are very pretty eyes still, but +surely they seem to have cried a good deal; and now that the hurrying +blood has left her cheek again, Burgoyne sees that she looks more nearly +her age than he had imagined at the first glance. He has not heard her +voice yet; she has not spoken, unless that first shaken whisper--so much +more likely to be the freak of his own heated fancy--could count for +speech. He must hear her tones. Do they keep an echo of the other world, +as he still imagines that he sees a shade from it lying lingeringly +across her face? + +"Do you ever climb apple-trees now?" he asks abruptly. She starts +slightly, and again, though with a weaker red wave, her rather thin +cheeks grow tinged. + +"Did I ever climb them?" she says, with a bewildered look, and speaking +in a somewhat tremulous voice. "Yes"--slowly, as if with an effort of +memory--"I believe I did." + + +"You have forgotten all about it?" cries Jim, in an accent of absurdly +disproportioned disappointment. "Have you forgotten the kangaroo too? +have you forgotten everything?" + +Perhaps she is putting her memory to the same strain as he had done his +in the case of her mother's name on the occasion of their Oxford +meeting. At all events, she leaves the question unanswered, and the +elder woman again hurries to her help against this persistent claimant +of reminiscences. + +"You must not expect us all to have such memories as you have," she says +with a touch of friendliness in her look. + +"I must own that I too had quite forgotten the kangaroo; and so I fear +had Robert, until you reminded us of it in Mesopotamia." + +"How is Mr. Le Marchant?" inquires Jim, thus reminded to put his tardy +query--"is he with you?" + +"No, he is not very fond of being abroad; it is not"--smiling--"'dear +abroad' to him, but I think that he will very likely come out to +Florence to fetch us." + +"You are going to Florence?" cries the young man eagerly. "So am I! oh, +hurrah! then we shall often meet." + +But the touch of friendliness, whose advent he had hailed so joyfully, +has vanished out of Mrs. Le Marchant's voice, or, at least, is overlaid +with a species of stiffness, as she answers distantly, "We do not intend +to go out at all in Florence--I mean into society." + +"But I am not society," replies he, chilled, yet resolute. "I +wish"--glancing rather wistfully from one to the other--"that I _could_ +give you a little of my memory. If I could, you would see that, after +being so infinitely good to me at the Moat, you cannot expect me to meet +you as total strangers now." + +In the sense of ill-usage that fills his breast, the fact of how almost +entirely oblivious he had been of the persons before him, during the +greater part of the long interval that had parted them, has--such is +human nature--quite slipped his recollection. It is brought back to him +in some degree with a twinge by Mrs. Le Marchant saying in a relenting +tone, and with an accent of remorse, "And you have remembered us all +these years?" + +He cannot, upon reflection, conscientiously say that he has; but is yet +disingenuous enough to allow a speaking silence to imply acquiescence. + +"And you are on your way to Florence too?" continues she, mistaking the +cause of his dumbness; the tide of compunction evidently setting more +strongly towards him, in her womanly heart, at the thought of the entire +want of interest she has manifested in the case of one whose long +faithfulness to her and her family had deserved a better treatment. + +"Yes." + +His face clouds so perceptibly as he pronounces this monosyllable, that +his interlocutor inquires, with a growing kindness: + +"Not on any unpleasant errand, I hope?" + +He laughs the uneasy laugh of an Anglo-Saxon obliged to tell, or at all +events telling, some intimate detail about himself. + +"I am going to see my young woman--the girl I am engaged to." + +"Well, that is a pleasant errand, surely?" (smiling). + +"_C'est salon!_" replies Jim gloomily. "I have a piece of ill-news to +tell her;" then, with a half-shy effort to escape into generalities, +"which way do you think that ill-news read best--on paper or _vivâ +voce_?" + +She shivers a little. + + +"I do not know. I do not like them either way." + +Then, taking out her watch, with the evident determination to be +surprised at the lateness of the hour, she cries, "It is actually a +quarter to two! Are not you famished, Elizabeth? I am!" + +There is such apparent and imminent departure in her eye that Burgoyne +feels that there is no time to be lost. + +"Have you decided upon your hotel in Florence?" he asks precipitately. + +"We have decided against them all," is her answer. "We have taken a +little apartment--a poor little _entresol_; but it is such a poor little +one, that I should be ashamed to ask any of my friends to come and see +me there." + +She accompanies the last words, as if to take the sting out of them, +with as sweet and friendly a smile as any he remembers in the Devonshire +days. But the sting is not taken out, all the same; it lingers, pricking +and burning still, after both the tall, thin, black figure, and the +slim, little gray one have disappeared. + +The moment that this is the case, Byng rejoins his friend; a curiosity +and alert interest in his young eyes, which his companion feels no +desire to gratify. He is unable, however, to maintain the entire silence +he had intended upon the subject, since Byng, after waiting for what, to +his impatience, appears a more than decent interval, is constrained to +remark-- + +"Did I hear you tell that lady, when first you spoke to her, that she +was dead?" + +"I thought she was." + +"Had you heard it?" + +"No." + +"Did you see it in the papers?" + +"No." + +A pause. + +"I wonder why you thought she was dead." + +The other makes a rather impatient movement. + +"I had no reason--none whatever. It was an idiotic inference." + +Byng draws a long breath of satisfaction. + +"Well, at all events, I am very glad that she is not." + +Jim turns upon him with something of the expression of face worn by Mrs. +Sarah Gamp on hearing Mrs. Prig express her belief that it was not by +Mrs. Harris that her services would be required. "Why should you be glad +of that, Betsy? She is unbeknown to you except by hearing. Why should +you be glad?" + +As Byng's case is a more aggravated one than Mrs. Prig's, seeing that +Elizabeth Le Marchant is 'unbeknown' to him even by hearing, so is the +warmth, or rather coldness, with which his friend receives his remark +not inferior to that of "Sairey." + +"I do not quite see how it affects you. Why are you glad?" + +"_Why am I glad?_" replies the younger man, with a lightening eye. "For +the same reason that I am glad that Vandyke painted that +picture"--pointing to it--"or that Shakespeare wrote _As You Like It_. +The world is the richer by them all three." + +But to this poetic and flattering analogy, Jim's only answer is a surly +"Humph!" + + + + +CHAPTER V. + + "There are no more by-path meadows where you may innocently + linger, but the road lies long and straight and dusty to the + grave. You may think you had a conscience and believed in God; + but what is conscience to a wife?.... To marry is to + domesticate the Recording Angel. Once you are married, there is + nothing left for you--not even suicide--but to be good." + + +There is no particular reason why Burgoyne should not impart to his +companion what he knows--after all it is not very much--about their two +countrywomen. Upon reflection he had told himself this, and conquered a +reluctance, that he cannot account for, to mentioning their name; and to +relating the story of those shadowy idyllic two months of his life, +which form all of it that has ever come into contact with theirs. So +that by the time--some thirty-six hours later--when they reach Florence, +the younger man is in possession of as much information about the +objects of their common interest as it is in the power of the elder one +to impart. + +To neither of them, meanwhile, is any second glimpse vouchsafed of those +objects, eagerly--though with different degrees of overtness in that +eagerness--as they both look out for them among the luggage-piles and +the tweed-clad English ladies at the station. It had been the intention +of Burgoyne that he and his friend should put up at the same hotel as +that inhabited by his betrothed and her family; hut, finding that it is +full, he orders rooms at the Minerva, and in the fallen dusk of a rather +chill spring night, finds himself traversing the short distance from the +railway to that hotel. + +As he and Byng sit over their coffee after dinner in the _salle à +manger_, almost its only tenants at that late hour, the younger man +remarks matter-of-factly, as if stating a proposition almost too obvious +to be worth uttering-- + +"I suppose you are off to the Anglo-Américain now." + +"I think not," replies Jim slowly; "it is past ten, you see, and they +are early people." He adds a moment later, as if suspecting his own +excuse of insufficiency, "Mr. Wilson is rather an invalid, and there is +also an invalid or semi-invalid sister; I think that I had better not +disturb them to-night." + +Byng has never been engaged to be married, except in theory, and it is +certainly no business of his to blow his friend's flagging ardour into +flame, so he contents himself with an acquiescent observation to the +effect that the train must have been late. But at all events the next +morning finds Burgoyne paying his fiacre at the door of the +Anglo-Américain, with the confidence of a person who is certain of +finding those he seeks, a confidence justified by the result; for, +having followed a waiter across a courtyard, and heard him knock at a +door on the ground-floor, that door opens with an instantaneousness +which gives the idea of an ear having been pricked to catch the expected +rap, and the next moment, the intervening _garçon_ having withdrawn, Jim +stands face to face with his Amelia. Her features are all alight with +pleasure, but her first words are not particularly amorous. + +"Would you mind coming into the dining-room? Sybilla is in the +drawing-room already this morning. She said she was afraid it was going +to be one of her bad days, so I thought" (rather regretfully) "that +possibly she would be a little later than usual in coming down; but, on +the contrary, she is much earlier." + +It is possible that an extremely ardent love may be independent of +surroundings; may burn with as fierce a flame, when its owner or victim +is seated on a hard horsehair chair beside a dining-room table, in a +little dull hotel back room, as when the senses are courted by +softly-cushioned lounges, penetrating flower-scents, and cunningly +arranged _bric-à-brac_; but perhaps Jim's passion is not of this intense +and Spartan quality. At all events a chill steals over him as Amelia +leads the way into that small and uncheerful chamber where the Wilson +family daily banquet. He is not so lost to all sense of what England and +Amelia expect of him as not to take her in his arms and kiss her very +kindly and warmly, before they sit down on two hard chairs side by side; +and even when they have done so, he still holds her hand, and kisses it +now and then. He has a great many things to say to her, but "out of the +abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh" is not invariably true. +Sometimes that very abundance clogs the utterance, and, after a ten +months' separation, the hinges of even lovers' tongues are apt at first +to be somewhat rusty. + +"And are you really glad to see me again?" asks the woman--she is +scarcely a girl, having the doubtful advantage of being her betrothed's +senior by two years. The horsehair chairs are obviously powerless to +take the edge off her bliss; and she can scarcely command her voice as +she asks the question. + +"I decline to answer all such futile inquiries," replies he, smiling not +unkindly; but there is no tremor in his voice. "Even if I did not +discourage them on principle, I should have no time to answer them +to-day; I have so much to say to you that I do not know where to begin." + +"After ten months that is not very surprising," rejoins she, with a +stifled sigh. There is no sentimental reproach in her words or tone; but +in both lurks a note of wistfulness which gives his conscience a prick. + +"Of course not! of course not!" he rejoins hastily; "but it is not +really ten months--no, surely----" + +"Ten months, one week, two days, four hours and a half!" + +Against such exactitude of memory what appeal has he? He attempts none, +and only thinks with a faint unjust irritation that she might have +spared him the odd hours. + +"And how are things going? How are you all getting on?" he asks, +precipitating himself upon a fresh subject, since he feels prevented by +circumstances from saying anything likely to bring him much distinction +upon the old one. "Your father?" + +"His throat is better"--with an accent of hesitating filial piety, as if +there were something else about him that was not better. + +"And Sybilla?" + +"Oh, poor Sybilla! she has her bad days now and then." + +"And, like the early Christians, she resolves to have all things in +common. I expect that her family have their bad days too," says Jim +dryly. + +"Well, we do sometimes," replies Amelia with reluctant admission; "but +she really does try to control herself, poor thing; she is hardly ever +unbearable now." + +"And Cecilia?" + +"She is rather in trouble just now; I fear there is no doubt that the +man she was engaged to has thrown her over. You never saw him? Oh no! Of +course, the affair came on after you left England." + +Burgoyne's eyebrows have gone up, and his face has assumed an expression +less of surprise than admiration at this piece of news. + +"How many does that make? Four? Well, courage! There is luck in odd +numbers; perhaps she will land the fifth." + +"She will tell you about it herself," says Amelia; "she tells everybody; +she likes talking about it--it is very odd, but she does. When you throw +me over"--rubbing his hand which she holds, with shy and deprecating +caressingness, against her own cheek--"I shall tell nobody; I shall keep +my misfortune very dark." + +"When I do!" repeats he with laughing emphasis; but to his own ear both +the emphasis and the laughter sound flat. This is perhaps the cause why +he, a second time, runs away from his subject; or, more probably, he is +really in haste to get to the new one. "Meanwhile," he says, his eyes +involuntarily dropping to the carpet, as if he had rather not see the +effect of his words upon her; "meanwhile, someone has thrown me over." + +"You?" + +"Yes, me; I did not write it to you, because I do not see much use in +putting down bad news in black and white, and even with this little +delay, I am afraid," with a dry smile, "that you will have plenty of +time to enjoy it." + +He pauses for an instant, and she does not hurry him with any teasing +questions; but waits, with meek patience, till he feels inclined to go +on. + +"My aunt is going to be married." + +If he has wished that his news shall produce the effect of a torpedo, he +has no cause to complain of his want of success. His placid Amelia +vaults to her feet. + +"Married!" she repeats with a gasp. "Why, she is quite, quite old!" + +"She is sixty-five!" + +The colour has flooded all Amelia's face; the blazing colour that means +not pleasure, but consternation. It is some moments before she can frame +her next query. + +"And is he?--do you?--has she chosen wisely, I mean?" + +Jim laughs again. + +"Can one choose wisely at sixty-five? Well, whether she has or no is a +matter of opinion; she has chosen the curate of the parish, who, by +reason of his extreme juvenility, is still in deacon's orders." + +Miss Wilson's limbs are shaking so that she cannot maintain her standing +attitude. She sinks down by the dining-table again in her hard chair. It +is a very hard chair on which to receive such ill news. + +"And cannot you hinder it, cannot you dissuade her?" she asks +falteringly. + +"I shall not try; poor old woman! After all, she has a right to pursue +her own happiness in her own way, only I wish that she had made up her +mind twenty years ago; though, to be sure, how could she?"--with another +smile--"since, at that time, her bridegroom was not much more than +born." + +A dead silence supervenes--a silence of shocked stupefaction on the one +side, of rather dismal brooding on the other. At length Amelia nerves +herself to put a question upon which it seems to her, not very +incorrectly, that her whole future hangs. She does it in such a low +voice that none but very sharp ears could have caught it. Jim's ears are +so; practised as they are in listening for the stealthy tread of wild +animals, and for the indescribable sounds of mountain solitudes at +night. + +"Will it--will it--make a great difference to you?" + +Burgoyne lifts his eyes, which have been idly bent on the floor, and +looks straight and full at her across the corner of the table. + +"It will make all the difference!" he answers slowly. + +Poor Amelia is holding her handkerchief in her hand. She lifts it to her +mouth and bites a corner of it to hide the quivering of her lips and +chin. She does not wish to add to his pain by any breakdown on her own +part. But Jim divines the quivering even under the morsel of cambric, +and looks away again. + +"Her money is almost entirely in her own power," he continues, in an +unemotional voice; "and when she announced her marriage to me, she also +announced her intention of settling the whole of it upon her--her"--he +pauses a second, as if resolved to keep out of his voice the accent of +satire and bitterness that pierces through its calm--"her husband." + +Amelia has dropped both shielding hand and handkerchief into her lap. +She has forgotten her effort to conceal the blankness of her dismay. +Unless she conceals the whole of her face, indeed, the attempt would be +in vain, since each feature speaks it equally. + +"Her whole fortune?" she repeats, almost inaudibly. "_All?_" + + "What, all my pretty chickens and their dam?" + +says Jim, oppressed by her overwhelmed look into an artificial and +dreary levity, and in not particularly apt quotation. "My dear, do not +look so broken-hearted. I am not absolutely destitute; I need not become +a sandwich man. I have still got my £800 a year, my very own, which +neither man nor mouse, neither curate nor vicar, can take from me. I can +still go on rioting upon that; the question is"--his words coming more +slowly, and his tone growing graver--"have I any right to ask you to +riot on it too?" + +Her hand has gone in feverish haste out to his for answer, and her eyes, +into which the tears are welling, look with an intense dumb wistfulness +into his; but, for the moment, it remains dumb. There is something +painful to Burgoyne in that wistfulness, almost more painful than the +telling of that news which has produced it. He looks down upon the +tablecloth, and, with his disengaged hand, the one not imprisoned in his +betrothed's fond hold, draws patterns with a paper-knife accidentally +left there. + +"The one thing that I blame her for," he continues, not following up the +branch of the subject that his last speech had begun to open up, and +speaking with a composure which, to the stricken Amelia, appears to +evidence his attainment of the highest pinnacle of manly fortitude, "the +only thing I blame her for, is her having hindered my adopting any +profession. Poor old woman, it was not malice prepense, I know; she had +not seen her Jessamey then, probably had not even a prophetic instinct +of him, but as things turned out"--stifling a sigh--"it would have been +kinder to have put me in the way of earning my own living." + +Amelia's head has sunk down upon his hand--he feels her hot tears upon +it; but now that the theme has no longer reference to herself, she can +speak. She straightens herself, and there is a flash, such as he has +very seldom seen there, in her rather colourless orbs. + +"It was monstrous of her!" she cries, with the almost exaggerated +passion of a usually very self-controlled person. "After having always +told you that you were to be her heir!" + +"But _had_ she told me so?" replies Jim, passing his hand with a +perplexed air over his own face. "That is what I have been trying to +recall for the last few days. I never remember the time when I did not +believe it, so I suppose that someone must have told me so; but I could +not swear that she herself had ever put it down in black and white. +However," tossing his head back with a gesture as of one who throws off +his shoulders a useless burden, "what does that matter now? I am not her +heir, I am nobody's heir; we must look facts in the face! Amelia, +dear"--in a tone of reluctant tender affection, as of one compelled, yet +most unwilling, to give a little child, or some other soft, helpless +creature, pain--"we must look facts in the face!" There is something in +his voice that makes Amelia's heart stand still; but she attempts no +interruption. + +"It is very hard for me, dear, after all these"--he pauses a second; he +is about to say "weary years' waiting," but his conscience arrests him; +to him they have not been weary, so, after a hardly-perceptible break, +he goes on--"after all these many years' waiting, to have come to this, +is not it?" + +He had not calculated on the effect which would be produced by his +melancholy words and his caressing tone. She buries her face on his +shoulder, sobbing uncontrollably. + +"They were not long!" she murmurs brokenly. "Nothing is, nothing can be, +long to me as long as I have you, or the hope of you!" + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + +It is, perhaps, fortunate for Amelia that she cannot see the expression +of the face which looks out above her prostrate head into space, with a +blankness equal to what has been her own, a blankness streaked, as hers +was not, with remorse. He would give anything to be able to answer her +in her own key, to tell her that, as long as he can keep her, the going +or coming of any lesser good hurts him as little as the brushing past +his cheek of a summer moth or windblown feather. But when he tries to +frame a sentence of this kind, his tongue cleaves to the roof of his +mouth. He can only hold her to him in an affectionate clasp, whose +dumbness he hopes that she attributes to silencing emotion. She herself +indulges in no very prolonged manifestation of her passion. In a few +moments she is again sitting up beside him with wiped eyes, none the +handsomer, poor soul, for having cried, and listening with a deep +attention to an exposition of her lover's position and prospects, which +he is at no pains to tinge with a factitious rose colour. + +"Have you realized," he says, "that I shall never be better off than I +am now? never! _never!_ For though of course I shall try to get work, +one knows how successful that quest generally is in the case of a man +with no special aptitudes, no technical training, and who starts in the +race handicapped by being ten years too late!" + +But the dismalness of this panorama raises no answering gloom in the +young woman's face. She nods her head gently. + +"I realize it." + +"And this is what I have brought you to, after all these years' +waiting," he continues, in a tone of profound regret. "All I can offer +you at the end of them is a not particularly genteel poverty, not even a +cottage with a double coach-house!"--laughing grimly. + +"I do not want a double coach-house, nor even a single one!" replies +Amelia stoutly, and laughing too, a little, through returning tears. "Do +not you know that I had rather drive a costermonger's barrow with you +than go in a coach and six without you!" + +This is the highest flight of imagination of which Jim has ever known +his matter-of-fact Amelia guilty, and he can pay her his thanks for it +only in compunctious kisses. Perhaps it is they, perhaps it is the +thought which dictates her next hesitating speech, that bring a light +into Amelia's tear-reddened eyes. + +"If you will never be better off----" She stops. + +"Yes, dear, go on; 'if I shall never be better off'--I certainly never +shall; I feel sure that you will be able to put my earnings for the next +ten years into your eye, and see none the worse for them!" + +"If--you--will--never--be--better--off----" she repeats again, more +slowly, and breaking off at the same place. + +"Well, dear?" + +"If you will never be better off"--this time she finishes her sentence; +but it is rendered almost inaudible by the fact of her flushed face and +quivering lips being pressed against his breast--"why should we wait any +longer?" + +_Why should we wait any longer?_ To most persons, granted the usual +condition of feeling of a betrothed couple, this would seem a very +natural and legitimate deduction from the premises; but, strange to say, +it comes upon Burgoyne with the shock of a surprise. He has been +thinking vaguely of his change of fortune as a cause for unlimited +delay, perhaps for the rupture of his engagement, never as a reason for +its immediate fulfilment. + +He gives a sort of breathless gasp, which is happily too low for Amelia +with her still hidden face to hear. To be married at once! To sit down +for all time to Amelia and £800 a year! To forego for ever the thrilling +wandering life; the nights under the northern stars, the stealthy +tracking of shy forest creatures; the scarce coarse delicious food, the +cold, the fatigue, the hourly peril, that, since its probable loss is +ever in sight, make life so sweetly worth having--all, in short, that +goes to make up so many an Englishman's ideal of felicity; that has +certainly hitherto gone to make up Jim's. To renounce it all! There is +no doubt that the bitterness of this thought comes first; but presently, +supplanting it, chasing it away, there follows another, a +self-reproachful light flashing over his past eight years, showing him +his own selfishness colossal and complete for the first time. In a +paroxysm of remorse, he has lifted Amelia's face, and, framing it with +his hands, looks searchingly into it. + + +"I believe," he says in a shaken voice, "that you would have married me +eight years ago, on my pittance, if I had asked you!" + +No "Yes" was ever written in larger print than that which he read in her +patient pale eyes. Even at this instant there darts across him a wish +that they were not quite so pale, but he detests himself for it. + +"And I never suspected it!" he cries compunctiously. "I give you my word +of honour, I never suspected it! I thought you looked upon my poverty in +as prohibitory a light as I did myself." + +"I do not call it such great poverty," replies Amelia, her practical +mind resuming its habitual sway over her emotions. "Of course, it is an +income that would require a little management; but if we cut our coat +according to our cloth, and did not want to move about too much, we +might live either in a not very fashionable part of London, or in some +cheap district in the country very comfortably." + +Despite his remorse, a cold shiver runs down Burgoyne's spine at the +picture that rises, conjured up with too much distinctness by her words, +before his mind's eyes; the picture of a snug Bayswater villa, with a +picturesque parlour-maid, or the alternative cottage in some dreary +Wiltshire or Dorsetshire village, with a shrubbery of three aucuba +bushes, and a kitchen-garden of half an acre. It may be that, her frame +being in such close proximity to his, she feels the influence of his +shiver, and that it suggests her next sentence, which is in a less +sanguine key. + +"But it would not be fair; it would be asking you to give up too much." + +The meek abnegation of her rather worn voice brings his remorse +uppermost again on the revolving wheel of his feelings. + +"Is not it my turn to give up something?" he asks tenderly; "and +besides, it is time for me to settle! I am--I am tired of wandering!" + +As this atrocious lie passes his lips, he catches his breath. Tired of +the Sierras! Tired of the bivouacs among the dazzling snow! Tired of the +august silence of the ever-lasting hills! Heaven forgive him for saying +so! Perhaps there is no great air of veracity in his assertion, for she +looks at him distrustfully; so distrustfully that he reshapes his +phrase: "At least, if I am not, I ought to be!" + +But still she gazes at him with a wistful and doubting intentness. + +"If I could only believe that that was true!" + +"It is true," replies he, evading her look; "at least, true enough for +all working purposes; we all know that life is a series of compromises, +a balancing of gain and loss. I shall lose something, I do not deny +that, but I gain more--I gain _you_!" + +"That is such a mighty gain, is it not?" she says with a melancholy +smile, as that intuition of the truth which sometimes comes to unloved +or tepidly loved women flashes upon her. + +"A matter of taste--a mere matter of taste!" rejoins he hurriedly; aware +of the unreal ring in his own words, and trying, with all his might, to +feel as well as speak light-heartedly. + +She shakes her head in a way which tells him how poorly he has +succeeded. In a desperate if not very well-judged attempt to convince +her of his sincerity, his next speech is uttered. + +"Why should not we be married at once? to-morrow? the day after +to-morrow? at the Consulate--of course there _is_ a Consulate--or the +English church; I suppose there are half a dozen English churches. Why +not? We have nothing to wait for, and we are both of age!" + +He has had no unkindly intention in the last words, but the moment that +these are out of his mouth, a glance at Amelia's unblooming face and +unyouthful figure tell him that they were not happily chosen. At the +first instant that the suggestion of an immediate marriage reaches the +hearer's brain, it sends a dart of joy over her features. To be married +at once! To put an end for ever to the interminable waiting, to enter at +last--at last upon the possession of the so long deferred Canaan. But in +a second, that first bright flash is chased away, and gives place to a +look of almost humiliation. + +"You must be making fun of me, to suggest such a thing!" she says in a +wounded voice; "you know how wildly impossible it would be that I should +leave them all--my father--Sybilla--without any preparation." + +"Without any preparation!" replies Jim, raising his eyebrows. "Have not +you been preparing them for the last eight years?" + +He feels a vague unjust irritation with her for opposing his +proposition, though deep down in his heart he knows that he would have +felt a much greater annoyance had she eagerly closed with it. As she +does not answer a question, which the moment that it is uttered he feels +to have been rather brutal, he goes on, against his will, in the same +sarcastic key: + +"I am afraid that you will have to leave them all some day; I am afraid +that our Bayswater mansion--by-the-bye, I am sure it will not be a +mansion, for I am sure it will not have a back-door--will not be likely +to contain all. Your father--Sybilla--Sybilla and her physic bottles +take up a good deal of room, do not they?" + +It is fortunate for Amelia that she is too preoccupied by the thought of +her own next speech to take in the full acerbity of the last remark. + +"If you would consent to wait till we get home--father does not mean to +stay in Italy beyond the end of next month--we might be married in June; +that" (with a pink flush of happiness) "would not be so long to wait." + +In a second a sum of the simplest description executes itself in +Burgoyne's head. It is now the second week of April; they are to be +married in June, he has then eight weeks left. It shocks himself to find +that this is the way in which he puts it. All the overt action that he +permits himself, however, is to say with a shrug: + +"As you will, then, as you will!" adding, since he feels that there is +something discourteous even to unchivalry in so bald an acquiescence in +his prospective bliss, "Of course, dear, the sooner I get you the better +for me!" + +No lover could have been overheard giving utterance to a more proper or +suitable sentiment; so that it is lucky that this is just the moment +that Cecilia chooses for entering. + +"Do not be afraid," she says, with a laugh. "I will not stay a minute, +but I just wanted to say 'How do you do?' How well you are looking! and +how young!"--with an involuntary glance of comparison from him to her +sister; a glance of which they are both rather painfully conscious. +"Ah!" (sighing) "with all your Rocky Mountain experiences, it is evident +that you have been having an easier time than we have!" + +"Are you alluding to Sybilla?" asks Jim gravely. "I have no doubt, from +what I know of her powers in that line, that she has been extremely +trying." + +"Yes, partly," replies the girl doubtfully; "but I have had troubles of +my own too. I dare say that Amelia has told you, or probably" (with a +second and heavier sigh) "you have been more pleasantly employed." + +"Amelia did hint at some disaster," replies Jim, struggling to conceal +the rather grim smile which is curving his mouth, a feat the more +difficult since he has no moustache to aid him; "but I have been waiting +to hear all the details from yourself." + +"I know that you are apt to think I fancy things," says Cecilia, sitting +down on a third hard chair, "but there could be no fancy in this case; I +am sure I was as much engaged as any girl ever was. I had chosen the +drawing-room paper and bought the dining-room grate!" + +"That is further than we ever got, is not it, Amelia?" says Jim, +breaking, at the relation of this prosaic fact, into the laugh he has +been with difficulty swallowing; "but, Cis, if I were you, I should keep +the grate; one does not know how soon its services may be required +again!" + +"It is all very well for you to joke," returns Cecilia, with an offended +air; "it may be play to you, but it is----" + +"Not death, not quite death to you!" interrupts Burgoyne, glancing with +an expressive smile at her buxom outline. "I think you will live to +fight another day, will not you? But I really am extremely sorry; tell +me all about it." + +"He was perfectly right when we left England," says Cecilia, mollified +at once, and apparently relieved by the invitation to unbosom herself of +her woes; "nobody could have been more so; he came to see us off at +Folkestone, and the tears were in his eyes; they were really, it was not +my imagination, was it, Amelia? And at first he wrote all right, and +said all the usual things; but then his letters gradually grew fewer and +fewer, and after I had written and telegraphed a great many times--I do +not know how many times I did not telegraph to ask whether he was ill, +and you know how expensive foreign telegrams are--he sent me a few +lines, oh, such cruel lines, were not they, Amelia? to say that, on +reflection, he feared that the feeling he had for me was not such as to +justify his entering on so sacred an engagement as marriage with me; but +he ought to have thought of that before, ought not he?" + +"Undoubtedly!" + +"I will never engage myself to a clergyman again," says Cecilia +pensively. + +Burgoyne's thoughts have strayed at the mention of the cloth of his +sister-in-law elect's truant admirer, to that member of the same +profession who has lately robbed him of his heritage, and he replies +with a good deal of feeling: + +"They do play one dirty turns now and then, do not they? Yes, Cis, stick +to laymen for the future!" + +Cecilia receives this counsel with a melancholy sigh, fixing her large +eyes on the carpet, but presently resumes the conversation in a livelier +key. + +"Let us talk about something pleasanter," she says. "Had you a good +journey? Do you like your travelling companion? Why did not you bring +him with you? Is he nice?" + +"At all events, he is not a clergyman," replies Jim, with a rather +malicious smile; "but no, my dear, do not let your thoughts turn in that +direction! You must look at him as poor women look at diamonds!" + +"I am sure I do not know what you mean!" replies Cecilia, reddening. "I +have not the slightest wish to look at him! I am not in spirits to +'look,' as you call it, at anyone!" + +A moment later, she adds, with a suspicion of malice in her tone: + +"We are certainly an unlucky family in our loves! I, heartlessly thrown +over, and Amelia engaged for eight years!" + +Burgoyne smiles. "Amelia is not going to be engaged any longer," he +says, putting his arm round his betrothed. "Amelia is going to be +married at once!" + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + + +It would seem natural that, after so long a separation, Burgoyne should +dine and spend the evening with his betrothed; but such is not the case. +For this, however, he is not to blame; he is quite prepared to stay with +her until she turns him out. Had he not better school himself to +domestic habits, since he is so soon to assume them for life? But in +consideration for Sybilla he is dismissed undined. It is not that she +ever shares the family dinner at their table _à part_ in the _salle à +manger_, but the thought of their entertaining a guest with a +conviviality far greater in her imagination than would be the case in +reality, while she herself lies lonely on her couch of suffering, preys +upon her spirits so much that her family have to abandon the idea. So, +towards sunset, Jim is dismissed. He has no opportunity for any parting +endearments to his lady-love, as the whole family are in the room, and +it is Cecilia, not Amelia, who volunteers to walk across the hotel +courtyard with him, for the advantage of a last word. What that last +word is he is not slow to learn. + +"You will take us some excursions, will not you?" she says, with a +persuasive air, putting her arm through his. "Father is so +unenterprising, we have really seen scarcely anything; but you will take +us some excursions now, will not you?" + +"Are you sure that your spirits are equal to them?" inquires Burgoyne +unkindly. + +"I do not know about that, I am sure," replies she, growing pink at his +tone; "but one must make an exertion sometime, and I think a little +distraction would do me good, and so I am sure it would to poor Amelia!" + +"Poor Amelia will shortly have the distraction of being married," +rejoins the young man, who feels as if he could not repeat the statement +of this fact too often to himself and others. + +"And I think it would be only civil," continues Cecilia persistently, +"in fact, I do not see how you could avoid it, if you invited your +friend to join us." + +But Jim escapes without having committed himself to this promise, and +wanders about the town in the lovely, lowering light; finds himself on +the Lung Arno, strolling along with the leisurely loiterers, among whom, +for every two soft Tuscan voices, there is a loud metallic Anglo-Saxon +one. He watches the carriages rolling back from their drive on the +Cascine; the river falling over the weir; the river yellow as Tiber +yesterday, and to day shot with blue and green and silver, as it tumbles +with a pleasant noise. The houses on either side of the Arno, the domes +and roofs, are all clothed in a strange serenity of yellow light; a +golden air so transparent and line and crystal clear, so free from the +soft blur of mist--lovely too--through which we see objects in our wet +green home, that Jim feels as if he could stretch out his hand and touch +the hill that backs gold towers and bridges, and see whether it really +is made out of one whole amethyst, as it looks. The beauty of the world +has always been very much to Burgoyne, though hitherto it has been +chiefly in the austerity of her high and desert places that he has bowed +the knee before the Universal Mother. This little gold evening city, +sunset clad in the colours of the New Jerusalem, lifting her heavenly +campanile to as heavenly a sky, is to him a new and wonderful thing. Her +loveliness sinks into his soul, and with it a companion sadness as deep. +From henceforth the sight of earth's fair shows will be, for the most +part, forbidden him. He has always loved to look and adore in silence +and alone; henceforth he will never have the right to be alone; +henceforth he will never have the right to go anywhere without his wife. +Strange and terrible word to which he tries in vain to accustom his +mental ears; and, thanks to the narrowness of their means, neither of +them will be able to stir from the strait precincts of their pinched +home. + +He comes back to his hotel, through the Piazza of the Duomo. All the +infinite richness of cupola and arch, high up, are still wrapped in the +fiery rose cloak of sunset, while below the body of the great church, +with all its marbles and traceries and carved wonders, is clad in the +sobriety of twilight. + +On reaching the Minerva, he finds that Byng has not yet returned, or +rather that he has been in and gone out again. He waits dinner +half-an-hour for him, and then dines without him; dines in solitude, +since it is not till his cup of coffee is before him, and his cigarette +between his lips, that his young friend appears. It is evidently no +unpleasant errand that has detained him, for he arrives beaming, and too +excited even to perceive the _menu_ which a waiter offers him. + +"They have arrived!" he cries. Oddly enough it never occurs to Burgoyne +to inquire who "they" may be; it seems as much a matter-of-course to him +as to the handsome pink and white boy before him, that the pronoun must +relate to Elizabeth Le Marchant and her mother. + +His only answer, however, is an "Oh!" whose tone is rather more eagerly +interested than he could have wished. + +"I thought that they could not stay more than another day in Genoa," +continues Byng, at length becoming aware of the _menu_ at his elbow; but +only to wave it impatiently away. "So I thought I would just run down to +the station to meet the evening train, the one we came by last night; +however, it must have been more punctual than yesterday, for before I +reached the station, I met them; I mean they passed me in a fiacre. I +only caught a glimpse of her face, but I saw her hand; it was lying on +the carriage door like a snow-flake." + +"Like my grandmother!" cries Burgoyne in a rage, for which he cannot +quite account to himself, at this ingenious and novel simile. + +Byng laughs; the laugh of a thoroughly sweet-natured person, who, in +addition, has some special cause for good-humour. + +"I do not know what colour your grandmother was; but she must have been +very unlike most people's if she was like a snow-flake." + +Jim's cross mouth unbends into a reluctant smile. It is not the first +time that he has discovered how useless, and also impossible, it is to +be out of humour with Byng. + +"I had a good mind to tell my fiacre man to follow them," continued +Byng, in an excited voice; "but, in the first place, I did not know how +to say it--really, Jim, we must get up a little of the lingo--and, in +the second place, I thought it would perhaps be rather too much in the +private detective line." + +"I think it would have been extremely ungentlemanlike!" rejoins Jim +severely. + +Byng reddens; but still without losing his temper. + +"That is coming it rather strong, is not it? but anyhow, I did not do +it." And then, by tacit agreement, they both drop the subject. + +During the next three or four days it is not named between them, nor +indeed do they see much of each other. Burgoyne spends the greater part +of his days with Amelia. Whatever cause for the accusation he may have +given during the previous eight years, nobody can say that he neglects +her now. He passes long hours at her side, on the same hard chair that +had supported him on their first interview, in the little dismal +dining-room; going into calculations of house-rent and taxes, drawing up +lists of necessary furniture. He even makes a bid for Cecilia's +drawing-room grate; but that young lady, whose forecasting mind can look +beyond present grief to future sunshine, refuses to part with it. The +lovers are not always, however, studying Maple's and Oetzmann's lists. +Sometimes Jim varies the diversion by taking his future wife to +picture-galleries and churches, to the Uffizi, the Accademia, San +Lorenzo. It is doubtful whether Amelia enjoys these excursions as much +as she does the selection of bedsteads and saucepans, her pleasure being +in some degree marred by a feverish anxiety to say what she thinks her +lover expects of her as they stand before each immortal canvas. In her +heart she thinks the great statues in the Medici Chapel frightful, a +heresy in which she is kept in countenance by no less a light than +George Eliot, who in one of her letters dares to say of them, "they +remained to us as affected and exaggerated in the original, as in copies +and casts." To Amelia many of the frescoes appear lamentably washed out, +nor are her efforts to hide these sentiments attended with any +conspicuous success, since nothing is more hopeless than for one utterly +destitute of a feeling for works of art to feign it, without having the +imposture at once detected. + +Burgoyne's mind during these expeditions is a battle-ground for pity and +rage; pity at the pathos of his poor love's endeavours; rage at their +glaring failure. Cecilia sometimes accompanies the lovers, but this does +not make matters much better. Cecilia devotes but a very cursory notice +to the pictures; her attention being almost wholly centred on the +visitors, and on finding resemblances for them among the inhabitants of +her own village at home, for the accuracy of which she appeals at every +moment to her sister. Every day she asks Burgoyne to fulfil his +promise--a promise which he as punctually assures her that he never +made--to introduce his friend to her. He has a strangely strong +reluctance to comply with this simple request, which yet, he knows, will +have to be complied with some day. When Amelia is his wife, Byng will +have to know Cecilia, for she will probably spend a great deal of her +time with them--make their house a second home, in fact. + +And meanwhile Jim is keenly, and for some reason sorely, conscious of +the fact that, during the hours in which he is stooping his weary head +over catalogues of fenders and fire-irons, carving-knives and +fish-slices, blankets and ticking, Byng is searching Florence through +her length and breadth for their two countrywomen. It is not indeed +necessary to credit his friend with any special quest to account for his +wanderings through the "adorable little city," as Henry James most truly +calls it, since he is a young man of a wide and alert curiosity, with a +large appetite for pleasure both intellectual and the reverse. Jim, +whose acquaintance with him has chiefly been with his rowdy +undergraduate side, bear-fighting, and proctor-defying, is astonished at +his almost tremulous appreciation of the Ghirlandajos, the Lorenzo di +Credis, the Giottos, that in a hundred chapels, from a hundred walls, +shine down in their mixed glory of naïve piety and blinding colour upon +him. + +One day the elder man is sitting in his bedroom with a despatch-box and +a sheet of paper before him. He is embarked upon a dreary calculation as +to what his guns will fetch. He has made up his mind to sell them. Of +what further use can they be to him? He will not be allowed to shoot at +the Bayswater omnibuses, which will be the only game henceforth within +his reach. While he is thus employed upon an occupation akin to, and +about as cheerful as, that of Rawdon Crawley before Waterloo, Byng +enters. + +"You look as if you had a headache, old chap," he says, sitting down +upon his friend's bed. + +"If you had been going through as many kitchen-ranges as I have this +morning, perhaps you would have a headache," replies Jim gravely. "You +know that I am going to be married as soon as I get home." + +Byng nods; and Burgoyne, while inwardly blessing the tact that spares +him any congratulations, takes himself to task for having made the +announcement so lugubriously as to render felicitation obviously +inapplicable. + +"When are you going to introduce me to Miss Wilson?" asks Byng +presently. "If you shirk it much longer, I shall think that you are +ashamed of me." + +Jim glances affectionately, yet not quite comfortably, at his young +friend, and the thought dashes across his mind that, in his last remark, +the latter has put the saddle on the wrong horse. + +"You have so large an acquaintance in Florence already," he says, with +some stiffness, "that I did not know that you would care to add to it." + +"One cannot have too much of a good thing," replies the other joyously. +"You know I love my fellow-creatures; and in this case," he adds +civilly, "I do care very much." + +Burgoyne's eyes are bent on the paper before him, which contains the +melancholy enumeration of his firearms--"A 500 double-barrelled express, +by Henry, of Edinburgh; a 450 single-barrelled ditto, by same maker," +etc., etc.--as he says slowly: + +"I shall be very happy." + +His acceptance of the proposition can hardly be called eager; but of +this Byng appears unawares. + +"When shall it be, then? To-day--this afternoon?" + +"No-o-o; not to-day, I think. It has been arranged that we are to go to +San Miniato--Amelia, her sister, and I." + +"Three of you?" cries Byng, raising his eyebrows. "Then why not four? +Why may not I come too?" + +There being, in point of fact, no reason why he should not, and +Cecilia's morning prayer being still ringing in her future +brother-in-law's ears, he gives a dull and lagging assent; so that at +about three o'clock the two men present themselves at the door of the +Wilsons' apartment at the Anglo-Américain Hotel. That Sybilla is not +expecting visitors is evident by the fact that, at the moment of their +entrance, she is taking her own temperature--a very favourite relaxation +of hers--with a clinical thermometer. She removes the instrument from +her mouth without indecent haste, and holds out a languid white hand to +Byng. + +"So you are going off on a long afternoon's pleasuring?" she says, with +a pathetic smile. "I am so glad that neither of my sisters is going to +stay at home with me. We invalids must guard against growing selfish, +though I think that is perhaps more the danger with _malades +imaginaires_; we real ones have learnt our lesson of suffering better, I +hope." + +"You do not look so very ill," replies Byng, in his sympathetic voice, +letting his eyes rest caressingly on the prostrate figure, which has yet +no smallest sign of emaciation about it. + +"Ah, that is because of my colour," replies Sybilla, with an animation +slightly tinged with resentment. "You, too, fall into that common error. +My London doctor tells me that there is no such unerring indication of +radical delicacy of constitution as a fixed pink colour like mine; the +more feverish I am, the deeper it grows. It is very hard"--smiling again +sadly--"for one gets no pity!" + +"Where is Cecilia?" cries Jim brusquely, and fidgeting in his chair. +"Why is not she ready?" + +As he speaks, the young lady in question enters--so obviously arrayed +for conquest, in so patently new a hat, and such immaculate pale gloves, +that across Burgoyne's mind there flashes, in vexed mirth, the +recollection of the immortal caution addressed by Major O'Dowd to his +friend and comrade, "Moind your oi, Dob, my boy!" Would he not do well +to repeat it to his friend? + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + +They are off now, there being nothing further to retard them, leaving +Sybilla _tête-à-tête_ with her thermometer. They are off, sociably +packed in one fiacre-- + + "Four precious souls, and all agog + To dash thro' thick and thin." + +Not, indeed, that there is much dash about the Florentine +cab-horses--saddest among God's many sad creatures--with not a sound leg +among them, with staring coats and starting ribs, and poor broken knees; +and with their sadness emphasized by the feathers stuck in their tired +heads, as if to mock their wretchedness by a sort of melancholy +smartness! Sad as they are, it must be owned that they are the only sad +things in the cheerful Florentine streets, where no one seems over-busy, +where, out of the deep-eaved, green-shuttered houses, people lean, +talking to acquaintances on the shadowed pavement below. All the narrow +thorough-fares are full of bustling life; but there is no haggard +squalor apparently, no dreadful gin-palace gaiety. It does not follow +here that a man must be drunk because he sings. And down the strait, +colourful streets one looks--down a vista of houses diversely tall, each +with its cream-yellow face and its green shutters, varied here and there +by the towering bulk of some giant-blocked mountain-palace, through +whose grim, barred windows a woman peeps, or a little dog shows his +pointed nose--looks to where, in dwindling perspective, the view is +closed by a narrow picture of lucent purple hill, Fiesole or +Bellosguardo--names to which the tongue cleaves lovingly. Through the +gay streets, over bridge and blue Arno, our travellers go; their driver +cracking a prodigious whip, and with a tiny red dog, absurdly shaven, +and with nothing but a small woolly head and tail left of the original +design, seated gravely beside him. Away they go, pleasuring; but +pleasure and pleasuring are not always identical. + +Burgoyne sits opposite Amelia; and as for Cecilia, it is to be supposed +that her heartache is for the moment dulled, since the same carriage-rug +covers her knees and those of Byng. Burgoyne does not look at Amelia; +nor, though his eyes are fixed upon the passing objects, does he at +first see aught of them. His vision is turned inwards, and to his own +soul he is mechanically repeating in dismal recitative, "A +double-barrelled, central fire, breech-loading gun, by Lancaster; made +strong enough at the breech to shoot a spherical bullet." + +As for Amelia, her features are not of a build to express any emotion +with much brilliancy; but over them lies a deep and brooding content. +Amelia has not had much undiluted happiness in her life, but she is +exceedingly happy to-day. She is even strangely free from the carking +fear which usually assails her, of praising mistakenly, of being +enthusiastic in the wrong places, and passing over the right ones +unnoticed. If she keep to a vague generality of handsome adjectives, she +will surely do well enough, and, on this high holiday that her heart is +holding, he cannot be cross to her. + +As to Byng, he is emphatically of the school of divinity taught by Tommy +Moore, nor was he ever known, when lacking "the lips that he loved," to +fail to make love to "the lips that are near." His taste is too good for +him to have chosen Cecilia as a companion; but, since fate has allotted +her to him for the afternoon, he finds no difficulty in making the best +of her. Nor, to do her justice, is she destitute of charms of a certain +kind, though her face has the inevitable air of commonness incident upon +a very short nose and a very long upper lip. But she has a good deal of +bloom, and of crisp, showy-coloured hair, and a very considerable +eye-power. Byng's attachment to the fair sex being of far too stout a +quality to be blunted by such trifles as an inch too much or too little +of nose or lip, he also, like Amelia, is thoroughly prepared to enjoy +himself. + +Up the turning Via Galileo they climb, to the Basilica at the +top--stock-drive of all tourists--hackneyed as only Yankeedom and +Cockneydom, rushing hand in hand through all earth's sacredness, can +hackney. But even hackneying is powerless to take off the freshness to +the eye that sees it for the first time, of that view when he beholds +the Lily City lying close at his feet, so close that it seems he could +throw a stone into her Arno. + +They have left their fiacre, and, as naturally happens in a _partie +carrée_--more especially when one couple are betrothed lovers--have +broken into pairs. Burgoyne leans pensively on the terrace parapet, and +his sombre eyes rest on the band of sister hills, joining hands in +perpetual watch round valley and town; hills over which, in this late +spring, there is more a promise than a performance of that green and +many-coloured wealth of verdure and blossom that one associates with +Firenze's fair name. But it is a promise that is plainly on the verge of +a bounteous fulfilment. Then his look drops slowly to the city herself. +In what a little space comparatively does the Florence that is immortal +lie! The Duomo, the lily Campanile "made up of dew and sunshine," the +Baptistery, Santa Croce, the Palazzo Vecchio; he could compass them in a +ten minutes' walk. And around this small nucleus of the undying dead and +their work, what a nation of gleaming villas of the polyglot living--a +nation of every tongue, and people, and language! All over the hills is +the sheen of white walls, the verdure of tended gardens; they stretch +away almost to where the Apennines raise their cold white fronts against +the sky. + +He rouses himself to remember that Amelia is beside him, and that he +ought to say something to her. So he makes a rather _banal_ observation +upon the smallness of the _enceinte_ that encloses so much loveliness. + +"Yes, is not it tiny?" replies she, with the eager pleasure of having a +remark made to her which she cannot go wrong in answering. "Think of +London! Why, the whole thing is not as big as South Kensington or +Bayswater!" + +He shudders. Must the accursed suburb pursue him even here? + +"Let us go into the church," he says, in a tone that a little dulls his +companion's buoyancy. + +She follows him crestfallenly, asking herself whether she has answered +amiss here also. She does not trust herself to any comment upon the +interior. + +Byng and Cecilia are standing before the high altar, from over which a +mosaic Madonna stiffly beams upon them; and as the other couple approach +them, Burgoyne hears the words "drawing-room grate" issue from his +future sister-in-law's lips. + +"Bravo, Cis!" he says in a dry aside; "you are getting on nicely! I did +not think that you would have reached the drawing-room grate till +to-morrow." + +To avoid intruding further on her delicate confidences, and also to +escape from two Americans, who are nasally twanging Hare and Horner at +each other, varied by trips into Baedeker, he passes into a side chapel +made famous by one of the loveliest tombs that ever feigned to simulate +in marble death's ugliness. The Yankee voices are high and shrill, but +they had need to be higher and shriller still before they could break +the slumber of him whose resting-place Jim has invaded in his flight +from Cecilia and New York. Was ever rest so beautiful as this of the +young sleeper? A priest he was, nay cardinal, and youthful and lovely +and chaste! and now in how divine a slumber is he lapt! But how should +that four hundred years' slumber not be divine, watched by such a gentle +Mary-mother as is watching his; smiling as if to tell him that he does +well to sleep, that sleep is better than waking, that death is better +than life! There is a sunken look about his fair eyelids, as if he had +gone through suffering to his rest; and his reposeful hands are thin; +but below him, as he lies in his spotless marble tranquillity, upon his +sarcophagus, the rose garlands wave in lovely frieze, and the riotous +horses rear and plunge in fulness of life. + +Burgoyne has not perceived that Amelia did not follow him. She has, in +point of fact, remained in the body of the church, immersed in her +guide-book, steadily working through the marble screen and pulpit, and +still five good minutes off the side chapel, in which her lover stands +in so deeply brown a study, that he is not aware of the intrusion upon +his solitude of two women, until he is roused with a leap by the voice +of one of them addressing--not him, of whose presence she is obviously +as unaware as was he of hers, until this moment--but her companion. + +"Oh, mother! am I not a fool, at my age, too? but I cannot help it, it +makes me cry so!" + +Burgoyne does not need the evidence of his eyes. His ears and his +startled heart have enough assured him whose are the tears called forth +by that indeed most touching effigy at which he himself has been so +pensively staring. + +The mother's answer is inaudible; and then again comes the voice of +Elizabeth Le Marchant, tearful and vibrating. + +"You know I have seen so few beautiful things in my life, I shall get +used to them presently; it is only sheer happiness that makes me----" + +She stops abruptly, having evidently discovered for herself, or been +made aware by her mother of his vicinity; and even if she had not done +so, he feels that he must lose no time in announcing himself. + +"Florence is a place that does make one often choky," he says, eagerly +taking the hand which she hesitatingly, and with some confusion, offers +him. + +It is not quite true; Florence has never made him feel choky; and, if he +is experiencing that sensation now, it is certainly not the dead +cardinal of Portugal who is giving it to him. + +"I am a fool, a perfect fool!" replies Elizabeth, hastily and +shamefacedly wiping away her tears. + +To give her time to recover herself, and also because he has not yet +greeted the girl's mother, Jim turns to her. + +"Did not I tell you that we should meet here?" + +There is such undisguised joy and triumph in his tone, that perhaps Mrs. +Le Marchant has not the heart to dash his elation; at all events, he is +conscious in her tone of a less resolute determination to keep him at +arm's-length, than on their two last meetings. + +"I do not think that I contradicted you," she answers, smiling. + +He may steal another look at Elizabeth now. She is not crying any +longer. Indeed, despite the real moisture on her cheeks, she strikes him +as looking happier than at their last meeting; and though the interval +between now and then is too short for any such alteration to have taken +place in reality, yet he cannot help imagining that the hollows in those +very cheeks are less deep than when they stood together before the great +Vandyke in the Brignoli Sala Palace. + +"And the _entresol_? is it all your fancy painted it?" he asks quickly, +feeling a sort of panic fear, that if he stops putting questions for one +minute they will slip out of his grasp again, as they did in the Genoese +Palace. + +Elizabeth's face breaks into a soft bright smile. She has a dimple in +one cheek and not in the other. She must have had it ten years ago; how +comes he to have forgotten so sweet and strange a peculiarity? + +"It is delightful--perfectly delightful!" + +"Large enough to receive your friends in, after all?" + +But the moment that the words are out of his mouth, he perceives that he +has made a false step, and is somehow treading dangerous ground. +Elizabeth's smile goes out, like a light blown into nothingness by a +sudden wind. + +"We have not many friends," she murmurs; "we--we are not going out at +all." + +He hastens to change his cue. + +"Byng and I are at the Minerva," he says, beginning to talk very fast; +"I wonder if, by any chance, you are in our neighbourhood; have I +forgotten, or did you never tell me where the _entresol_ lies? Where is +it, by-the-bye?" + +Ensnared by the wily and brazen suddenness of this demand, Miss Le +Marchant has evidently no evasion ready, and, after an almost +imperceptible pause of hesitation, answers: + +"We are at 12 bis, Piazza d'Azeglio." + +She is looking doubtfully and half uneasily in his face, as she gives +this answer, but he has scarcely time for a flash of self-congratulation +at having obtained the information, which he had never realized the +eagerness of his desire for until this moment, before he becomes aware +that his interlocutor's eyes are no longer meeting his, but have +wandered to some object over his shoulder. What that object is he is not +long left in doubt. Whether it is a genuine accident, or one of those +spurious ones, of which those who profit by them are the artificers, Jim +does not know; and, as he is at the time, and will be when he thinks of +the circumstance to the end of his life, too angry to question Byng on +the subject, it is pretty certain that he never _will_ know; but so it +is that at this moment the voice of his _protégé_ breaks upon his ear: + +"You are not going to give us the slip like this, old chap--oh! I beg +your pardon!" + +But begging pardon ever so sweetly does not alter the fact that he has +rushed, like a bull in a china shop, into the middle of the dialogue. +All four look at each other for a second; then, since there is no help +for it, Jim presents his disciple, and the next moment the latter has +slid into talk with Elizabeth, and she is responding with an ease and +freedom from embarrassment such as had never marked her sparse and +hardly won utterances to the elder man. + +Byng has the advantage of him, as he somewhat bitterly thinks. Byng has +no connection with "old times;" those poor old times which she and her +mother have so unaccountably taken _en grippe_. He seems suddenly +relegated, as by some natural affinity, to the mother. On their two last +meetings the eagerness to converse has been all on his side; yet now he +has nothing to say to her. It is she who addresses him. + +"I hope that you found your young lady flourishing," she says civilly. + +He gives a slight inward start, though--as he is thankful to feel--his +body is quiet. "His young lady!" Yes, of course he has a young lady! Has +there been any danger during the last five minutes of his forgetting +that fact? and has Mrs. Le Marchant done him an unnecessary service in +recalling it? + +"Oh, yes, thanks, she is all right!" + +"Is she still in Florence?" + +"Yes, she is here; by-the-bye"--looking round with a sudden sense that +he ought to have missed her--"what has become of her? Oh, here she is!" + +For even while the words are on his lips, Amelia and Cecilia come into +sight. Amelia with a shut Baedeker, and the serene look of an easy +conscience and a thoroughly performed duty on her amiable face; Cecilia +with a something of search and disquiet in her large rolling eye, which +would have made him laugh at another time. + +A sudden instinct, with which his will has nothing to do, makes him +flash a look back at Mrs. Le Marchant, as if to gauge the effect +produced upon her by his betrothed; and, following her glance, he finds +that it is resting on Cecilia. She thinks that he is engaged to Cecilia. +The mistake is intolerable to him, and yet a second's reflection tells +him that it is a natural one. In a second he sees his Amelia as she +presents herself to a strange eye. Miss Wilson is only thirty-one, but +upon her has already come that set solid look of middle age, which +overtakes some women before they are well over the borders of youth, and +which other women manage to stave off till they are within near hail of +forty. Yes; the mistake is quite a natural one. Most people would +suppose that the showy Cecilia, still fairly youthful, and with so many +obvious and well-produced "points," must be his choice; and yet, as I +have said, the idea that anyone should credit him with her ownership is +intolerable to him. + +"Here she is!" he cries precipitately. "The one to the right side, the +other is her sister; may I--may I present them to you?" + +Perhaps it is his irritated fancy that dictates the idea, but it seems +to him as if he detected a sort of surprise in Mrs. Le Marchant's face, +when he effects the introduction he has proposed, and to which she +accedes courteously, after a pause of hesitation about as long as had +followed his inquiry of Elizabeth as to their address. + +Five minutes later they have all sauntered out again on the terrace, and +Burgoyne is again leaning on the wall; but this time he has no fear of +hearing of Bayswater, for it is Elizabeth who is beside him. Since last +he looked at it half an hour ago, a sort of glorification has passed +over the divine view. Down where the river twists through the plain +country, there is a light, dainty mist, but the mountains have put on +their fullest glory. They are not green, or brown, or purple, or blue; +but clad in that ineffable raiment woven by the sun, that defies our +weak vocabulary to provide it with a name. A little snow-chain lies on +the sun-warmed neck of Morello, and along the tops of the further +Apennines, right against the acute blue of the heavens, lies a line of +snow, that looks like a fleece-soft cloud resting from its journeyings +on their crests; but it is no cloud, nor is there any speck upon the +gigantic complete arch that over-vaults town and valley and radiant +mountains. In the folds of these last, the shadows slumber; but over all +the city is the great gold glory of spring. The one thing in Florence +that frowns among so many smiles is the scowling Pitti, and that, from +here, is invisible. Nearer to him, against the azure, stand the solemn +flame-shaped cypresses arow, and beside them--as unlike as life to +death--a band of quivering poplars, a sort of transparent gold-green in +their young spring livery. The air is so clear that one can go nigh to +counting the marbles on the Duomo walls. In a more transparent amber +light, fuller of joy and gaiety, cannot the saved be dancing around, as +in Fra Angelico's divine picture? cannot they be walking in the New +Jerusalem of St. John's great dream? Only in the New Jerusalem there are +no galled and trembling-kneed fiacre horses. + +Elizabeth is sitting on the wall, her light figure--is it possible that +it has been in the world only four years less than Amelia's solid +one?--half-supported by one small gray hand outspread on the stone; her +little fine features all tremulous with emotion, and half a tear +gathered again in each sweet eye. As Jim looks at her, a sort of cold +covetous gripe pinches his heart. + +"What a woman with whom to look at all earth's loveliness--with whom to +converse without speech!" + +Even as he so thinks, she turns her head towards him, and, drawing in +her breath with a long low sigh, says: + +"Oh, how glad I am I did not die before to-day!" + +Her eyes are turned towards him, and yet, as once before, he realizes +that it is not to him that either her look or her thoughts are directed. +Both are aimed at an object over his shoulder, and, as before, that +object is Byng. Byng, too, has been gazing at the view. There are tears +in Byng's eyes also. Stevenson says that some women like a man who +cries. Byng cries easily and genuinely, and enjoys it; and, as he is a +remarkably fine young man, there is something piquant in the contrast +between his wet blue orbs and his shoulders. + +As Burgoyne rolls home that afternoon in his fiacre, as before, placed +opposite Amelia, his mental vision is no longer fixed upon a +"double-barrelled, central fire, breech-loading gun;" it is fixed with a +teasing tenacity upon the figure of a smallish woman, perennially +looking, through brilliant tears, over his shoulder at somebody else. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + + +"Was it 12, or 12 bis, Piazza d'Azeglio?" + +There are no tears in Byng's eyes as he asks this question next +morning--asks it of his friend, as the latter sits in the Fumoir, with +an English paper in his hands, and a good cigar between his clean-shaven +lips. It has struck him several times lately that he will have to give +up good cigars, and take to a churchwarden pipe and shag instead. But, +so far, the churchwarden and the shag remain in the future. + +"12, or 12 bis, Piazza d'Azeglio?" inquires Byng. + +"Was _what_ 12 or 12 bis?" replies his friend, with a somewhat obviously +intentional obtuseness; but Byng is far too thoroughly healthy and happy +a young animal this morning to take offence easily. + +"I mean Miss Le Marchant's address," he answers, explaining as amiably +as if he had not been perfectly aware that it was only "cussedness" that +had dictated the query. + +There is a slight pause. Burgoyne would like to answer that he does not +remember--would like still more to answer that he does not see what +business it can be of Byng's; but, since he is not destitute of +common-sense, a second's reflection shows him that he has no good reason +for either the lie or the incivility, so he replies, pretty calmly, with +his eyes still on his leading article: + +"I believe Miss Le Marchant said 12 bis." + +Having obtained the information he wanted, and finding his companion not +conversationally disposed, Byng is moving away again, when he is +arrested by Jim's voice, adding to the intelligence he has just given +the monosyllable: + +"Why?" + +"Why what?" asks Byng, returning readily, and laughingly mimicking the +intentional obtuseness so lately practised on himself by the other. + +"Why did you ask?" + +"I am thinking of paying my respects there this afternoon, and I did not +want to ring at the wrong bell." + +A short silence. Jim's head is partly hidden by his _Galignani_. + +"Did Miss or Mrs. Le Marchant ask you to call?" + +Byng laughs. + +"Both of them are as innocent of it as the babe unborn!" + + +"You asked yourself then?" (in a snubbing voice). + +Byng nods. + +"And she said yes?" + +The plural pronoun has dropped out of sight, but neither of them +perceives it. The younger man shakes his sleek head. Jim lays down his +paper with an air of decision. + +"If she did not say 'Yes'--if she said 'No,'" he begins, with an accent +of severity, "I fail to understand----" + +"She did not say 'No,'" interrupts Byng, still half laughing, and yet +reddening as well. "She began to say it; but I suppose that I looked so +broken-hearted--I am sure I felt it--that she stopped." + +As Jim makes no rejoinder, he continues by-and-by: + +"After all, she can but send me away. One is always being sent away" +(Jim wishes he could think this truer than he does); "but now and again +one is not sent, and those are the times that pay for the others! I'll +risk it." + +There is a hopeful ring in his voice as he ends, and again a pause +comes, broken a third time by the younger man. + +"Come now, Jim"--looking with a straight and disarming good humour into +his friend's overcast countenance--"speak up! Do you know of any cause +or impediment why I should not?" + +Thus handsomely and fairly appealed to, Burgoyne, who is by nature a +just man, begins to put his conscience through her paces as to the real +source of his dislike to the idea of his companion's taking advantage of +that introduction which he himself has been the means--however +unwillingly--of procuring for him. It is true that Byng's mother had +adjured him, with tears in her eyes, to preserve her boy from +undesirable acquaintances; but can he, Burgoyne, honestly say that he +looks upon Elizabeth Le Marchant as an undesirable acquaintance for +anyone? The result of his investigations is the discovery of how +infinitesimal a share in his motives regard for his young friend's +welfare has had. The discovery is no sooner made than he acts upon it. + +"My dear boy," he says--and to his credit says it heartily--"I see no +earthly reason why you should not go; you could not make nicer friends." + +"Then why will not you come too?" asks Byng, with boyish generosity. + +The other shakes his head. "They had much rather I stayed away; they +have taken me _en grippe_." + +"Pooh! Nonsense! You fancy it." + +"I think not"--speaking slowly and thoughtfully--"I am not a fanciful +person, nor apt to imagine that my acquaintances bother their heads +about me one way or another; but when people try their best, in the +first instance, to avoid recognising you at all, and on every subsequent +occasion endeavour to disappear as soon as you come in sight, it is not +a very forced assumption that they are not exactly greedy for your +society." + +This reasoning is so close that Byng is for the moment silenced; and it +is the other who shortly resumes: + +"I think it is because I remind them of the past; they have evidently +some unpleasant association of ideas with that past. I wonder what it +is." + +The latter clause is addressed more to himself than to Byng. + +"Perhaps some of them have died, or come to grief, and they are afraid +of your asking after them," suggests the younger man. + +"On the contrary--they are all--one more flourishing than another." + +"Well, I would give them one more trial, anyhow; I am sure they would +come round. Give them time, and I am sure they would come round!" cries +Byng sanguinely; adding, "What could have been pleasanter than Mrs. Le +Marchant's manner when you presented her to Miss Wilson?" + +The mention of Miss Wilson recalls to Jim the extremely unpleasant +moment of that presentation, thus brought back to him--the moment when +Amelia had looked so middle-aged, and Cecilia so flashy; recalls to him +also the conviction that has been growing upon him since yesterday, of +the more than wisdom, the absolute imperative duty on his part, of +avoiding a repetition of that comparison which had forced itself upon +his notice in the church of San Miniato. + +"You had better come," persists Byng still, like a magnanimous child, +holding out half his cake to his friend; whether, like the same child, +with a semi-hope that it may be refused, or whether, on the other hand, +it may have crossed his mind that, where there are two visitees, the +chances of a _tête-à-tête_ are improved by there being also two +visitors. + +"My dear boy," returns Jim, this time with a testiness handsomely +streaked with irony, "you are really too obliging; but, even if I wished +it--which I do not--or even if _they_ wished it--which they do _not_--it +is in this case quite impossible, as I am engaged to go shopping with +Amelia." + +Probably the blow is not a knockdown one to Byng; at all events, he +bears the rebuff with his habitual healthy good temper, and goes off to +put on a smarter tie. Burgoyne, thinking no such improvement in his +toilette necessary, strolls away to the Anglo-Américain. It is true that +he has covenanted to escort Amelia to the shop for Cantagalli ware, +though there is no particular reason why, had he so wished it, the +purchase of the dinner-service that is to grace their Bayswater symposia +might not have been deferred for twenty-four hours; and indeed, as +things turn out, it has to be so deferred. + +As he opens the door of the Wilson sitting-room his future father-in-law +brushes past him, with evident signs of discomposure all over his +clerical figure and spectacled face; and, on entering, he finds equal, +if not superior, marks of upset equanimity on the countenances of the +three women that are the room's occupants. Over the wood fire--Sybilla +alternately roasts and freezes her family, and this is one of her +roasting days--Cecilia is stooping, in evident search for some object +that has been committed, or tried to be committed, to the flames. The +other two are looking on with an air of vexed interest. Sybilla is the +first to address him. + +"You have appeared at a not very happy moment," she says, with a sigh; +"we have been having a family breeze; it has sent my temperature up +nicely! It is 100, 100, Point 2." + +The mention of Sybilla's temperature is always enough to put Jim in a +rage. It is therefore in no very feeling tone that he returns: + +"If it were 1,000, Point 99, I should not be surprised, in this +atmosphere! Good Heavens, Cis, are not you hot enough already?" + +The young lady thus apostrophised rises, with some precipitation, and +with a very heated complexion, from her knees, holding in her hand, +however, the object of her quest--a rather charred small parcel, done up +in white paper, and with a fragment of white ribbon still adhering here +and there to it. + +"Father behaves so childishly," she says, with irritated undutifulness. + +"You must own that it was enough to provoke him," strikes in Amelia's +mild voice. + +"What was enough to provoke him? How has he shown his childishness? For +Heaven's sake, some of you explain!" cries Jim impatiently, looking from +one to the other. + +But with this request none of the three appears in any hurry to comply. +There is a distinct pause before Cecilia, seeing neither of her seniors +shows any signs of relieving her of the burden of explanation, takes +that burden upon herself. + +"The fact is," she says, setting her little rescued packet on the table +beside her, and beginning to fan herself, "that Mr. Dashwood, the man to +whom I was engaged, has chosen to marry. I am sure"--with a shrug--"no +one has the least desire to deny his perfect right to do so; and this +morning there arrived by post a bit of his wedding-cake! I suppose he +meant it civilly; but father chose to take it as an insult to himself, +and though it was addressed to me, he threw it into the fire. I am very +fond of wedding-cake; so, as soon as father's back was turned, I fished +it out again!" + +Jim laughs, with more vigour perhaps than heartfelt amusement. + +"Bravo, Cis! You are a real philosopher! We might all learn a lesson +from you." + +"What have you done with your nice friend?" asked Sybilla languidly. +"Amelia, dear, this _couvre-pied_ is slipping off me again. What a +sympathetic voice he has! I am sure he has been a great deal with sick +people." + +"I left him putting on his best tie to go out calling. No, calm +yourself, Cecilia, not on you; it is not your turn to-day." + +"Whose turn is it then?" asks the girl, with an interest not at all +blunted by the mortifying incident of the cake, which, indeed, she has +begun to nibble with apparent relish. + +Jim hesitates a second--a second during which it strikes him with a +shock that he already finds a difficulty in pronouncing Elizabeth Le +Marchant's name. He manages to evade the necessity even now by a +circumlocution. + +"I believe it is the Piazza d'Azeglio upon which that luminary is to +shine." + +"Is he going to see that lovely creature to whom you introduced me +yesterday?" cries Amelia, with good-natured enthusiasm. "I heard her +telling him that she lived in the Piazza d'Azeglio. Oh, Jim, how pretty +she is! One ought to pay for being allowed to look at her." + +Many women, whose plainness is incontestable, are able to be just to +their better favoured sisters; but Amelia is more than just--she is +lavishly generous. + +Burgoyne rewards her with an affectionate look--a look such as would +make her swear that, beside Miss Le Marchant, as beside Dumain's fair +love, + + "Juno but an Ethiop were!" + +"She looks as if she had had a history; that always improves a woman's +appearance," says Cecilia pensively, holding a fragment of the fateful +cake suspended in air, and regarding it with a melancholy eye. "Has +she?" + +"I never asked her." + +"Why did not you go too?" inquires Amelia, judiciously striking in, as +is her habit, as often as she perceives that her younger sister is +beginning to get too obviously upon her own _fiancé's_ nerves; a +catastrophe which something in the tone of his last remark tells +her--though she does not quite understand why it should--is imminent. +"They are old friends of yours, are not they? They may be hurt if they +find that a perfect stranger like Mr. Byng is in a greater hurry to +visit them than you are." + +Before Burgoyne's mental vision rises a picture of Elizabeth's heavenly +eye wandering indifferently over the dear old friend's shoulder to find +its home in that of the perfect stranger. But he says kindly, and even +playfully: + +"Why did not I go too? Because I was under the impression that I was +engaged to go with another lovely being to choose crockery, was I not? +Am I not?" + +Amelia's answer is conveyed by a series of nods and winks executed +behind her sisters' backs, which he presently understands to imply that +she desires a private interview. It is not immediately that he grasps +what she is driving at, since dumb-show is often puzzling to the person +at whom it is aimed, though clear as day to the dumb-shower. As soon, +however, as he masters what her wish is, he hastens to comply with it; +and five minutes later finds them _tête-à-tête_ in the hideous little +dining-room which had been the scene of their reunion, and of many +after-meetings. + +"I could not say so, of course, before _her_," remarks Miss Wilson, as +soon as they are out of earshot, "or she might have insisted upon my +going. She is very unselfish sometimes; but the fact is, I do not think +I ought to leave Sybilla again to-day. You see, she was alone the whole +of yesterday afternoon; and when we came back we found her in a very low +way. She had been reading her book of prescriptions--you know the book; +all the prescriptions which she has had for the last ten years bound up +together--and we rather dread her bringing it out, as she always fancies +that she is going to have the disease prescribed for." + +"Humph!" + +"And, after all, happiness ought not to make one selfish, ought it?" +says Amelia, with a gentle sigh of abnegation, as she ruffles her +pale-haired head against his coat-sleeve. "I have so much of you +now--oh, so much!--not to speak of----" + +"Cecilia, of course, is incapacitated by grief?" interrupts Jim +brusquely. "She will be going up and down upon the mountains like +another unfortunate fair one. But your father? He will be at home, will +he not?" + +"Yes, he will be at home," replies Amelia, slowly and doubtfully, as if +not finding a very satisfactory solution in this suggested arrangement; +"but, as you know, it never answers to leave father and Sybilla alone +together for long. You see, he does not believe that there is anything +the matter with her; he thinks that she is as well as you or I" (a gush +of warm feeling towards his father-in-law rushes over Jim's heart); "and +though he tries to prevent himself from showing it to her, yet I am +afraid, poor dear, that he is not very successful." + +Jim laughs. + +"And to-day," continues Amelia, "he is naturally a good deal upset about +Cecilia and that wedding-cake; it _was_ very impertinent to send it--was +not it?--though she does not seem to see it. I hope"--with a wistful +smile, and a repetition of the fond friction of her head against his +sleeve--"that when _you_ throw _me_ over----" + +This is a hypothesis, suggested with perhaps unwise frequency by poor +Miss Wilson, which never fails to exasperate Jim. + +"If we are going to talk nonsense," he breaks in brusquely, and with no +attempt to return or reward her caressing gesture, "I may as well go." + +"Go to the Piazza d'Azeglio," says she coaxingly, her spirits raised by +the harshness of tone of his interruption of her speech, and half +persuading herself that it owes its birth to the supposition being too +painful to be faced by him. + +He looks at her strangely for a moment, then--"Why do you wish me to go +to the Piazza d'Azeglio?" he asks, in a tone that is no longer overtly +cross, only constrained and odd. "Why are you driving me there?" + +"Because I think you would like it," she answers; "because"--taking his +hand and passing her lips, which he feels to be trembling a little, very +gently over the back of it--"because all through your life I want you to +have exactly what you like, always." + +He draws his hand away; not unkindly, but as if shocked at the humility +of her action. + +"That is so likely," he says mournfully. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + + +There is no particular mirth in Burgoyne's mind as he mounts the stone +stairs of the house which announces itself as 12 bis, in the commonplace +new square of the Piazza d'Azeglio. But yet it is evident that, if he +wishes to be in tune with the mood of the family to whom he is going to +pay his respects, he must be not only mirthful, but musical. As the door +of the _entresol_, to which he is directed by the porter, opens in +answer to his ring, bursts of laughter, among which he can plainly +detect the voice of Byng, assail his ear, mingled with music, or rather +noise of a sort, but what sort his ear, without fuller evidence than is +yet before it, is unable to decide. The person who has admitted him is +an elderly Englishwoman, whose features at once strike him as +familiar--so familiar that it needs scarcely one reaching back of +memory's hand to capture the fact of her having filled the office of +nurse at the Moat, at the period when the nursery there had been the +scene of those frantic romps in which he himself had taken a prominent +part, and in which Elizabeth had been to him by turns so able a second, +or so vigorous an adversary. He would like to claim acquaintance with +her, and, perhaps, if she had made any difficulty as to admitting him, +might have screwed up his courage to do so; but as she lets him in +without delay or hesitation, he follows her in silence along the passage +of a by no means imposing little _entresol_--they are not so well off as +they used to be, is his passing thought--is ushered into a small +sitting-room, and, entering behind his own name, which has been +completely drowned by the din issuing from within, has time, before the +consciousness of his own appearance has disturbed it, to take in the +details of a group which his entry naturally breaks up. Set slantwise +across one angle of the room is an open cottage-piano, and beside it +stands Elizabeth, her elbow resting on the top, and all her pensive face +convulsed with helpless laughter. Upon the music-stool is seated a large +collie dog, supported from behind in an upright position by Byng. Before +him is a score of music, from which he is obviously supposed to be +playing, as indeed he is doing in a sense--that is to say, he is +bringing down first one large paw and then another heavily on the keys, +accompanying each crash with a short howl to express the agony inflicted +upon his nerves by his own performance. The scene is so entirely +different a one from what he had expected: the immoderately laughing +Elizabeth has so much more kinship with the sweet hoyden of the Moat +than with the pale woman with a history of his two last meetings, that +for a second or two Burgoyne stands in the doorway as if stunned. It is +not till Mrs. Le Marchant, coming out of an inner room, advances to +greet him, that he recovers himself. + +"How do you do?" she says, smiling, and with less constraint than he has +of late learnt to expect. "Are you fond of music?" (putting, as she +speaks, her hands up to her ears). "I hope so! Did you ever hear such a +shocking noise?" + +"I do not know which I admire most, the vocal or the instrumental part +of the performance," replies he, laughing; but even as he speaks both +cease. + +Elizabeth lifts her elbow from the piano, and Byng removes his hands +from under the dog's arms, who at once, joyful and released, jumps down, +upsetting his music-stool with the impetus of his descent, and yet +immediately, with all a dog's real good-heartedness, begins to swing a +handsome tail, to show that he bears no real malice for the odious +practical joke that has been played upon him. The clamorous fall of dog +and music-stool reveals an object which had been hidden behind both, in +the shape of a little boy, in whose behalf, as it darts across Jim's +mind, the eccentric concert, for which he has come in, must have been +got up. + +"Oh, _do_ go on!" cries the child shrilly. "Oh, _do_ make him do it +again! Oh, why do you stop?" + +And indeed through the whole of the ensuing conversation this cry recurs +at short intervals with the iteration of a guinea-hen. But none of the +three performers seems disposed to comply with this request. Two of them +sit down decorously on chairs, and the third throws himself upon the +floor panting, showing a fine red tongue, and dragging himself +luxuriously along on his stomach to show his relief at his _corvée_ +being ended. The child has followed Elizabeth, and now stands beside +her, tiresomely pulling at her white hands. + +"Bertie has come to spend the day with us," she says, looking +explanatorily up at Jim, but speaking with a formality very different, +as he feels, from the exuberant ease and mirth that had marked her +intercourse with Byng. + +Jim had already had a flash of speculation about the child, as to +whether he might be a late-come little brother, arrived on the scene at +a period subsequent to his own connection with the family; since plainly +the span of his small life did not stretch to a decade. + +"Bertie is a new friend," he says kindly. "I do not know Bertie." + +"His mother, Mrs. Roche, is a cousin of ours; she has a villa on +Bellosguardo. Perhaps you know her?" + +"I am going to a party at her house on Wednesday," cries Jim, in a tone +of eager pleasure at the discovery of this fresh link, and of the vista +of probable meetings which it opens up. "I shall meet you there?" + +Elizabeth turns her head slightly aside and shakes it as slightly. + +"No?" + +"We are not going out." + +The formula implies mourning, and yet the clothes both of Elizabeth and +her mother are unmistakably coloured ones, and give no indication of an +even moderately recent loss. But it is so clear that Miss Le Marchant +means to add no explanation that he has to change the subject. + +"Though Bertie is not an old friend," he says, smiling, "yet I have come +across one here to-day--she opened the door to me; I should have liked +to shake hands with her, only she looked so haughty--she never used to +look haughty at the Moat." + +"Do you mean nurse?" she asks. + +"Yes, I knew her in an instant; she is not in the least changed, less +even"--hesitating a little, as if doubtful whether the stiffness of +their new relations warranted a personality--"less even than you." + +She snatches a hasty look at him, a look upon which he sees, to his +surprise, imprinted a character of almost fear. + +"You must be laughing at me," she says, in a voice in which he detects +an undoubted tremor; "I am very much changed." + +There is such obvious apprehension in her whole manner, that his one +thought--after a first flash of astonishment--is to reassure her. + +"Of course I was only speaking of externals," he says quickly; "ten +years could hardly be expected to leave any of us quite where we were as +to our inner selves;" then, seeing her still look flurried, and becoming +himself nervous, he adds, rather stupidly, the hackneyed Swinburnian +couplet-- + + "'Time turns the old days to derision, + Our loves into corpses or wives!' + +though I never could see that that was quite a necessary alternative!" + +Ere the words are out of his mouth she has risen with precipitation, and +begun hurriedly to re-arrange the branches of lilac in a scaldino on the +table near her. She is apparently so awkward about it that one odorous +white bough falls out on the floor. Before Jim can stoop to pick it up, +Byng has rushed to the rescue. In eagerly thanking him, in receiving it +back from him, and accepting his services in replacing it among its +perfumed brothers, the girl, perhaps involuntarily, turns her back upon +her former interlocutor, who sits for a moment staring rather blankly at +her, and wondering what sting there could have lurked in his apparently +harmless words to drive her away so abruptly. Whatever may have driven +her away, there is certainly no doubt as to her being gone. Nor as Jim +sees her moving about the room, followed by Byng, and showing him her +treasures--the little wild red and yellow tulips she plucked in the +field this morning; the chicken-skin box she bought at Ciampolini's +yesterday, and mixing all that she shows with her delicate light +laughter--can he buoy himself up with any reasonable hope of her ever, +with her own good will, returning. He must be looking more blank than he +is conscious of, for Mrs. Le Marchant's voice sounds quite apologetic in +his ears, when, having been, like himself, deserted by her companion, +she takes a seat near him. + +"Elizabeth is so proud of her bargains," she says, glancing with a +lenient smile towards her daughter; "she must show them to everybody." + +"She never offered to show them to me," replies Jim, rather morosely; +then, becoming aware of the almost puerile jealousy evidenced by his +last remark, he adds: + +"I am afraid I said something that annoyed Miss Le Marchant; I cannot +think what it could have been. I told her how wonderfully little changed +I thought her in the last ten years; but it could not have been that, +could it?" + +The mother's eye is still following her child, and, if it were not an +absurd assumption, Burgoyne could have fancied that there was a sudden +moisture in it. + +"She is very sensitive," Mrs. Le Marchant answers slowly; "perhaps it +would be safer not to say anything about herself to her." + +"Perhaps it would be safer," rejoins Jim, with some ill-humour, "if you +were to draw up a list of subjects for me to avoid; I have no wish to +play the part of bull in a china shop; and yet I seem to be always doing +it; imprimis" (striking the forefinger of his left hand with the right), +"imprimis the Moat." + +He pauses, as if expecting a disclaimer, but none such comes--"The past +generally" (moving on to the second finger and again halting; but with +no more result than before). "Yourselves" (reaching the third finger). +Still that silence, which, if it mean anything, must mean assent. He +looks impatiently in her face, to seek the response which her lips +refuse him. + +"On your own showing," she says gently, though in a rather troubled +voice, "you have the whole field of the present and the future left you; +are not they wide enough for you?" + +His brows draw together into a painful frown. + +"Perhaps I have as little cause to be fond of them as you have of the +past." + +It is a random shot, a bow drawn at a venture; but it could not have hit +more true apparently had it been levelled with the nicest aim. + +As her daughter had done before her, Mrs. Le Marchant rises hastily, and +leaves him--leaves him to reflect ironically upon how wisely Amelia had +acted in insisting upon his visiting these "dear old friends," upon whom +the effect of his conversation is so obviously exhilarating. + +"I wish I had not come; I wish it was time to go home!" + +The small fractious voice that wails the two preceding sentences seems +to be Jim's own mouthpiece. It is, in point of fact, the voice of +Bertie, who, tired of uttering his unregarded request for the repetition +of the concert which had filled him with such delight, has of late been +trying the effect of his unassisted powers to bring about the desired +consummation, by putting his arms as far as he can round the dog's body, +and endeavouring to lug him towards the music-stool. The collie has been +enduring this treatment for five minutes--enduring it with an expression +of magnanimous patience, which seems to say, that, though it is +undoubtedly an unpleasant experience, yet, as it is inflicted upon him +by one of his own family, he must of course put up with it, when +Elizabeth goes to the rescue. Elizabeth goes alone, since Byng is held +in converse by her mother at the other side of the room. Verbal +persuasions having entirely failed, she tries to loosen the child's +arms; but his grasp, though puny, is obstinate, and the only perceptible +result of her endeavours is the utterance by her young friend of the two +polite aspirations above recorded. + +"He does not want to sing any more to-day," Jim hears her saying in her +gentle voice; "you really are hurting him; he is too polite to say so; +but you are squeezing him so tight that you really _are_ hurting him. +Why now" (with a little accent of pain), "you are hurting _me_." + +Jim has been looking with a lack-lustre eye out of the open window at +the young plane trees exchanging their frowsy buds for infant leaves; at +the one Judas tree pranking in its purple blossoms in the Piazza; but at +that low complaint he makes one step across the room, and, whipping off +Master Bertie alike from long-enduring dog and plaintive woman, stoops +over the latter as she sits upon the floor, passing one hand over the +other, upon which the child's angry fingers, transferred from his first +victim, have left rosy prints of pain. + +"I wish I had not come; I wish it was time to go home!" whimpers the +little boy. + +"Since he is so anxious to go home, I will take him, if you like," says +Jim in a stiff voice; "I must be going myself." + +She looks up at him from her lowly posture, a charming, half-apologetic, +wholly peace-making smile fleeting across her small face, while she +still chafes her hand--that little pinched hand which makes him feel so +ridiculously tender. + +"Are you, too, sorry that you came?" she asks. + +The question takes him by surprise. He is not prepared for so friendly +and almost intimate a sequel to her short, shy answers, and her abrupt +quitting of him. He hesitates how to answer it; and as he hesitates, she +rises and stands beside him. It is not easy for a grown person to rise +gracefully from a seat on the floor. Jim catches himself thinking with +what a roll and a flounder Cecilia would have executed the same +manoeuvre; but Elizabeth, supple and light, rises as smoothly as an +exhalation from a summer meadow. + +"If I was rude to you just now," she says, rather tremulously; "if I am +ever rude to you in the future, I hope you will understand--I hope you +will put it down to the fact that I--I--am very ignorant of--that I know +very little of the world." + + * * * * * + +The two men are gone; so is the child; so is the dog; and Elizabeth is +shutting up the piano and removing the score. + +"What a noise we made!" she says, smiling at the recollection. + +"If you make such a shocking noise again, the signora and the other +lodgers will infallibly interfere." + +Mrs. Le Marchant has followed her daughter, and now throws one arm about +her slight neck, with a gesture of passionate affection. + +"If you knew," she says, in a voice of deep and happy agitation, "what +it was to me to hear you laugh as you did to-day!" + +"I have a good many arrears in that way to make up, have not I, mammy? +And so have you too," answers the younger woman, laying her sleek head +down caressingly on her mother's shoulder; then, in a changed and +restless voice: "Oh, if we could stop that man talking about the Moat! +Why does he go on hammering about it?" + +"Why indeed?" replies Mrs. Le Marchant with a shrug. "Men are so +thick-skinned; but it is rather touching, his having remembered us all +these years, is not it? For my part, I had almost entirely forgotten his +existence--had not you?" + +"Absolutely!" replies Elizabeth, with emphasis; "and if he will only let +me, I am more than willing to forget it over again. Oh, mammy" (turning +her face round, and burying it on her mother's breast), "why can't we +forget everything? begin everything afresh from now--this delightful +_now_?" + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + + +A reconciliation is seldom effected without some price being paid for +it. Jim's with Elizabeth, if it can be called such, is bought at the +cost of a small sacrifice of principle on his part. No later than this +morning he had laid it down as a Median rule that he should avoid +opportunities of finding himself in Miss Le Marchant's company; and yet, +not only has he spent the major part of the afternoon in her society, +but, as he walks away from her door, he finds that he has engaged +himself to help Byng, on no distant day, in doing the honours of the +Certosa Monastery to her and her mother. On reflection, he cannot quite +explain to himself how the arrangement has come about. The proposal +certainly did not originate with him, and still less with the two ladies +so strangely shy of all society. The three have somehow been swept into +it by Byng, who, either with the noblest altruism, or because he feels +justly confident that he has no cause for jealousy of his friend (Jim's +cynical reflection is that the latter is the much more probable reason), +has insisted on drawing him into the project. + +Jim Burgoyne is not a man whom, as a rule, it is easy either to wile or +cudgel into any course that does not recommend itself to his own +judgment or taste--a fact of which he himself is perfectly aware, and +which makes him remorsefully acknowledge that there must indeed have +been a traitor in the citadel of his own heart before he could have so +weakly yielded at the first push to what his reason sincerely +disapproves. But yet it is not true that remorse is the leading feature +of his thoughts, as he walks silently beside his friend down the Via di +Servi. It ought to be, perhaps; but it is not. The picture that holds +the foreground of his memory is that of Elizabeth sitting on the floor, +and sending him peace-offerings from her pathetic eyes and across her +sensitive lips. It was very sweet of her to think it necessary to make +him amends at all for her trifling incivility, and nothing could be +sweeter than the manner of it. How gladly would he buy some little +rudeness from her every day at such a price! But yet, as he thinks it +over, the manner of it, the ground on which she rested her excuse, is +surely a strange one. That she should attribute her light lapse from +courtesy to want of knowledge of the world comes strangely from the +mouth of a woman of six-and-twenty. If it be true--and there was a naïve +veracity in lip and eye as she spoke--how is it to be accounted for? Has +her mind, has her experience of life, remained absolutely stationary +during the last ten years? Her tell-tale face, over which some pensive +story is so plainly written, forbids the inference. It is no business of +his, of course. Amelia, thank Heaven! has no story; but, oh! if someone +would tell him what that history is! And yet, three days later, he +voluntarily puts away from himself the opportunity of hearing it. + +During those three days he sees no more of her. He does not again seek +her out, and accident does not throw her in his way. He buys his +Cantagalli dinner-service in company with Amelia; chooses the +soup-tureen out of which he is to ladle mutton broth for the inhabitants +of Westbourne Grove; he tastes of the wedding-cake that has cost Cecilia +so dear, and he avoids Byng. On the third day he can no longer avoid +him, since he is to occupy, as on the San Miniato occasion, the fourth +seat in the fiacre which conveys himself and the Misses Wilson to the +garden-party at the villa in Bellosguardo inhabited by Mrs. Roche, the +mother of the amiable Bertie. The Wilsons' acquaintances in Florence are +few, and, as far as Burgoyne has at present had the opportunity of +judging, evil. It is, therefore, with a proportionate elation that +Cecilia dresses for a party at which she will meet the bulk, or at least +the cream, of the English society. It is to Byng's good nature that she +and her sister owe the introduction to a hostess whose acquaintance is +already too large to make her eager for any causeless addition to it; +but whose hand has been forced by Byng, in the mistaken idea that he is +doing a service to his friend Jim. + +They are late in setting off, as Amelia is delayed by the necessity of +soothing Sybilla, who has been reduced to bitter tears by a +_tête-à-tête_ with her father, in which that well-intentioned but +incautious gentleman has been betrayed into suggesting to her that she +may possibly be suffering from biliousness. The administering of +bromide, to calm her nerves under such a shock; the reiterated +assurances that every member of the family except its head realizes the +monstrosity of the suggestion, take up so much time that Amelia herself +has to reduce to a minimum the moments allotted to her own toilette. She +has cried a little with Sybilla, for company partly, and partly out of +weariness of spirit. That and hurry have swollen her eyelids, and +painted her cheeks with a hard, tired red, so that it is an even more +homespun figure and a homelier face than usual, that seat themselves +opposite Burgoyne, when at length they get under weigh. + +He, Burgoyne, has been impatient of the delay, impatient to set off and +to arrive; yet he would be puzzled to say why. He knows, on no less +authority than her own word, that he shall not meet Elizabeth; and yet +the mere feeling that the mistress of the house to which he is going is +of the same blood as she; that he shall see the rude, spoilt child, +whose ill-tempered pinch made her utter that low cry of pain, suffice to +give a tartness to his tone, as he inquires the cause of her lagging, of +the panting, flushed, apologetic Amelia. Byng and Cecilia have been +sitting waiting for some time in the _salon_, from which Sybilla has +removed her prostrate figure and tear-stained face; but they have been +entertaining each other so well--she in paying him a series of marked +attentions, and he in civilly and pleasantly accepting them--that the +half-hour has not seemed long to either. But the party, in motion at +last, has passed the Roman Gate, and is climbing up and up between the +high walls, each step giving it a greater vantage ground over the Flower +City, before Burgoyne recovers his equanimity. + +The spring comes on apace. In the gardens above their heads laurestinus +bushes, with all their flowers out (as they are never seen in England, +where always the east wind nips half the little round buds before they +can expand into blossom), stand in white and green; rosemary trees, +covered with gray bloom, hang down; and against the azure of the high +heaven purple irides stand up arow. It is one of those days on which one +can with bodily eyes see the Great Mother at her quickening work; can +see her flushing the apple-boughs, unfolding the fig-leaves, and driving +the lusty green blood through the sappy vines. And in the slow creeping +of the fiacre up the twisting white road, each turn lays the divine +Tuscan city before them in some new aspect of arresting loveliness. + +At Florence, one is like Balaam with the Israelites. One is taken to see +her from one point after another, each point seeming fairer than the +last; but the likeness ends there, for no wish to curse the sweet town +could ever arise in even the morosest heart. The hills have put on their +summer look of dreamy warmth and distance. Before they have reached the +hilltop the boon Italian air has kissed most of the creases out of Jim's +temper, and the brick-red from Amelia's cheek-bones. He looks +remorsefully from the triumphant beauty around, into the poor, fond face +opposite to him--looks at her with a sort of compassion for being so +unlovely, mixed with a compunctious admiration and tenderness for her +gentle qualities. He may touch her hand without fear of observation, so +wholly is Byng enveloped in the mantle of Cecilia's voluble tenderness. + +"Have you forgiven me?" he asks, smiling; "I will make any apologies, +eat any dirt, say anything, short of allowing that Sybilla is not +bilious." + +They have reached the villa, and turned out of the dusty highway into a +great cool courtyard, that has a Moorish look, with its high arches, +over which the Banksia roses tumble in cascades of yellow and white. It +seems wrong that the voices which come from the tea-tables under the +Loggia should be chattering English or Yankee, instead of cooing that +"sweet bastard Latin" that better suits place and day. + +The hostess shakes hands absently with Burgoyne, offers his fair charges +iced coffee, and then, having discharged her conscience towards them, +draws Byng away for an intimate chat. From her hands he passes into +those of several other willing matrons and maids, and it seems likely +that the party who brought him will see him no more. Amelia, unused to, +and unexpectant of attention, is perfectly content to sit silent, +sipping her cold coffee; but Cecilia is champing her bit in a way which +frightens her future brother-in-law so much that he cowardly takes the +opportunity of her looking in another direction to lure his docile +_fiancée_ on to the broad terrace, whence all the young green glory of +the Arno's plain, and the empurpled slopes and dreamful breast of +Morello, are to be seen by the looker's beauty-drunk eye. Upon this +terrace many people are walking and sitting in twos and threes, and in +one of the little groups Amelia presently discovers a female +acquaintance, who at once fastens upon her, and happening to be +afflicted with a relative visited by a disorder of something the same +nature as Sybilla's, subjects her to a searching and exhaustive +catechism as to the nature of her sister's symptoms. Sybilla's symptoms, +whether at first or second hand, have invariably the property of driving +Jim into desert places; and, in the present instance, seeing no +likelihood of an end to the relation of them, he turns impatiently away, +and, without much thought of where he is going, follows a steep downward +path that ends in a descent of old stone steps, between whose crevices +green plants and little hawkweed blow-balls flourish undisturbed, to a +large square well, framed by a low broad parapet, with flower-beds set +around it, and the whole closed in by rugged stone walls. No one +apparently has had the same impulse as he, for, at first, he has the +cool solitude to himself. He sits down on the parapet of the still well, +and drops in pebbles to see how deep the water is; and anon lifts his +idle look to the empty niches in the crumbling wall--niches where once +wood-god, or water-nymph, or rural Pan stood in stone, now empty and +forsaken. Out of the wall two ilexes grow, and lift themselves against +the sapphire arch, which yet is no sapphire, nor of any name that +belongs to cold stone; a blue by which all other blues are but feeble +colourless ghosts of that divinest tint. + +He is roused from the vague reverie into which the cool silence and the +brooding beauty around have lulled him, by the sound of approaching +voices. He is not to have his well any longer to himself. He looks up +with that scarcely latent hostility in his eye with which one regards +the sudden intruder into a railway carriage, when--counting on keeping +it to one's self for a long night journey--one has diffused limbs and +parcels over its whole area. The owners of the voices, having descended, +as he had done, the age-worn steps, come into sight. They are both men, +and one of them he recognises at once as a Mr. Greenock, a well-known +stock figure in Florentine society, a mature bachelor diner-out, a not +ill-natured retailer of news, collector of _bons-mots_, and harmless +appendage of pretty women. Of the other, at whom he scarcely glances, +all he grasps is the fact that he is dressed in clerical attire, and +that the first words audible of his speech, as he comes within hearing, +is the name of an English county--Devonshire. The answer comes in a tone +of keen interest: + +"Ah, I thought there must be a screw loose!" + +As the new arrivals become aware of the presence of a third person, they +pause in their talk; but presently, Mr. Greenock having recognised Jim +and greeted him with a friendly nod and a trivial remark upon the +splendour of the day, they resume their interrupted theme, standing +together a few yards distant from him on the walk--resume it in a rather +lower but still perfectly audible key. + +"I thought there must be some reason for their shutting themselves up so +resolutely," continues Mr. Greenock in the gratified tone of one who has +at length solved a long-puzzling riddle. "I thought that there must be a +screw loose, in fact; but are you quite sure of it?" + +The other gives a sigh and a shrug. + +"Unfortunately there can be no doubt on that head; the whole lamentable +occurrence took place under my own eyes; the Moat is in my parish." + +"Devonshire!" "A screw loose!" "The Moat!" Burgoyne is still sitting on +the well-brim; but he no longer sees the lapis vault above, nor the +placid dark water below. A sort of horrible mist is swimming before his +eyes; it is of Elizabeth Le Marchant that they are speaking. Through +that mist he snatches a scared look at the speaker; at him whom but two +minutes ago he had glanced at with such a cursory carelessness. Does he +recognise him? Alas! yes. Though changed by the acquisition of a bald +head and a grizzled beard, he sees him at once to be the man who, at the +time of his own acquaintance with the Le Marchant family, had filled the +office of vicar of their parish; under whom he had sat on several drowsy +summer Sunday mornings, trembling at the boys' perilous antics in the +great curtained pew, and laughing inwardly at Elizabeth's +mirth-struggling efforts to control them. + +"And you say that they never held up their heads again afterwards?" +pursues Mr. Greenock in a tone of good-natured compassion, that is yet +largely tinged with gratified curiosity. + +"They left the neighbourhood at once," returns the clergyman. "Dear me, +how time flies! it must be ten years ago now, and I never saw them again +until I met the unhappy girl and her mother yesterday, driving in the +Via Tornabuoni; but"--lowering his voice a little more--"you will +understand that this is strictly _entre nous_; that it must not go any +further." + +"What do you think I am made of?" cries Mr. Greenock in a burst of +generous indignation; "but"--stepping a pace or two nearer to his +interlocutor--"I am not quite sure that I have got the details of the +story right; would you mind just running it over to me again?" + +Jim has been sitting in such a stunned stillness that it is perhaps no +wonder that they have forgotten his neighbourhood. At all events, the +clergyman is evidently about to comply with his companion's request and +recapitulate the tale. If Jim preserves his motionless attitude but five +minutes longer, he will be put into possession of that story whose +existence he has already heavily conjectured, and the imagining of which +has made him often, within the last week or two, turn with nausea from +his food, and toss restlessly upon his bed. Without any trouble on his +part, without any possible blame attaching to him, he will learn the +poor soul's secret. Never! If the devil wish to tempt him with a +prospect of success, it must be with a less unhandsome bait. Almost +before the two startled scandalmongers have recalled the fact of his +existence by the abrupt noise of his departure, he is half-way back to +the terrace, that mist still before his eyes, and a singing in his ears. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + + "A merry going out bringeth often a mournful return home; and a + joyful evening makes many times a sad morning." + + +The return drive, as it is quicker, being all downhill, so is it a more +silent one than that to the villa had been. Byng, indeed, is as gaily +willing to be fondled by Cecilia as he was on his way up; but there is a +mixture of maidenly reserve and sub-tender reproach in her manner which +makes their relations somewhat strained. The afternoon's pleasuring has +had a jading effect upon Amelia's spirits, as, after having been sucked +dry on the subject of Sybilla's maladies, and afterwards at once shaken +off, by her female acquaintance, she has not been fortunate enough to +meet with anyone else to exchange talk with, and has sat in disconsolate +yet patient loneliness on a stone bench, afraid to stir from the spot +where he had left her, lest she might miss her lover, of whom, however, +she has unaccountably seen nothing, until when the Angelus is ringing, +and the shadows spreading, he has come to give her curt notice, with +half-averted face, that the fiacre is at the door. In point of fact, he +has been too conscious of the disorder of his features to dare to expose +them sooner than he can help to her fond scrutiny. He would give +anything to be able to sit beside, instead of opposite to her during +their drive home, as a profile is a much less tell-tale and more +governable thing than a full face; and he is painfully conscious that as +often as she imagines she can do it without being detected by him, she +is stealing looks of inquiring anxiety at him. He tries to put her off +the scent by spasmodic comments upon the entertainment that they have +just quitted; and she does her best to keep up the ball of conversation, +since she sees that it is his wish. But in vain. Each forced remark +falls still-born, leading to nothing. It is Cecilia who at last succeeds +in giving a fillip to the languid talk. + +"I did not know that Mrs. Roche was a cousin of your beauty, Miss Le +Marchant," she says suddenly, growing tired of her pensive attitude, and +addressing herself to Jim. + +He starts guiltily. "Did not you?" + +He must look odd; for even Cecilia's large and preoccupied cow eyes rest +upon him with an expression of surprise. + +"I wonder why she was not there to-day." + +It is not exactly a question, yet her great shallow orbs do not seem to +be going to leave his face until he makes some response. He forces +himself to do so. + +"I understood Miss Le Marchant to say that they are not going out just +now." + +"And why are not they, pray?" inquires Cecilia, in an injured voice, as +if the retirement from the world of the two ladies in question were a +personal injury to herself; "they are not in mourning, all their gowns +are coloured ones, and they do not look as if they had bad +health--perhaps, however" (after a moment's thoughtful attempt to find a +solution)--"perhaps, however, they may have something--one never +knows--people have such unexpected diseases nowadays--hysteria, perhaps, +or fits." + +At this ingenious suggestion Jim is conscious of a writhing motion +passing over the stalwart form of Byng beside him. In his own brain, if +there is room for anything but the desire to evade Amelia's eyes, is a +dim sense of relief at a suggestion so grotesquely wide of the mark as +that made by the younger Miss Wilson. In perfect innocence of the effect +produced upon her companions by her bright hypothesis, Cecilia goes on +to remind her sister of the parallel case of a very handsome girl whom +they had once reckoned among their acquaintance, and who was +periodically being found by her family with her head under the fender. +But Amelia rises but faintly to the reminiscence, and the remainder of +the drive is accomplished in a general silence. + +The next day is the one which had been fixed upon for the expedition to +Certosa. It was only with a very large admixture of wormwood in his +prospective pleasure that Jim had ever looked forward to this party, but +now he anticipates it with absolute dread. How can he face Elizabeth and +her mother, with that ominous phrase of the "screw loose" still ringing +in his ears? He feels a traitor towards them, in that he has, however +unwillingly, overheard it. To add to his mental uneasiness is the fact +of his having as yet not broken to Amelia his intentions with regard to +the disposal of his afternoon. Amelia's eyes have for years had the +habit of covertly watching him to read his wishes almost before they +rose; but in their gaze yesterday he had, unless misled by his guilty +conscience, detected a new quality, a quality of alarm and +enlightenment. He will get over the communication of his piece of news +as early in the day as may be; so, having finished breakfast before Byng +has put in his, as usual, tardy appearance, he takes his hasty way to +the Anglo-Américain. He finds the family there in a more placid frame of +mind than that which they had presented on one or two of his recent +visits. Sybilla is expecting her doctor, on which occasions she always +likes to have a more lacy coverlet than usual thrown over her languid +feet; a greater efflorescence of pink ribbons about her thin throat, and +a disposition of pots of lilies about her wan head. Amelia, active and +long-suffering as usual, is moving about in patient execution of her +vain and tiresome whimsies. Cecilia sits tranquilly in the window, +knitting an elaborate pair of men's woollen gloves, not indeed--to do +her justice--for anyone in particular, but with a wise forethought for +the accidents and possibilities of life. Since, on this occasion, his +sweetheart shows no inclination to draw him away into the dining-room +for a _tête-à-tête_, Jim has to take the bull by the horns, and rush +into his subject in a more public manner than he had intended. But the +one desire to get it over outbalances all minor considerations. + +"Amelia," he begins suddenly, and even to himself his voice sounds +discourteous and abrupt, "shall you want me this afternoon?" + +The moment that the words are out of his mouth it strikes him that the +form into which he has thrown his question is more than necessarily +untender. She stops in the patting of Sybilla's smart pillows, and +perhaps there is something a little abrupt too in her monosyllabic +"Why?" + +"Because," standing before the fireplace, with his back to the three +women, and throwing the words over his shoulder, "because, if you do +not, Byng and I were thinking of going to Certosa." + +There is a pause. He hears that Cecilia's needles have stopped clicking; +her work has dropped into her lap. In another moment she will have +proposed to come too. "With the Le Marchants," he goes on, shooting out +the fateful words like bullets; "a _partie carrée_." + +Still silence behind him. He cannot go on staring for ever at the +billets of wood of the unlit fire. He has to turn round and face his +companions. The only one of them whose pleasure or displeasure in his +announcement he at all heeds--Amelia--is stooping over Sybilla, +rearranging in a high, picturesque tier behind the invalid's long back, +three cushions, and her face is almost entirely hidden from him by her +attitude. + +"Of course if it is in the least inconvenient, if you have made any +other plans for me--if, in fact, you want me," he continues in a tone +that is at once apologetic and dogged. + +"But I do not," cries she, answering at last, and with a distinct laugh +in her voice, a laugh into whose quality he is not anxious too curiously +to inquire. "You must not be so conceited as to think that I always want +you! In point of fact, you could not have hit upon a day that suited me +better. I am really rather 'throng' to-day, as they say in Yorkshire. I +have quite a hundred things to do, and father wants me to help him to +correct the proofs of his sermon, the sermon he preached at Mr. Moffat's +church on the Holy Innocents' Day. He has been asked to publish it--is +not that flattering? Poor father, I believe he will end by being a +popular preacher--in fact" (laughing again), "the whole family is going +up in the world!" + +There is such a forced mirth in her tone that Jim feels much more +guiltily uncomfortable than if she had treated him to hysterics or +sulks. Nor does his satisfaction with himself increase, when, upon his +rising to depart, she runs out of the room after him, to say to him, +while her homely face twitches against her will, how much she hopes that +he will enjoy himself; how perfectly happy she shall be without him; and +how eagerly she shall look forward to hearing all about it from him +to-morrow. "It will be almost better than going to Certosa herself," she +ends. + +But against the unnatural altitude of this last flight of abnegation +nature revolts, and, becoming conscious of a break in her voice, she +hastily retreats and gets back into the _salon_, in time to see Cecilia +shaking her elaborate head, and to hear her remarking with slow +emphasis, "Mark my words! There is something odd about those people, and +it is not hysteria!" + +With spirits sensibly worsened by his interview, Burgoyne returns to the +Minerva, and, mounting to Byng's bedroom, finds that young gentleman +stretched upon his bed, gloom in his usually jocund eye, and an open +letter lying on the floor beside him. But Jim is far too preoccupied to +notice anybody's gloom but his own. + +"I came to ask at what hour we are to set off this afternoon?" he says +with a sort of flat moroseness in his tone. + +"_We_, indeed!" rejoins the other with a groan, and rolling over with a +sort of petulance on the bed, dishevelling the neatly-smoothed pillow by +burrowing his ruffled head in it--"we!" + +There is such a heart-rent woe in the accent with which the last +monosyllable is pronounced that for a moment Burgoyne has no other idea +but that his young friend, too, has become aware of the "screw loose," +has heard, perhaps in detail, that story from before whose ominous +opening he himself had fled. The thought sends his heart into his +throat, so as to render him incapable of asking an explanation of the +other's affliction. + +"We!" repeats Byng for the third time, and very indistinctly, as he is +now lying entirely on his face. + +"Why do you go on saying '_we_' in that idiotic way?" asks Jim at last, +recovering his voice--recovering it only to employ it in imitating the +younger man's accents, in a manner which displays more exasperation than +natural talent for mimicry. It is not a politely-worded inquiry, but it +has the desired result of acting as a tonic on him at whom it is aimed, +making him not only roll over once again, but actually sit up. + +"Why do I say _we_?" repeats he, his young eyes looking lamentably out +from under the fall of his tumbled hair--"because it is not _we_! it is +_you_! You lucky dog, you will have her all to yourself!" + +Jim heaves an inaudible sigh of relief. Whatever may be the cause of his +companion's enigmatical conduct, it is evidently not what he had feared. +There is, however, no evidence of relief or any other mild quality in +his next remark. + +"If you would talk less like an ass, I should have a better chance of +knowing what you are driving at!" + +The query seems only to renew and deepen the other's tribulation. He +falls back into his former attitude. + +"You will hold the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand!" he groans. "No, +do not go" (with a sudden and startling change of tone, springing off +the bed, as he becomes aware that his friend is making for the door, +unable to bear those rhapsodies, whose full distastefulness to their +hearer the utterer little conjectures). "I'll tell you! I'll explain. +Why are you in such a deuce of a hurry? I cannot go to Certosa because I +have just heard from my mother that she is to arrive to-day. She will be +here in another hour." + +Jim's fingers are already on the door handle, but this piece of news +arrests him. + +"Your mother? I did not know that she was coming abroad." + +"No more did I!" + +"It must have been a very sudden thought!" + +"Very!" + +"What a delightful surprise for you!" + +"Delightful!" There is so ludicrous a discrepancy between the adjective +and the accent with which it is rendered that Jim bursts into a bitter +laugh. + +"She would be flattered if she could see your elation at the prospect of +meeting her!" + +Byng's blood rushes up under his clear smooth skin at his friend's jeer, +but he answers, with some dignity: + +"I do not think you have any right to imply that I am not always glad to +see my mother; I do not deny that, if it had been equally convenient to +her, I had rather she should have come twenty-four hours later." + +Jim feels ashamed of himself, though, being an Anglo-Saxon, he has far +too much false shame to confess it directly, and what he means for an +_amende_, when it comes, is of an oblique nature. + +"I think far the best plan will be to put off the excursion altogether; +I am sure that I am not particularly keen about it." + +The indignant red has rapidly died out of Byng's face; his placability +being only to be surpassed by his slowness to take offence. + +"Is it possible?" he asks in a tone of stupefaction; then, with a sudden +tardy recollection of the rosy fetters in which his friend is held by +another lady, he adds--"But, of course, you are not--I was forgetting!" + +Jim winces. + +"As it is your party, you had better send up a note at once to the +Piazza d'Azeglio." + +"No, do not let us both throw them over!" cries Byng eagerly. "Heaven +knows it was hard enough to persuade them to accept in the first +instance. If you go we shall at all events keep our communications open; +and you--you will say something to her for me?" + +"What kind of something?" inquires the older man carpingly. "Am I to +tell her only what a fine fellow you are in general, or anything more +circumstantial?" + +"Tell her----" begins Byng in a rapt voice; but apparently the sight of +his companion, who has somewhat ostentatiously pulled out a note-book +and pencil, and assumed the patient air of one about to write to +dictation, dries the stream of his young eloquence; "tell +her--_nothing_." + + "'Nothing speaks our grief like to speak nothing!'" + +replies Jim, leaving the room with this quotation on his lips, rather +hastily, for fear lest the other should change his mind. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + + +It is five o'clock, the hour fixed for the expedition to Certosa, and in +the _entresol_ of 12 bis, Piazza d'Azeglio, Mrs. and Miss Le Marchant +are sitting--hatted, gloved, and _en-tout-cas-ed_--in expectation of the +arrival of their double escort. Elizabeth's afternoon has, so far, not +been a lazy one, as her little cousin Bertie and his dog have again been +good enough to pay her a lengthy visit, and the former has insisted upon +a repetition of the musical performance of the other day, though with +truncated rites. Without the powerful aid of Byng, Elizabeth has found +it a task considerably beyond her strength to hold a large collie, +poised on his hind-legs, on a music-stool. He has jumped down +repeatedly, and now lies on his back--an attitude in which experience +has taught him he is less attackable than in any other--sawing the air +with his fore-paws, and lifting his lip in a deprecating grin. + +"Where is Mr. Byng?" cries Bertie fretfully, baulked in his efforts to +make his wily victim resume the perpendicular. "I want Mr. Byng! Why +does not Mr. Byng come?" + +"Perhaps if you went to the window," suggests Mrs. Le Marchant, in that +patiently coaxing voice in which we are wont to address a tiresome child +on a visit, instead of the buffet which we should bestow upon it were it +resident--"perhaps if you went to the window and looked out, you would +see him coming round the corner of the Piazza." + +The suggestion is at once accepted, and the child, balancing his fidgety +body on a chair, and craning his neck over the window-ledge, is shouting +shrill pieces of information as to the passers-by to his friends within +the room. Presently he shrieks out in triumph: + +"I see him! He is just coming into sight! He is walking so fast! No!"--a +moment later, with a changed and disgusted note, as a nearer view +corrects the first impression--"it is not he at all! It is only the +other one!" + +"_Only the other one!_" It is quite impossible that the sound of the +child's voice can reach down to the open portal of No. 12 bis, at which +Jim has now arrived, and it is also certain that neither of the ladies +whom he has come to visit is likely to word her surprise at his having +arrived alone with the frank brutality which is confined to the +utterances of infancy; and yet Jim, as he presents himself, announced by +Annunziata, the hard-featured possessor of a lovely name, is quite as +conscious, as if he had overheard the boy's slighting remark, of being +"only the other one!" + +Before he can begin his apologies, the eager little boy has run up to +him. + +"Where is Mr. Byng? I want Mr. Byng! Why has not he come? Elizabeth +wants Mr. Byng!" + +At this last clause Burgoyne is conscious of a dark, hot flush rising to +his face, and, partly to hide it, partly to avoid seeing what the effect +of his communication may be upon her for whom it is meant, he stoops +over the child, addressing his answer to him: + +"Mr. Byng is very sorry, very sorry indeed, but he cannot come." + +"Cannot come! Why cannot he come?" + +"Because he has gone to meet his mammy," replies Jim, trying to speak in +a light and playful voice; "she is to arrive unexpectedly in Florence +to-day; no good boy would leave his mammy when she had come all the way +from England to see him, would he?" + +But to this fustian and copy-book generality the young gentleman +addressed is too angry to reply. + +"It is a great disappointment to Byng; he bid me tell you what a great +disappointment it is to him!" says Jim, turning to the two ladies, and +looking apologetically from one to the other. + +Elizabeth's head is averted; but on her mother's features he sees, or +fancies he sees, slight evidences of a feeling not unlike relief. + +"It is not of the least consequence," she says cheerfully; "we can go +any other day just as well." + +Burgoyne's heart sinks. In these last sentences he too surely traces +signs of the evasive and would-be-retrograde nature which has all along +characterized Mrs. Le Marchant's relations with him. It has seemed to +him that he has been looking forward to the expedition with sensations +of almost unmixed dread, and yet, now that he seems to be going to be +delivered from it, what he experiences certainly does not come under the +head of elation. + +"You wish to give up the excursion?" he asks, in a tone which he +honestly tries to make as neutral and colourless as he can. + +"Well, I thought so--we thought so, did not we, Elizabeth?" + +The person thus addressed lifts her head, and all over her features he, +eagerly scanning them, sees written a warm acquiescence in her motherly +decision, an acquiescence which, as her eyes meet his--his, in which his +disappointment is written a good deal more plainly than he is +aware--changes slowly and sweetly into indecision. + +"I do not know," she answers, her gentle look clouded a little, and yet +kindly interrogating his; "if Mr. Burgoyne is willing to burden himself +with us; and Bertie must play at being a grown-up gentleman, and help to +take care of us! Bertie, will you play at being a grown-up gentleman?" + +To this proposition Bertie assents warmly, and begins thrasonically to +recount to inattentive ears the high and singular deeds with which he +will celebrate his arrival at maturity. But, as Mrs. Le Marchant puts a +strenuous veto upon his adoption as escort, and as his nurse appears at +the same juncture to fetch him, he and his dog are presently removed; +and the other three set off without him. + +Burgoyne has chartered a fiacre, with a horse as little lame as is ever +to be found in Florence, and in this vehicle they are presently rolling +along. None of them are in very exuberant spirits. Burgoyne is as well +aware as if her sensitive lips had put the fact into words, that for +Elizabeth the pleasure of the outing has evaporated with the absence of +Byng, and that it is only the soft-hearted shrinking of a sweet nature +from inflicting mortification on a fellow-creature that has set her +opposite to him in her white gown. He has never seen her dressed in +white before, and says to himself that it was for Byng's sake that she +has made herself so summer-fine. But even if it be so, it is not Byng +who is profiting by it. It is for him, not Byng, that the large Italian +light is glorifying its thin fabric. Lily-pure, snow-clean she looks, +sitting under her sunshade; and he sits over against her in a stupid +silence. It seems to him as if his only safety were in silence, as if, +did he speak at all, he must put into brutal words the brutal questions +that are dinging in his head, that seem knocking for utterance against +the gate of his set teeth. + +"What is the 'screw loose'? How is she an 'unfortunate girl'? Why have +they 'never held up their heads since'? Since what?" He looks, in a +fierce perplexity, from one to the other of those delicately poised +heads, held aloft with such modest dignity. Surely it is beyond the +bounds of possibility that any heavily hideous shame or leaden disgrace +can ever have weighed upon them! Probably the intensity of his thought +has given an intensity to his look, of which he is unaware; for he +presently finds the soft veiled voice of Elizabeth--Elizabeth who has +hitherto been as mute as himself--addressing him: + +"How very grave you look! I wonder what you are thinking of?" + +The question, striking in so strangely pat, brings him back with a +start. For a second an almost overpowering temptation assails him to +tell her what is the object of his thought, to answer her with that +whole and naked truth which we can so seldom employ in our intercourse +with our fellow-men. But one glance at her innocent face, which has a +vague trouble in it, chases the lunatic impulse, though he dallies with +the temptation to the extent of saying: + +"Would you really like to know? Do you really wish me to tell you?" + +He looks at her penetratingly as he puts the question. Before either his +eyes or his manner she shrinks. + +"Oh, no--no!" she cries with tremulous haste, "of course not! I was only +joking. What business have I with your thoughts? I never wish to know +people's thoughts; if their looks and words are kind, that is all that +concerns me!" + +He relapses into silence; but her words, and still more the agitated +manner in which they are pronounced, make a vague yet definite addition +to the disquiet of his soul. + +By setting off at so judiciously late an hour as five o'clock, they have +avoided the greater part of the flood of tourists which daily sets +towards Certosa, and which they meet, tightly packed in crowded +vehicles, sweeping Florence-wards in a choking cloud of white dust; so +that on reaching the Certosa Monastery, sitting so grandly on its +hilltop, they have the satisfaction of finding that it is temporarily +all their own--all their own but for the few white-frocked figures and +tonsured heads which an economico-democratic Government has left to hint +what in its palmy days was the state of that which is now only a +Government museum. + +A burly monk receives them. He does not look at all a prey to the +pensive sorrow one would expect at the desecration of his holy things +and the dispersion of his fraternity. Probably, in his slow peasant mind +there is room for nothing but self-congratulation at his being one of +the few--only fifteen in all--left to end their days in the old home. He +leads them stolidly through chapels and refectory--the now too roomy +refectory, where the poor remnant of Carthusians dine together only on +Sundays--through meagrely furnished cells, in one of which he +matter-of-factly lets down the front flap of a cupboard to show what +forms his daily dining-table except on the happy Sunday, to which he +must look forward so warmly. + +"Must not he love Sunday!" cries Elizabeth, with sparkling eyes. "Do not +you long to know what they have for dinner on Sundays? Do you think he +would mind telling us?" + +Elizabeth's spirits are going up like quicksilver. It is evident, +despite the delicate melancholy of her face, that she is naturally of an +extremely joyous and enjoying nature, and gifted with a freshness of +sensation which belongs ordinarily rather to the green age at which Jim +first remembers her, than to the mature one which he knows for a +certainty that she has now reached. She is filled with such a lively and +surprised delight at all the little details of arrangement of the +monastic life that he is at last impelled to say to her, something +wonderingly: + +"But you must have seen hundreds of monasteries before?" + +"Not one." + +"But there are, or were, such swarms of them all over Italy." + +"I dare say. I was never in Italy before." + +"Not really?" + +She lifts up her hand, and waves it at him with an air of hasty +deprecation of further question, growing suddenly grave. + +"Don't ask me whether I have been here or there, or whether I have done +this or that. I have never been anywhere or done anything." + +Her desire for a cessation of all inquiries as to her doings is +obviously so earnest that Jim of course complies with it. Once or twice +before he has been struck by her strange want of acquaintance with facts +and phenomena, which would have come as a matter of course within the +range of observation of every woman of her age and station. Against his +will, a horrid recollection flashes upon him of a novel he had once +read, in which the hero exhibits a singular ignorance of any events or +incidents that had occurred within the ten years preceding the opening +of the story--an ignorance which towards the end of the third volume was +accounted for by its transpiring that he has spent the intervening +period in a convict prison! He drives the grotesque and monstrous idea +with scourges out of his mind; but it recurs, and recurs to be displaced +by another hardly less painful, if in some degree more probable. Can it +be possible that the crushing blow which has fallen upon the Le Marchant +family, and upon Elizabeth in particular, whitening the mother's hair, +and giving that tear-washed look to the daughter's sweet eyes--can it be +possible that that heavy stroke was insanity? Can Elizabeth have been +out of her mind? Can she have spent in confinement any of that past, +from all allusion to which she shies away with a sensitiveness more +shrinking than that of + + "The tender horns of cockled snails"? + +He is so much absorbed in his tormenting speculations about her that for +the moment he forgets her bodily presence; and it is only her voice, her +soft sane voice, that brings him back to a consciousness of it. They +have been led into a _salon_, in which, as their guide tells them, the +confraternity used to receive any "personage" that came to visit them. +Alas, no personage ever visits the poor frocked remnant now! It is a +charming lightsome room, that gives one no monastic idea, with pretty +airy fancies of flower-wreaths and arabesques, and dainty dancing +figures painted on wall and ceiling and doors. One of these latter is +half open, and through it comes an exquisite sudden view of the hills, +with their sharp-cut shadows and their sunlit slopes; of shining +Florence at their feet, of the laugh of young verdure, and the wedded +gloom and glory of cypress and poplar filling the foreground. Upon +Elizabeth's small face, turned suddenly towards him, seems reflected +some of the ineffable radiance of the Tuscan light. + +"When next I dream of heaven," she says, in her tender, vibrating voice, +"it will be like this. Do you ever dream of heaven? I often do, and I +always wake crying because it is not true; but"--with a joyful change of +key--"I will not cry any more without better cause. Since I came here I +have found earth beautiful and delightful enough for me!" + +He looks back at her, hardly hearing her words, but chiding himself +fiercely for the disloyal thought which he has entertained, however +unwillingly; the thought that the foul fiend of madness could ever, even +temporarily, have defiled the temple of those eyes whence reason and +feeling, so sweetly wedded, are shining out upon him, unworthy as he is +of their rays. + +"Since you came here?" he repeats in a sort of dreamy interrogation; +"only since you came here?" + +"You must not take me up so sharply!" she cries in a voice of playful +remonstrance, in which there is a lilt of young gaiety. "I warn you that +I will not be taken up so sharply! I did not say, '_only_ since I came +here!' I said, 'Since I came here!'" + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + + +Presently they pass into the still, cloistered garden, in whose unmown +grass-squares gray-blue flowers are blowing, beside whose walks pale +pink peonies are flushing, and round whose well the grave rosemary +bushes are set. Through the whole place is an atmosphere of deep peace, +of silence, leisure, dignity. It is virtually a _tête-à-tête_, as their +tonsured guide, seeing their evident harmlessness, has left them to +their own devices; and Mrs. Le Marchant has sat down to rest upon a +camp-stool which Elizabeth has been carrying ever since they left the +carriage. It has fidgeted Jim to see her burdened with it; for let a man +be ever so little in love with a woman, his tendency always is to think +her as brittle as spun glass, to believe that any weight, however light, +will bruise her arm--any pebble, however tiny, wound her tender foot. He +has offered to relieve her of it, but she has refused--playfully at +first--telling him she is sure that he will lose it; and afterwards, +when he insists, more gravely, though with gentle gratitude, saying that +it would never do for her to get into the habit of being waited upon, +and that she always carries mammy's things. It is perhaps absurd that a +woman of six-and-twenty should speak of her mother as "mammy," yet the +homely and childish abbreviation seems to him to come "most fair and +featously" from her lips. + +They stay a long time in the sun-kissed garden, considering that there +is after all not very much to see there. But Elizabeth's light steps, +that to-day seem set to some innocent dancing-tune, are loath to leave +it; she must smell the great new peonies, monthly-rose-coloured, faintly +perfumed; she must steal a sprig of rosemary "to put into her coffin +when she dies," at which he catches his breath, shuddering; she must +peep into the well. He insists on her holding his hand for safety as she +leans over to do so; her little fingers grip his tight as she cranes her +neck and bends her lissom body. But what a small handful they are, +compared to those other fingers--those kind, useful, but undoubtedly +solid fingers--which he has held perfunctorily through many a +matter-of-fact hour. By-and-by they stray away together out of the +bounteous air of the hilltop into a semi-underground church, to see the +fifteenth and sixteenth century monuments, which look as fresh as if +their marble had left its home in Carrara but yesterday. They stand +looking down at those three kin who lie side by side before the high +altar, each with head dropped a little sideways on the shoulder, as if +overcome by sudden sleep. They step on into the side chapel, where that +yet nobler mitred figure, fashioned by Donatello's hand, stretches his +prone length above his border of fruit and flowers, among which lies a +carved skull, through whose empty eye-holes--strange and grisly fancy +contrasting with so much beauty--a mocking ribbon runs. Elizabeth is +perfectly silent the whole time, but no flood of talk could make Jim +half so conscious of her presence, palpitating with sympathy and +feeling, could give half the confidence he enjoys that she will +introduce no allusion to either Kensal Green or Woking, as it is but too +probable that the excellent companion of most of his Florentine rambles +would have done. + +Elizabeth has been perfectly silent, yet at last she speaks. It is in +the Chapter House, where, as most of us have done, they have suddenly +come upon another tomb, the tomb of one lying full-length on the +pavement before the altar, with no separating edge of marble or +wrought-iron railing to keep him from the foot of the passer-by. He lies +there, portrayed with such an extraordinary vividness of life about his +prostrate figure and his severe, powerful face, that one feels inclined +to speak low, lest he should lift his white lids and look rebuke at us. +In the lines about his mouth there is a hint of sardonic mirth. Is +he--hearing our foolish chatter--touched with a grave contemptuous +amusement at it? Or is he keeping in his sleep the memory of some four +hundred years old jest? Elizabeth has involuntarily crept close to +Burgoyne's side, with the gesture of a frightened child. + +"Are you sure that he did not stir?" she asks tremulously under her +breath. Her next thought is that her mother must see him too, this +wonderful living dead man, and they presently set forth to return to the +garden to fetch her. But apparently she has grown tired of waiting for +them, for, as they enter the cloistered _enceinte_, they see her +advancing to meet them. + +"I would not be left alone with him at night for the wealth of the +Indies," Elizabeth is saying, with a half-nervous laugh. "Oh, mammy, you +would never have forgiven me if I had let you go without seeing him! +Why, what is this?"--with a sudden change of key--"what has happened?" +For as they draw near to Mrs. Le Marchant they see that her walk is a +staggering one, and that the usually healthy, clear pallor of her face +is exchanged for a livid whiteness. "What is it, darling?" cries +Elizabeth in an accent of terror. "Oh, Jim, she is going to faint!" In +the agitation of the moment she has unconsciously returned to the +familiar address which she used always to employ towards him in their +boy-and-girl days. "Put your arm round her on that side, I can hold her +up on this. Let us get her back to the camp-stool." + +A camp-stool is neither an easy nor a luxurious seat upon which to +deposit a half-swooning woman, but the joint exertions of her daughter +and of Burgoyne presently succeed in replacing her on her rickety +resting-place; their arms interlace each other behind her back, and +their anxious eyes look interrogation at one another above her head, +half dropped on Elizabeth's slight shoulder. + +"Does she often faint? Is she apt to do it?" asks Jim, in a whisper. + +"Never--never!" replies the girl in a heart-rent voice, raining kisses +on her mother's white face. "Oh, darling, darling, what has happened to +you?" + +Perhaps it is through the vivifying rain of those warm kisses, but a +little colour is certainly beginning to steal back into the elder +woman's cheek, and she draws a long breath. + +"Oh, if she could have a glass of water!" cries Elizabeth, greedily +verifying these slight signs of returning consciousness. "Get her a +glass of water! Oh, please get her a glass of water--quick! quick!" + +Burgoyne complies, though it is not without reluctant misgivings that he +withdraws the efficacious support of his own solid arm, and leaves +Elizabeth's poor little limb to bear the whole weight of her mother's +inert body. + +Their guide has, as before mentioned, disappeared; and Jim has not the +slightest idea in which direction to seek him. It is five good minutes +before he discovers him, standing near the door of the monastery, in +conversation with a visitor who is apparently just in the act of +departure. The stranger is in clerical dress; and, as he turns to nod +farewell to the monk, Jim recognises in his features those of the +Devonshire clergyman, whom he had last seen, and so unwillingly heard, +by the well-brim of the Bellosguardo villa. In a second a light has +flashed into his mind. Mrs. Le Marchant, too, has seen that +stranger--has seen him for the first time for ten years, since it is +evident that the recognition of mother and daughter in the Via +Tornabuoni, to which the Moat's late rector had referred, could not have +been reciprocal. It is to the fact of her having been brought suddenly +and unpreparedly face to face with that mysterious past, which seems to +be always blocking his own path to her friendship, that is to be +attributed the poor woman's collapse. A rush of puzzled compassion flows +over him as he realizes the fact, and his one impatient wish is to +return with all the speed he may to the forlorn couple he has left, to +reassure them as to the removal (even though it may only be a temporary +one) out of their path of the object of their unexplained terror. Will +the mother have imparted to her child the cause of her fainting, or will +she have tried to keep it from her? + +The first glimpse he gets when, having at length procured the desired +glass of water, he comes into sight of them, answers the question for +him. Mrs. Le Marchant is evidently partially recovered. She is sitting +up, no longer supported by her daughter's arm, and that daughter is +lying on her knees, with her head buried in her mother's lap. As he +nears them, he sees the elder woman hurriedly pressing her daughter's +arm to warn her of his approach, and Elizabeth obediently lifts her +face. But such a face! He can scarcely believe it is the same that laid +itself--hardly less bloomily fair than they--against the faint peony +buds half an hour ago; a face out of which the innocent glad shining has +been blown by some gust of brutal wind--scared, blanched, miserable. + +"Oh, yes, I am better, much better--quite well, in fact," says Mrs. Le +Marchant, pushing away the offered glass, and speaking with a ghastly +shadow of her former even cheerfulness. "Give it to Elizabeth, she needs +it more than I do! You see, I gave her a terrible fright!" + +He silently holds out the water to Elizabeth, and she, without +attempting to take the tumbler into her own trembling hand, drinks. He +looks with impotent pity from the bent blonde head to the prematurely +snow-white one. How can he word his reassurance to them without +appearing to thrust himself with officious insolence into their +confidence? It seems to himself that he solves the problem very +clumsily. + +"I am afraid you must have thought me but slow," he says, feeling that +he is dragging in the piece of information he is anxious to give them +with an awkward head-and-shoulder-ness: "but at first I couldn't find +our monk, and when I did, he was engaged--he was talking to a visitor--a +clergyman." + +He pauses, conscious that at the last word a tremulous shiver has passed +over the kneeling figure. + +"Yes, a clergyman," he goes on with nervous haste, hurrying to put them +out of their pain; "an elderly, gray-haired, English clergyman, who was +just in the act of going away; indeed, before I left, he had gone. I saw +him drive off!" + +Ere he has finished his sentence, he is seized by the apprehension that +there must appear to his listeners something suspicious in the laboured +details into which he is entering; presupposing, as they do, that he is +aware of there being for them an interest attaching to the fact of the +stranger's departure. And indeed, as he speaks, he is conscious that +Mrs. Le Marchant's frightened eyes, which have been taking surreptitious +trips round the peaceful garden, now come home with a no less alarmed +look to his face. + +"Was he--was he--an acquaintance of yours?" she asks, with an attempt at +a laugh--"this clergyman, I think you said he was--that you noticed him +so particularly?" + +"An acquaintance?" repeats Jim doubtfully; "what is an acquaintance? a +man whom one knew very little, and disliked a good deal, ten years ago; +and who passes one by without a gleam of recognition now--is that an +acquaintance?" + +Elizabeth's hat has fallen on the ground, and hitherto she has seemed +unconscious of the evening sunbeams smiting her uncovered head; now she +stoops and picks it up. + +"And you did not make yourself known to him then?" continues Mrs. Le +Marchant, still with that painful effort at lightness of tone. "You let +him drive off without telling him who you were? or asking him where he +was staying? or how long his visit to Florence is to last? or--or +anything?" + +Jim's eyes are fixed on her as she speaks with a compassionate +steadiness, under which hers quail waveringly. Is it possible that she +can imagine that she is deceiving him by this miserable pretence of +indifference? + +"I have no doubt that I shall be able to find out if you wish to know," +he answers gravely; "for I think he must be as much an acquaintance of +yours as of mine, since it was only at the Moat that I ever met him." + +He had thought that Mrs. Le Marchant was already as colourless as a +woman could be; but as he speaks, he sees her face take on a new degree +of pallor. She struggles unsteadily to her feet. + +"It is--it is getting late!" she says indistinctly; "we--ought--to +be--going home!" + +Even as she speaks she makes an uncertain step forward, but it is so +uncertain that he catches her by the arm. + +"You are not fit to move yet," he says with kind imperativeness; "rest +five minutes longer; it is not late, really--the sun is quite high +still." + +Convinced, either by the young man's eloquence, or, as is more likely, +by the shaking of her own limbs, Mrs. Le Marchant sits down again. +Elizabeth has risen to her feet, and now stands beside her mother. She +has said nothing, but he can see her trembling from head to heel. He +hears her voice now addressing him, but in so subdued a key that her +words are almost lost in the low blowing of the faint south wind that is +fondling the blades of the unshorn grass. + +"Did you say that he was gone? Are you sure of it?" + +"Yes, yes, quite sure! I saw him go." + +"Did you--did you happen to hear where he was staying?" + +"No, but"--with the greatest eagerness--"I can easily find out; nothing +can be simpler." + +Elizabeth is standing quite close to him, so close that he can see her +poor little heart leaping under the thin white gown, whose simple finery +had piqued him earlier in the day. She has apparently, in her new +terror, forgotten that there is any cause for concealing from him the +occasion of it. She turns instinctively to him, as a hurt child to the +nearest bystander. It seems to him the most natural thing in the world +that she should. They are both recalled to themselves by her mother's +voice. + +"You must think that we have lost our wits," she says with a sickly +smile; "but even if we have, I do not know what right we have to impose +upon a--a comparative stranger like you, the task of helping us to +gratify our--our idle curiosity." + +"But I am not a comparative stranger!" cries Jim vehemently; by this +time--he does not know how--he is holding a hand of each of the +trembling women in his. "I am not a stranger at all! I am a friend! Why +will not you treat me as one? Why will not you let me help you?" + +He glances with pitying, affectionate eagerness from one to other of the +woebegone faces on either side of him. The tears have come in sudden +flood to the elder woman, and are pouring over her white cheeks, +stopping the passage of her voice; but Elizabeth's fair eyes are +drearily dry, and speech comes clear and hopeless from her. + +"You are very good to us!" she says, giving the hand that holds hers a +little pressure, which he feels to be as cold as it is grateful; "at +least, I see that you want to be very good to us if we would let you; +but as to helping us"--with a slight despairing shrug--"no one can do +that; no one but God, and sometimes"--drawing a long, half-sobbing +breath--"I think that it would pass even His power." + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + + +There are few things more difficult than when one's mind is full of the +interests, cares, and sorrows of one set of friends, to have to empty it +suddenly of them, and refill it as suddenly with the entirely different, +and perhaps discrepant interests, cares, and sorrows of an altogether +alien set. + +Seldom in the course of their old and tried friendship has Jim Burgoyne +felt less disposed for the company and conversation of his valued ally, +Mrs. Byng, than when he knocks at the door of her sitting-room on the +morning following the excursion to Certosa. He cannot talk to her about +the Le Marchants, seeing that she has never even heard of their +existence; and if out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh, +his talk upon any other topic must be scant and jejune indeed. The only +cheerful side which his prospective visit turns to him is, that if he +were not with Mrs. Byng, he would be with Amelia; and that the +friendlily indifferent eyes of the former will, at all events, be less +likely than the hungrily loving ones of the latter to detect that he has +not slept a wink, and that he has not the remotest idea what he is +talking about. If he were to follow his inclination, he would be +bestowing his company this morning upon neither friend nor sweetheart, +but would be ransacking Florence for the piece of information he had +yesterday promised those two woebegone women to procure for them. Even +into the very midst of his heartfelt sore compassion for them, there +pierces a shamed unwilling flash of elation at the thought of what a +stride to intimacy his being entrusted with this commission implies, of +what an opening to indefinitely numerous future visits it affords. His +determination to conduct the search is at present a good deal more +clearly defined than the method in which that search is to be effected. +He can consult _Galignani_ as to the names and whereabouts of new +arrivals; but they could do that much for themselves. He could examine +the visitors' books of the different hotels; but Florence, though a +little city, is rich in hostelries, and this course would take time. He +could consult Mr. Greenock, the head and fount of all Florentine gossip, +and who, since he had seen him in conversation with the object of his +inquiries, would probably be able to satisfy them; but his acquaintance +with the good-natured newsmonger is not sufficiently intimate for him to +be able to pay him a morning visit with any air of probability of having +been impelled thereto by a desire for his company; and, moreover, he +shrinks with a morbid fear from any action which may lead, however +obliquely, to his being himself apprised of the terrible secret +which--it is no longer mere matter of conjecture--lies couched somewhere +in those two poor creatures' past. + +And meanwhile he knocks at Mrs. Byng's door, and is quickly bidden enter +by a cheerful English voice, the welcoming alacrity of whose tones +shames his own want of pleasure in the meeting. But he is too +unfortunately honest to express a joy he does not experience, and only +says, with a slight accent of reproach as he takes her ready hand, +heartily held out: + +"You should not spring these surprises upon us." + +She laughs a little guiltily. + +"It--it was a sudden thought; you see I--I had never seen Perugia." + +He laughs too. "Poor Perugia! I think it would have blushed unseen for a +good many more years if you had not begun to doubt the efficiency of my +chaperonage. Confess! you have come to look after the precious baby-boy, +have not you?" + +His tone is, as he himself feels, not quite a pleasant one; but the +mother is scarcely more prone to take offence than the son; and she +answers with an amiably hasty disclaimer: + +"It was not that I felt the least want of confidence in you--you must +not think that; but--but I had one of my presentiments! you know that I +am always a little superstitious; and three nights running an owl came +and hooted quite close under my window!" + +"As long as I have known your wood, it has had owls; and as long as I +have known them, they have hooted." + +"In the wood, yes, of course, and I like to hear them; but this one was +close under my window." + +Jim's only answer is to lift his hands and shoulders in protest against +his friend's weak-mindedness. + +"I had quite made up my mind that something had happened," continues +she, not much abashed by his scorn; "and it was the greatest relief when +I first caught sight of him at the station yesterday, looking just as +usual, a little thinner perhaps--does not he strike you as a little +thin? Has he been weighed lately? He gives me the idea of having lost a +pound or two since I last saw him. Is there a weighing-machine in the +hotel?" + +"It will be very easy to ascertain." + +"And how is Amelia?"--her cheerful eyes resting in friendly and +half-inquisitive interest on his sombre face. + +"Amelia is very well, thank you." + +"Amelia Wilson still?" + +"Yes." + +"For how long?"--laughing--"another ten years, I suppose?" + +"For three months, I believe; we are to be married as soon as they +return to England." + +"You do not say so?"--with an accent of lively and delighted +incredulity--"hurrah! poor Amelia! '_Tout vient à point à qui sait +attendre_;' and she has _su attendre_ with a vengeance, has not she?" + +"She is not going to _attendre_ any more," replies Jim dryly. + +"Then I shall have to give you a present, I suppose!" cries Mrs. Byng, +still with that delighted accent. "Something useful, I have no doubt. I +feel sure that Amelia would like something useful; why should not we +choose it to-day? Florence is an ideal place for buying presents; do you +think that Amelia would spare you to me for a whole morning?" + +Jim hesitates. It is not that he has any doubt as to Amelia's cheerful +renunciation of any portion of his time that he may see fit to abstract +from her; but the occupation suggested--that of squiring Mrs. Byng--is +not that to which he had purposed devoting his forenoon. She sees his +unreadiness to answer, and attributes it to a wrong cause. + +"Amelia will not?" cries she in a tone of surprise and disappointment. +"Well, I could not have believed it of her! Not even if you told her +that it is on purpose to buy her a present?" + +Jim breaks into an unavoidable smile. "How frightfully quickly your mind +moves! It leaps like a kangaroo! I never said that she would not resign +the precious boon of my society; on the contrary, I am sure that nothing +would give her greater pleasure, but--but--what will Willy say to my +monopolizing you?" + +At the excessive disingenuousness of this speech his conscience gives +him a severe prick, recalling to his mind the attitude of prostrate +affliction--stretched face downwards on his bed--in which his young +friend had received the news of his parent's prospective approach. A +light cloud passes over that parent's sunny face. + +"Willy has an engagement this morning," she answers more slowly, and +with less radiance than has hitherto marked her utterances; "nothing +could be sweeter and dearer than he was, and he is going to take me +somewhere this afternoon--to Fiesole or Petraia, or somewhere else +delightful; but this morning he has an engagement. He did not tell me +what it was, and I did not like to tease him with questions. You"--with +a rather wistful glance of interrogation at her companion--"do not +happen to know what it is?" + +Jim shakes his head, while a rather deeper shade than habitually lies +upon it settles on his careworn forehead. It is perfectly true that he +knows nothing of young Byng's engagement, but yet he has a shrewd +suspicion to what quarter of the town that engagement will lead him. + +"So that I rather counted upon you," continues Mrs. Byng, turning with a +somewhat crestfallen air to the window. + +"And you did not count in vain," replies Burgoyne, with a sort of forced +gallantry. It has flashed upon him that he will have to consent under +penalty of giving a detailed account of the reasons for his inability, +and that therefore he had better make a virtue of necessity, and do it +with a good grace. After all, the deferring for a couple of hours of his +researches cannot be of any great consequence to the persons in whose +behalf those researches are set on foot. To a suspicious ear there might +be something dubious in the sudden and galvanized alacrity of his +assent; but not a shadow of doubt crosses Mrs. Byng's mind as to her old +and tried ally being as pleased to avail himself of an opportunity for +enjoying her society as he has always showed himself during the twenty +years and more of their acquaintance. + +Protected by this happy misconception, she sets off, all smiles, though +at the outset of the expedition she finds that she has to modify her +project; and that Burgoyne shows himself restive as to _bric-à-brac_ +shops, and declines peremptorily to be any party to buying himself a +wedding present. He puts his objection upon the semi-jocose ground that +he shall be unable to avoid overhearing the price of her intended gift, +and that his modesty could not stand the strain of helping her to haggle +over it. Perhaps, however, deep in his heart is an unconscious feeling +that to receive nuptial offerings gives an almost greater body and +certainty to his on-striding fate than even the buying of +dinner-services and saucepans. So they go to the Accademia delle Belli +Arti instead, it having occurred to Jim that in a picture-gallery there +will be less opportunity for conversation, less opening for interested +inquiries on his companion's part as to Amelia and the minutiæ of his +future life with her, than there would be in the green walks of the +Cascine, or on the slopes of Fiesole. + +To Mrs. Byng, who is of almost as enjoying a nature as her son, and +whose spirits have been raised to a pitch even higher than their usual +one, by the disproof of her presentiments, it is all one where she goes, +so that she is taken somewhere, to see something. They stare up at the +big young David, and stand before Fra Angelico's ineffably happy +Paradiso, which yet brings the tears to the looker's eyes, perhaps out +of sheer envy of the little blissful saints dancing and frolicking so +gaily, or pacing so softly in the assured joy of the heavenly country. +They look at Botticelli's "Spring," fantastic wanton, with her +wildly-flowered gown, and her lapful of roses. The room in which she and +her joyous mates stand, with their odd smiles, is one of the smaller of +the gallery. It is rather a narrow one, and has an open window, giving +upon a little court, where, in a neglected garden-close, wallflowers are +growing, and sending in their familiar perfume. The sweet Francia saints +in the picture hung on the wall directly opposite, and the rapt Madonna, +must surely smell them. If they do not, it must be because a young +couple, he and she, who are leaning out in their eagerness to enjoy it, +have intercepted all the homely fragrance. Jim's eyes are still on the +"Spring," and he is thinking half absently how little kinship she has +with the goitred green women, whom his nineteenth-century disciples +present to the confiding British public as representatives of Sandro +Botticelli's manner, when his attention is diverted by hearing the voice +of Mrs. Byng at his elbow addressing him in an excited tone: + +"Why, there's Willy! Do not you see? There! leaning out of that window, +and who--who is the lady whom he has with him?" + +Jim looks quickly in the direction indicated, and at once recognises a +slender gray figure which to-day has not assumed its white holiday gown. +Elizabeth, whom he had been pitifully picturing lying heart-struck on a +sofa in the seclusion of her own little _entresol_, probably with +lowered blinds and tear-smarting eyes, is leaning on the window-ledge +with her back to the pictures--she whom he had always credited with so +delicate a sensibility for Art, with her back to the pictures, as if the +live picture which Byng's eager face presents to her pleases her better. +A sense of indignation at having been tricked out of his compassion--who +had ever seemed to need it less than the suave little figure about whose +blonde head a Tuscan sunbeam, stolen through the easement, is amorously +playing?--makes him forget to answer the question addressed to him, +until it is repeated in a still more urgent key. + +"Who _is_ she? Who _can_ she be? Have not you an idea? He has not seen +us! Had not we better creep quietly away? Most likely he would rather +not meet me; I could not bear to make him look foolish!" + +The suggestion that there can be anything calculated to put Willy to the +blush in being discovered in conversation with Miss Le Marchant has the +effect of giving Burgoyne rapidly back his power of speech. + +"What nonsense!" he cries almost rudely; "I wish you would not let your +imagination run away with you so, and of course I know who she is; she +is an--an acquaintance of mine. I--I presented Willy to her; she is Miss +Le Marchant." + +"Miss Le Who?" repeats the mother eagerly, catching the name +imperfectly, as we usually do a name that is unfamiliar to us, proving +how much of imagination and memory must go to eke out all our +hearing--"an acquaintance of yours, is she? Oh, then, of course" +(drawing a long breath of relief), "she is all right." + +"All right!" echoes Jim, with an unconscious snappishness of tone, +greater than he would have employed in defence of the reputation of any +other lady of his acquaintance, probably because, ever since the day +when he stood an unwilling eaves-dropper by that well on Bellosguardo, a +hideous low voice has been whispering to his own sick heart that perhaps +she is not "all right!" "All right! of course she is all right." + +"But she is lovely!" cries Mrs. Byng, not paying much heed to the testy +emphasis of her companion's asseveration, and continuing to stare at the +unwitting girl; "what a dear little face! but," the alarm returning +again into her voice, "is it possible that she is here alone with him? +If so, of course she is American. Oh! do not say that she is American." + +"Of course she is not," answers Burgoyne, half laughing at the plaintive +intensity of this last appeal; "of course she is all that there is of +most English, and there is her mother, as large as life, within a yard +and a half of her; there, do not you see? looking at the Ghirlandajo." + +Mrs. Byng removes her eyes from the daughter, and fixes them with a +scarcely less degree of interest upon the then indicated parent. + +"So that is the mother, is it? a very nice-looking woman, and what +beautiful white hair! Mrs. Le----what did you say their name was? Ah! +Willy has seen us, poor boy!"--laughing--"how guilty he looks! here he +comes!" + +And in point of fact the young man, having given a very indubitable +start and said something hurried to his companion, is seen advancing +quasi-carelessly to meet the two persons, the object of whose +observation he has for some minutes so unconsciously been. + +"Is not this a coincidence?" cries Mrs. Byng, with a rather +nervously-playful accent; "it _is_ a coincidence, though it may not look +like one! But do not be afraid; we know our places, we are not going to +offer to join you!" + +"What should I be afraid of?" replies the young man, the colour--always +as ready as a school miss's to put him to shame--mantling in his +handsome smooth cheeks. "I am like the Spanish hidalgo, who never knew +what fear was till he snuffed a candle with his fingers. So you and Jim +are having a happy day among the pictures. Do not you like 'Spring'? I +love her, though I am sure she was a real baggage!" + +But this ingenious attempt to divert the current of his parents' ideas +into another channel is scarcely so successful as it deserves. + +"Will not you introduce me to her?" she asks eagerly, and not heeding, +evidently not even hearing, the empty question contained in the last +half of his speech; "does she know that I am your mother? Will not you +introduce me to her?" + +It seems a simple and natural request enough, and yet the young man +perceptibly hesitates. He even tries to turn it off by a clumsy and +entirely pointless jest. + +"Introduce you to her? to whom? to 'Spring'? I am really afraid that my +acquaintance with her scarcely justifies such a liberty!" + +A look of surprise and of natural annoyance clouds the cheerful +eagerness of Mrs. Byng's face. + +"Is that a joke, dear?" she asks, with a rather vexed smile; "it is not +a very good one, is it? Well, Jim, I must apply to you then; _you_ can +have no objection to presenting me to your friends?" + +"Of course not, of course not," replies he, with a stammering +unreadiness, which contrasts somewhat ludicrously with the acquiescence +conveyed by his words, "I shall be delighted, only----" + +"Only what? Ah, here they come! they save us the trouble of going after +them." + +As she speaks, indeed, Mrs. Le Marchant and Elizabeth are seen nearing +the little group; but it is soon apparent that this movement on their +part is by no means owing to any wish or even willingness to make Mrs. +Byng's acquaintance. It is indeed solely due to there being no egress +from the room at that end of it where they have been standing, so that, +if they wish to leave it, they must necessarily retrace their steps and +pass the three persons who are so busily discussing them. They do this +so quickly and with so resolute an air of not wishing to be delayed in +their exit, bestowing a couple of such smileless and formal bows upon +the two men, that it would have needed a much more determined +obstruction than either of those gentlemen is prepared to offer to +arrest their progress. In a moment they are through the doorway and out +of sight. Mrs. Byng looks after them, with her mouth open. + +"They--they--are obliged to go home, they--they are in a great hurry!" +says the younger man, observing the displeased astonishment expressed by +his mother's countenance, and with a lame effort at explanation. + +"So they seemed when first we caught sight of them," retorts she dryly. + +"They--they are not going out at all at present, they--they do not wish +to make any fresh acquaintance: oh, by-the-bye, I forgot something I had +to say to--I will be back in a moment!" + +So saying, he shoots off in pursuit of the retreated figures, and Mrs. +Byng and her escort are again left _tête-à-tête_. + +"Are you quite sure that she is all right?" asks the lady, looking at +Jim with a penetrating glance that he does not enjoy; "because, if so, +why was she so determined not to know me?" + +"How can I tell?" answers he testily. "Perhaps--who knows?"--laughing +unmirthfully--"perhaps she was not sure that _you_ were all right!" + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + + "Tous les hommes se haïssent naturellement. Je mets en fait que + s'ils savaient exactement ce qu'ils disent, les uns des autres, + il n'y aurait pas quatre amis dans le monde." + + + +Although Mrs. Byng always speaks of Miss Wilson as "Amelia," and is +acquainted with every detail of that young lady's uneventful +history--thanks to a long series of direct and interested questions, +addressed through a considerable number of years, to her friend Jim, as +to his betrothed--she has no personal acquaintance with the latter. She +is so determined, however, to repair this omission, now that so highly +favourable an opportunity is presented as their common stay in the same +small city, that Jim is powerless to hinder her from arranging a joint +expedition of the two parties--herself and her son on the one side, and +Jim with his future wife and sister-in-law on the other, to Careggi, on +the afternoon of the same day as he had witnessed her abortive attempt +to add Elizabeth Le Marchant and her mother to the list of her +acquaintances. + +Amelia, is, for a wonder, free from home claims, Sybilla being more than +usually bright, a kind friend having lately provided her with a number +of the _Lancet_, containing a detailed account of an operation, which it +seems not over-sanguine to expect she may herself be able to undergo. We +all have our Blue Roses, and to "undergo operation," as she technically +phrases it, is Sybilla Wilson's Blue Rose. Cecilia is likewise +disengaged. The latter circumstance is matter for not unmixed rejoicing +to Jim, Cecilia's future connection with himself being too close for him +to relish the thought of her somewhat pronounced wooing of Byng being +exposed in all its _naïveté_ to the clear if good-humoured eyes of +Byng's mother. But in this he wrongs Cecilia. The garden-party at the +villa on Bellosguardo had proved to her that the fruit is hung too high +for her fingers to reach, and that philosophy, which had enabled her +genuinely to relish the wedding-cake of the man who had jilted her, now +teaches her to lay to heart the sarcastic advice offered her by Jim, to +look at the young man as poor women look at diamonds. Beyond one or two +trifling gallantries, for which no one can judge her harshly, she leaves +him alone, even though out of good-nature, and from inveterate force of +habit, he gives her several openings to make love to him. + +The day is one of even Italy's best, an air as soft as feathers, and +full of April odours--a bright gay sun. The vines are rushing into leaf; +they that ten days ago looked such hopeless sticks; little juicy leaves +uncurling and spreading on each, and the mulberry trees, round which +they twine, are rushing out too, at the triumphant call of the spring. + +The party being of the unmanageable number five, has to be divided +between two fiacres, whereof Mrs. Byng, in pursuance of her +determination to know Amelia, insists upon occupying the first in +_tête-à-tête_ with Miss Wilson, while Cecilia and the two men fill the +other. The latter makes but a silent load. Byng is, for him, out of +spirits, and finding that Cecilia has virtually abandoned her suit, is +glad to lapse into his own reflections. His example is followed by Jim, +whose temper is ruffled by being again obliged to defer the quest he is +still feverishly anxious to pursue, despite the shock of the morning's +meeting at the Accademia. + +They reach the villa, and leave their vehicles, glad to think that two +of the perennially tired Florentine cab-horses will have a pause of +rest, and, having shaken off a tiresome would-be _laquais de place_, +desirous to embitter for them the sweet day and place, they stray at +will through the garden among the clipped laurels, the cypresses, the +gorgeous red rhododendrons, while beds of mignonette send forth such a +steady wave of poignant sweetness as makes the sense ache with ecstasy +of pleasure; and over the conservatory hangs a wistaria so old, so +magnificent, with such a Niagara of giant flower bunches, as takes an +English breath away. They go over the villa itself, pass through the +room, and by the bed where Lorenzo, with the grotesque grim face, +Lorenzo the Magnificent, gave his last sigh. It would make Death even +more difficult to face than he is already, if one thought one should +have to meet him under such a catafalque. + +As they issue out again from the house's shadow into the sun-drenched +garden, Mrs. Byng joins Burgoyne, who is walking a little apart. + +"I like Amelia," she says confidentially, "such a nice _pillowy_ sort of +woman; not too clever, and oh, Jim, poor soul, how fond she is of you!" + +It must always be pleasant to hear that the one absolutely good thing +which this life has to offer is lavishly heaped upon us by the person +with whom we are to pass that life; and perhaps pleasure is the emotion +evidenced by the silent writhe with which Jim receives this piece of +information. + +"Not, of course, that she told me so in so many words," continues his +friend, perceiving that her speech is received in a silence that may +mean disapproval of any intrusion into the sanctuary of his affections; +"but one can see with half an eye: poor Amelia, she beamed all over when +I said one or two little civil things about you! She worships the very +ground you tread on!" + +He writhes again. "I hope that that is one of your figures of speech," +he answers constrainedly. + +The not unnatural result of the tone in which he utters this sentence, +no less than the words themselves, is to quench the fire of Mrs. Byng's +benevolent eulogies; and, as she cannot at once hit upon another topic, +and is by no means sure that her countenance does not betray the rather +snubbed dismay produced by the reception of her amenities, she is not +sorry when Jim presently leaves her. Being, however, of a very sanguine +disposition, and seeing him a little later sitting peacefully on a +garden-seat beside his _fiancée_, she hopes that her words, though not +very handsomely received at the time, may bear fruit later for Amelia's +benefit. "And he always was very undemonstrative," she adds to herself +consolatorily. "Nobody would have guessed that he was delighted to see +me this morning; and yet, of course, he was." + +The sun is growing visibly lower, and the Ave Maria comes ringing +solemnly from the city. The seat to which Jim has somewhat remorsefully +led his lady-love is a stone bench, shaded by a honeysuckle bower, close +to a fountain. The fountain is not playing now; but round about it first +a marten wheels, dipping in the water the end of her fleet wings; then a +little bat prematurely flits, for it is still broad daylight. Broad +indeed and bounteous is the daylight of Italy. Around them is the lush +unmown grass; full of homely field-flowers, buttercups, catch-flies, +daisies, ragged robins, while from some bush near by a nightingale is +pouring out all the infinite variety of her ravishing song. She says so +many different things that one never can feel sure that one has heard +all that she has to say. Jim leans back listening, with his hands behind +his head, steeped in a half-voluptuous sadness. He is oppressed by the +thought of Amelia's great love. Is the nightingale's splendid eloquence +really the voice of the poor dumb passion beside him, lent to Amelia to +plead her cause? The high-flown poetry of the idea fills his heart with +an imaginative yearning kindness towards her. He is in the act of +turning to face her, with a more lover-like speech on his lips than has +hovered there for years, when Amelia herself anticipates him. + +"And to think that it is only April!" she says, with an air of prosaic +astonishment. "Last April we had four inches of snow on the front drive. +It was when Cecilia had the mumps." + +"When Cecilia had the mumps?" repeats Burgoyne in a rather dazed voice. +"I did not know that Cecilia had ever had the mumps." + +This is the form into which are frozen the love-words that the +nightingale and the perfume of the Tuscan flowers and the Ave Maria had +so nearly brought to his tongue. Had Amelia known what an unwonted burst +of tenderness her unlucky reminiscence had choked, she would have +regretted it probably with a good deal deeper bitterness than would many +a woman with a happier gift of utterance. But she is blessedly ignorant +of what Cecilia's mumps have robbed her, and presently again strikes +athwart the nightingale's song with the placid remark: + +"I like your friend very much; I think that she is a very nice woman." + +This time Burgoyne has no difficulty in responding immediately. Miss +Wilson's first speech had so effectually chased his dreams that he can +now reply with commonplace kindliness: + +"She has just been button-holing me to make the same confidence about +you." + +"And she is so fond of you," continues Amelia. + +He laughs. + +"She has just confided to me that so are you;" then, with a hurried +change of tone, in dread lest the last speech shall call out some +expression of the mute pent passion always lurking in her patient eyes, +he adds lightly, "I seem to be very generally beloved!" + +What effect the flat fatuity, as it seems to Jim himself, of this last +observation has upon Amelia, does not appear, since she receives it in +silence; and again the Ave Maria and the bird divide between them the +province of sound. + +As the great sun droops, the honeysuckle above their heads seems to give +out more generously its strong clean sweetness. The rest of the party +have drifted away out of sight and hearing; but by-and-by their voices +are again heard and their returning forms seen. As they draw near, it +appears that their original number of three has been augmented by the +addition of two men; and a still nearer approach reveals who the two men +are. Mrs. Byng leads the way, talking animatedly to Mr. Greenock, who is +evidently an old acquaintance. Byng trails after them by himself, and +the rear is brought up by Cecilia and a portly clerically-dressed +figure, whom Jim at once recognises as the Devonshire clergyman, his +failure in obtaining information about whom has embittered and fidgeted +his whole day. Here then is the opportunity he has sought brought to his +very hand. And yet his first feeling, as he sees the complacent priestly +face, and the deliberate black legs pacing beside Cecilia, is one of +dismay. There is nothing unlikely in the supposition that he may have +been presented to her at the garden-party at the Bellosguardo villa; and +yet he now realizes with a shock of surprise that they are acquainted, +and, if acquainted, then at liberty to converse upon whatever subject +may best recommend itself to them. He is absolutely powerless to put any +check upon their talk, and yet at this very moment he may be narrating +to her that story which his own loyalty had forbidden him to overhear. +The first couple has passed, so absorbed in eager question and answer +that they do not even see Burgoyne and his betrothed. Mrs. Byng left +London only three days ago, and Mr. Greenock might return thither at any +moment that he chooses; and yet they are talking of it with a wistful +fondness that might have beseemed Dante questioning some chance wayfarer +to Ravenna as to the prosperity of his Florence. The second pair's +voices are lower pitched, and their topics therefore less easy to +ascertain; yet by Cecilia's gratified and even hopeful air they are +evidently agreeable ones. But though agreeable, there is no evidence of +their being, by their riveting ear and eye, of the nature he dreads. +They also are so absorbed in each other as to have no attention to spare +for the quiet silent persons sitting on the stone bench. + +Amelia looks after them with a benevolent smile. Her sense of humour is +neither keen nor quick, but there is a touch of very mild sarcasm in her +voice, as she says, watching her sister's retreating figure: + +"Cecilia has found a new friend, a clergyman again; do you know what his +name is?" + +"I believe it is Burton or Bruton, or something of the sort," replies +Jim reluctantly, feeling as if even in admitting knowledge of the +stranger's surname he were letting out a dangerous secret. "I should +have thought that she had had enough of the Church," he adds with a very +much more pronounced accent of satire than Miss Wilson's. "She has not +taken my advice of sticking to the laity. Shall we--shall we follow +them?" + +This last suggestion is the result of a vague, uneasy feeling that, by +keeping within earshot, he may exercise some check upon their +conversation. + +"Why should we?" replies Amelia, for once in her life running counter to +a proposition of her lover's, and turning her meek eyes affectionately +upon him; "we are so well here, are not we? and"--laughing--"we should +spoil sport." + +As Jim can allege no adequate reason for pursuing Cecilia and her latest +spoil, he has unwillingly to acquiesce, and to content himself with +following them with his eyes, to gain what reassurance he can from the +expression of their backs. But the peaceful if melancholy restfulness +that had marked the first part of his abode on the stone seat is gone, +past recall. He moves his feet fidgetily on the gravel; he gets up, and +throws pebbles into the fountain; he snubs an officious little Italian +boy who brings Amelia a small handful of flowers plucked out of the +emerald grass. + +Amelia does not share her lover's uneasiness, as indeed why should she? +She puts the expected tip into the young Tuscan's dirty brown hand, and +leans her head enjoyingly on the back of the stone seat. + +"I think I like to come to these sort of places with you even better +than to picture-galleries," she says with an intonation of extreme +content. + +"Do you, dear?" replies he absently, with his uneasy eyes still +searching the spot at which Cecilia and her escort had disappeared. "Of +course you are quite right: 'God made the country, and man made the----' +Ah!" + +The substitution of this ejaculation for the noun which usually +concludes the proverb is due to the fact of the couple he is interested +in having come back into sight, retracing their steps, and again +approaching. It is clear as they come near that the desire to explore +the villa grounds has given way, in this case, to the absorption of +conversation. With a pang of dread, Jim's sharpened faculties realize, +before they are within earshot, that they have exchanged the light and +_banal_ civilities which had at first employed them for talk of a much +more intimate and interesting character. Cecilia is generally but an +indifferent listener, greatly preferring to take the lion's share in any +dialogue; but now she is all silent attention, only putting in, now and +again, a short eager question, while her companion is obviously +narrating--narrating gravely, and yet with a marked relish. Narrating +what? Jim tells himself angrily that there are more stories than one in +the world; that there is no reason why, because Cecilia's clerical +friend is relating to her something, it must necessarily be that +particular something which he dreads so inexpressibly; but he strains +his ears as they pass to catch a sentence which may relieve or confirm +his apprehensions. He has not to strain them long. It is Cecilia who is +speaking, and in her eagerness she has raised her voice. + +"You may depend upon me; I assure you I am as safe as a church; if I had +chosen I might have made a great deal of mischief in my day, but I never +did. I always said that she had a history. I do not pretend to be a +physiognomist, but I said so the first time I saw her. I knew that they +came from Devonshire. I assure you I am as safe as a church!" + +It is clear that the clergyman's hesitation, already perhaps more coy +than real, is unable to withstand the earnestness of Cecilia's +asseverations of her own trustworthiness. He has already opened his +mouth to respond when an unexpected interruption arrests the stream of +his eloquence. Jim has sprung from his bench, and thrust himself +unceremoniously between the two interlocutors. + +"Come and see the wistaria," he says, brusquely addressing the girl; +"you were not with us when we were looking at it, were you? You were +maintaining the other day that wistaria has no scent; come and smell +it!" + +It is in vain that Cecilia protests that she has already seen quite as +much of the wistaria as she wishes; that she had never denied the +potency of its perfume; that her legs are giving way beneath her from +fatigue. Jim marches her relentlessly away, nor does he again quit her +side until he sees her safely seated in the fiacre which is to carry her +home. It is indeed his portion to have a _tête-à-tête_ drive back to +Florence with her, Byng having absently stepped into the vehicle which +bears the other ladies. He draws a long breath as they jog slowly away +from the villa, leaving the clergyman taking off his tall hat, with a +baffled and offended air of farewell. He is conscious that Cecilia is +swelling beside him with feelings no less wounded, even for some moments +before she speaks. + +"You rather cut your own throat," she says, in an affronted voice, "when +you interrupted me and Mr. Burton so rudely; he was on the point of +telling me something very interesting about your dear friends the Le +Marchants; he knows all about them; he has known Elizabeth ever since +she was a child." + +Even across Jim's alarm and anxiety there comes a flash of indignation +and distaste at the familiar employment of the name that even to himself +he only pronounces on his heart's knees. + +"Who is Elizabeth? Do you mean Miss Le Marchant?" + +"Mr. Burton talked of her as 'Elizabeth,'" replies Cecilia, with a still +more offended accent at the rebuke implied in his words; "one naturally +would of a person whom one had known in short frocks." + +"And he--he told you something very interesting about her?" + +"No, he did not," returns Cecilia snappishly, "he had not the chance; he +was just beginning when you rushed in like a bull in a china shop, and +now"--in a key of excessive vexation--"I shall probably never have +another chance of hearing, as he leaves Florence to-morrow." + +Jim's heart gives a bound. "Leaves Florence to-morrow, does he?" he +repeats eagerly. + +"I do not know why you should seem so delighted to hear it," rejoins +Cecilia, looking at him from under her smart hat with a mixture of +surprise and resentment. "I do not see anything particularly +exhilarating in losing an agreeable acquaintance almost as soon as one +has made it!" + +"Perhaps--perhaps it was a false alarm," says Jim, set, to some extent, +on his guard by her evident astonishment at the keenness of his interest +in the subject; "perhaps"--beginning to laugh--"he only said it to +frighten you; why do you think that he is leaving Florence to-morrow?" + +"Because he told me so," answers she impatiently; "he is at the Grande +Bretagne, and he was complaining of not being comfortable there, and I +was advising him to move to another hotel, and he said, 'Oh no, it was +not worth while, as he was leaving Florence to-morrow.'" + +Jim draws a long breath, and leans back in his corner of the fiacre. He +has gained the information he sought. It has come to his hand at the +very time he was chafing most at his inability to go in quest of it. + +"So your interruption was the more provoking," continues Cecilia, her +indignation puffing out and ruffling its feathers at the recollection of +her wrongs, "as it was our last chance of meeting; however, you cut your +own throat, as he evidently knew something very interesting about your +dear friends; something which he does not generally tell people, and +which he would not have told me only that he saw at once I was no blab." + +Jim shivers. He had only just been in time then--only just in time to +stop the mouth of this blatant backbiter in priest's raiment. His +companion looks at him curiously. + +"Are you cold," she asks, "or did a goose walk over your grave? Why did +you shiver?" + +He pulls himself together. "I was shivering," he says, compelling +himself to assume the rallying tone in which he is apt to address the +girl beside him, "at the thought of the peril I had saved you from. My +poor Cis, have not you and I suffered enough already at the hands of the +Church?" + +She reddens. "Though I do not pretend to any great sensitiveness on the +subject, I think you have worn that old joke nearly off its legs." + +But during the rest of the drive she utters no further lament over her +lost clergyman. + + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + + +It is past seven o'clock by the time that the party breaks up at the +door of the Anglo-Américain, and the dusk is gaining even upon the red +west that, in the upper sky, is insensibly melted into that strange +faint green that speaks, in so plain a language, of past and future fine +weather. + +"Are you coming to look in upon us to-night?" asks Amelia, with a rather +wistful diffidence, as her lover holds out his hand in farewell to her. + +He hesitates. In his own mind he had planned another disposition of his +evening hours to that suggested by her. + +"What do you advise?" he asks. "Shall you spend the evening in the usual +way?" + +"I suppose so," she answers. "I suppose we shall read aloud; you know +father likes to make our evenings as like our home ones as possible, and +Sybilla----" + +"Then it is no use my coming," interrupts he hastily. "I should have no +good of you;" then, seeing her face fall at his alacrity in seizing a +pretence for escape, he adds, "but, of course, if you wish it, dear--if +it would give you any satisfaction----" + +"But it would not," cries she precipitately, anxious as usual to be, if +possible, beforehand with his lightest wish; "when you are by, I always +lose my place"--laughing tremulously--"and father scolds me! No, you had +far better not come. I must not be greedy"--in a lower key. "I had quite +half an hour, nearly three-quarters, of you this afternoon." + +Without trusting herself to any further speech, she disappears, and he, +with a sigh that is only half of relief, turns away from the hotel door, +and, after a moment's hesitation, a moment's glance at the suave +darkening sky, and another at his watch, begins to walk briskly--not in +the direction of the Minerva. It is really not late, not much beyond +canonical calling hours, and he is almost sure that they dine at eight. +His face is set in the direction of the Piazza d'Azeglio, as he +addresses these reassuring remarks to himself. This is no case of +self-indulgence, or even of friendly civility. It is a question of +common humanity. Why should he leave them to endure their suspense for a +whole night longer than they need, merely to save himself the trouble of +a walk beneath the darkly splendid sky-arch, through the cheerful +streets, still full of leisurely foot-passengers, of the sound of +cracking whips and rolling carriages? + +He reaches No. 12 bis, and finds the porter's wife sitting at the door +of her _loge_, and smiling at him with all her white teeth, as if she +knew that he had come on some pleasant errand. He climbs the naked stone +stairs, and rings the bell. It is answered by Annunziata, who, smiling +too, as if she were saying something very agreeable, conveys to him that +the signora and the signorina are out. + +The intelligence baffles him, as he had not at all expected it. Probably +his disconcertment is written not illegibly on his features, as +Annunziata begins at once to inform him that the signore are gone to +drive in the Cascine, and that she expects them back every moment. It is +a good while before he quite masters her glib explanation, his Italian +being still at that stage when, if the careful phrase-book question does +not receive exactly the phrase-book answer, the questioner is at fault. +But the smiling invitation of the amiable ugly face, and the hospitably +open door--so different a reception from what the old bull-dog of an +English nurse would have accorded him--need no interpreter. After a +moment's hesitation he enters. He will wait for them. + +It is not until he has been left alone for a quarter of an hour in the +little _salon_ that he has time to ask himself nervously whether the +amount of his acquaintance with them, or the importance of the tidings +he brings, justifies his thus thrusting himself upon their evening +privacy. The table--since they have obviously but one sitting-room--is +spread for their simple supper--a coarse white cloth, a wicker-covered +bottle of rough Chian wine, and a copper pot full of delicately odorous +Freesias. He wanders restlessly about the room, looking at the +photographs. + +Tom--can it be Tom?--with a moustache, Charles with a beard and a +bowie-knife, Rose dandling her baby, Miriam hanging over her new +husband--all his little playfellows! How far the wave of time has rolled +them away from him! He strolls to the window whence, at sunset, the +green shutters have been thrown back, and stares out at the Piazza +garden, where the twilight is taking all the colour out of the Judas +flowers, thence to the piano upon which Schubert's "Trockne Blumen" +stands open. Absently he repeats aloud the song's joyous words: + + "Der Lenz wird kommen, der Winter ist aus!" + +Is her "Winter aus"? Judging by the look in her eyes, it has been a long +and cruel one. If he wishes to put the question to her, she comes in +just in time to answer it--enters laggingly, as one tired, blinking a +little from the sudden crude lamplight after the soft feather-handed +dusk. She is evidently unprepared to find anyone in the room, and gives +a frightened jump when she sees a man's figure approaching her. Even +when she recognises him the scared look lingers. It is clear that in her +sad experience surprises have been always synonymous with bad news. The +white apprehension written on her small face makes him so cordially +repent of his intrusion, that his explanation of his presence is at +first perfectly unintelligible. + +"I hope you will excuse my taking such a liberty. I know that I had no +business to come in when I was told you were out," he says incoherently, +"but--I thought--I hoped--I had an idea--that you might be glad to +hear----" + +He stops, puzzled how to word his piece of intelligence, whether or not +to name the person whose presence, whose very existence had yesterday +seemed to inspire with such terror the woman before him. She has sunk +down upon a chair, holding her hat, which she had taken off on entering +the room, nervously clutched in her hands, the little waves of her hair, +straightened out by the night wind, invading her forehead more than +their wont and giving her an unfamiliar look. + +"To hear what?" asks Mrs. Le Marchant, who, following her daughter more +leisurely, has come in just in time to catch the last few words of +Burgoyne's speech dissevered from their context. He begins that speech +again, still more stammeringly than before. + +"I thought you might be glad to hear that the--the inquiries you asked +me--I mean that I promised to make--that the person relating to whom +I--I made inquiries, leaves Florence to-morrow." + +He hears a long sighing breath that may mean relief that may mean only +distress at the introduction of the subject, from the chair beside him, +while the elder woman says in a low abrupt voice: + +"To-morrow? Are you sure? How do you know?" + +"He said so himself to-day." + +"Have you met him? Have you been talking to him?" + +It seems to Jim as if there were a sharp apprehension mixed with the +abruptness of her tone, as she puts the two last questions. He makes a +gesture of eager denial. + +"Heaven forbid! I have taken great care to avoid recalling myself to his +memory. I have no desire to renew my acquaintance with him. I--I--hate +the sight of him!" + +To an uninterested bystander there would have been something ludicrous +in the boyish virulence of the expression of hatred coming from so +composed and mature a man's mouth as Jim's. But neither of the two +persons who now hear it is in a position of mind to see anything +ridiculous in it. + +"Then how do you know that it is true?" + +"He told an--an acquaintance of mine; he was complaining of the +discomfort of his hotel, and, on her recommending him to change it, he +answered that it was not worth while, as he was leaving Florence +to-morrow." + +Again from the chair beside him comes that long low sigh. This time +there can be no question as to its quality. It is as of a spirit lifting +itself from under a leaden load. For a few moments no other sound breaks +the stillness. Then Mrs. Le Marchant speaks again in a constrained +voice: + +"We are extremely obliged to you for having taken so much trouble for +us, and it must seem very strange to you that we should be so anxious to +hear that this--this person has left Florence; but in so small a place +one is sure to be always coming into collision with those whom one would +rather avoid, and there are reasons which--which make it very--painful +to us to meet him." + +So saying, she tums away precipitately, and leaves the room hastily, by +another door from that by which they both entered, and which evidently +communicates with an adjoining bedroom. Elizabeth remains lying back in +her chair, looking as white as the tablecloth. She is always white, but +usually it is a creamy white, like meadow-sweet. Out of her eyes, +however, has gone the distressed look of fear, and in them is dawning +instead a little friendly smile. + +"You must have thought us rather impostors when you saw us at the +Accademia this morning, after leaving us apparently so shattered +overnight," she says, with a somewhat deprecating air. + +"I was very glad to find you so perfectly recovered," he replies, but he +does not say it naturally. When a person, habitually truthful, slides +into a speech not completely true, he does it in a bungling journeyman +fashion; nor is Burgoyne any exception to this rule. + +"I think we are a little like india-rubber balls, mammy and I," +continues Elizabeth; "we have great recovering powers; if we had not" +(stopped for a second by a small patient sigh) "I suppose that we should +not be alive now." + +He does not interrupt her. She must be a much less finely-strung +instrument than he takes her for if she does not divine the sympathy of +his silence, and sympathy so much in the dark as to what it sympathizes +with as his, must needs walk gropingly, if it would escape gins and +pitfalls. + +"But we should not have gone out sight-seeing this morning--we were not +at all in a junketing mood--if it had not been for Mr. Byng; he came in +and took us both by storm. It is difficult," her face dimpling and +brightening with a much more confirmed smile than the tiny hovering one +which is all that Jim has been able to call forth--"it is difficult to +resist a person who brings so much sunshine with him--do not you find it +so? He is so very sunshiny, your Mr. Byng. We like sunshine; we--we have +not had a great deal of it." + +It is on the very edge of his lip to tell her that when he had known her +she had had and been nothing but sunshine. But he recollects in time her +prohibition as to the past, and restrains himself. + +"When you look so kind and interested," she cries impulsively, sitting +up in her chair, with a transparent little hand on each arm of it, "I +feel a fraud." + +She stops. + +"I look interested because I feel interested," returns he doggedly; +"fraud or not--but" (in a distressed voice) "do not, even in joke, call +yourself ugly names--fraud or not, you cannot hinder me." + +"Do not be interested in me," says she, in her plaintive cooing voice; +"we are very bad people to get interested in, we are not repaying people +to be interested in. I think--that perhaps" (slowly and dreamily) "under +other circumstances we might have been pleasant enough. Mammy has +naturally excellent spirits, and so have I; it does not take much to +make us happy, and even now I often feel like poor little Prince +Arthur-- + + "'By my Christendom, + So I were out of prison and kept sheep, + I should be as merry as the day is long.' + +But then," sighing profoundly, "the moment that we begin to feel a +little cheerful, something comes and knocks us down again." + +There is such a blank hopelessness in the tone with which she pronounces +the last words, and, in his almost total ignorance of the origin of her +despair, it is so impossible to put his compassion into fit words, that +he can think of nothing better than to pull his chair two inches nearer +her, to assure her by this dumb protest of how little inclined he is to +accept her warning. + +"Are you sure that he is really gone--going, I mean," she asks, in an +excited low voice, "going to-morrow morning, as you say? Oh, I wish it +were to-morrow morning! But perhaps when to-morrow morning comes, he +will have changed his mind. Was he quite, quite sure about it?" + +"He said he was going to-morrow morning," replies Jim, repeating +Cecilia's quotation from her new friend's conversation with +conscientious exactness; "that it was not worth while to change his +hotel, as he was leaving Florence to-morrow morning." + +"He will not go," she says, shaking her head with restless dejection; +"nobody but would be loth to leave this heavenly place"--glancing out +affectionately through the open window, even at the commonplace and now +almost night-shaded Piazza garden--"we shall find that he is not gone +after all." + +"Nothing will be easier to ascertain than that fact," says Burgoyne, +eagerly catching at so easy an opportunity for help and service; "now +that I know which is his hotel, I can inquire there to-morrow morning, +and bring you word at once." + +"Could you, would you?" cries she, life and light springing back into +her dejected eyes at his proposal; "but no," with an accent of remorse, +"why should you? Why should we keep you running upon our errands? What +right have we to take up your time?" + +"_My time_," repeats he ironically. "I am like the German Prince +mentioned by Heine, who spent his leisure hours--hours of which he had +twenty-four every day--in----" + +"But if we do not rob you," interrupts Elizabeth, looking at him in some +surprise, "we rob Miss--Miss Wilson. What will she say to us?" + +"She will be only too glad," replies he stiffly, a douche of cold water +thrown on his foolish heart by the little hesitation which had preceded +her pronunciation of Amelia's name, showing that her interest in him had +not had keenness enough even to induce her to master his betrothed's +appellation. + +"Will she?" rejoins Elizabeth, quite ignorant of having given offence, +and with her eyes fixed rather wistfully upon his. "How good of her! and +how unlike most very happy people! Happy people are generally rather +exacting; but she looks good. She has a dear face!" + +He is silent. To hear the one woman's innocent and unconscious encomiums +of the other fills him with an emotion that ties his never ready tongue. +She mistakes the cause of his muteness. + +"I am afraid I have vexed you," she says, sweetly and humbly. "I had no +business to praise her to you; it was like praising a person to himself; +but do not be angry with me--I did not mean to be impertinent!" + +One small fragile hand is hanging over the arm of her hard lodging-house +arm-chair, and before he has an idea of what his own intentions are, it +is lying, without any asking of its consent, in his. + +"I will not--I will not let you say such things," he says, trembling. +"She _is_ good: she _has_ a dear face: and I love to hear you say so! +May I--may I bring her to see you?" + +As he makes this request, he feels the little fingers that are lying in +his palm give a nervous start; and at once, quietly but determinedly, +the captive hand is withdrawn. It and its fellow fly up to her face, and +together quite cover it from his view. Though, as I have said, they are +small, yet, it being small too to match them, they conceal it entirely. + +"You will not say no?" he cries anxiously. "I am sure you will not say +no. I shall feel very much snubbed if you do." + +Still no answer. Still that shielded face, and the ominous silence +behind it. He rises, a dark red spreading over his features. + +"I must apologize for having made the suggestion. I can only beg you to +forget that it was ever made. Good-bye!" + +He has nearly reached the door, when he hears the _frou-frou_ of her +gown, and turning, sees that her unsteady feet have carried her after +him, and that her face is changing from crimson to white and back again +with startling rapidity. + +"I thought you would have understood," she says faintly. "I thought that +you were the one person who would not have misunderstood." + +His conscience pricks him, but he is never very quick to be able to own +himself in the wrong, and before he can bring himself to frame any +sentence that smacks of apology and regret, she resumes, with a little +more composure and in a conventional voice: + +"You know--we told you--even at Genoa--that--that we are not going out, +that we do not wish to make any new acquaintances!" + +"I know," replies he, with some indignation, "that that is the hollow +formal bulletin you issue to the world in general, but I thought--I +hoped----" + +"Do not bring her to see me," she interrupts, abandoning her effort for +composure, and speaking in a broken voice, while her eyes swim in tears. +"She--she might be sorry--she--she might not like it--afterwards!" + +He looks back at her with an almost terrified air. Is the answer to her +sad riddle coming to him thus? Has he had the brutality to force her +into giving it? + +"You have been so kind in not asking me any questions, you have even +given up alluding to old times since you saw that it hurt me; but you +must see--of course you do--that--that there is something--in me--not +like other people; something that--that prevents--my--having any +friends! I have not a friend in the world" (with a low sob) "except my +mother--except mammy! Do you think" (breaking into a watery smile) "that +it is very silly of me, at my age, to call her 'mammy' still?" + +"I think," he says, "that I am one of the greatest brutes out, and that +I should be thankful if someone would kick me downstairs." + +And with this robust expression of self-depreciation, he takes his hat +and departs. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + + "Ihr Blumen alle, Heraus! Heraus!" + + +It was to German flowers that the above hest was addressed. If they obey +it, with how much more alacrity do the Italian ones comply with its glad +command. It is a week later, and now no one can say that "the spring +comes slowly up this way." Vines, figs, and mulberries, all are +emulously racing out, and the corn has added two emerald inches to its +juicy blades. The young plane-trees in the Piazza d'Azeglio, so skimpily +robed when first Jim had rung the _entresol_ bell of No. 12, are +exchanging their "unhandsome thrift" for an apparel of plenteous green, +and a wonderful Paulownia is beginning to hold up her clusters of +gloccinia bells. + +Jim has watched the daily progress of the plane-leaves from the low +window of No. 12's _entresol_. The daily progress? Is it possible that +he has been there every day during the past week? He asks himself this, +with a species of shock; and it is with a sense of relief that he finds +that one whole day has intervened, during which he had not heard the +sound of the electric bell thrilling through the apartment under the +touch of his own fingers. What can have taken him there, every day but +one? He runs over, in his mind, with a misgiving as to their +insufficiency, the reasons of his visit. For the first he had had an +excellent excuse. Surely it would have been barbarous not to have +imparted to the anxiously-watching pair the good news that the object of +their mysterious terror had really and authentically gone! On the second +day it seemed quite worth while to take the walk, in order to tell them +that he had accidentally learned the clergyman's destination to be +Venice, and his intention to return _viâ_ Milan and the St. Gothard. On +the third day, being as near to them as San Annunziata, it had seemed +unfriendly not to inquire after Mrs. Le Marchant's neuralgia. On the +fourth----He is pulled up short in his reminiscences. Why had he gone on +the fourth day? He can give no answer to the question, and slides off +from it to another. Which was the fourth day? Was it--yes, it was the +one on which the wind blew as coldly east as it might have done across +Salisbury Plain's naked expanse, and he had found Elizabeth sitting on a +milking-stool shivering over a poor little fire of green wood, and +blowing it with a pair of bellows. He had helped her to blow, and +between them they had blown the fire entirely away, as often happens in +the case of unskilled handlers of bellows, and Elizabeth had laughed +till she cried. + +And meanwhile, how many times has he been within the portals of the +Anglo-Américain? With all his arithmetic he cannot make it more than +twice. This neglect of his betrothed, however, is not of quite so +monstrous a cast as at the first blush it may appear. It is she herself +who, true to her life-long principle of shielding him from all +disagreeable experiences, has forbidden him her door. He can aid her +neither to bandage her father's swollen foot in the severe gout-fit +under which he is groaning, nor to allay Sybilla's mysterious +sufferings, which always display a marked increase in acuteness whenever +any other member of the family shows a disposition to set up claims as +an invalid. Cecilia, indeed, is ready enough to give her help in nursing +her father, but she has on former occasions shown such an unhappy +aptitude for tumbling over his swathed and extended leg, and upsetting +his physic all over him, that she is received with such objurgations as +his cloth will permit, so often as she shows her short nose within his +sick-room. Only twice in a whole week. Can Amelia have wished to be +taken quite so literally when she had bidden him stay away? There is +only one answer possible to this question, and he shows his +consciousness of it by at once raising himself out of the chair in which +he is sunk, and turning his steps hastily towards her. + +It is morning. The east wind is clean gone, and the streets are full of +the scent of the innumerable lilies of the valley, of which everybody's +hands are full. He stops a minute and buys a great sheaf for a +miraculously small sum, from one of the unnumbered sellers. It shall +make his peace for him, if indeed it needs making, which it has never +done yet. He almost smiles at the absurdity of the suggestion. He finds +Cecilia alone in the sitting-room, Cecilia sitting by the window reading +the _Queen_. Upon her large pink face there is a puzzled expression, +which is perhaps to be accounted for by the fact that the portion of the +journal which she is perusing is that entitled "Etiquette," and under it +are the answers to last week's questions, upon nice points of social +law, which, if you do not happen to have read the questions, have +undoubtedly an enigmatical air, as in the following instances: "Your +husband takes the Baronet's daughter, and you follow with the +Prince."--"We do not understand your question--babies never dine out," +etc. + +Upon Jim's entrance Cecilia lays down her paper, and at once offers to +go in search of her sister, with whom she shortly returns. He had been +quite right. There is no peace to make. Amelia greets him with her usual +patient and perfectly unrancorous smile, but his second glance at her +tells him that she is looking old and fagged. It is only in very early +youth that vigils and worries and self-denials do not write their names +upon the skin. + + +"How--how pale you are!" he says. If he had given utterance to the word +that hovered on his lips, he would have cried, "how yellow!" + +"It would be very odd if she did not," says Cecilia with a shrug, +looking up from her "Etiquette," to which she has returned; "she has sat +up three nights with father, and last evening Sybilla bid us all +good-bye. You know she never can bear anybody else to be ill, and when +father has the gout she bids us all good-bye--and Amelia is always taken +in and sheds torrents of tears--do not you, Amelia?" + +Amelia has subsided rather wearily into a chair. "She really thinks that +she is dying," says she apologetically--"and who knows? some day perhaps +it may come true." + +"Not it," rejoins her sister, with an exasperated sniff "she will see us +all out--will not she, Jim?" + +"I have not the remotest doubt of it," replies he heartily; and then his +conscience-struck eyes revert to his betrothed's wan face, all the +plainer for its wanness. "No sleep, no fresh air," in an injured tone, +checking off the items on his fingers. + +"But I have had fresh air," smiling at him with pale affection; "one day +Mrs. Byng took me out for a drive. Mrs. Byng has been very kind to me." + +She does not lay the faintest invidious accent on the name, as if +contrasting it with another whose owner had been so far less kind; it is +his own guilty heart that supplies the emphasis. His only resource is an +anger which--so curiously perverse is human nature--is not even feigned. + +"You can go out driving with Mrs. Byng then, though you could not spare +time to come out with me," he says in a surly voice. + +She does not defend herself but her lower lip trembles. + +"Come out with me now," he cries, remorse giving a harshness even to the +tone of the sincerely-meant invitation. "You look like a geranium in a +cellar; it is a divine day, a day to make the old feel young, and the +young immortal; come out and stay out with me all day. I will take you +wherever you like. I will----" + +The genuine eagerness of his proposal has tinged her sickly-coloured +cheek with a healthier hue for the moment, but she shakes her head. + +"I could not leave father this morning; he will not take his medicine +from anyone else, and he likes me to sit with him while he eats his +arrowroot." + +The only sign of approval of this instance of filial piety given by Jim +is that he rises and begins to stamp irritably about the room. + +"He is really not at all exacting," continues Amelia in anxious +deprecation; "he was quite pleased just now when I told him that Mrs. +Byng was going to take me to a party at the Villa Schiavone this +afternoon. He said----" + +"Mrs. Byng! Mrs. Byng again!" + +This is not what Mr. Wilson said, but is the expression of the unjust +wrath which Burgoyne, feeling it much pleasanter to be angry with +someone else than himself is artificially and not unsuccessfully +fostering. Again Amelia's lip quivers. + +"I thought," she says gently, "if--if you have no other engagement this +afternoon; if--if you are free----" + +Nothing can be milder than the form which this suggestion takes, and yet +there is something in its shape that provokes him. + +"Free!" he interrupts tartly, "of course I am free! Have I a gouty +father and a hysteric sister? Why should not I be free?" + +"I am very glad to hear it," rejoins she--the light that his first +proposal to take her out had brought into her face growing brighter and +more established--"because in that case there is nothing to prevent your +meeting us at the villa, and----" + +"And seeing you and Mrs. Byng walking about with your arms round each +other's necks, like a couple of schoolgirls," cries he, with a sort of +spurious grumpiness. + +"I can't think why you should object to Amelia walking about with her +arm round _Mrs._ Byng's neck," says Cecilia, whose attention to her +"Etiquette" is apparently not so absorbing but that she has some to +spare for the conversation going on in her neighbourhood. + +They all laugh a little; and harmony being restored, and Jim graciously +vouchsafing to forgive Amelia for having ignored her for a sennight, she +returns to her patient, and he to his hotel, where he is at once, +contrary to his wish, pounced upon by Byng. + +For some reason, which he would be puzzled to explain to himself, he has +for the last week rather avoided his friend's company--a task rendered +easier by the disposition manifested by the young man's mother to +monopolize him, a disposition to which Burgoyne has felt no inclination +to run counter. It is without enthusiasm that he receives Byng's +expressions of pleasure in their accidental meeting. + +"I have been searching for you, high and low." + +"Have you?" + +"Where have you been?" + +"I have been to the Anglo-Américain"--with a flash of inward +self-congratulation at this query having been put to-day, instead of +yesterday, or the day before. The other looks disappointed. + +"To the Anglo-Américain? I thought--I hoped; have you--seen _them_ +lately?" + +Burgoyne has ceased to feign lack of understanding to whom the personal +pronoun refers, and he answers with as much carelessness as at a +moment's notice he can put on: "Why, yes, I have, once or twice." + +"Do they--do not they think it strange of me not to have been near them +all this time?" + +"They may do"--dryly. + +"They did not say so?" + +"They did not; perhaps"--sarcastically--"the subject was too acutely +painful for them to allude to." + +Frequently as he has exposed himself to them, his Mentor's sneers never +fail to send the crimson racing into Byng's face, and it finds its way +there now. It does not, however, prevent his proceeding, after a +confused moment or two, with his anxious catechism. + +"She--she has not referred to the subject?" + +"What subject?" + +"To--to me?" + +"She has never mentioned your name. Stay"--his veracity winning a +reluctant victory over his ill-nature--"one day she said that you were +sunshiny, and that she liked sunshine." + +As he speaks he looks down at his boots, too unaffectedly annoyed at the +justification of Elizabeth's epithet which its retailing has worked on +Byng's countenance to be able to contemplate him with any decent +patience. But there is enough evidence in the boy's voice of the effect +wrought upon him by Miss Le Marchant's adjective to make his comrade +repent very heartily of having repeated it. + +"I should have been over," says Byng in a low eager way, "every day, +every hour, as often as they would have received me, only that I could +not leave my mother; and she--she has taken them _en grippe_!" + +"_En grippe?_ Your mother?" repeats Jim, too honestly and disagreeably +startled by this piece of news to be able any longer to maintain his +ironical manner; "why?" + +The other shrugs his shoulders dispiritedly. + +"I have not an idea; it cannot be because they did not seem to wish to +be introduced to her at the Accademia the other day; she is quite +incapable of such pettiness, and she admired HER so tremendously at +first, did not she? You heard her; but since then she has taken it into +her head that there is something--I cannot bear even to say it"--dashing +his hat and gloves vehemently upon the table--"something _louche_, as +she calls it, about her. Mother thinks that she--she--she"--sinking his +voice to an indistinct half-whisper--"has--has gone off the rails some +time or other. Can you conceive?"--raising his tone again to one of the +acutest pain and indignation--"that anyone--any human being could look +in her face and harbour such a notion for a single instant?" + +He stares with eyes ablaze with wrathful pity at his friend's face, +expecting an answering outbreak to his own; but none such comes. +Burgoyne only says, in a not much more assured key than that which the +young man had employed: + +"How--how can such an idea have got into your mother's head?" + +"I do not know, but it is there; and what I wanted you, what I have been +searching everywhere for you for, is to ask you to--to set her right, at +once, without any delay. It is unbearable that she should go on thinking +such things, and nothing could be easier for you, who know them so well, +who know all about them!" + +Burgoyne is at first too much stupefied by this appeal, and by the +impossibility of answering it in a satisfactory manner, to make any +response at all; but at length: + +"Know all about them?" he says, in a voice whose surface impatience +hides a much profounder feeling. "Who dares ever say that he knows all +about any other living soul? How many times must I tell you that, until +we met at Genoa, I had not set eyes on Miss Le Marchant for ten good +years?" + +At the tone of this speech, so widely different from the eager +acceptance of the suggested task which he had expected, Byng's face +takes on a crestfallen, almost frightened look. + +"But when you knew them," he says, "in Devonshire, they--they were all +right then, were not they? they were well thought of?--there was nothing +against them?" + +"Good Heavens--no!" replies Jim heartily, thankful that the appeal is +now so worded as to enable him to give a warm testimony in favour of his +poor friends. "There was not a family in all the neighbourhood that +stood so high. Everybody loved them; everybody had a good word for +them." + +Byng's countenance clears a little. + +"And there is no reason--you have no reason for supposing anything +different now?" + +Jim stirs uneasily in his chair. Can he truthfully give the same +convinced affirmative to this question as to the last? It is a second or +two before he answers it at all. + +"The facts of life are enough for me; I do not trouble myself with its +suppositions." + +He gets up and walks towards the door as he speaks, resolved to bring to +an end this to him intolerable catechism. + +"But you must have an opinion--you must think," cries the other's voice, +persistently pursuing him. He turns at bay, with the door-handle in his +hand, his eyes lightening. + +"I asked her permission to bring Amelia to see her," he says, in a low +moved voice; "if I had thought as ill of her as your mother does, do you +think I should have done that?" + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + + CAMILLE.--"Que me conseilleriez-vous de faire le jour où je + verrais que vous ne m'aimez plus?" + + +There is no greater fiction than that for time to go quickly implies +that it must needs go pleasantly. Jim has seldom spent a more +disagreeable period than the hours which follow his conversation with +Byng, and which he passes in his own bedroom, with his elbows on the +window-ledge, looking blankly out at the Piazza, and at the great +"Bride" of Arnolpho's planning, the church of Santa Maria Novella. And +yet, when the city clocks, which have chimed unnoticed by him several +times, at length convey to his inattentive ear what the hour is, he +starts up, shocked and confused at its lateness. He had meant to have +reached the Villa Schiavone in time to receive Amelia, and now she must +have long preceded him, and be attributing his tardiness to some fresh +neglect and indifference. In five minutes he has rearranged his dress, +and jumped into a fiacre. Through the Porta Romana, and up between the +straight row of still and inky cypresses, up and up to where the villa +door, promising so little and performing so much, opens as so many do, +straight upon the road. + +The day has changed its ravishing blue gaiety for a pensive cloudy +gloom, and the guests at the villa are walking about without any +sunshades. They are numerous, though few indeed in comparison of the +Banksia roses on the laden wall, over which, too, a great wistaria--put +in, as the host with a just pride relates, only last year--is hanging +and flinging its lilac abundance. And seen above its clusters, and above +the wall, what a view from this raised terrace! Jim is really in a hurry +to find Amelia, and yet he cannot choose but stop to look at it--from +Galileo's tower on the right, to where, far down the plain of the Arno, +Carrara loses itself in mist. It is all dark at first, sullen, +purple-gray, without variation or stir--city, Duomo, Arno, Fiesole, and +all her chain of sister-hills--one universal frown over every slope and +jag, over street and spire, over Campanile with its marbles, and Santa +Croce with its dead. But now, as it draws on towards sun-setting, in the +western sky there comes a beginning of light, a faint pale tint at +first, but quickly broadening across the firmament, while the whole huge +cloud canopy is drawn aside like a curtain, and, as a great bright eye +from under bent brows, the lowering sun sends arrows of radiance over +plain, and river, and city. All of a sudden there is a vertical rain of +dazzling white rays on the plain, and the olive shadows, merged all the +afternoon in the universal gray, fall long and soft upon the blinding +green of the young corn. He has forgotten Amelia. Oh, that that other, +that creature herself made out of sun-rays and sweet rain-drops, were +beside him, her pulses beating, as they so surely would, to his tune, +her whole tender being quivering with delicate joy at this heavenly +spectacle. + +Someone touches him on the shoulder, and he starts violently. Has the +intensity of his invocation called her spirit out of her light body, and +is she indeed beside him? + +"What a bad conscience you must have! Did you think that I was a +bailiff?" cries Mrs. Byng, laughing. + +"Where is Amelia?" he asks, rather curtly, the memory of Byng's +communication about his mother being too fresh in his mind to make it +possible for him to answer her in her own rallying key. "What have you +done with Amelia?" + +"What a 'Stand-and-deliver' tone!" says she, laughing still, but looking +not unnaturally surprised. "Well, where is she?" glancing round. "She +was here five minutes ago with Willy. Poor Amelia!" lowering her voice +to a more confidential key. "I am so glad you have come at last; she is +patience personified. I must congratulate you upon the excellent +training into which you have got her, but I think that she was beginning +to look a little anxious." + +"And _I_ think that you have been giving the reins to your imagination, +as usual," replies he, walking off in a huff. + +There is another delightful garden at the back of the villa, and there, +having failed to find her in the first, he now with growing irritation +at her for not being more immediately conspicuous, seeks Amelia. It is a +sheltered leisurely paradise, where white rose-trees, with millions of +bursting buds, are careering over the walls in leafy luxuriance, where +double wallflowers--bloody warriors, one should call them, if one could +connect any warlike idea with this Eden of scented peace--stocks in +fragrant row are flowering as we Britons never see them flower in our +chary isle, save in the plates of a Gardeners' Chronicle. But among them +he finds no trace of his homely English blossom. He finds, indeed, him +who had been named as her late companion, Byng; but it is not with +Amelia, but with one of the pretty young daughters of the house that he +is pacing the straight walk in lively dialogue. Jim accosts him +formally: + +"I understood that Miss Wilson was with you? Do you happen to know where +she is?" + +Byng stops short in his leisurely pacing. + +"Why, where is she?" he says, looking round, as his mother had done, but +with a more guilty air. "She was here five minutes ago. Where can she +have disappeared to?" + +It is but too obvious that in greeting and being greeted by their +numerous acquaintances, both poor Amelia's chaperon and that chaperon's +son have completely forgotten her existence. Always nervously afraid of +being burdensome, Jim feels convinced from what he knows of her +character that she is going about in unobtrusive forlornness, the +extreme smallness of her Florentine acquaintances making it unlikely +that she has found anyone to supply the place of the friends who have +become so entirely oblivious of her. The conviction, pricking his +conscience as he hastens contritely away from the vainly-repentant Byng, +lends speed and keenness to his search. But thorough and earnest as it +is, it is for some time quite unsuccessful. She makes one of no group, +she loiters under no Banksia rose-bower, she is no gazer from the +terrace at gold-misted valley or aureoled town, she is to be found +neither in hidden nook, nor evident path. She is not beneath the loggia, +she is nowhere out-of-doors. She must then, in her loneliness, have +taken refuge in the house. He finds himself in a long, noble room, with +a frescoed ceiling, a room full of signs of recent habitation and recent +tea, but which has apparently been deserted for the sunset splendours on +the terrace. He can see no single occupant. He walks slowly down it to +assure himself of the fact of its entire emptiness. + +By a singular and unaccountable freak of the builders, the windows are +set so high in the wall that each has had to have a little raised daïs +erected before it to enable the inmates to look comfortably out. Upon +each small platform stands a chair or two, and low over them the +curtains sweep. As he passes one recess, he notices that the drapery is +stirring a little, and examining more closely, sees the tail of a +well-known gown--of that gown which has met with his nearest approach to +approval among Amelia's rather scanty stock--peeping from beneath the +stiff rich folds of the old Italian brocade. It is the work of a second +to sweep the latter aside, and discover his poor _fiancée_ all alone, +and crouching desolately in a low arm-chair. There is something so +unlike her in the attitude, something so different from her usual +uncomplaining, unpretending fortitude, something so disproportioned to +the cause--his own careless but not criminal delay, as he supposes--in +the despair evidenced by her whole pose, that he feels at once terrified +and angry. In a second he, too, has stepped up on to the little platform +beside her. + +"Amelia!" he cries. "Amelia! What are you doing up here? With whom are +you playing hide-and-seek?" + +Her words and her smiles are apt to be prompt enough, Heaven knows, to +spring out, answering his least hint; but now she neither speaks nor +moves a muscle of her face. She scarcely starts at all at his sudden +apparition and address, and no light comes across her features--those +features which, now that he looks at them more closely, he sees to be +set in a much more pinched pallor than even three watching nights and a +week of airless worry can account for. + +"Are you ill?" + +"No; I am not ill." + +The sting of irritation which, mixed with genuine alarm, had besieged +Jim's mind on his first realizing her crouched and unnatural attitude, +now entirely supersedes any other feeling. Is the accidental delay of +half an hour, an hour, say even an hour and a half, enough to justify +such a parade of anguish as this? + +"Is it possible," he inquires, in a tone of cold displeasure, "that I am +to attribute this--this state of things--to my being accidentally late? +It was a mere accident: it is not like you to make a scene. I do not +recognise you; I am very sorry that I was late, and that I have made you +angry." + +The chill reproach of his words seems to rouse her to a state more akin +to her natural one, to the humble and unexacting one which is habitual +to her. + +"Angry!" she repeats: "angry with you for being late? Oh, you are quite +mistaken! In all these years how often have I been angry with you?" + +There is such a meek upbraiding in her tone that his ill-humour gives +way to a vague apprehension. + +"Then what is it?" he cries brusquely; "what is it all about? I think I +have a right to ask you that; since I saw you last something must have +happened to you to produce this extraordinary change." + +She heaves a long dragging sigh. + +"Something has happened to me; yes, something has happened!" + +"But what--what kind of a something? I have a right to know--I insist +upon knowing; tell me!" + +He has grasped both her hands, whose unnatural coldness he feels even +through her rather ill-fitting gloves. So strange and mean a thing is +human nature that even at this moment it flashes across him, with a +sense of annoyance, what bad gloves Amelia always wears. However, he is +not troubled with them long, for she takes them and her cold hands +quietly back. + +"I will tell you, there is no question of insisting. I should have told +you anyhow; but not _here_"--glancing nervously round the dropped +curtains--"not now!" + +"Why not here? Why not now?" + +Her face quivers. + +"I could not," she says piteously. "I do not quite know how I shall get +through telling it; it must be somewhere--somewhere where it will not +matter if I do break down!" + +He stares at her in an unfeigned bewilderment, again slightly streaked +with wrath. + +"Have you gone mad, Amelia? or are you taking a leaf out of Sybilla's +book? If you do not clear up this extraordinary mystification at once, I +shall be compelled to believe either the one or the other." + +Again her face contracts with pain. + +"Oh, if it were only a mystification!" she says, with a low cry. "I +cannot tell you here; it is physically impossible to me. But do not be +afraid"--with an accent of bitterness, which he is quite at a loss to +account for--"you shall not have long to wait; I will tell you, without +fail, to-morrow; to-morrow morning, if you like. Come as early as you +please, I shall be ready to tell you; and now would you mind leaving me? +I want to have a few moments to myself before I see anybody--before I +see Mrs. Byng; will you please leave me?" + +It is so apparent that she is in deadly earnest, and resolute to have +her request complied with, that he can do nothing but step dizzily down +off the little daïs, feeling as if the world were turning round with +him. + +A quarter of an hour later he sees her leaving the party with Mrs. Byng, +looking as simple, as collected, and not very perceptibly paler than +usual. + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + + +There is always something in the nature of a mountain in a night that is +interposed between us and either any promised pleasure or any threatened +pain. In the case of pleasure, we are naturally in a hurry to scale it, +in order to see how full of sunshine and flowers is the happy valley on +the other side; and in the case of pain, we are all scarcely less eager +to ascertain how deep is the abyss, how choking the swamp, how angry the +waves that wait us beyond the dusty hill. + +Burgoyne has no expectation of finding anything agreeable on the further +slope of his mountain, and yet the time seems long to him, till he has +climbed its crest, and slidden down its other side. Early and splendid +as is the new light that takes possession of him and his shutterless +bedroom, he upbraids it as a laggard; and the hours that pace by till +the one appointed for the explanation of yesterday's mystery seem to him +to hobble on crutches. What can Amelia have to say to him that needs +such a pomp of preparation? What can have turned Amelia into a Tragedy +Queen? What miracle can have made her take the imperative mood? For it +was the imperative mood unquestionably which, contrary to all precedent, +she had made use of when she had commanded him, most gently it is true, +since, being by her nature gentle, she can do nothing ungently, to leave +her. He absolutely laughs at the topsy-turviness of the idea. What can +she have to say that requires so carefully selected a spot to say it +in?--a spot where "it does not matter if she does break down." What, in +Heaven's name, can she be going to say that inspires her with such a +cold-blooded intention beforehand of breaking down? + +Jim's state of mind is something that of the Baron's in "On ne badine +pas avec l'amour," on hearing that his daughter's governess had been +turning somersaults in a field of luzerne. "Non, en vérité, non, mon +ami, je n'y comprends absolûment rien. Tout cela me paraît une conduite +désordonnée, il est vrai, mais sans motif comme sans excuse." If she +were any other woman, he should ascribe her behaviour to some tiresome +but passing tantrum, evoked by his delay in appearing? But in the past +eight years how many hundred times has he kept her waiting? and has she +ever failed to meet him with the same meek good-humour that has not had +even a tinge of reproachful forgiveness in it. As she herself had said, +"In all these years how often have I been angry with you?" He has been +angry with her times out of mind, angry with her on a thousand unjust +and unkind counts; angry with her for her slowness, her bad complexion, +her want of a sense of humour; for a hundred things that she cannot +help, that she would have altered--oh, how gladly!--if she could! But +how often has she been angry with him? In vain he searches his memory, +hoping to overtake some instance of ill-humour, or even pettishness, +that may make the balance between them hang a little more equal. But in +vain. She has never been angry with him. And even now neither her face +nor her manner--whatever else of strange and unparalleled they may have +conveyed--have conveyed the idea of anger. + +But if not anger, what then can be the cause that has produced a change +so startling in one so little given to impulsive action or +eccentricities of emotion? Can she have heard anything about him? +anything to his discredit? He searches his conscience, but whether it be +that that organ is not a particularly sensitive one, or that it really +has no damaging facts to give up, it is silent, or almost so. He has +perhaps been rather slack in his attendance upon her of late, but at her +own bidding. At his visits to the Le Marchants' no one could take +exception, dictated as they so obviously have been by philanthropy, and +his conversations with Elizabeth--how few and scant! his heart heaves a +rebellious sigh at their paucity--might be proclaimed without excision +at the market cross. Our thoughts are our own, and are, moreover, so +safely padlocked in our minds that he does not think it worth while to +inquire whether, if his future wife could have looked in and seen the +restive fancies capering, saddleless and bridleless, there, she might +have been justified in assuming a crouching attitude and a sorrowfully +commanding manner. + +He is as far as ever from solving the problem, when--for once in his +life before his time at the rendezvous--he presents himself at the +familiar door. It is opened to him by Amelia herself. She has often done +it before, seeming to know by instinct his ring from that of any other +person, but to-day the familiar action disconcerts him. He had expected +to be received with a formality and pomp of woe such as yesterday had +seemed to threaten; and here is Amelia looking exactly like her ordinary +self, except that she is perhaps rather more carefully dressed than +usual; but that may be due to the fact of her having, for the first +time, assumed the fresh calico gown, which the high summer of the +Italian April morning seems to justify. Whether it be due to the calico +gown or not, there is an indisputable air of gala about her, and she is +smiling. A revulsion of feeling comes over the man, to whom her tragic +semi-swooning airs had given a wakeful night. It was a tantrum after +all, then; a storm in a teacup. And now her common sense has come to the +rescue, and she has seen the folly of quarrelling with her bread and +butter. These reflections naturally do not translate themselves into +responsive smiles on his face, but she does not seem to notice his dour +looks. + +"I have a proposal to make to you," she says, still smiling. "Father is +so well this morning, quite easy, and he has been wheeled into the +sitting-room to see Sybilla. She has been very good about him this time, +and quite believes that he has been really bad." + +"How good of her!" comments Jim grimly; "it would be so easy and so +amusing to play at having a swollen toe, would not it?" + +"And so," continues Miss Wilson, wisely ignoring his fleer at her +sister, "I am perfectly free, and I want you to take me somewhere, some +little drive or expedition; you see," with a conciliatory glance at her +own modest finery, "I counted upon your saying 'yes'; I dressed so as +not to keep you waiting." + +Every word of this sentence confirms Burgoyne in the idea implanted by +her first address. This is her _amende_, and she is quite right to make +it. But she would have been more right still if her conduct had not +rendered it necessary. + +Amelia is not the type of woman who through life will gain much by +pouts. Perhaps, by-and-by, very kindly and delicately, he may obliquely +hint this to her. But all that he says aloud is the rather stiff +acquiescence conveyed in the words: + +"By all means. I am quite at your service." + +"And now where shall we go?" continues Amelia, shutting the door behind +her and beginning to cross the hotel courtyard at his side; "that is the +next thing--not to any gallery or church, I think, if you do not mind; I +say such stupid things about Art, and the more I try, the stupider they +are; let us go somewhere into the country--I can understand the country. +I am not afraid of saying stupid things about it." + +Into Burgoyne's mind comes the odious thought that he would not put it +past his betrothed to say stupid things even about the Tuscan landscape, +but he only awaits her decision in a respectful silence while helping +her into a fiacre. + +"It would be a sin to be under any roof to-day but this one," she says, +looking up to the immeasurable azure bridge above her head; "would you +mind--could you spare time to go to Fiesole?" + +His only answer is to repeat the word Fiesole to the driver, who, with +the inevitable tiny poodle-shaven dog beside him, is awaiting the order +as to his destination. It is but a little way to Fiesole, as we all +know, but yet, as the slow hired vehicle crawls up the steep ascent, +with the driver walking alongside, or even lagging behind, there would +be time and opportunity to say a good deal. But Amelia says next to +nothing. Perhaps the heat makes her sleepy, for it is so hot, so hot +between the garden walls, where the rose hedges are beginning to show a +pale flush of plenteous pink among their multitude of green buds. Young, +indeed, just born as the roses are, the highway dust has already +powdered them with its ash-toned white. He does not know it at the time, +but those dust-filmed rosebuds have found a home in his memory from +which no after-sights, however numerous, will dislodge them. They have +reached the village, and left their carriage, and begun, silently still, +to ascend the steep lane up which the feet of most of Europe and America +have in turn climbed to see the famous view that rewards the little +effort. Past the cottages, whose inmates, tranquilly sitting in their +doorways, or leaning idly against their door-posts, have probably seen +all that is illustrious, notorious, history-making of the day, pass +pantingly. Is there a prime minister, a princess, a poet, a prima donna, +of the time, that has not toiled up the steep path to the welcome rest +of the bench on the high plateau, on the hillside? Jim and Amelia are +certainly not likely to figure in the annals of their time, but the +peasants look at them with as much or as little interest as if they +were. An immortal, unless his immortality is printed on his back in +letters as large as those that announce Colman's mustard to the world, +has, to the vulgar, very much the air of one of themselves. + +Our friends have reached the haven of the stone seat, and, thanks to the +earliness of the hour, have it all to themselves, save for a trio of +sunburnt women of the people, with handkerchiefs tied over their tanned +heads, who tease them to buy straw hand-screens. And when they have +bought a couple, and made it kindly but distinctly evident that no +amount of worrying will induce them to buy any more, even these leave +them in peace and descend the hill again, in search of newer victims. +They are alone under the sky's warm azure. Beneath their eyes spreads +one of those nobly lovely spectacles that Italy and spring, hand in +hand, alone can offer. To some, indeed, it may seem that the prospect +from the Bellosguardo side of the valley is even more beautiful, since +Fiesole, sitting so high as she does, dwarfs the opposite hills, and +makes the looker lose their wavy line. They seem flat in comparison, the +plain appears wider, the beloved city more distant, and does not show +the same exquisite distinctness of separate tower and spire and palace. +But yet such comparison is mere carping. Who can wish for a sight more +divinely suave and fair than this from the bench above Fiesole? Not a +breath of smoke dares to hang about the glorious old town, dimming its +lustre, and between them and it what a spread of manifold colour, of +more "mingled hue" than the rainbow's "purfled scarf doth show!" The +moon-tinted olives, twilight and ghostly, even in the dazzling radiance +of this superb morning hour, with the blinding green of the young corn +about their gray feet, the cypress taper-flames, the gay white houses, +terrace gardened, and, above all, the vast smile of the Tuscan heaven. + +At first Amelia's muteness seems natural and grateful to Jim, as the +outcome of the awe and hush that exceeding beauty breathes on the human +heart, but by-and-by, as it is prolonged beyond the limits that seem to +him fit or agreeable, it begins to get on his nerves. After having so +genuinely and wantonly alarmed him, has she brought him here, without +any expressions of regret or remorse, simply to steep herself in a +silent luxury of selfish enjoyment? After brooding resentfully on this +idea for a considerable time, he translates it into speech. + +"I thought that you had something to say to me?" + +It seems as if her soul had gone out into the sun and April-painted +champaign country, and that it is only with an effort and a sigh that +she fetches it home again: + +"So I have." + +"And how much longer am I to wait for it?" + +There is no indication of any capacity for patience in his tone. + +She brings her look back from the shining morning city, and fixes it +wistfully upon him. + +"Are you in such a hurry to hear?" + +The pathetic streak in her voice, instead of conciliating, chafes him. +What is the sense of this paraphernalia of preliminaries? Why not come +to the point at once? if indeed there is a point--a fact of which he +begins to entertain grave doubts. + +"I do not know what you call hurry," he replies drily; "I have been +awaiting this mystic utterance for sixteen or seventeen hours." + +Her sallow cheek takes on a pinky tinge of mortification at his accent. + +"You are quite right," she answers quickly; "I have no business to keep +you waiting. I meant to tell you as soon as we got here; I asked you to +bring me here on purpose, only----" + +"You told me that you must make the communication at some place where it +would not matter if you did break down," says he, rather harshly helping +her memory; "you must allow that that was not an encouraging exordium. +Do you look upon this"--glancing ironically round--"as a particularly +suitable place for breaking down?" + +Again that pain-evidencing wave of colour flows into her face. There is +such an unloving mockery in his displeased voice. + +"I shall not break down," she replies, forcing herself to speak with +quiet composure; "you need not be afraid that I shall. I know that +yesterday I was foolish enough to say the very words you quote, but I +was not quite myself then; I did not quite know what I was saying; I had +only just heard it." + +"_It?_ What IT? Is this a new riddle? For Heaven's sake let us hear the +answer to the first before we embark on any fresh one!" + +"It is no riddle," replies she, her low patient tones contrasting with +his exasperated ones, "nothing could be plainer; it was only that I +happened to overhear something rather--rather painful--something that +was not intended for me." + +His angry cheek blanches as his thought flies arrow-quick to the one +subject of his perennial apprehension. Someone has been poisoning her +ear with cowardly libels, or yet more dreadful truths about Elizabeth Le +Marchant. For a moment or two his tongue cleaves to the roof of his +mouth, then he says in a tone which he uselessly tries to make one of +calm contempt alone: + +"If you had lived longer in Florence, you would know how much importance +to attach to its tittle-tattle and _cancans_." + +She shakes her head with a sorrowful obstinacy. + +"This was no tittle-tattle--no _cancan_." + +Her answer seems but to confirm him in this first horrible suspicion. + +"It is astonishing," he says, in a strangled voice, "how ready even the +best women are to believe evil; what--what evidence have you of the +truth of--of these precious stories?" + +"What evidence?" she repeats, fastening her sad eyes upon him--"the +evidence of my own heart. I realize now that I have known it all along." + +Read by the light of his fears, this response is so enigmatic that it +dawns upon him with a flash of inexpressible solace that perhaps he may +be on the wrong track after all. His ideas are precipitated into such a +state of confusion by this blessed possibility that he can only echo in +a stupefied tone: + +"Have known what all along?" + +She has turned round on the stone bench upon which they have hitherto +been sitting side by side, and, as he in the eagerness of his listening +has done the same thing, they are now opposite to one another, and he +feels as well as sees her hungry eyes devouring his face. + +"That you are sick of me," she answers, in a heart-wrung whisper, "sick +to death of me--that was what she said." + +It is impossible to deny that Burgoyne's first impulse is one of relief. +He has been mistaken, then. Elizabeth's secret is in the same state of +precarious safety as her enemy's departure from Florence had left it in. +His second impulse--our second impulses are mostly our best ones, +equally free from the headlongness of our first, and the cold worldly +wisdom of our third--is one of genuine indignation, concern, and +amazement. + +"What who said?" + +"Mrs. Byng." + +His stupefaction deepens. + +"_Mrs. Byng_--Mrs. Byng told you that I was sick of you? Sick to death +of you?" + +"Oh, no," she cries, even her emotion giving way to her eagerness to +correct this misapprehension, "she did not tell _me_ so! How could you +imagine such a thing? She is far, far too kind-hearted; she would not +hurt a fly intentionally, and would be exceedingly pained if she thought +I had overheard her." + +He shrugs his shoulders despairingly. + +"_Je m'y perds!_ She told you, and she did not tell you; you heard, and +you did not hear." + +"I am telling it very stupidly, I know," she says apologetically, "very +confusedly; and of course I can't expect you to understand by instinct +how it was." She sighs profoundly, and then goes on quickly, and no +longer looking at him. "You know she took me to the party, but when we +reached the villa, I found that she knew so many people, and I so few, +that I should only be a burden to her if I kept continually by her side, +and as I was rather tired--you know that I had not been in bed for two +or three nights--I thought I would go into the house and rest, so as to +be quite fresh by the time you came. I fancied it was not unlikely you +might be a little late." + +His conscience, at the unintentional reproach of this patient +supposition, reminds him of its existence by a sharp prick. How many +times has her poor vanity suffered the bruise of being long first at the +rendezvous? + +"I discovered that chair by the window under the curtain, the one where +you found me." + +"Well?" + +"It was so quiet there, as everybody was in the garden, that I suppose I +fell asleep; at least I remember nothing more until suddenly I heard +Mrs. Byng's voice saying----" + +"Saying what?" + +"Her son was with her--he had brought her in to have some tea; it was to +him that she was speaking; she was asking him about me, where I was? +where he had left me? whether he had seen me lately? And then she said, +'Poor Amelia, Jim really does neglect her shamefully; and yet one cannot +help being sorry for him, too; it was such child-stealing in the first +instance, and he is evidently dead-sick of her! It is so astonishing +that she does not see it!'" + +There is something almost terrible in the calm distinctness with which +Amelia repeats the sentences that had laid the card-house of her +happiness in the dust. Certainly she keeps her promise to him to the +letter; she gives no lightest sign of breaking down. There is not a tear +in her eye, not a quiver in her voice. After a moment's pause, she +continues: + +"And then he, Mr. Byng, answered, 'Poor soul, it--it _is_ odd! She must +have the hide of a hippopotamus.'" + +Amelia has finished her narrative, repeating the young man's galling +comment, with the same composure as his mother's humiliatingly +compassionate ones; and for a space her sole auditor is absolutely +incapable of making any criticism upon it. He is forbidden, if he had +wished it, to offer her even the mute amends of a dumb endearment, by +the reappearance on the scene of a couple of the sun-scorched peasant +torments with their straw hand-screens. It is not likely that those so +lately bought should have worn out already; but yet they renew their +importunities with such a determined obstinacy, as if they knew this to +be the case; and it is not until they are lightened of two more, that +they consent once again to retire, leaving the warm bright plateau to +the lovers--if indeed they can be called such. + + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + + "True, be it said, whatever man it said, + That love with gall and honey doth abound; + But if the one be with the other way'd, + For every dram of honey therein found + A pound of gall doth over it redound." + + +"She was perfectly right," says Amelia, still speaking quite quietly; +"it is astonishing that I should not have seen it; and it _was_ +child-stealing; you were barely twenty-one, and I--I was not very young +for a woman even then--I was twenty-three. I ought to have known +better." + +For once in his life Burgoyne is absolutely bereft of speech. It is +always a difficult matter to rebut a charge of being dead sick of a +woman without conveying an insult in the very denial; and when there +lies a horrid substratum of truth under the exaggeration of the +accusation, the difficulty becomes an impossibility. + +"However, it might have been much worse," continues Miss Wilson; "just +think if I had overheard it only after I had married you, when I knew +that there was nothing but death that could rid you of me. I thank God I +have heard it in time." + +His throat is still too dry for him to speak; but he stretches out his +arm to encircle her in a mute protest at that thanksgiving over her own +shipwreck; but, for the first time in her life, she eludes his caress. + +"Child-stealing," she repeats, under her breath; "and yet"--with a +touching impulse of apology and deprecation--"you seemed old for your +age; you seemed so much in earnest; I think you really were;"--a wistful +pause--"and afterwards, though of course I could not help seeing that I +was not to you what you were to me, yet I thought--I hoped that if I +waited--if I was patient--if no one else--no one more worthy of you came +between us"--another and still wistfuller delay in her halting +speech--"you might grow a little fond of me, out of long habit; I never +expected you to be more than a little fond of me!" + +He has entirely hidden his face in his two hands, so that she is without +that index to guide her as to the effect produced by her words, and he +continues completely silent. Whether, even after her rude awakening, she +still, deep in her heart, cherishes some pale hope of a denial, an +explaining away of the reported utterances, who shall say? It is with a +half-choked sigh that she goes on: + +"But you could not; I am not so unjust as not to know that you tried +your best. Poor fellow! it must have been uphill work for you"--with a +first touch of bitterness--"_labouring_ to love me, for eight years; is +it any wonder that you failed? and I was so thick-skinned I did not see +it--the '_hide of a hippopotamus_' indeed! There could not be a juster +comparison; and now all I can do is to beg your pardon for having spoilt +eight of your best years--_your best years_"--with slow iteration; "but +come"--more lightly--"you have some very good ones left too; you are +still quite young; for a man you are quite young; the harm I have done +you is not irreparable; I think"--with an accent of reproach--"you might +ease my mind by telling me that the harm I have done you is not +irreparable!" + +Thus appealed to, it is impossible for him any longer to maintain his +attitude of disguise and concealment. His hands must needs be withdrawn +from before his face; and, as he turns that face towards her, she +perceives with astonishment, almost consternation, that there is an +undoubted tear in each of his hard gray eyes. + +"And what about the harm I have done to you?" he asks under his breath, +as if having no confidence in his voice; "what about the eight best +years of _your_ life?" + +A look of affection, so high and tender and selfless, as to seem to +remove her love out of the category of the mortal and the transitory, +dawns and grows in her wan face. + +"Do not fret about them," she answers soothingly, "they were--they +always will have been--the eight best years of my life. They were full +of good and pleasant things. Do not forget--I would not for worlds have +you forget--I shall never forget myself--that they all came to me +through you!" + +At her words, most innocent as they are of any intention of producing +such an effect, a hot flush of shame rises to his very forehead, as his +memory presents to him the successive eras into which these eight good +years had divided themselves: six months of headlong boyish passion; six +months of cooling fever; and seven years of careless, intermittent, +matter-of-course, half-tenderness. + +"Through _me_?" he repeats, with an accent of the deepest +self-abasement; "you do not mean to be ironical, dear; you were never +such a thing in your life; you could not be if you tried; but if you +knew what a _sweep_ you make me feel when you say the sort of thing you +have just said!--and so it is all to come to an end, is it? Good as +these eight years have been, you have had enough of them? You do not +want any more like them?" + +She says neither yes nor no. He remains unanswered, unless the faint +smile in her weary eyes and about her drooped mouth can count for a +reply. + +"And all because you have heard some fool say that I was tired of you?" + +The tight smile spreads a little wider, and invades her pale cheeks. + +"Worse than tired! _sick! sick to death!_" + +She is looking straight before her, at the landscape simmering in the +climbing sun, the divine landscape new and young as it was before duomo +and bell-tower sprang and towered heavenwards. Why should her gaze dwell +any more upon him? She has renounced him, her eyes must fain renounce +him too. As he hears her words, as he watches her patient profile, the +sole suffering thing in the universal morning joy, a great revulsion of +feeling, a great compassion mixed with as large a remorse pours in +torrent over his heart. These emotions are so strong that they make him +deceive even himself as to their nature. It seems to him as if scales +had suddenly fallen from his eyes, showing him how profoundly he prizes +the now departing good, telling him that life can neither ask nor give +anything better than the undemanding, selfless, boundless love about to +withdraw its shelter from him. His arm steals round her waist, and not +once does it flash across his mind--as, to his shame be it spoken, it +has often flashed before--what a long way it has to steal! + +"Am I sick of you, Amelia?" + +She makes no effort to release herself. It does him no harm that she +should once more rest within his clasp. But she still looks straight +before her at lucent Firenze and her olives, and says three times, +accompanying each repetition of the word with a sorrowful little +head-shake: + +"Yes! _yes!_ YES!" + +He will compel her to look at him, his own Amelia. Have not all her +tender looks been his for eight long years? He puts out his disengaged +hand, and with it determinately turns her poor quivering face round so +as to meet his gaze. + +"Am I sick of you, Amelia?" + +In the emotion of the moment, it appears to him as if there were +something almost ludicrously improbable and lying about that accusation, +in which, when first brought against him, his guilty soul had admitted +more than a grain of truth. Her faded eyes turn to his, like flowers to +their sun; the veracity of his voice and of his eager gray orbs--still +softened from their habitual severity by the tears that had so lately +wet them--making such a hope, as, five minutes ago, she had thought +never again to cherish, leap into splendid life in her sick heart. + +"Is it possible?" she murmurs, almost inaudibly, "do you mean--that you +are _not_?" + + * * * * * + +They go down the hill, past the cottages, and the incurious peasants, +hand in hand, her soul running over with a deep joy; and his occupied by +an unfamiliar calm, that is yet backed by an ache of remorse, and +by--what else? That "else" he himself neither could nor would define. He +spends the whole of that day with Amelia, both lunching and dining with +her and her family; a course which calls forth expressions of unaffected +surprise, not at all tinctured with malice--unless it be in the case of +Sybilla, who has never been partial to him--from each of them. + +"We have been thinking that Jim was going to jilt you, Amelia!" Cecilia +has said with graceful badinage; nor, strange to say, has she been at +all offended when Jim has retorted, with equal grace and much superior +ill-nature, that on such a subject no one could speak with more +authority than she. + +The large white stars are making the nightly sky almost as gorgeous as +the day's departed majesty had done, ere Jim finds himself back at his +hotel. His intention of quietly retreating to his own room is traversed +by Byng, who, having evidently been on the watch for him, springs up the +stairs, three steps at a time, after him. + +"Where have you been all day?" he inquires impatiently. + +"At the Anglo-Américain. I wonder you are not tired of always asking the +same question and receiving the same answer to it." + +"I am not so sure that I should always receive the same answer," replies +the other, with a forced laugh--"but stop a bit!"--seeing a decided +quickening of speed in his friend's upward movements--"my mother is +asking for you; she has been asking for you all the afternoon; she wants +to speak to you before she goes." + +"_Goes?_" + +"Yes, she is off at seven o'clock to-morrow morning--back to England: +she had a telegram to-day to say that her old aunt, the one who brought +her up, has had a second stroke. No!"--seeing Jim begin to arrange his +features in that decorous shape of grave sympathy which we naturally +assume on such occasions--"it is no case of great grief; the poor old +woman has been quite silly ever since her last attack; but mother thinks +that she ought to be there, at--at the end; to look after things, and so +forth." + +There is an alertness, a something that expresses the reverse of regret +in the tone employed by Mrs. Byng's son in this detailed account of the +causes of her imminent departure, which, even if his thoughts had not +already sprung in that direction, would have set Burgoyne thinking as to +the mode in which the young man before him is likely to employ the +liberty that his parent's absence will restore to him. + +"I offered to go with her," says Byng, perhaps discerning a portion at +least of his companion's disapprobation. + +"And she refused?" + +Byng looks down, and begins to kick the banisters--they are still on the +stairs--idly with one foot. + +"Mother is so unselfish that it is always difficult to make out what she +really wishes; but--but I do not quite see of what use I should be to +her if I did go." + +There is a moment's pause; then Burgoyne speaks, in a dry, hortatory +elder brother's voice: + +"If you take my advice you will go home." + +The disinterested counsel of wise elder brothers is not always taken in +the spirit it merits; and there is no trace of docile and unquestioning +acquiescence in Byng's monosyllabic-- + +"Why?" + +"Because, if you stay here, I think you will most likely get into +mischief." + +The young man's usually good-humoured eyes give out a blue spark that +looks rather like fight. + +"The same kind of mischief that you have been getting into during the +past week?" he inquires slowly. + +The acquaintance with his movements evidenced by this last sentence, no +less than the light they throw upon his own motives, stagger Jim, to the +extent of making him accept the sneer in total silence. Is not it a +richly deserved one? But the sweet-natured Byng is already repenting it; +and there is something conciliatory and almost entreating in the spirit +of his last remark: + +"I do not know what has happened to my mother," he says, lowering his +voice; "there is no one less of a _mauvaise langue_ than she, as you +know; but in the case of----"--he breaks off and begins his sentence +afresh; "she has been warning me against _them_ again; I can't find that +she has any reason to go upon; but she has taken a violent prejudice +against _her_. She says that it is one of her instincts; and you--you +have done nothing towards setting her right?" + +Perhaps it may be that his young friend's reported metaphor of the +"hippopotamus hide" has not served to render him any dearer to Jim; but +there is certainly no great suavity in his reply: + +"Why should I?--it is no concern of mine." + +"No concern of yours to stand by and see an angel's white robe +besmirched by the foul mire of slander?" cries Byng indignantly, and +lapsing into that high-flown mood which never fails to make his more +work-a-day companion "see blood." + +"When I come across such a disagreeable sight it will be time enough to +decide whether I will interfere or not. At present I have not met with +anything of the kind," returns he, resolutely putting an end to the +dialogue by knocking at Mrs. Byng's portal, within which he is at once +admitted. + +The door of the bedroom communicating with the _salon_ is open, and +through it he sees the lady he has come to visit standing surrounded by +gaping dress-baskets, strewn raiment, and scattered papers; all the +uncomfortable litter that speaks of an imminent departure. She joins him +at once, and, shutting the door behind her, sits down with a fagged air. + +"I hear," he begins--"Willy tells me--I am very sorry to hear----" + +"Oh, there is no great cause for sorrow," rejoins she quickly, as if +anxious to disclaim a grief which might be supposed to check or limit +her conversation--"poor dear old auntie!--the people who love her best +could not wish to keep her in the state she has been in for the last +year; oh, dear!"--sighing--"how very dismal the dregs of life are! do +not you hope, Jim, that we shall die before we come to be 'happy +releases'?" + +"I do indeed," replies he gravely; "I expect to be sick--dead-sick of +life long before I reach that stage of it." + +He looks at her resentfully as she speaks, but she has so entirely +forgotten her own application of the accented adjectives to his feelings +for Amelia, that she replies only by a rather puzzled but perfectly +innocent glance. + +"I never was so unwilling to leave any place in my life," she goes on +presently, pursuing her own train of thought; "I do not know how to +describe it--a sort of presentiment." + +He smiles. + +"And yet I do not think that there are any owls in the Piazza to hoot +under your windows!" + +"Perhaps not," rejoins she, with some warmth; "but what is still more +unlucky than that happened to me last night; they passed the wine the +wrong way round the table at the MacIvors. I was on thorns!" + +"And you think that the wine going the wrong way round the table gave +your aunt a stroke?" inquires Jim, with an irritating air of asking for +information. + +Mrs. Byng reddens slightly. + +"I think nothing of the kind; I draw no inference; I only state a fact; +it _is_ a very unlucky thing to send the wine round the wrong way: if +you had not spent your life among grizzly bears and cannibals you would +have known it too!" + +"There are no cannibals in the Rocky Mountains," corrects Jim quietly; +and then they both laugh, and recommence their talk on a more friendly +footing. + +"I am not at all happy about Willy." + +"No?" + +"It is not his health so much--his colour is good, and his appetite not +bad." + +"Except the Fat Boy in 'Pickwick,' I never heard of anyone who had a +better." + +"But he is not himself; there is something odd about him!" + +"Indeed!" + +"Have not you noticed it yourself?--do not you think that there is +something odd about him? Does not he strike you as odd?" + +"_Odd?_" repeats Burgoyne slowly, reflecting in how extremely +commonplace a light both the virtues and vices of his fellow-traveller +have always presented themselves to him; "it would never have occurred +to me that Willy was _odd_; I cannot"--smiling--"encourage you in the +idea that you have added one to the number of the world's eccentrics." + +She sighs rather impatiently at his apparently intentional +misunderstanding of her drift. + +"'Children are avenues to misfortune,' as somebody said, and I think +that, whoever he was, he was right. 'If Jacob take a wife of the +daughters of Heth, such as are those in the land, what good shall my +life do to me?'" + +"Why should you credit Jacob with any such intention?" + +"I do not half like leaving him here by himself." + +"_By himself?_ You count me as no one then?" + +"Oh yes, I do--I count you as a great deal; that is why I was so anxious +to speak to you before I went; of course I do not expect you to take +upon yourself the whole responsibility of him, but you might keep an eye +upon him." + +He shrugs his shoulders. + +"As I have to keep the other eye upon myself, I am afraid that the +effort would but make me squint." + +"It is his own generosity that I am afraid of--his self-sacrificing +impulses; I am always in terror of his marrying someone out of pure +good-nature, just to oblige her, just because she looked as if she +wished it." + +"Stevenson thinks that it does not much matter whom we marry, whether +'noisy scullions,' or 'acidulous vestals.'" + +"I do not care what Stevenson thinks: ever since Willy was in Eton +jackets, I have had a nightmare of his bringing me home as +daughter-in-law some poor little governess with her nose through her +veil, and her fingers through her gloves!" + +Burgoyne smiles involuntarily as a vision of Elizabeth's daintily-clad +hands flashes before his mental eye. + +"I think you overrate his magnanimity; I never saw him at all tender to +anyone whose gloves were not beyond suspicion." + +Mrs. Byng laughs constrainedly. + +"Well, if she has not holes in her gloves, she may have holes in her +reputation, which is worse." + +Jim draws in his breath hard. The tug of war is coming, as the preceding +leading remark, lugged in by the head and shoulders, sufficiently +evidences. At all events he will do nothing to make its approach easier +or quicker. He awaits it in silence. + +"These Le Marchants--as they are friends of yours--I suppose that I +ought not to say anything against them?" + +"I am sure that you are too well-bred to do anything of the kind," +replies he precipitately, with a determined effort to stop her mouth +with a compliment, which she is equally determined not to deserve. + +"I do not think I am; I am only well-bred now and then, when it suits +me; I am not going to be well-bred to-night." + +"I am sorry to hear it." + +"Whether they are friends of yours or not, I do not like them." + +"I do not think that that matters much, either to you or to them." + +"I have an instinct that they are adventuresses." + +"I know for a certainty "--with growing warmth--"that they are nothing +of the kind." + +"Then why do not they go out anywhere?" + +"Because they do not choose." + +"Because no one asks them, more likely! Why were they so determined not +to be introduced to me?" + +"How can I tell? Perhaps"--with a wrathful laugh--"they did not like +your looks!" + +She echoes his false mirth with no inferior exasperation. + +"Who is ill-bred now?" + +Her tone calls him back to a sense of the ungentleman-likeness and +puerility of his conduct. + +"I!"--he replies contritely--"undoubtedly I! but----" + +"Do not apologize," interrupts she, recovering her equanimity with that +ease which she has transmitted to her son; "I like you for standing up +for them if they _are_ your friends; and I hope that you will do the +same good office for me when someone sticks pins into me behind my back; +but come now, let us be rational; surely we may talk quietly about them +without insulting each other, may not we?" + +"I do not know; we can try." + +"I suppose"--a little ironically--"that you are not so sensitive about +them but that you can bear me to ask a few perfectly harmless +questions?" + +He writhes. "Of course! of course! what are they to me?--they are +nothing to me!" + +A look of incredulity, which she perhaps does not take any very great +pains to conceal, spreads over her face. + +"Then you really will be doing me a great service if you tell me just +exactly all you know about them, good and bad." + +"All I know about them," replies Jim in a rapid parrot-voice, as if he +were rattling over some disagreeable lesson--"is that they were +extremely kind to me ten years ago; that they had a beautiful place in +Devonshire, and were universally loved and respected: I hear that they +have let their place; so no doubt they are not so much loved and +respected as they were; and now you know as much about the matter as I +do!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. + + "Welcome ever smiles; and Farewell goes out sighing." + + +This last clause is not always true. For example, there is very little +sighing in the farewells made to Mrs. Byng by the two young men who see +her off at the Florence Railway Station. And Mrs. Byng herself has been +too much occupied in manoeuvring to get a few last private words with +each of her escort to have much time for sighing either. + +She would have been wounded if her old friend Jim had not come to see +the last of her, and she would have been broken-hearted if her son had +not paid her this final attention; and yet each necessarily destroys the +_tête-à-tête_ she is burning to have with the other. It is indelicate to +implore your adored child not to go to the devil in the presence of an +intimate friend, and it would give a not unnatural umbrage to that child +if you urged the guardian friend to check his downward tendency while he +himself is standing by. Nor do her two companions at all aid her in her +strategy; rather, they show a tendency to unite in baffling her, hanging +together round her like a bodyguard, and effectually hindering the last +words which she is pining to administer. Only once for a very few +minutes does she succeed in outwitting them, when she despatches Willy +to the bookstall to buy papers for her--an errand from which he returns +with an exasperating celerity. The instant that his back is turned, Mrs. +Byng addresses her companion in an eager voice of hurry and prayer: + +"You will keep an eye upon him?" + +Silence. + +"You will keep an eye upon him--promise?" + +"I do not know what 'keeping an eye upon him' means in your vocabulary; +often you and I do not use the same dictionary; until I know, I will not +promise." + +"You will look after him; _do_, Jim!" + +"My dear madam"--with irritation--"let me go and buy your papers; and +meanwhile urge _him_ to look after _me_; I assure you that it is quite +as necessary." + +"Fiddlesticks, with your unimaginative, unemotional nature----" + +"H'm!" + +"Your head will always take care of your heart." + +"Will it?" + +"While he--promise me at least that, if you see him rushing to his ruin, +you will telegraph to me?" + +"Certainly, if you wish it; I will telegraph, 'Willy rushing Ruin.' At +five-and-twenty centimes a word, it will cost you sevenpence halfpenny; +not dear at the price, is it?" + +The mother reddens. + +"You have become a very _mauvais plaisant_ of late, Jim; oh dear me! +here he is back again, tiresome boy!" + +It is with feelings tied into a knot of complications, which he scarcely +seeks to unravel, that Burgoyne walks away from the station, and from +the good-natured staunch woman, whose last few moments in fair Firenze +he has done his best to embitter. He is glad that she is gone, and he is +sorry that she is gone. He is remorseful at his gladness, and he is +ashamed of his sorrow, knowing and acknowledging that it results from no +regret for her companionship, which he had been wont to prize; but to +the consciousness that she had stood like an angel with a drawn sword +between her son and the Piazza d'Azeglio. Both angel and drawn sword are +steaming away now, covered by a handsome travelling cloak down to the +heels in a _coupé toilette_, and the road to the Piazza lies naked and +undefended, open to the light feet that are so buoyantly treading the +flags beside him. + +The step of youth is always light, but there is something aggressively +springy in Byng's this morning; and though he does not _say_ anything +offensively cheerful, there is a ring in his voice that makes his kind +friend long to hit him. He, the kind friend, is thankful when their ways +part, without his having done him any bodily violence. + +"You are late to-day," says Cecilia, as he enters the _salon_, giving +him a nod of indifferent friendliness, while Sybilla crossly asks him to +shut the door more quietly, and Amelia lays her hand lingeringly in his, +with a silent smile of rapture; "we began to think you had had a +relapse. I was just telling Amelia that the pace had been too good to +last--ha, ha!" + +Burgoyne has always found it difficult to laugh at Cecilia's jokes, and +his now perfect intimacy with her relieves him from the necessity of +even feigning to do so. + +"I have been seeing Mrs. Byng off," he replies, with that slight shade +of awkwardness in his tone which has accompanied his every mention of +the mother or son since his explanation with his betrothed. + +"You let her go without getting that wedding present out of her, after +all?" cries Cecilia, who is in a rather tryingly playful mood. + +"Gone, is she?" says Sybilla, with a somewhat ostentatious sigh of +resentful relief; "well, I, for one, shall not cry. I am afraid that she +was not very _simpatica_ to me; she was so dreadfully robust. Perhaps, +now that she is no longer here to monopolise him, we shall be allowed to +see something more of that nice boy." + +No one answers. Not one of her three listeners is at the moment disposed +to chant or even echo praises of the "nice boy." Sybilla perversely +pursues the subject. + +"I dare say that he has a delicacy about coming without a special +invitation," she says, "where there is an invalid; but you might tell +him that on my good days no one is more pleased to see their friends +than I; it does not even send my temperature up; you might tell him that +on my good days Dr. Coldstream says it does not even send my temperature +up!" + +Again no one answers. + +"You do not seem to be listening to what I am saying," cries Sybilla +fractiously; "will you please tell him, Jim?" + +Jim lifts his heavy eyes from the ugly carpet on which they have been +resting, and looks distastefully back at her. + +"I do not think that I will, Sybilla," he replies slowly; "I do not +think he cares a straw whether your temperature goes up or down. I think +that he does not come here because--because he has found metal more +attractive elsewhere." + +He makes this statement for no other reason than because it is so +intensely unpleasant to him, because he realizes that he must have to +face the fact it embodies, and to present it not only to himself, but to +others. And each day that passes proves to him more and more +conclusively that it _is_ a fact. He asks Byng no question as to the +disposition of his day. He sees but little of him, having, indeed, +changed the hours of his own breakfast and dinner in order to avoid +having his appetite spoilt by the sight of so much unnecessary radiance +opposite him; but he knocks up against him, flower-laden, at the Strozzi +steps; he notes the splendour of his ties and waistcoats; he grows to +know the _Elizabeth-look_ on his face, when he comes singing home at +evening, as one knows the look of the western clouds that the sun's red +lips have only just ceased to kiss, though no sun is any longer in +sight; and yet he does not interfere. He has received from the young +man's mother a hasty letter, pencilled in the train, not an hour after +she had quitted him; another more leisurely, yet as anxious, from Turin; +a third from Paris, and lastly a telegram from Charing Cross. All bear +the same purport. + +"Write; keep an eye upon him!" "Write; keep an eye upon him! Write!" + +And yet, though a full week has passed, though he sees the son of his +old ally drifting, faster than ever autumn leaf drifted on a flush +October river, to the whirlpool she had dreaded for him, yet he sends +her never a word. He writes her long letters, it is true, covers +telegram-forms with pregnant messages, but they all find their ultimate +home in the wood fire. When the moment comes, he finds it impossible to +send them, since, upon searching his heart for the motives that have +dictated them, he finds those motives to be no fidelity to an ancient +friendship, no care for the boy's welfare, but, simply and nakedly, the +satisfaction of his own spite, the easing of his own bitter jealousy. + +So the Florentine post goes out daily, bearing no tale of Byng's +backslidings to his native land, and Jim, brushing past him, answering +him curtly, never going nearer to the Piazza d'Azeglio than the +Innocenti--a good long street off--devotes himself to the frantic +prosecution of a suit long since won, to the conquest of a heart for +eight weary years hopelessly, irrecoverably, pitiably his. His presence +at the Anglo-Américain is so incessant, and his monopolizing of Amelia +so unreasonable, that Sybilla--for the first time in her life really a +little neglected--alternately runs up her pulse to 170 and drops it to +40. + +"And then you wonder that I am anxious to be married," says Cecilia, +accompanying her future brother-in-law to the door, on the day on which +the latter phenomenon has occurred, and wiping the angry tears from her +plump cheeks. "I make no secret of it, I _am_ madly anxious, I would +marry anyone, I am desperate. Just think what my life will be when +Amelia is gone; and though of course I shall be a great deal with +her--she has promised that I shall be almost always with her" (Jim +winces)--"yet of course it can't be the same thing as having a home of +your own." + +"We will do our best for you," replies he, with a rather rueful smile +and a sense of degradation; "but you know, my dear Cis, anybody can lead +a horse to the water, but it is not so easy to make him drink." + +"That is quite true," replies Cecilia, one of whose most salient merits +is an extreme unreadiness to be affronted, wiping her eyes as she +speaks, "and I have no luck; such promising things turn up, and then +come to nothing. Now, that clergyman the other day, whom we met at the +Villa Careggi--such a pleasant gentlemanlike man--he was on the look-out +for a wife, he told me so himself, and I know so much about the working +of a parish, and next day he was off, Heaven knows where!" + +Jim gives a slight shudder. + +"I do not think you had any great loss in him," he says hastily; then, +seeing her surprised air, "I mean, you know, that it is always said that +a man is a better judge of another man than a woman is, and I did not +like his looks; give us time, and we will do better for you than that." + +Cecilia can no longer accuse her future relation of any slackness in the +matter of expeditions. There is something of fever in the way in which +he arrives each morning, armed with some new plan for the day, giving no +one any peace until his project is carried out. It seems as if he must +crowd into the last fortnight of Amelia's stay in Florence all the +sight-seeing, all the junkets, all the enjoyment which ought to have +been temperately spread over the eight years of their engagement. + +One day--all nearer excursions being exhausted--they drive to Monte +Senario, that sweet and silent spot, happily too far from Florence for +the swarm of tourists to invade, where earth-weary men have set up a +rest scarcely less dumb than the grave in a lonely monastery of the +Order of La Trappe. Through the Porta San Gallo, along the Bologna Road +they go. It is a soft summer morning, with not much sun. Up, past the +villas and gardens, where the Banksia roses and wistarias are rioting +over wall, and berceau and pergola, climbing even the tall trees. Round +the very head of one young poplar two rose-trees--a yellow and a white +one--are flinging their arms; flowered so lavishly that hardly a pin's +point could be put between the blossoms. Up and up, a white wall on +either hand. The dust lies a foot thick on the road; thick too on the +monthly roses, just breaking into full pink flush; thick on themselves +as the endless mulecarts come jingling down the hill with bells and red +tassels, and a general air of what would be jollity were not that +feeling so given the lie to by the poor jaded, suffering beasts. Up and +up, till they leave stone walls and villas and oliveyards behind them, +and are away among the mountains. At a very humble little house that has +no air of an inn they leave the carriage, and climb up a rocky road, and +through a perfumed pine-wood, to where the Trappist Monastery stands, in +its perfect silence and isolation, on its hilltop, looking over its +fir-woods at the ranges of the Apennines, lying one behind the other in +the stillness of the summer-day; looking to distant Florence, misty and +indistinct in her Arno plain; looking to Fiesole, dwarfed to a +molehill's dimensions. + +"I am told that one of the brothers is an Englishman; I did not hear his +name, but he is certainly English," says Cecilia, as they mount the +shallow, grass-grown steps to the monastery door. "If I send up word +that I am a fellow-countrywoman, perhaps he will come out and speak to +me; I am sure that it would be a very nice change for him, poor fellow!" + +And it is the measure of the amount of Cecilia's acquaintance with the +rules of the Order, that it is only half in jest that she makes the +suggestion. But she does not repeat it to the lay-brother who stands, +civil yet prohibitory, at the top of the flight, and who, in answer to +Burgoyne's halting questions as to where they may go, politely answers +that they may go anywhere--anywhere, _bien entendu_, outside. So they +wander aimlessly away. They push open a rickety gate, and passing an old +dog, barking angry remonstrances at them from the retirement of a +barrel, step along a grassy path that leads they know not whither. Two +more young lay-brothers meet them, with their hands full of +leopard's-bane flowers, which they have been gathering, probably to deck +their altar with. + +Amelia has passed her hand through Jim's arm--since his late increased +kindness to her she has been led to many more little freedoms with him +than she had hitherto permitted herself--and though she is very careful +not to lean heavily or troublesomely upon him, yet the slight contact of +her fingers keeps him reminded that she is there. Perhaps it is as well, +since to-day he is conscious of such a strange tendency to forget +everything, past, present, and to come. Has one of the monks' numb hands +been laid upon his heart to lull it into so frozen a quiet? To-day he +feels as if it were absolutely impossible to him to experience either +pleasure or pain; as if to hold Elizabeth in his own arms, or see her in +Byng's, would be to him equally indifferent. His apathy in this latter +respect is to be put to the test sooner than he expects. Not indeed that +Elizabeth is lying in Byng's arms--it would be a gross misrepresentation +to say so, she being, on the contrary, most decorously poised on a +camp-stool--least romantic of human resting places--when they come +suddenly upon her and him in the course of their prowl round the +inhospitable walls. She is sitting on her camp-stool, and he is lying on +his face in the grass, just not touching her slim feet. + +The advancing party perceive the couple advanced upon before the latter +are aware of their nearness; long enough for the former to realize how +very much _de trop_ they will be, yet not long enough to enable them to +escape unnoticed. Jim becomes aware of the very second at which Amelia +recognises the unconscious pair, by an involuntary pinch of her fingers +upon his arm, which a moment later she hastily drops. His own first +feeling on catching sight of them--no, not his _very_ first--his very +first is as if someone had run a darning-needle into his heart--but +almost his first is to shout out to them in loud warning: + +"Be on your guard! we are close to you!" + +He will never forgive either himself or them if they ignorantly indulge +in any endearment under his very eyes. But they do not. There are no +interlacing arms to disentwine, nothing to make them spring apart, when +at length they look up and take in the fact--an unwelcome fact it must +needs be--of their invasion. + +On hearing approaching footsteps, Byng rolls over on his back in the +grass; on perceiving that most of the footsteps are those of ladies, he +springs to his feet. Elizabeth remains sitting on her camp-stool. + +"What a coincidence!" cries Cecilia, breaking into a laugh. + +They are all grateful to her for the remark, though it is rather a silly +one, as there is no particular coincidence in the case. Burgoyne is +irritatedly conscious that Amelia is covertly observing him, and before +he can check himself he has thrown over his shoulder at her one of those +snubbing glances from which, for the last ten days, he has painstakenly +and remorsefully refrained. It is not a happy moment to look at poor +Amelia, as she has not yet cooled down from the heat of her climb +through the fir-wood--a heat that translates itself into patchy flushes +all over her face, not sparing even her forehead. Elizabeth is flushed +too. She has not met Miss Wilson since she had declined Burgoyne's offer +of bringing his betrothed to see her, and in her deprecating eyes there +is a guilty and tremulous recollection of this fact. But below the guilt +and the deprecation and the tremor, what else is there in Elizabeth's +eyes? What of splendid and startling, and that comes but once in a +lifetime? Rather than be obliged to give a name to that vague radiance, +Jim turns his look back upon his own too glowing dear one. + +"Did you come here all alone? You two all alone? What fun!" asks +Cecilia, with an air of delighted curiosity. + +Again her companions inwardly thank her. It is the question that +both--though with different degrees of eagerness--have been thirsting to +ask. + +"Alone?--oh no!" replies Elizabeth, with that uneasy, frightened look +that Burgoyne has always noticed on her face when she has been brought +into unwilling relation with strangers. "My mother is here--she came +with us; why, where is she?"--looking round with a startled air--"she +was here a moment ago." + +A grim smile curves Jim's mouth. It is evident that the unhappy Mrs. Le +Marchant, worn out with her _rôle_ of duenna, has slipped away without +being missed by either of her companions. Would they have even +discovered her absence but for Cecilia's query? + +"Mrs. Le Marchant was here a moment ago," echoes Byng, addressing the +company generally; "but"--dodging his friend's eyes--"she said she was a +little stiff from sitting so long; she must be quite close by." + +"I will go and look for her," says Elizabeth, confused, and rising from +her rickety seat as she speaks; but Amelia, who is nearest to her, puts +out a friendly hand in prohibition. + +"Oh, do not stir!" she cries, smiling kindly and admiringly. "You look +so comfortable. Let _me_ go and search for Mrs. Le Marchant; +I--I--should be afraid to sit down, I am so hot. I should like to find +her; Cecilia will help me, and Mr. Byng will show us the way." + +It is not always that generous actions meet their meed of gratitude from +those for whose sake they are performed; and, though Burgoyne recognises +the magnanimity of his _fiancée's_ line of conduct, thankfulness to her +for it is not the feeling uppermost in his mind when, a few moments +later, he finds himself standing in uneasy _tête-à-tête_ over the seated +Elizabeth. + +"Will not you sit down?" she asks presently, adding, with a low, timid +laugh, "I do not know why I should invite you, as if"--glancing round at +the sun-steeped panorama--"this were my drawing-room." + +He complies, taking care to occupy a quite different six feet of herbage +from that which still bears the imprint of Byng's lengthy limbs. The +grass grows cool and fresh, full of buttercups and tall blue bugle; out +of them the gray monastery wall rises, in its utter lifeless silence, +with its small barred windows. Was ever any building, within which is +human life, so unutterably still? As he leans his elbow among the +king-cups, Jim says to himself that the lovers had chosen their place +well and wisely--that the consciousness of the austere, denied lives +going on so close behind them, in their entire joylessness, must have +given an added point, a keener edge to the poignancy of their own +enjoyment of the sweet summer day outside. + +"You have not been to see us for a long time," says Elizabeth presently, +in a small and diffident voice, after having waited until the +probability of his speaking first has become a mere possibility, and +even that a faint one. + +He replies baldly, "No." + +His look is fixed on a knoll, whence the monks must have gathered their +leopard's bane. They cannot have gathered much, so bounteously do the +gay yellow flowers still wave on the hillock. Nearer stands a colony of +purple orchises, and from them the eye travels away to the silent +fir-wood, to the range of misty hills and the distant plain, touched now +and again by a vague hint of sunshine, that makes one for the moment +feel sure that one has detected Duomo or Campanile. How many hill ranges +there are! One can count six or seven, like the ridges in a gigantic +ploughed field, one behind another--all solemnly beautiful on this +windless day of grave and ungaudy sweetness. Has the young man been +reckoning the ranks of the Apennines, that it is so long before he adds +a low-voiced, mocking question to his monosyllable? + +"Have you missed me very much?" + +The woman addressed seems in no hurry to answer. She has drawn her +narrow brown brows together, as if in the effort to hit truth in her +nicest shade in her answer. Then she speaks with a sort of soft +self-remonstrance: + +"Oh, surely! I _must_ have missed you--you were so extraordinarily, so +unaccountably kind to us!" + +There is not one of us who would not rather be loved for what we _are_ +than for what we _do_; so it is perhaps no wonder if the young woman's +reply strikes with an unreasonable chill upon the asker's heart. + +"You must have been very little used to kindness all your life," he +says, with some brusqueness, "to be so disproportionately grateful for +my trumpery civilities." + +She hesitates a moment, then: + +"You are right," she replies; "I have not received any great kindness in +my life--justice, well, yes, I suppose so--but no, not very much mercy." + +Her candid and composed admission of a need for mercy whets yet farther +that pained curiosity which has always been one of the strongest +elements in his uncomfortable interest in her. But the very sharpness of +that interest makes him shy away awkwardly from the subject of her past. + +"I always think," he says, "that there is something fatuous in a man's +apologizing to a lady for not having been to see her, as if the loss +were hers, and not his." + +"Is there? All the same, I am sorry that you did not come." + +This simple and unsophisticated implication of a liking for him would +have warmed again the uneasy heart that her former speech had chilled +had not he, under the superficial though genuine regret of her face, +seen, still shining with steady lustre, that radiance which has as +little been called forth by, as it can be dimmed by him or anything +relating to him. And so he passes by in silence the expression of that +sorrow which he bitterly knows to be so supportable. + +The still spirit of the day seems to have touched the very birds. They +sing a few low notes in veiled, chastened voices from the fir-wood, and +again are silent. The clock tells the hours in quarters to the doomed +lives inside the monastery, self-doomed to suffering and penance and +incarceration, even with the winning blue of the Tuscan sky above their +tonsured heads, with the forget-me-nots pressing their feet, and the +nightingales singing endless love-songs to them from the little dark +forest nigh at hand. + +"I suppose," says Elizabeth presently, in a reflective tone, "that the +fact is, when people are in your position--I mean on the brink of a +great deep happiness--they forget all lesser things?" + +He snatches a hasty glance of suspicion at her. Is this her revenge for +his neglect of her? But nothing can look more innocent or less ironical +than her small profile, bent towards the gigantic forget-me-nots and the +pulmonaria, azure as gentians. + +"Perhaps." + +"The big fish"--her little face breaking into one of her lovely smiles, +which, by a turn of her head from side to full, she offers in its +completeness to his gaze--"swallows up all the little gudgeons! Poor +little gudgeons." + +"Poor little gudgeons!" he echoes stupidly, and then begins to laugh at +his own wool-gathering. + +"And now I suppose you will be going directly--going home?" pursues she, +looking at him and his laughter with a soft surprise. + +"I hope so; and--and--you too?" + +She gives a start, and the sky-coloured nosegay in her hand drops into +her lap. + +"We--we? Why should _we_ go home? We have nothing pleasant to go to, +and"--looking round with a passionate relish at mountain, and suffused +far plain, and sappy spring grass--"we are so well--so infinitely well +here!" Then, pulling herself together, and speaking in a more composed +key, "But yes, of course we, too, shall go by-and-by; this cannot last +for ever--nothing lasts for ever. That is the one thought that has kept +me alive all these years; but now----" + +She breaks off. + +"But now?" + +Even as he watches her, putting this echoed interrogation, he sees the +radiance breaking through the cloud his question had gathered, as a very +strong sun breaks through a very translucent exhalation. + +"But now?" she repeats vaguely, and smiling to herself, forgetful of his +very presence beside her--"But now? Did I say 'But now?' Ah, here they +are back again!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. + + +"I am going to turn the tables on you," says Amelia next morning to her +lover, after the usual endearments, which of late he has been +conscientiously anxious not to scant or slur, have passed between them, +very fairly executed by him, and adoringly accepted and returned by her; +"you are always arranging treats for me; now I have planned one for +you!" + +She looks so beaming with benevolent joy as she makes this statement, +that Jim stoops and drops an extra kiss--not in the bond--upon her +lifted face. "Indeed, dear!" he answers kindly, "I do not quite know +what I have done to deserve it; but I hope it is a nice one." + +"It is very nice--delightful." + +"Delightful, eh?" echoes he, raising his brows, while a transient wonder +crosses his mind as to what project she or anyone else could suggest to +him that, at this juncture of his affairs, could merit that epithet; +"well, am I to guess what it is? or are you going to tell me?" + +Amelia's face still wears that smile of complacent confidence in having +something pleasant to communicate which has puzzled her companion. + +"We have never been at Vallombrosa, have we?" asks she. + +"Never." + +"Well, we are going there to-morrow." + +"Are we? is that your treat?" inquires he, wondering what of peculiarly +and distinctively festal for him this expedition may be supposed to have +above all their former ones. + +"And we are not going alone." + +"There is nothing very exceptional in that; Cecilia is mostly good +enough to lend us her company." + +"I am not thinking of Cecilia; I have persuaded"--the benevolent smile +broadening across her cheeks--"I have persuaded some friends of yours to +join us." + +It does not for an instant cross his mind either to doubt or to affect +uncertainty as to who the friends of whom she speaks may be; but the +suggestion is so profoundly unwelcome to him, that not even the +certainty of mortifying the unselfish creature before him can hinder him +from showing it. Her countenance falls. + +"You are not glad?" she asks crestfallenly, "you are not pleased?" + +It is impossible for him to say that he is, and all that is left to him +is to put his vexation into words that may be as little as possible +fraught with disappointment to his poor hearer's ear. + + +"I--I--had rather have had you to myself." + +"Would you really?" she asks, in the almost awed tones of one who, from +being quite destitute, has had the Koh-i-Noor put into his hand, and +whose fingers are afraid to close over the mighty jewel; "would you +really? then I am sorry I asked them; but"--with intense +wistfulness--"if you only knew how I long to give you a little pleasure, +a little enjoyment--you who have given me so infinitely much." + +If Miss Wilson were ever addicted to the figure of speech called irony, +she might be supposed to be employing it now; but one glance at her +simple face would show that it expressed nothing but adoring gratitude. +Her one good fortnight has spread its radiant veil backwards over her +eight barren years. + +He takes her hand, and passes the fingers across his lips, murmuring +indistinctly and guiltily behind them: + +"Do I really make you happy?" + +"Do you?"--echoes she, while the transfiguring tears well into her +glorified pale eyes--"I should not have thought it possible that so much +joy could have been packed into any fortnight as I have had crammed into +mine!" + +They have to set off to Vallombrosa at seven o'clock in the morning, an +hour at which few of us are at our cleverest, handsomest, or our best +tempered; nor is the party of six, either in its proportion of women to +men--four to two--or in its component parts, a very well adjusted one. +They are too numerous to be contained in one carriage, and are therefore +divided into two separate bands--three and three. Whether by some +manoeuvre of the well-meaning Amelia, or by some scarcely fortunate +accident, Burgoyne finds himself seated opposite to his betrothed and to +Elizabeth; while Byng follows in the second vehicle as _vis-à-vis_ to +Cecilia and Mrs. Le Marchant. There is a general feeling of wrongness +about the whole arrangement--a sense of mental discomfort equivalent to +that physical one of having put on your clothes inside out, or buttoned +your buttons into unanswering buttonholes. + + +Mrs. Le Marchant's face, as Burgoyne catches sight of it now and then, +as some turn in the road reveals the inmates of the closely-following +second carriage to his view, wears that uneasy and disquieted look which +always disfigures it when there is any question of her being brought +into personal relation with strangers. And Elizabeth, of whom he has +naturally a much nearer and more continuous view, is plainly +ill-at-ease. Miss Wilson has not thought it necessary to mention to her +lover how strong had been the opposition to her plan on the part of the +objects of it; nor, that it was only because her proposal was made _vivâ +voce_, and therefore unescapable, that it had been reluctantly accepted +at last. At first Burgoyne had attributed Elizabeth's evident +ill-at-easeness to her separation from Byng; but he presently discovers +that it is what she possesses, and not what she lacks, that is the chief +source of her _malaise_. During the latter part of his own personal +intercourse with her she had been, when in his company, sometimes sad, +sometimes wildly merry; but always entirely natural. Strange as it may +seem, it is obviously the presence of Amelia that puts constraint upon +her. Before the spirit of that most unterrifying of God's creatures, +Elizabeth's "stands rebuked." Once or twice he sees her inborn +gaiety--that gaiety whose existence he has so often noted as it +struggles up from under the mysterious weight of sorrow laid upon +it--spurt into life, only to be instantly killed by the reassumption of +that nervous formal manner which not all Amelia's gentle efforts can +break through. + +A very grave trio they drive along through the grave day. For it is, +alas! a grave day--overcast, now turning to rain, now growing fair again +awhile. Not a grain of Italy's summer curse, her choking white dust, +assails their nostrils. It must have rained all night. Through the +suburbs by the river, crossing and recrossing that ugly iron interloper +the railway; by the river flowing at the foot of the fair green hills, +so green, so green on this day of ripe accomplished spring. The whole +country is one giant green garland, of young wheat below and endless +vine necklaces above--necklaces of new juicy, just-born, yet vigorous +vine-leaves. The very river runs green with the reflection of the +endless verdure on its banks. The road is level as far as Pontassieve, +the town through which they roll, and then it begins to mount--mounts +between garden-like hills, dressed in vine leaves and iris-flowers, and +the dull fire of red clover; while the stream twists in flowing +companionship at the valley bottom, until they turn abruptly away from +it, up into a steep and narrow valley, almost a gorge, and climb up and +up one side of it, turning and winding continually to break the +steepness of the ascent. However broken, it is steep still. But who +would wish to pass at more than a foot's pace through this great sheet +of lilac irises wrapping the mountain side, past this bean-field that +greets the nostrils with its homely familiar perfume, along this wealthy +bit of hedge, framed wholly of honeysuckle in flower? At sight of the +latter Elizabeth gives a little cry. + +"Oh, what honeysuckle! I must have some! I must get out! Tell him to +stop!" + +In a moment her commands are obeyed; in another moment Byng has sprung +out of the second carriage and is standing beside her. The door of +Byng's vehicle is stiff apparently, and a sardonic smile breaks over the +elder man's face as he hears the noise of the resounding kicks +administered to it by the younger one's impatient foot. But he need not +have been in such a hurry--no one interferes with his office of rifling +the hedge of its creamy and coral bugles. + +Burgoyne gets out of the carriage; but it is only to walk to the other +one and assume Byng's vacated seat. + +"Are you going to change places?" Amelia has asked rather chapfallenly +as he leaves her; and he has given her hand a hasty pressure, and +answered affectionately-- + +"It will not be for long, dear; but you know"--with an expressive +glance, and what he rather too sanguinely hopes looks like a smile in +the direction of the flower-gatherers--"fair play is a jewel!" + +If his departure from the one vehicle is deplored, it is not welcomed at +the other. Cecilia asks the same question as her sister had put, though +the intonation is different. + +"Are you going to change places?"--adding--"do not you think we did very +well as we were?" + +But probably he is too much occupied in wrestling with the stiff door to +hear her, for he makes no answer beyond getting in. The only reward that +he receives for his piece of self-sacrifice is a rapturous look of +gratitude from Byng, when he perceives the changed position of his +affairs, and that recompense Jim had far rather have been without. + +They are off again. Being now second in the little procession, Burgoyne +has but meagre and difficult views of the first; but now and again, when +the road describes an acuter angle than usual, he can by turning his +whole body, under pretext of admiring the view, snatch a glimpse of all +three occupants leaning their heads sociably together, evidently in +bright light talk. After all, he had deceived himself. It is he and not +Amelia who had made her shy. Even when he cannot see her, there come to +his ears little wafts of laughter, in which her voice is mixed. He +catches himself trying to recall whether she had laughed even once +during the period of his being her companion. There is not much mirth in +his own carriage. What a kill-joy he has grown! Cecilia, though her +heart is as pure as the babe unborn of any serious designs on Byng, of +which indeed she has long seen the fruitlessness, yet thinks a sulky +brother-in-law-elect but a poor exchange for a handsome young +acquaintance, whom neither his good manners nor the amount of his +intimacy allow to sit opposite to her in grumpy silence. Mrs. Le +Marchant is obviously as ill at ease as was her daughter when in his +fellowship, though in this case a little observation shows him that he +counts for nothing in her discomfort of mind, but that she is watching +the other half of the party with an anxiety as keen, if almost as +covert, as his own. She is too well-bred indeed not to endeavour to keep +up a decent show of conversation, but as neither of her companions makes +any effort to second her, an ever-deepening silence falls upon them as +they advance, nor, as the day grows older, is the weather calculated to +exhilarate their spirits. + +The sky's frown becomes more and more pronounced the higher they mount. +Through a village nobly seated on its hilltop, but, like most Italian +townlets, squalid enough on a nearer view--up and up--up and up--till +they reach what were once groves of stately chestnuts, but where the +hungry Tuscan axe has left nothing but twigs and saplings, but never a +spreading tree; then on into the fir-woods, which are woods indeed, +though even here the hatchet's cruel tooth has begun to bite. No sooner +is their dark umbrage reached than the mist, that has been hanging with +threatening lowness above the travellers' heads, comes down close, +blinding, clinging like wet flannel, and as thick. + +"Perhaps it will lift," Jim says, with a sort of dismal unlikely +hopefulness as he strains his eyes, trying to look down the straight +solemn fir aisles, with their files upon files of tall stems, that seem +to be seen only as if through a thick gauze. Neither of his companions +has the spirit necessary to echo the supposition. The road winds +endlessly, steeper and steeper up through the mist. The tired horses +step wearily, and the unfortunate pleasure-seekers are beginning to +think that the muffled monotony of firs, of winding road, of painfully +labouring horses, will never end, when the vetturino turns round with a +smile on his fog-wet face, and says, "Vallombrosa!" + +Under other circumstances, the announcement might have been cheering, +might have excited a poetic curiosity; but as it is, the hood of the +vehicle--necessarily raised some miles back--is so far poked forward +that nothing is to be seen but a pour of rain--the rain has begun to +descend in torrents--a glass-door in a house-wall opening to admit them, +and a waiter holding up a green umbrella to protect their descent. +Neither he nor the landlord, nor yet the chambermaid, show any signs of +mirth or wonder at their arrival among the clouds on such a day. They +are used to mad Inglese. And amongst the mad Inglese themselves there is +certainly no temptation to mad merriment. On such an occasion there is +nothing to do but eat, so they lunch dismally in a long, bare +dining-room, with a carpetless floor, a table laid for a grossly +improbable number of guests, and a feeling of searching cold. Having +spun out their scanty meal to the utmost limits of possibility, and +washed it down with the weakest red wine that ever lived in a wicker +bottle, they pass into a funereal _salon_, to which the waiter invites +them. Someone makes the cheering announcement that they have as yet been +here only half an hour, and that the horses must have two full hours to +bait before there can be any question of beginning the return journey. +And then they amble about the room, looking at the dreadful lithographs +of Italy's plain King and fair Queen on the walls; at the venerable +journals and gaudy English storybook, so dull as to have been forgotten +by its owner, on the table. Their spirits are not heightened by a +pervading sense as of being in a cellar, minus the wine. The equipment +of this pleasant apartment is completed by a half-dead nosegay of what +must once have been charming mountain blossoms. The sight decides them. +They must go out. Perhaps even through this opaque cloud they may dimly +see the mountain flowers growing, the mountain brooks dashing, which +John Milton has told them that-- + + "the Etrurian shades, + High over-arch'd imbower." + +They all catch at the suggestion, when made by Byng, and presently sally +forth to see as much of Vallombrosa as a fog that would not have +disgraced the Strand, as a close blanket of almost _confluent_ rain, and +as umbrellas held well down over their cold noses, will let them; Mrs. +Le Marchant alone declines to be one of the party, and is left sitting, +swaddled in all the superfluous wraps, on a horsehair chair in the +_salon_, to stare at the wall and at King Humbert's ugly face, until +such time as her companions see fit to release her. It is no wonder that +Burgoyne overhears her eagerly whispering to Elizabeth a request that +she will not stay too long away. And Elizabeth, whose spirits have gone +up like a rocket at the prospect of a taste of the fresh air, and who +knows what else, lays her little face, crowned with a deer-stalking cap, +against her mother's, and promises, and skips away. + +At first they all five keep together, wet but sociable. They ask their +way to the Paradiso--the name sounds ironical--and set off climbing up +through the fir-wood in the direction indicated; along a path which in +fair weather must be heavenly with piny odours, but which is now only a +miry alternative of dripping stones and muddy puddles. Through the mist +they see indeed fair flowers gleaming, yellow anemones, unfamiliar and +lovely, but they are too drenched to pluck. The sound of falling water +guides them to where the clear brook--clear even to-day--falls in little +cascades down the hill's face between the pines. How delicious to sit on +its flat stones some hot summer's noon, with your hands coolly straying +among its grasses, or dabbling in its bright water; but to-day they can +but look at it sadly from the low bridge, saying sighingly, "If!" + +They reach the goal, some cross, and all floundering, the ladies with +draggled skirts and cold, dank ankles. The Paradiso is a little house, a +_dépendance_ apparently of the hotel below--apparently also tenantless +and empty. It is built on the bare rock, looking sheer down on--what? on +a blanket of fog. What does, what can, that maddening blanket conceal? +Oh, if they could but tear it in pieces, rend it asunder, hack it with +knives, by any means abolish its unsightly veil from over the lovely +face they will now, with all their climbing, all their early rising, +never see! But will not they? Even as they look, despairingly straining +their eyes, in the vain effort to pierce that obscure and baffling veil, +there is a movement in it, a stirring of the inert mass of vapour; a +wind has risen, and is blowing coldly on their brows, and in a moment, +as it seems, the maddening wet curtain is swept away and up, as by some +God-hand, the hand of some spirit that has heard their lament and has +pitied them and said, "They have come from afar; it is their only +chance; let us show it to them." The curtain has rolled up and up, the +sombre fir-wood starts out, and the emerald meadows, the lowest and +nearest range of hills, then the next, and then the next, and then the +furthest and highest of all. There they stand revealed, even the city, +Florence, far away. They can make out her Duomo, small and dim with +distance, yet certainly there; in the sudden effulgence all the valley +alight and radiant. Range behind range stand the hills; belated vapour +wreaths floating, thin as lawn, up their flanks; wonderful dreamy +patches of radiance on the far slopes; marvellous amethysts starring +their breasts. Mystery and beauty, colour and space, sky and lovely +land, where, five minutes ago, there was nothing but choking fog. +Burgoyne stands as in a trance, vaguely conscious--trance-wise too--that +Elizabeth is near him; all his soul passed into his eyes; stands--how +long? He hardly knows. Before that fair sight time seems dead; but even +as he yet looks, smiling as one smiles at anything surpassingly lovely, +the cloud-wreaths float downwards again, wreaths at first, then great +volumes, then one universal sheet of vapour, impenetrably dense as +before. Vanished are the Apennine slopes, sun-kissed and dreamy; +vanished the distant Arno plain; vanished even the near pines. He can +scarce see his hand before him. And yet he can see Elizabeth's face +transfigured and quivering, lifted to his--yes, to _his_--though Byng is +on her other side; her eyes full of tender tears of ravishment, while +her low voice says sighingly: + +"It is gone; but we have seen it! Nothing can ever take that from us! +nothing! nothing!" + +And although the next moment she is reabsorbed into the fog and Byng, +though for the rest of the deplorable walk he scarce catches sight again +of the little brown head and the soaked deer-stalking cap, yet it makes +a gentle warmth about his chilled heart to think that, in her moments of +highest emotion, it is her impulse to turn to him. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. + + "Oh, gentle Proteus, Love's a mighty lord, + And hath so humbled me that I confess + There is no grief to his correction + Nor to his service no such joy on earth. + Now no discourse except it be of Love; + Now can I break my fast, dine, sup and sleep + Upon the very naked name of Love." + + +Not once again, so long as they remain at Vallombrosa, does the envious +cloud-blanket lift; and, after slopping about for some time longer, in +the vain hope that it will, Burgoyne and his two female relatives-elect +return to the inn, all fallen very silent. The other two members of the +party have disappeared into the fog. At the door of the hotel they find +Mrs. Le Marchant, who has broken from her cerements, and is looking +anxiously out. As she catches sight of them the look of tension on her +face lessens. + +"Oh, here you are!" says she. "I am so glad; and the others--no doubt +the others are close behind." + +"We know nothing about the others," replies Cecilia, with some +ill-humour, taking upon her the office of spokeswoman, which neither of +her companions seems in any hurry to assume; "the others took French +leave of us an hour ago. Oh dear, how wet I am! What a horrible +excursion! How I detest Vallombrosa!" + +Amelia is to the full as wet as her sister; nothing can well be more +lamentable than the appearance of either; and upon Amelia's face there +is, in addition to a handsome share of splashes of rain, a look of +mortification and crestfallenness; but she now puts in her word, with +her usual patience and thoughtful good-temper. + +"I do not think you need be in the least anxious about them," she says, +observing the immediate relapse into what seems an exaggerated concern +following instantly upon Cecilia's remark on Mrs. Le Marchant's +features; "they were with us not long ago. We were certainly all +together not so long ago; they were with us at the Paradiso--they were +certainly with us at the Paradiso?" turning with an interrogative air to +Burgoyne. + +"Yes, they were certainly with us at the Paradiso," he assents, not +thinking it necessary to add why he is so very certain as to this fact. + +"They must have so much inducement to loiter this charming weather," +cries Cecilia, with an exasperated laugh. "Oh, how wet I am! I do not +expect that we shall any of us forget Vallombrosa in a hurry! I shall go +and ask the chambermaid to lend me some dry shoes and stockings." + +With these words she walks towards the staircase and climbs it, leaving +a muddy imprint on each step to mark her progress as she mounts. + +Amelia does not at once follow her example. She remains standing where +she was, her arms hanging listlessly by her sides, and the expression of +crestfallenness deepened on her fagged face. Her lover is touched by her +look, and, going up to her, lays his hand kindly and solicitously on her +shoulder. + +"Umbrellas are not what they were in my days," he says, trying to smile. +"You are quite as wet as Cis, though you do not proclaim your sufferings +nearly so loudly. Had not you better go and see whether the chambermaid +owns two pairs of dry stockings?" + +She lifts her eyes with wistful gratitude to his. "This is my treat," +she says slowly; "my first treat to you; oh, poor Jim!" + +There is a depth of compassion in her tone as disproportioned to the +apparent cause as had been Mrs. Le Marchant's anxiety for her daughter's +return, and beneath it he winces. + +"Why do you pity me?" he inquires half indignantly. + +"Am I-- + + "'A milksop; one that never in his life + Felt so much cold as over shoes in snow?' + +What do I care for a little rain?" Adding cheerfully, "You shall give me +a second treat, dear; we will come here again by ourselves when the sun +shines." + +"By ourselves--when the sun shines!" echoes she, as if repeating a +lesson; and then she goes off docilely, in obedience to his suggestion, +in search of dry raiment. + +He rejoins Mrs. Le Marchant, whose unaccountable fears have led her +beyond the house's shelter out into the rain, where she stands looking +down that river of mud which represents the road by which she hopes to +see the truants reappear. + +"I think you are unnecessarily alarmed," he says, in a reassuring and +remonstrating tone. "What harm could have happened to them?" + +She does not answer, her eyes, into which the rain is beating under her +umbrella brim, still fixed upon the empty road. + +"Is she--is she apt to take cold?" he asks, his own tone catching the +infection of her vague and nameless disquiet. + +"Yes--no--not particularly, I think. Oh, it is not that!"--her composure +breaking down into an unaffected outburst of distress. "It is not that! +Do not you understand? Oh, how unwilling I was to come here to-day! It +is--do not you see? Oh, I should not mind in the least if it had been +you that were with her!" + +"If it had been I that was with her?" repeats Jim slowly, not at the +first instant comprehending, nor even at the second quite taking in the +full, though unintentional, uncomplimentariness of this speech; which, +however, before his companion again takes up her parable, has tinglingly +reached--what? His heart, or only his vanity? They lie very close +together. + +"Why did not he go home with his mother?" pursues Mrs. Le Marchant, +still in that voice of intense vexation. "It would have been so much +more natural that he should, and I am sure that she wished it." + +"You are making me feel extremely uncomfortable," says Burgoyne gravely; +"when I remember that it was I who introduced him to you." + +"Oh, I am not blaming you!" replies she, with an obvious effort to +resume her usual courteous manner. "Please do not think that I am +blaming you. How could you help it?" + +"I thought you liked him." + +"Oh, so I do--so we both do!" cries the poor woman agitatedly. "That is +the worst of it! If I did not like him, I should not mind; at least, I +should not mind half so much." + +"I am very sorry," he begins; but she interrupts him. + +"Do not be sorry," she says remorsefully; "you have nothing to say to +it. I do not know, I am sure"--looking gratefully at him through the +rain--"why I am always regaling you with my worries; but you are so +dependable--we both feel that you are so dependable." + +"Am I?" says he, with a melancholy air that does not argue much +gratification at the compliment. "Do not be too sure of that." + +But she does not heed his disclaimer. + +"We have been so happy here," she goes on; "I do not mean +_here_"--looking round with an involuntary smile at the envelope of wet +vapour that encases them both--"but at Florence; so peacefully, +blessedly happy, she and I--you do not know"--with an appealing touch of +pathos--"what a dear little companion she is!--so happy that I naturally +do not want our memory of the place to be spoilt by any painful +_contretemps_. You can understand that, cannot you?" + +It is senseless of him; but yet, little as he can comprehend why it +should be so, the idea of Byng's love being described as a "painful +_contretemps_" presents itself not disagreeably to his mind. For +whatever mysterious reason, it is apparent that even Byng's own mother +cannot be much more adverse to his suit than is the lady before him. + +"I can perfectly enter into your feelings," he answers, with sympathetic +gravity; "but do not you know that 'a watched pot never boils'? As long +as you are looking for them, they will never appear; but the moment that +your back is turned they will probably come round the corner at once." + +"I think it is the truest proverb in the world," she says, with an +impatient sigh; but she allows him to guide her and her umbrella back to +the inn. + +Burgoyne's prediction is not verified; probably he had no very great +faith in it himself. Mrs. Le Marchant's back has, for the best part of +an hour, been turned upon the mountain road, and the stragglers have not +yet rejoined the main body. There has been plenty of time for Cecilia to +be thoroughly dried, warmed, comforted, and restored to good humour; for +the _vetturino_ to send in and ask whether he shall not put the horses +to; for Amelia to exhaust all her little repertory of soothing +hypotheses; for Mrs. Le Marchant to stray in restless misery from +_salon_ to _salle-à-manger_ and back again, and for Burgoyne to pull +gloomily at a large cigar in the hall by himself before at length the +voices of the truants are heard. + +Burgoyne being, as I have said, in the hall, and therefore nearest the +door of entrance, has the earliest sight of them. His first glance tells +him that the blow apprehended by Mrs. Le Marchant has fallen. Of +Elizabeth, indeed, he scarcely catches a glimpse, as she passes him +precipitately, hurrying to meet her mother, who, at the sound of her +voice, has come running into the outer room. But Byng! Byng has not +experienced so many very strong emotions in his short life as to have +had much practice in veiling them from the eyes of others when they +come, and the gauze now drawn over his intolerable radiance is of the +thinnest description. Again that earnest desire to hit him _hard_ +assails the elder friend. + +"Why, you are back before us!" cries the young man. + +"Yes, we are back before you," replies Burgoyne; and if the penalty had +been death, he could not at that moment have added one syllable to the +acrid assent. + +"Are we late?" asks Elizabeth tremulously; "I am afraid we are late--I +am afraid we have kept you waiting! Oh, I am so sorry!" + +She looks with an engaging timidity of apology from one to other of the +sulky countenances around her; and Burgoyne stealing a look at her, +their eyes meet. He is startled by the singularity of expression in +hers. Whatever it denotes, it certainly is not the stupid simplicity of +rapture to be read, in print as big as a poster's, in Byng's. And yet, +among the many ingredients that go to make up that shy fevered beam, +rapture is undoubtedly one. + +"Did you lose yourselves? Did you go further into the wood?" asks +Cecilia, with a curiosity that is, considering the provocation given, +not unjustifiable. + +They both reply vaguely that they had lost themselves, that they had +gone deeper into the wood. It is obvious to the meanest intelligence +that neither of them has the slightest idea where they have been. + +"I may as well tell the driver to put the horses in," says Burgoyne, in +a matter-of-fact voice, glad of an excuse to absent himself. + +When he comes back, he finds the Le Marchants standing together in the +window, talking in a low voice, and Byng hovering near them. It is +evident to Jim that the elder woman has no wish for converse with the +young man; but in his present condition of dizzy exhilaration, he is +quite unaware of that fact. He approaches her indeed (as the unobserved +watcher notes) with a dreadful air of filial piety, and addresses her in +a tone of apology it is true, but with a twang of intimacy that had +never appeared in his voice before. + +"You must not blame her; indeed you must not! it was entirely my fault. +I am awfully sorry that you were alarmed, but indeed there was no cause. +What did you think had happened? Did you think"--with an excited laugh +of triumph and a bright blush--"that I had run off with her?" + +The speech is in extremely bad taste, since, whatever may be the posture +of affairs between himself and Elizabeth, it is morally impossible that +her mother can yet be enlightened as to it; the familiarity of it is +therefore premature and the jocosity ill-placed. No one can be more +disposed to judge it severely than its unintended auditor; but even he +is startled by the effect it produces. + +Without making the smallest attempt at an answer, Mrs. Le Marchant +instantly turns her shoulder upon the young man--a snub of which Jim +would have thought so gentle-mannered a person quite incapable, and +walks away from him with so determined an air that not even a person in +the seventh heaven of drunkenness can mistake her meaning. Nor does +Elizabeth's conduct offer him any indemnification. She follows her +mother a little more slowly; and, as she passes Jim, he sees that she is +shaking violently, and that her face is as white as chalk. A sort of +generous indignation against the mother for spoiling the poor little +soul's first moments of bliss mixes curiously in his mind with a less +noble satisfaction at the reflection that there are undoubtedly breakers +ahead of Byng. + +"How--how are we to divide?" cries Cecilia, as they all stand at the +door while the two carriages drive up. + +No one answers. The arrangement seems planned by no one in particular, +and yet, as he drives down the hill, Burgoyne finds himself sitting +opposite the two Misses Wilson. He is thankful that the raised hood and +unfurled umbrellas of the second equipage prevent his having any ocular +evidence of the ecstasy that that wet leather and that dripping silk +veil. But even this consolation is not long left him. As they leave the +fir-wood, they come out of the clouds too, into clear, lower air. Hoods +are pushed back and umbrellas shut. The horses, in good heart, with +homeward-turned heads, pricked with emulation by another carriage ahead +of them, trot cheerfully down the road--the road with all its bent-elbow +turnings--down, down, into the valley beneath. But the clouds that have +rolled away off the evening sky seem to have settled down with double +density upon the spirit of Burgoyne and his companions. Even the +fountain of Cecilia's chatter is dried. Once she says suddenly _à propos +de bottes_: + +"She must be years older than he!" To which Amelia quickly rejoins-- + +"But she does not look it." + +It is almost the only remark she makes during the long drive, and +Burgoyne is thankful to her for her silence. Conscious of and grateful +for her magnanimity as he is, there is yet something that jars upon him +in her intuition of his thoughts, and in her eager championship of that +other woman. He looks out blankly at the flowers, wetly smiling from +field and bank, at the endless garden of embracing vines and embraced +mulberries, joining their young leafage; at the stealing river and the +verdurous hill-sides. In vain for him Italy's spring laughter broadens +across the eternal youth of her face. + +On reaching Florence and the Anglo-Américain, he would fain enter and +spend the evening with his betrothed. He has a feverish horror of being +left alone with his own thoughts, but she gently forbids him. + +"It would not be fair upon father and Sybilla," she says. "I am afraid +they have not been getting on very well _téte-à-téte_ together all this +wet day, and I should not be much good to you in any case. I feel +stupid. You will say"--smiling--"that there is nothing very new in that; +but I am quite beyond even my usual mark to-night. Good-night, dear; I +humbly beg your pardon for having caused you to spend such a wretched +day. I will never give you another treat--never, _never!_ it was my +first and last attempt." + +She turns from him dejectedly, and he is himself too dejected to attempt +any reassuring falsities. She would not have believed him if he had told +her that it had not been a wretched day to him, and the publicity of +their place of parting forbids him to administer even the silent +consolation of a kiss. And yet he feels a sort of remorse at having said +nothing, as the door closes upon her depressed back. Backs can look +quite as depressed as faces. The lateness of their start home has thrown +their return late. Burgoyne reflects that he may as well dine at once, +and then trudge through his solitary evening as best he may. Heaven +knows at what hour Byng may return. Shall he await his coming, and so +get over the announcement of his bliss to-night, or put the dark hours +between himself and it? + +He decides in favour of getting it over to-night, up to whatever small +hour he may be obliged to attend his friend's arrival. But he has not to +wait nearly so long as he expects. He has not to wait at all, hardly. +Before he has left his own room, while he is still making such toilette +for his own company as self-respect requires, the person whom he had not +thought to behold for another four or five hours enters--enters with +head held high, with joy-tinged, smooth cheeks, and with a superb lamp +of love and triumph lit in each young eye. A passing movement of +involuntary admiration traverses the other's heart as he looks at him. +This is how the human animal ought to--was originally intended to--look! +How very far the average specimen has departed from the type! There is +not much trace of admiration, however, in the tone which he employs for +his one brief word of interrogation: + +"Already?" + +"I was sent away," replies Byng, in a voice whose intoxication pierces +even through the first four small words; "they sent me away--they would +not let me go further than the house-door. I say 'they,' but of course +_she_ had no hand in it--_she_, not _she_. _She_ would not have sent me +away, God bless her! it was her mother, of course--how could she have +had the heart?" + +Burgoyne would no doubt have made some answer in time; though the "she," +the implication of Elizabeth's willingness for an indefinite amount of +her lover's company, the "God bless her," gave him a sense of choking. + +"But I do not blame Mrs. Le Marchant," pursues Byng, in a rapt, +half-absent key. "Who would not wish to monopolize her? Who would not +grudge the earth leave to kiss her sweet foot? + + "'All I can is nothing + To her whose worth makes other worthies nothing. + She is alone!'" + +"That at least is not your fault," replies Burgoyne dryly; "you have +done your best to avert that catastrophe." + +But to speak to the young man now is of as much avail as to address +questions or remonstrances to one walking in his sleep. + +"If she had allowed me, I would have lain on her threshold all night; I +would have been the first thing that her heavenly eye lit on; I would--" + +But Burgoyne's phial of patience is for the present emptied to the +dregs. + +"You would have made a very great fool of yourself, I have not the least +doubt. Why try to persuade a person of what he is already fully +convinced? But as Miss Le Marchant happily did not wish for you as a +doormat, perhaps it is hardly worth while telling me what you would have +done if she had." + +The sarcastic words, ill-natured and unsympathetic as they sound in +their own speaker's ears, yet avail to bring the young dreamer but a +very few steps lower down his ladder of bliss. + +"I beg your pardon," he says sweet-temperedly; "I suppose I am a hideous +bore to-night; I suppose one must always be a bore to other people when +one is tremendously happy." + +"It is not your being tremendously happy that I quarrel with," growls +Burgoyne, struggling to conquer, or at least tone down, the intense +irritability of nerves that his friend's flights provoke. "You are +perfectly right to be that if you can manage to compass it; but what I +should be glad to arrive at is your particular ground for it in the +present case." + +The question, sobering in its tendency, has yet for sole effect the +setting Byng off again with spread pinions into the empyrean. + +"What particular ground I have?" he repeats, in a dreamy tone of +ecstasy. "You ask what particular ground I have? Had ever anyone cause +to be so royally happy as I?" + +He pauses a moment or two, steeped in a rapture of oblivious reverie, +then goes on, still as one only half waked from a beatific vision: + +"I had a prognostic that to-day would be the culminating day--something +told me that to-day would be the day; and when you gave me up your seat +in her carriage--how could you be so magnificently generous? How can I +ever adequately show you my gratitude?" + +"Yes, yes; never mind that." + +"Then, later on, in the wood"--his voice sinking, as that of one who +approaches a Holy of Holies--"when that blessed mist wrapped her round, +wrapped her lovely body round, so that I was able to withdraw her from +you, so that you did not perceive that she was gone--were not you really +aware of it? Did not it seem to you as if the light had gone out of the +day? When we stood under those dripping trees, as much alone as if--" + +"I do not think that there is any need to go into those details," +interrupts Burgoyne, in a hard voice; "I imagine that in these cases +history repeats itself with very trifling variations; what I should be +glad if you would tell me is, whether I am to understand that you have +to-day asked Miss Le Marchant to marry you?" + +Byng brings his eyes, which have been lifted in a sort of trance to the +ceiling, down to the prosaic level of his Mentor's severe and +tight-lipped face. + +"When you put it in that way," he says, in an awed half-whisper, "it +does seem an inconceivable audacity on my part that I, who but a few +days ago was crawling at her feet, should dare to-day to reach up to the +heaven of her love." + +Burgoyne had known perfectly well that it was coming; but yet how much +worse is it than he had expected! + +"Then you _did_ ask her to marry you?" + +But Byng has apparently fled back on the wings of fantasy into the wet +woods of Vallombrosa, for he makes no verbal answer. + +"She said yes?" asks Burgoyne, raising his voice, as if he were +addressing someone deaf. "Am I to understand that she said yes?" + +At the sound of that hard naked query the dreamer comes out of his +enchanted forest again. + +"I do not know what she said; I do not think she said anything," he +answers, murmuring the words laggingly; while, as he goes on, the fire +of his madness spires high in his flashing eyes. "We have got beyond +speech, she and I! We have reached that region where hearts and +intelligences meet without the need of those vulgar go-betweens--words." + +There is a moment's pause, broken only by the commonplace sound of an +electric bell rung by some inmate of the hotel. + +"And has Mrs. Le Marchant reached that region too?" inquires Jim +presently, with an irony he cannot restrain. "Does she, too, understand +without words, or have you been obliged, in her case, to employ those +vulgar go-betweens?" + +"She _must_ understand--she _does_--undoubtedly she does!" cries Byng, +whose drunkenness shares with the more ordinary kind the peculiarity of +believing whatever he wishes to be not only probable but inevitable. +"Who could see us together and be in uncertainty for a moment? And her +mother has some of her fine instincts, her delicate intuitions; not, of +course, to the miraculous extent that _she_ possesses them. In _her_ +they amount to genius!" + +"No doubt, no doubt; but did you trust entirely to Mrs. Le Marchant's +instincts, or did you broach the subject to her at all? You must have +had time, plenty of time, during that long drive home." + +"Well, no," answers Byng slowly, and with a slight diminution of +radiance. "I meant to have approached it; I tried to do so once or +twice; but I thought, I fancied--probably it was only fancy--that she +wished to avoid it." + +"To avoid it?" + +"Oh, not in any offensive, obvious way; it was probably only in my +imagination that she shirked it at all--and I did not make any great +efforts. It was all so perfect"--the intoxication getting the upper hand +again--"driving along in that balmy flood of evening radiance--did you +see how even the tardy sun came out for us?--with that divine face +opposite to me! Such a little face!"--his voice breaking into a tremor. +"Is not it inconceivable, Jim, how so much beauty can be packed into so +tiny a compass?" + +Burgoyne has all the time had his brushes in his hand, the brushes with +which he has been preparing himself for his solitary dinner. He bangs +them down now on the table. How can he put a period to the ravings of +this maniac? And yet not so maniac either. What gives the sharpest point +to his present suffering is the consciousness that he would have made +quite as good a maniac himself if he had had the chance. This +consciousness instils a few drops of angry patience into his voice, as, +disregarding the other's high-flown question, he puts one that is not at +all high-flown himself. + +"Then you have not told Mrs. Le Marchant yet?" + +But the smile that the memory--so fresh, only half an hour old--of +Elizabeth's loveliness has laid upon Byng's lips still lingers there; +and makes his response dreamy and vague. + +"No, not yet; not yet! _She_ had taken one of her gloves off; her little +hand lay, palm upward, on her knees almost all the way; once or twice I +thought of taking it, of taking possession of it, of telling her mother +in that way; but I did not. It seemed--out in the sunshine, no longer in +the sacred mist of that blessed wood--too high an audacity, and I did +not!" + +He stops, his words dying away into a whisper, his throat's too narrow +passage choked by the rushing ocean of his immense felicity. + +Burgoyne looks at him in silence, again with a sort of admiration mixed +with wrath. How has this commonplace, pink-and-white boy managed to +scale such an altitude, while he himself, in all his life, though with a +better intelligence, and, as he had thought, with a deeper heart, had +but prowled around the foot? Why should he try to drag him down? On the +peak of that great Jungfrau of rapture no human foot can long stand. + +"As I told you, Mrs. Le Marchant turned me away from their door," +pursues Byng. "It struck me--I could not pay much attention to the fact, +for was not I bidding _her_ good-night--taking farewell of those +heavenly eyes?--did you ever see such astonishing eyes?--for four +colossal hours--but it struck me that her mother's manner was a little +colder to me than it usually is. It had been a little cold all day--at +least, so I fancied. Had the same idea occurred to you?" + +Burgoyne hesitates. + +"But even if it were so," continues Byng, his sun breaking out again in +full brilliancy from the very little cloud that, during his last +sentence or two, had dimmed its lustre, "how can I blame her? Does one +throw one's self into the arms of the burglar who has broken open one's +safe and stolen one's diamonds?" + +Burgoyne still hesitates. Shall he tell the young ranter before him what +excellent reasons he has for knowing that any filial disposition on his +part to throw himself on Mrs. Le Marchant's neck will be met by a very +distinct resistance on that lady's part, or shall he leave him poised on + + "The jag + Of his mountain crag" + +till morning? The morning light will certainly see him tumbling at the +least some few kilometres down. He decides generously to leave him in +present possession of his peak; but yet, so inconsistent is human +nature, his next speech can have no drift but that of giving a slight +jog to his friend's towering confidence. + +"And your own mother?" + +It may generally be concluded that a person has not a very pertinent +response to give to a question if his only answer to that question be to +repeat it in the same words. + +"My own mother?" + +"Yes; you will write at once to tell her, I suppose?" + +For a second the young man's forehead clouds, then he breaks into an +excited laugh. + +"Tell her? I should rather think I should! Do you suppose that I shall +lose a moment in telling everybody I know--everybody I ever heard of? I +want you to tell everybody too--every single soul of your acquaintance!" + +"_I?_" + +"Tell Amelia; tell Cecilia"--quite unaware, in his excitement, of the +freedom he is taking, for the first time in his life, with those young +ladies' Christian names--"tell the other one--the sick one; tell them +all! I want _her_ to feel that all my friends, everybody I know, welcome +her--hold out their arms to her. I want them all to tell her they are +glad--you most of all, of course, old chap; she will not think it is all +right till you have given your consent!"--laughing again with that +bubbling-over of superfluous joy. "Do you know--it seems +incomprehensible now--but there was a moment when I was madly jealous of +you? I was telling _her_ about it to-day; we were laughing over it +together in the wood." + +Burgoyne feels that one more mention of that wood will convert him into +a lunatic, quite as indisputable as his companion, only very much more +dangerous. + +"Indeed!" he says grimly. "I should have thought you might have found a +more interesting subject of conversation." + +"Perhaps I was not so very far out either"--possibly dimly perceiving, +even through the golden haze of his own glory, the lack of enjoyment of +his last piece of news conveyed by Jim's tone--"for she has an immense +opinion of you. I do not know anyone of whom she has so high an opinion; +she says you are so dependable." + +The adjective, as applied to himself by Elizabeth and her mother, has +not the merit of novelty in the hearer's ears, which is perhaps the +reason why the elation that he must naturally feel on hearing it does +not translate itself into words. + +"So dependable," repeats Byng, apparently pleased with the epithet. "She +says you give her the idea of being a sort of rock; you will come +to-morrow, and wish her joy, will not you?" + +"I am afraid that my wishing it her will not help her much to it," +answers Burgoyne, rather sadly; "but I do not think you need much doubt +that I do wish it. Joy"--repeating the word over reflectively--"it is a +big thing to wish anyone." + +The extreme dampness of his tone arrests for a few minutes Byng's +jubilant pæan. + +"You do not think that my mother will be pleased with the news?" he asks +presently, in a changed and hesitating key. + +"I do not think about it; I know she will not!" + +"I suppose not; and yet"--with an accent of stupefaction--"it is +inconceivable that she, who has always shown such a tender sympathy for +me in any paltry little bit of luck that has happened to me, should not +rejoice with me when all heaven ope----" + +"Yes, yes; of course." + +"Do you think"--with a gleam of hope--"that my mother may have tried to +dissuade me because she thought I was only laying up disappointment for +myself--because she thought it so unlikely that _she_ should deign to +stoop to me?" + +Burgoyne shakes his head. + +"Perhaps," he says, with the slowness of a man who is saying what he +himself does not believe, "a part of your mother's dislike to the idea +may be in the fact of Miss Le Marchant's being older than you." + +"_Older!_" cries Byng, with almost a shout of angry derision at the +suggestion. "What have creatures like _her_ to do with age? I neither +know nor care what her age is! If you know, do not tell me! I will not +listen! Upon that exquisite body time and change are powerless to work +their hideous metamorphoses!" + +"Fiddlesticks!" replies Burgoyne gruffly. "If she live long enough, she +will be an old woman, and will look like one, I suppose!" though, even +as he speaks, he realizes that to him this is almost as incredible as to +the young madman whom he is so pitilessly snubbing. "But, however that +may be, I think you had better make up your mind to meeting the most +resolved opposition on the part of your mother." + +"I believe you are right," replies Byng, out of whose voice his kind +Mentor has at last succeeded in momentarily conjuring the exaltation. +"Her prejudice against them, against _her_, always filled me with +stupefaction. I never dared trust myself to discuss it with her; I was +afraid that if I did I might be led into saying something to her, +something I should be sorry for afterwards. Thank God, I have never +spoken unkindly to her in all my life!" + +"You would have been a sweep if you had!" interjects Jim. + +"I never heard her give any reason for it, did you? It was as baseless +as it was senseless." After a pause, his voice taking on again its +inflection of confident, soaring triumph: "But it cannot last--it is +absolutely beyond the wildest bounds of possibility that it can last! +After five minutes' talk mother will be at her feet; I know my mother so +well! Not one of her exquisite ways will be lost upon her, and _she_ +will do her very best to win her! Jim, I ask you--I put it to you +quietly and plainly--I know you think I am mad, but I am not--I am +speaking quite rationally and coolly--but I ask you--_you_, an impartial +bystander--do you think that any human being, anything made of flesh and +blood, could resist _her_--_her_ when she puts herself out to +please--_her_ at her very best?" + +As Burgoyne is conscious of not being in a position to answer this +question with much satisfaction to himself, he leaves it unanswered. + + + + + +CHAPTER XXV. + + "Some say the genius so + Cries 'Come' to him that instantly must die." + + +A new day has awaked, and Firenze, fresh-washed after yesterday's rain, +smelling through all her streets of lilies, laughs up, wistaria-hung, to +a fleckless sky. If poor Amelia had but deferred her treat for +twenty-four hours, what a different Vallombrosa would she and her +companions have carried home in their memories! Amelia's treat! + +"I shall not forget Amelia's treat in a hurry!" Burgoyne says to +himself, as he sits appetiteless over his solitary breakfast. "I had +better go and tell her the result of it." + +As he makes this reflection, he rises with some alacrity, and, leaving +his scarcely-tasted coffee and his not-at-all-tasted omelette, walks out +of the _salle-à-manger_. His motive for so early a visit to the +Anglo-Américain is less an excessive eagerness to proclaim his piece of +news than the thought that by so doing he will, at least for a few +hours, escape the necessity of being in his young friend's company. As +to where that young friend at present is, whether, after having wandered +about the town all night, he is now sleeping late, or whether he is +already off to persecute poor Mrs. Le Marchant for that maternal +blessing which she has so little inclination to give, Jim is ignorant. +All he knows is that such another dose of Byng's erotic eloquence as he +had to swallow last night will leave him (Burgoyne) either a murderer or +suicide. + +Owing to his arrival at the Anglo-Américain so much sooner than usual, +he finds himself coming in for the ceremony of Sybilla's installation +for the day in the drawing-room. There is always a little pomp and fussy +bustle about this rite. Sybilla totters in (grave doubts have +occasionally crossed the minds of her family as to whether she does not +in reality possess a pair of excellent and thoroughly dependable legs), +supported on one side by Amelia and on the other by her maid. Cecilia +goes before with an air cushion, and Mr. Wilson follows, when he does +not turn restive--which is sometimes the case--with a duvet. To-day, as +I have said, this rite is in full celebration when Jim arrives, but it +is being performed with mutilated glories. The rite is going forward, +but the high priest is absent. That ministrant, upon whose arm the +sufferer is wont to lean far the most heavily; she upon whom devolves +the whole responsibility of arranging the three cushions behind the long +limp back; the properly covering the languid feet; the nice +administering of the reviving cordial drops that are to repair the +fatigue of the transit from bedroom to sitting-room--that most important +and unfailing ministrant is nowhere to be seen. No artist wishes his +picture to be viewed in an inchoate, unfinished stage, nor is Sybilla at +all anxious to have the public admitted to the sight of that eminent +work of art herself until she is stretched in faint, moribund, graceful +completeness on her day-bed. At the moment of Burgoyne's entry she has +just reached that unbecoming point, where she is sitting sideways on her +sofa, before her wasted limbs--Burgoyne is one of those heretics who +have never believed that they are wasted--have been carefully lifted +into their final posture of extension upon the Austrian blanket. It is, +of all moments, the one at which interruption is least welcome; nor is +the intruder at all surprised at being greeted by the invalid with a +more than sub-acid accent. + +"My dear Jim, _already_! Why you become more _matinale_ every day! you +_are_ the early bird indeed! You do not"--with an annoyed laugh--"give +us poor worms a chance of being beforehand with you." + +"I am very sorry if I am too soon," replies he, his eyes wandering away +from the fretful features before him in search of others upon which he +knows he shall find written no complaint of his prematureness--"but I +came to----Where's Amelia?" + +"You may well ask," replies Sybilla, with a sort of hysterical laugh. +"It is pretty evident that she is not _here_! My dear Cis, would you +mind remembering that my head is not made of mahogany? you gave it such +a bang with that cushion. I am very sorry to trouble you. The heaviest +load a sick person has to bear is the feeling that she is such a burden +to those around her; and certainly, my dear, you do not help me to +forget it." + +"Where is she?" repeats Burgoyne hastily, both because he wants to know, +and because he is anxious to strangle in its infancy one of those +ignoble family bickerings, to assist at many of which has been the +privilege or penalty of his state of intimacy. + +"She is not well," replies Cecilia shortly, her rosy face rosier than +usual, either with the joy of imminent battle, or with the exertion of +swaddling, under protest, the invalid's now elevated legs. + +"Not well! Amelia not well," echoes he, in a tone of incredulity. + +During all the years of their acquaintance not once has he heard his +patient sweetheart complain of ache or pain. Manlike, he has therefore +concluded that she can never have felt either. + +"It is very thoughtless of her," says Cecilia, with a not altogether +amiable laugh, and giving a final irritated slap to Sybilla's +coverlet--"considering how much illness we already have in the house; +ha! ha! but it is true all the same: she is not well, not at all well; +she is in bed." + +"_In bed!_" + +"She must have caught a chill yesterday on that disgusting excursion; +driving home that long distance in wet shoes and stockings." + +"But I thought, I hoped that--I asked her to change them." + +"She had them dried in a sort of way; but I could see when she put them +on again that they were really wringing wet still. I told her so, but +she only answered that even if they were, what matter? she never caught +cold. You know that Amelia never thinks that anything matters that +concerns herself." + +This would be an even handsomer tribute to Amelia than it is, if it did +not suggest a secondary intention of administering a back-hander to +someone else. + +"In the case of my children," says Mr. Wilson, making his voice heard +for the first time from the window, where he is discontentedly peering +up and down the sheets of a journal through his spectacles, "there seems +to be no mean possible between senseless rashness and preposterous +self-indulgence." + +Mr. Wilson likes his eldest daughter. He is uneasy and upset, and rather +angry at her indisposition, and this is his way of showing his paternal +tenderness. + +"_In bed!_" + +The human animal is the most adaptive of created beings; but even it +requires some little time to adjust itself to entirely new conditions of +existence. + +"Amelia," continues Mr. Wilson, fanning the flame of his ire with the +bellows of his own rhetoric, "is the one among you whom I did credit +with the possession of a head upon her shoulders, and now here she is +wantonly laying herself up!" + +"You talk as if she did it on purpose, father," says Cecilia, with an +indignant laugh--"as if she enjoyed it. I do not think that anyone, even +Sybilla"--with a resentful side-glance at the sofa--"could enjoy having +her teeth chattering with cold, her head as heavy as lead, and her knees +knocking together under her." + +"Good heavens!" cries Jim, his bewildered surprise swallowed up in +genuine alarm; "you do not mean to say that she is as bad as that?" + +Sybilla laughs, and even in the midst of his real anxiety, Burgoyne has +time for the reflection that the Wilson family seem this morning to have +_se donné le mot_ to show in how many different styles it is possible to +be merry without the least tinge of genuine mirth in any. + +"My dear Jim, have not you known Cis long enough not to take her _au +pied de la lettre_? Do not you know of old what a magnificent colourist +she is?--a perfect Tintoret! Of course Amelia is not quite the thing, +poor dear--she has no one but herself to blame for that!--but equally of +course, to a colossally healthy person such as she, any little ailment +appears a mountain." + +This speech is uttered with the accent of such entire conviction that it +ought to carry reassurance into the heart of the person to whom it is +addressed. Sybilla really and honestly disbelieves in the reality of any +claims but her own to sincere sickness. But Jim unreasonably neither is +nor feigns to be reassured. + +"You have had advice for her? You have sent for Dr. Coldstream?" he asks +rapidly of the two sound members of the family, turning his back +unceremoniously upon the invalid. + +"I was going to send for him at once," answers Cecilia, her own latent +anxiety quickened by the evident alarm of her interlocutor, "but Sybilla +said it was needless, as in any case he was coming to see her this +afternoon." + +"I think he wishes to change my medicine," puts in Sybilla in a piano +voice, that shows an evident desire to assert her threatened position of +prime and only genuine invalid, a sort of "beware of imitations" tone; +"he is not quite satisfied with the effect of the last, I think; it has +not brought up the pulse and quickened the appetite in the way he hoped. +I thought that he might run up and look at Amelia at the end of his +visit to me." + +"And is it possible," inquires Jim, with some heat, "that you are going +to let half a day go by without doing anything for her? I suppose you +have not exaggerated, have you?" turning with an earnest appeal in his +eyes to Cecilia; "but in any case I am very sure that nothing short of +being really and gravely ill would have kept her in bed--she who is +always waiting hand and foot upon us all, whom we all allow to spend her +life in hewing wood and drawing water for us." + +"Send for Dr. Coldstream at once," says Mr. Wilson irritably; "at once, +I tell you; he is so very seldom out of the house that I have often +thought of suggesting to him to take a room here; and now, on the only +occasion on which he is really needed, he is not at hand." + +"If you will write the note," says Jim, a shade relieved at having at +last succeeded in rousing Amelia's relations to prompt action, and +feeling a feverish desire to be doing something, "I will take it at +once; it will be the quickest way; I may catch him before he goes out +and bring him back with me." + +"Do you really think it is necessary?" asks Sybilla, as Jim hustles +Cecilia to her writing-table, and stands, nervously fidgeting beside her +as she writes; "do you think, if it is only a common cold, as I suspect, +that it is quite fair to worry a man who is so run off his legs already? +He will probably laugh in your face; still, if you are so set upon it, +it is perhaps more satisfactory." + +"You need not go into details--just a line--make haste!" cries Jim, +hanging tiresomely over Cecilia, rather impeding her than the reverse by +his impatience, and leaving entirely unnoticed Sybilla's observation, +which indeed has been uttered more to preserve her own self-respect than +with much hope that in the present wrong-headed state of mind of her +family any member will pay much heed to it. + +In five minutes more, Jim, with Cecilia's note in his pocket, is being +borne rapidly in a fiacre through the sweet, gay streets. But, drive as +rapidly as he may, he is not quick enough to intercept the popular +English doctor, who, although, as his servant tantalizingly informs Jim, +he is almost always at home at that hour, has, on this occasion, been +sent for to an urgent case of sudden illness out of Florence, at the +village of Peretola. Jim has to content himself with the assurance that +immediately on his return the note will be given him; and with this +unsatisfactory intelligence Mr. Burgoyne reappears at the +Anglo-Américain. He finds the three persons whom he had left much as he +had quitted them--uneasy, cross, and unemployed. + +"It is all the fault of that odious expedition yesterday," says Cecilia, +harking back to her old cry. "Why we set out at all, I can't imagine; on +such a day, it was madness, and----" + +"It is not much use thinking of that now," interrupts Burgoyne +impatiently, and wincing at these philippics against his poor bride's +miserable treat as if they had been directed against herself. + +"Well, it is an ill-wind that blows nobody any good," pursues the young +lady. "I suppose that two of us enjoyed it enough to make up for the +wretchedness of the other four." + +Her large prominent eyes are fixed upon Jim as she speaks with a sort of +knowingness overlying their former lugubrious expression. + +"Do you mean Mr. Byng and Miss Le Marchant?" inquires he, pronouncing +both names with a laboured distinctness, while his voice sounds to +himself loud and wooden. "You are perfectly right in your conjecture; no +doubt they enjoyed themselves. Byng wished me to tell you that they are +engaged to be married." + +If the essence of a good piece of news is to surprise, Jim can certainly +not flatter himself that his comes under that head. + +"It did not require a conjurer to prophesy that," is Cecilia's comment. +"I never saw two people who troubled themselves less to disguise their +feelings. I saw that they neither of them knew whether they were on +their heads or on their heels, when they emerged dripping from that +horrid pine wood. Dear me!"--with a good-sized sigh--"how smoothly +things run for some people! how easily some of these affairs come off, +without a hitch anywhere from beginning to end!" + +She pauses, and it is plain to those acquainted with her heart history +that her thoughts are coursing mournfully back to the all-along +reluctant and ultimately entirely faithless clergyman who had last +possessed her young affections. + +"Without a hitch from beginning to end?" cries Jim hotly, jarred more +than he would like to own to himself by this phrase. "How can you +possibly tell? These are early days to assert that so dogmatically. + + "'There's many a slip + 'Twixt the cup and the lip.'" + +"Do you mean to say that you think it will not come off?" asks Cecilia, +a slightly pleasurable light coming into her eyes as she asks--not that +she has any ill-will towards Elizabeth, nor any distinct design of her +own upon Byng; but that there is something not absolutely disagreeable +to her in the idea of his being still among the ranks of the possible. + +"I am sure he would make a delightful husband," puts in Sybilla, her +praise given emphasis by her desire to employ it as a weapon of offence +against one who is at present more deeply than usual in her black books; +"he has such gentle, feminine ways; he comes into a room so quietly, and +when he asks one how one is really listens for the answer." + + +"Perhaps you are right, and it will fall through," says Cecilia +thoughtfully; "many engagements do!" (sighing again). "She is a sweet, +pretty creature, and looks as if butter would not melt in her mouth; but +she is evidently older than he." + +"Jim will not allow that to be an objection," cries Sybilla, with a +faint laugh, "will you, Jim? How much older than you is Amelia? I always +forget." + +"I never can help thinking that she has a history," resumes Cecilia, in +a meditative voice, "and that Mr. Greenock knows it. If ever her name is +mentioned he always begins to look wise, as if there were something that +he was longing to tell one about her; it is continually on the tip of +his tongue--some day it will tumble over the tip." + +"I do not think that there is any use in my staying all this while!" +cries Jim, jumping up. "Dr. Coldstream cannot be here at soonest for +another hour; and I do not think that we are, any of us, very good +company for each other to-day, so I will look in again later." + + +He is out of the room and out of the hotel before his companions can +take exception to his disappearance. For some time he walks along +aimlessly, his mind a jumble of misery, and dull, remorseful anxiety +about Amelia; intolerable comparisons between his own lot and his +friend's; sharp knives of jealousy as often as--which is almost +unintermittently--his imagination wings its cruel way to the Piazza +d'Azeglio--through one opulent week, _his_ Piazza. At this moment--this +moment, while his own leaden feet are treading goalless the hot flags +that for him lead nowhere--Byng is enthroned with _her_ in the heaven of +the mean little _salon_. He unconsciously shows his teeth in a stern +smile to the surprised passers-by. He had jeered Byng for his +hyperboles, and now he is _out-hyperboling_ him. What a detestable verb +he has invented! He laughs out loud. Are they sitting at the window, +looking out at the judas tree and the Paulownia? Not they! The window is +commanded to a certain extent by the roadway. The window is for +acquaintances, banal acquaintances, like himself--no place for the +permitted freedoms of exquisite new love. Are they then on the sofa, the +vulgar walnut sofa, over which Elizabeth has thrown her blue Neapolitan +tablecloth? It is a little sofa, scarcely room for two upon it, but, oh! +plenty of room for them! Or are they at the piano? Is she singing him +some sugared ditty "lovely well" until he breaks into her song with the +storm of his kisses, and her little white hands drop from the keys, and +they lie sobbing with ecstasy in each other's arms? It is quite certain +that Byng will sob. He is always delighted at having an opportunity for +turning on the water-works. Is there a bare possibility that Mrs. Le +Marchant may carry her disapprobation to the pitch of impeding by her +presence their _tête-à-tête_? The idea gives him a momentary +alleviation. Why should not he go and see for himself whether it is so? +It will be a method of passing the tedious interval before he can hear +the doctor's verdict on Amelia. He must at some time or other comply +with Byng's pressing prayer to him to offer his congratulations to +Elizabeth, and he may as well have a day of complete and perfect +pain--pain of various flavours and essences mixed into one consummate +draught--a day of which not one hour shall be without its ache. + +Having come to this conclusion, his aimless walk quickens, and changes +into a purposeful striding through streets and Piazzas, till he finds +himself standing at the door of 12_a_. He looks up at the _entresol_ +windows--they are all open, but no one is either sitting in or looking +out at them. It is as he had thought. The window is too public for them; +neither can they be at the piano, for not a sound of either voice or +instrument is wafted down to him. He runs up the stone stairs, and rings +the electric bell. The standing before the unopened portal, and the +trembling jar of the bell, bring back to him, with a vividness he could +do without, those other long-ago days--they seem to him long ago--when +he stood there last, with no easy heart even then, but yet with how +different anticipations. He has found it hard enough to bear the brunt +of Byng's furious inhuman joy when alone with him. How will he stand it +when he sees them together? + +He is recalled from these reflections by the opening of the door, and +the appearance in it of the ministering angel who has usually admitted +him into his Eden--Annunziata. It strikes him that Annunziata looks +older and more dishevelled than ever, and is without that benevolent +smile of welcoming radiance which her hard-featured face generally +wears. Nor does she, as has been her wont, stand back to let him pass in +almost before he has put his question, as if she could not admit him +quickly enough. But to-day she stands, on the contrary, in the doorway +without a smile. In a second the idea flashes across Jim's mind that +Byng has forbidden anyone to be let in. It turns him half sick for the +moment, and it is with an unsteady voice that he stammers: + +"The Signora? The Signorina?" + +Annunziata lifts her shoulders in a dismal shrug, and stretches out her +hands: + +"Gone!" + +"_Gone?_ You mean gone out driving?" Then remembering that her English +is as minus a quantity as his Italian, he adds in eager explanation, "En +fiacre?" + +She shakes her head, and then nods vaguely in the direction of the whole +of the rest of the world--the whole, that is, that is not 12 bis. + +"No, _gone_!" + +"But _where_? _Dove?_" cries he, frantic with irritation at his own +powerlessness either to understand or be understood. + +Again she shakes her head. + +"I do not know; they did not say." + +He gathers this to be her meaning, and hurriedly puts another query. + +"When? _Quando?_" + +But her answer being longer and more voluble, he can't take in its +drift, seeing which she retreats a step, and, motioning him with her +hand to enter, points down the passage. He does not require to have the +dumb-show of invitation twice repeated, but, rushing past her, hurries +down the well-known little corridor to the _salon_ door. It is open, and +he stands within. At the first glance it seems to him to wear much its +usual air. There is even a score of music standing on the piano, the +copper pots are full of rose-branches, and the _scaldini_ brimming with +Firenze's own lilies, the bit of red Venetian brocade, with the little +old tinsel fringe, still hangs over the arm-chair by the fireplace, and +the blue Neapolitan table-cover still disguises the vulgarity of the +sofa. He has misunderstood Annunziata--it is really monstrous to be so +helplessly ignorant of the language of the country you are living in--or +she has lost her wits, or----He had thought the room empty, but as he +advances a step further into it, he discovers that he is not the sole +occupant: that lying stretched upon the floor, with his fair head buried +in a little pillow, against which both men have often seen Elizabeth's +small white cheek resting, is Byng!--the Byng whose riotous, insolent +happiness he had doubted his own powers of witnessing without murdering +him!--the splendid felicity of whose lot he has been so bitterly laying +beside his own destiny--the Byng whom he had been gnashing his teeth at +the thought of--at the thought of him lying in Elizabeth's arms! + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI. + + "Cressid, I love thee in so strained a purity, + That the blest gods--as angry at my fancy, + More bright in zeal than the devotion which + Cold lips blow to their deities--take thee from me." + + +"What does this mean?" + +The question has to be twice repeated before the person to whom it is +addressed gives any sign of having heard it. His ears must be so deeply +embedded in the pillow that the passage to his hearing is blocked. It is +not till the interrogation is put a second time, in a louder key, and +accompanied by a not very gentle shake of the shoulder, that he at +length looks up, and reveals what Jim knows to be, and yet has some +difficulty in recognising, as the features of Byng--features so altered, +so distorted, so swollen by excessive weeping, that no one less +intimately acquainted with them than the person who has been already +contemplating them, under the influence of a variety of circumstances +for a couple of months, could possibly put the owner's name to them. Jim +has expected that his young friend would spend some portion of this day +in crying, knowing well both his powers of, and his taste for, "turning +on the water-works," as he but lately cruelly and uncivilly phrased it +to his own mind. But the warm tears of emotion, few and undisfiguring, +with which he had credited him, have not much kinship with the scalding +torrents that have made his handsome young eyes mere red blurs on his +ashen face, that have furrowed his cheeks, and damped his disordered +curls, and taken all the starch out of his immaculate "masher" collar. +They have wetted, too, into a state of almost pulp, a crumpled sheet of +note-paper, which his head seems to have been burrowing in, upon the +pillow. + +"What does it mean?" repeats Burgoyne, for the third time, a hideous +fear assailing him, at the sight of the young man's anguish, that he +himself may have mistaken Annunziata's meaning; that her "gone" may have +stood for the final one; that some instant stroke may have snatched +lovely Elizabeth away, out of the world. Surely no catastrophe less than +death can account for such a metamorphosis as that wrought in Byng. "Why +do you look like that?" he goes on, his voice taking that accent of rage +which extreme fear sometimes gives. "Why do not you speak?" + +The other, thus adjured, plainly makes a violent effort for +articulation; but his dry throat will let pass nothing but a senseless +sob. + +"What does that paper mean?" goes on Burgoyne, realizing the impotence +of his friend to obey his behest, and rendered doubly terrified by it; +"what is it? what does it say? Does it--does it--explain anything?" + +He points as he speaks to the blurred and rumpled _billet_, and Byng +catches it up convulsively, and thrusts it into his hand. + +"It is the first letter I ever had from her," he says, the words rushing +out broken and scarcely intelligible upon a storm of sobs, and so flings +his head violently down upon the floor again in a new access of furious +weeping. + +Burgoyne holds the paper in his fingers, but for a moment or two he is +unable to read it. There is an ugly swimming before his eyes for one +thing; for another, Byng's treatment has not improved it as a specimen +of caligraphy; but it never in its best days could have been a very +legible document. And yet it is not long. Its few words, when at length +he makes them out, ran thus: + + "_Good-bye, I was mad yesterday. I shall never marry you; I + have no right to marry anyone. For God's sake do not ask me + what I mean; and oh! don't, don't, DON'T come after me!_" + +There is neither date nor signature. As Jim stands staring at the five +crooked, straggling sentences, a great swelling compassion fills his +heart. Did ever poor little scribble make it so easy to construct the +small shaking hand, and the tender breaking heart that penned it? An +immense pity fills his soul; yet does it quite fill it? Is there room +besides, in one corner, for a small pinch of devilish joy? + + "There's many a slip + 'Twixt the cup and the lip." + +His own words of ill-natured croaking, uttered not an hour ago, to +Cecilia Wilson, recur to his mind. How little he thought that that +prophecy would so soon be fulfilled! He remains so long motionless and +silent, his fingers still holding the paper, whose contents he has long +ago mastered, that Byng--the violence of his paroxysm of grief at length +exhausted--struggles to his feet and speaks--speaks as well as the catch +in his sobbing breath and his quivering lips will let him. + +"It is not her doing! You may think it is her doing, but I know it is +not! I know her better than you do." + + +"I never made any pretensions to knowing her well," replies the other +sadly, and relinquishing as he speaks the note to its owner. + +"Is it likely, I ask you?" cries Byng excitedly. "I put it to you +fairly: is it likely that she, with her seraph nature, all love and +burning, she that is tender over drowning flies, would have put me to +this horrible pain?--O God, you do not know what pain it is" ["Do not +I?" aside]--"of her own free will?" + +"I do not know; as you say, I do not know her well." + + "'Then tell, oh tell! how thou didst murder me?'" + +says Byng, beginning to walk up and down the room with the tears still +rolling down his cheeks, but in his spouting voice--a voice which at +once assures Jim of an amelioration in his friend's condition, and +hardens his heart against him. As a broad rule, indeed, it may be laid +down that that sorrow which courses through one of the numberless +channels cut by the poets for it will not bring its owner to Waterloo +Bridge. + +"But what am I saying?" lapsing out of his quotation into broken-hearted +prose again. "It was not she! If I thought it were she, could I live a +moment? It is her mother; no sane person can doubt that it is her +mother's doing! She was always so sweetly docile, and her mother has +conceived some prejudice against me. Did not I tell you how barbarously +she shut the door upon me last night?--shut the door of my heaven in my +face just as I thought I had won the right to enter it. Who would not +have thought that it was won who had seen us together in the wood?" + +Jim writhes. + +"Oh, never mind the wood now!" + +"Someone has prejudiced her against me, but who? I did not know that I +had an enemy in the world. Someone has told her about--about +Oxford--about my being sent down." + +Jim is silent. + +"If it is only that----" a tearful buoyancy beginning to pierce through +his despair. + +"It is not that." + +"Someone has put a spoke in my wheel; but who? You are the only person +who could, and you, dear old chap, are the last person who would, though +you were not very encouraging to me last night! _You_ did not?" + +There is so direct an interrogation in the last words, accompanied by so +confiding a look of affection, that yet has an uneasy touch of doubt in +it, that Jim is obliged to answer. + +"No, I did not put a spoke in your wheel; but"--his honesty forcing the +admission--"I am not at all so sure that I am the last person who would +have done so, if I could." + +Byng has wiped his eyes to clear his vision of the blinding tears, and +has again directed them to the note, which he has all this while been +alternately pressing against his heart, laying upon his forehead, and +crushing against his mouth. + +"It seems blasphemy to say so of anything that came from her hand," he +says, poring for the hundredth time over each obscure word, "but it +reads like nonsense, does it not? '_I shall never marry you! I have no +right to marry anyone!_' No right? what does she mean?" + +Jim shakes his head sadly. + +"How can I tell?" + +"Do you think it is possible"--lifting his disfigured eyes in horrified +appeal to his friend--"it is a dreadful hypothesis, but I can think of +no other--that that bright intelligence was clouded--that--that her dear +little wits were touched when she wrote this?" + +"No, I do not think so." + +"You--you are not keeping anything from me?"--coming a step nearer, and +convulsively clutching his friend's arm--"you--you do not know +anything--anything that could throw light upon--upon this? I do not know +whether you are conscious of it, but there is something in your manner +that might lead me to that conclusion. Do you know--have you heard +anything?" + +"I know nothing," replies Jim slowly, and looking uncomfortably away +from the questioner, "but I conjecture, I fear, I believe +that--that----" + +"That what? For God's sake, be a little quicker!" + +"That--that--there is a--a--something in her past." + +Byng falls back a pace or two, and puts up his hand to his head. + +"What--what do you mean? What are you talking about? Her past? +What"--soaring into extravagance again--"what can there be written on +that white page?--so white that it bedazzles the eyes of even the angels +who read it." + +"I do not know what there is," replies Jim miserably, irritated almost +beyond endurance by this poetic flight, and rendered even more wretched +than he was before by the _rôle_ that seems to be forced upon him, of +conjecturally blackening Elizabeth's character. "How many times must I +tell you that I _know_ no more than you, only from--from various +indications I have been led to believe that she has _something_--some +great sorrow behind her?" + +There is a silence, and when it is broken it is infringed by what is not +much more than a whisper. + +"What--what do you mean; what--what sort of a sorrow?" + +"I tell you, I do not know." + +Byng's tears have stopped flowing, and he now lifts his eyes, full of a +madness of exaltation, to the ceiling. + +"I will go to her," he cries; "if sorrow has the audacity to approach +her again, it will have to reckon with me. There is no sorrow, none, in +the whole long gamut of woe, for which love such as mine is not a balm. +Reciprocal love!"--trailing the words in a sort of slow rapture--"no one +that had seen her in the wood could have doubted that it _was_ +reciprocal." + +"No doubt, no doubt." + +"I will go to her!"--clasping his hands high in the air--"I will pour +the oil and spikenard of my adoration into her gaping wounds! I will +kiss the rifts together, though they yawn as wide as hell--yes, I will." + +"For heaven's sake, do not talk such dreadful gibberish," breaks in Jim, +at length at the end of his patience, which had run quite to the extreme +of its tether indeed at the last mention of that ever-recurring wood. +"It _is_ a knockdown blow for you, I own, and I would do what I could to +help you; but if you will keep on spouting and talking such terrible +bosh----" + +"I suppose I am making an ass of myself," replies Byng, thus brought +down with a run from his heroics. "I beg your pardon, I am sure, old +man. I have no right to victimize you," his sweet nature asserting +itself even at this bitter moment; "but you see it is so horribly +sudden. If you had seen her when I parted from her last night at the +door! She lingered a moment behind Mrs. Le Marchant--just a moment, just +time enough to give me one look, one wordless look. She did not speak; +she was so divinely dutiful and submissive that nothing would have +persuaded her by the lightest word to imply any censure of her mother; +but she gave me just a look, which said plainly, 'It is not _my_ fault +that you are turned away! _I_ would have welcomed you in!' Upon that +look I banqueted in heaven all night." + +He stops, choked. + +"Well?" + +"And then this morning, when I got here--I think I ran all the way; I am +sure I did, for I saw people staring at me as I passed--to be met by +Annunziata with the news that they were _gone_! I did not believe her; I +laughed in her face, and then she grew angry, and bid me come in and see +for myself! And I rushed past her, in here, with my arms stretched out, +confident that in one short moment more _she_ would be filling them, and +instead of her"--dropping upon his knees by the table with a groan--"I +find this!"--dashing the note upon the floor--"all that she leaves me to +fill my embrace instead of her is this poor little pillow, that still +seems to keep a faint trace of the perfume of her delicate head!" + +He buries his own in it again as he speaks, beginning afresh to sob +loudly. + +Jim stands beside him, his mind half full of compassion and half of a +burning exasperation, and his body wholly rigid. + +"When did they go? at what hour? last night or this morning?" + +"This morning early, quite early." + +"They have left all their things behind them"--looking round at the +room, strewn with the traces of recent and refined occupation. + +"Yes"--lifting his wet face out of his cushion--"and at first, seeing +everything just as usual, even to her very workbasket--she has left her +very workbasket behind--I was quite reassured. I felt certain that they +could have gone for only a few hours--for the day perhaps; but----" + +He breaks off + +"Yes?" + +"They left word that their things were to be packed and sent after them +to an address they would give." + +"And you do not know where they have gone?" + +"I know nothing, nothing, only that they are gone. + + "'Then tell, oh tell! how thou didst murder me?' + +Oh! oh!! oh!!!" + +"You never heard them speak of their plans, mention any place they +intended to move to on leaving Florence?" + +"Never!" + +"It is too late for Rome," says Jim musingly; "England? I hardly think +England," recalling Elizabeth's forlorn admission made to him at Monte +Senario, "Why should we go home? We have nothing pleasant to go to." + +"I do not think they had any plans," says Byng, speaking in a voice +which is thick with much weeping; "they never seemed to me to have any. +She was so happy here, so gay, there never was anything more lovely than +her gaiety, except--except--her tenderness." + +"Yes, yes, no doubt. Then you are absolutely without a clue?" + +"Absolutely." + +"Do you mean to say that up to yesterday--all through yesterday, +even--she never gave you a hint of any intention of leaving Florence?" + +"Never, _never_. On the contrary, in the----" (he is going to say "the +wood," but thinks better of it), "we were planning many more such +expeditions as yesterday's. At least, I was planning them." + +"And she assented?" + +"She did not _dis_sent. She met me with a look of divine acquiescence." + +Jim turns away his head. He is involuntarily picturing to himself what +that look was like, and with what sweet dumb-show it was accompanied. + +"What powers of hell"--banging his head down upon the table +again--"could have wrought such a hideous change in so few hours? Only +ten! for it was eight in the evening before I left them, and they were +off at six this morning. They could have seen no one; they had received +no letters, no telegrams, for I inquired of Annunziata, and she assured +me that they had not. Oh no!"--lifting his face with a gleam of moist +hope upon it--"there is only one tenable hypothesis about it--it is not +_her_ doing at all. She wrote this under pressure. It is her +handwriting, is it not?--though I would not swear even to that. I--I +have played the mischief with my eyes"--pulling out his drenched +pocket-handkerchief, and hastily wiping them--"so that I cannot see +properly; but it _is_ hers, is not it?" + +"I do not know; I never saw her handwriting; she never wrote to me." + +"It was evidently dictated to her," cries Byng, his sanguine nature +taking an upward spring again; "there are clear traces, even in the very +way the letters are formed, of its being written to order reluctantly. +She did it under protest. See how her poor little hand was shaking, and +she was crying all the while, bless her! There, do not you see a blister +on the paper--here on this side?" + +Burgoyne does not see any blister, but as he thinks it extremely +probable that there was one, he does not think himself called upon to +wound his friend by saying so. + +"I declare I think we have got hold of the right clue at last," cries +Byng, his dimmed eyes emitting such a flash as would have seemed +impossible to them five minutes ago. "Read in this light, it is not +nearly so incomprehensible: '_I shall never marry you, I have no right +to marry anyone._' Of course, I see now! What an ass I was not to see it +at once! What she means is that she has no right to leave her mother! To +anyone who knew her lofty sense of duty as well as I ought to have done +it is quite obvious that that is what she means. Is not it quite +obvious? is not it as clear as the sun in heaven?" + +Jim shakes his head. + +"I am afraid that it is rather a forced interpretation." + +"I do not agree with you," rejoins the other hotly; "I see nothing +forced about it. You do not know as well as I do--how should you?--her +power of delicate, self-sacrificing devotion. It is overstrained, I +grant you; but there it is--she thinks she has no right to leave her +mother now that she is all alone." + +"She is not alone; she has her husband." + +"I mean now that all her other children are married and scattered. There +are plenty more--are not there?--though I never could get her to talk +about them." + +"There are two sisters and two brothers." + +"But they are no longer any good to their mother," persists Byng, +clinging to his theory with all the greater tenacity as he sees that it +meets with no very great acceptance in his friend's eyes; "as far as she +is concerned they are non-existent." + +"I do not know what right you have to say that." + +"And so she, with her lofty idea of self-sacrifice, immolates her own +happiness on the altar of her filial affection. It is just like +her!"--going off into a sort of rapture--"blind mole that I was not to +divine the motive, which her ineffable delicacy forbade her to put into +words. She thought she had a right to think that I should have +comprehended her without words!" + +He has talked himself into a condition of such exalted confidence before +he reaches the end of this sentence that Jim is conscious of a certain +brutality in applying to him the douche contained in his next words. + +"I do not know why you should credit Mrs. Le Marchant with such colossal +selfishness; she never used to be a selfish woman." + +But Burgoyne's cold shower-bath does not appear even to damp the +shoulders for which it is intended. + + "'Since you left me, taking no farewell,'" + +murmurs Byng, beginning again to tramp up and down the little room, with +head thrown back and clasped hands high lifted; and in his rapt poet +voice: + + "'Since you left me, taking no farewell,' + +I must follow you, sweet! Despite your prohibition, I must follow you. + + "'We two that with so many thousand sighs, + Did buy each other.'" + +Then, coming abruptly down to prose--"Though they left no address, it +will of course be possible, easy, to trace them. I will go to the +station and make inquiries. They will have been seen. It is out of the +question that she can have passed unnoticed! No eye that has once been +enriched by the sight of her can have forgotten that heavenly vision. I +will telegraph to Bologna, to Milan, to Venice. Before night I shall +have learnt her whereabouts. I shall be in the train, following her +track. I shall be less than a day behind her. I shall fall at her feet, +I shall----" + +"You are talking nonsense," answers Burgoyne impatiently; and yet with a +distinct shade of pity in his voice; "you cannot do anything of the +kind. When the poor woman has given so very unequivocal a proof of her +wish to avoid you, as is implied in leaving the place at a moment's +notice, without giving herself even time to pack her clothes, it is +impossible that you can force your company again upon her--it would be +persecution." + +"And do you mean to tell me," asks Byng slowly, and breathing hard, +while the fanatical light dies out of his face, and leaves it chalk +white; "do you mean to say that I am to acquiesce, to sit down with my +hands before me, and submit without a struggle to the loss of----O my +God"--breaking out into an exceeding bitter cry--"why did you make me + + "'so rich in having such a jewel, + As twenty seas, if all their sands were pearl, + The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold,' + +if it were only to rob me of her?" + +"I do not see what other course is open to you," replies Jim, answering +only the first part of the young sufferer's appeal, and ignoring the +rhetoric, terribly genuine as is the feeling of which it is the florid +expression. "It is evident that she has some cogent reasons--or at least +that appear cogent to her--for breaking off her relations with you." + +"What cogent reasons can she have that she had not yesterday?" says Byng +violently--"yesterday, when she lay in my arms, and her lips spoke their +acquiescence in my worship--if not in words, yet oh, far, far more----" + +"Why do you reiterate these assertions?" cries Burgoyne sternly, since +to him there seems a certain indecency in--even in the insanity of +loss--dragging to the eye of day the record of such sacred endearments. +"I neither express nor feel any doubt as to the terms you were on +_yesterday_; what I maintain is that _to-day_--I do not pretend to +explain the why--she has changed her mind; it is not"--with a sarcasm, +which he himself at the very moment of uttering it feels to be cheap and +unworthy--"it is not the first time in the world's history that such a +thing has happened. She has changed her mind." + +"I do not believe it," cries Byng, his voice rising almost to a shout in +the energy of his negation; "till her own mouth tell me so I will never +believe it. If I thought for a moment that it was true I should rush to +death to deliver me from the intolerable agony of such a thought. You do +not believe it yourself"--lifting his spoilt sunk eyes in an appeal that +is full of pathos to his friend's harsh face. "Think what condemnation +it implies of her--her whom you always affected to like, who thought so +greatly of you--her whose old friend you were--her whom you knew in her +lovely childhood!" + +"You are right," replies Jim, looking down, moved and ashamed; "I do not +believe that she has changed her mind. What I do believe is that +yesterday she let herself go; she gave way for one day, only for one +day, after all, poor soul, to that famine for happiness which, I +suppose"--with a sigh and a shrug--"gnaws us all now and then--gave way +to it even to the pitch of forgetting that--that something in her past +of whose nature I am as ignorant as you are, which seems to cast a +blight over all her life." + +He pauses; but as his listener only hangs silently on his utterance he +goes on: + +"After you left her, recollection came back to her; and because she +could not trust herself again with you, probably for the very reason +that she cared exceedingly about you"--steeling himself to make the +admission--"she felt that there was nothing for it but to go." + +Either the increased kindness of his friend's tone, or the conviction +that there is, at least, something of truth in his explanations, lets +loose again the fountain of Byng's tears, and once more he throws his +head down upon his hands and cries extravagantly. + +"It is an awful facer for you, I know," says Burgoyne, standing over +him, and, though perfectly dry-eyed, yet probably not very much less +miserable than the young mourner, whose loud weeping fills him with an +almost unbearable and yet compunctious exasperation. + +"What is he made of? how can he do it?" are the questions that he keeps +irefully putting to himself; and for fear lest in an access of +uncontrollable irritation he shall ask them out loud, he moves to the +door. At the slight noise he makes in opening it Byng lifts his head. + +"Are you going?" + +"Yes; if it is any consolation to you, you have not a monopoly of +wretchedness to-day. Things are not looking very bright for me either. +Amelia is ill." + +"Amelia," repeats the other, with a hazy look, as if not at first able +to call to mind who Amelia is; then, with a return of consciousness, "Is +Amelia ill? Oh poor Amelia! Amelia was very good to her. Amelia tried to +draw her out. She liked Amelia!" + +"Well"--with an impatient sigh--"unfortunately that did not hinder +Amelia from falling ill." + +"She is not ill _really_?"--his inborn kind-heartedness struggling for a +moment to make head against the selfishness of his absorption. + +"I do not know"--uneasily--"I am going back to the hotel to hear the +doctor's verdict. Will you walk as far as to the Anglo-Américain with +me? There is no use in your staying here." + +But at this proposition the lover's sobs break out louder and more +infuriating than ever. + +"I will stay here till I die--till I am carried over the threshold that +her cruel feet have crossed. + + "'Then tell, oh tell! how thou didst murder me?'" + +Against a resolution at once so fixed and so rational, Jim sees that it +is useless to contend. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII. + + +The sun rides high, as Burgoyne issues into the open air, and beats, +blinding hot, upon the great stone flags that pave the Florentine +streets, and seem to have a peculiar power of absorbing and retaining +light and heat. He must have been longer in the Piazza d'Azeglio than he +had thought, and the reflection quickens his steps as he hurries, +regardless of the midsummer blaze--for, indeed, it is more than +equivalent to that of our midsummer--back to the Anglo-Américain. As he +reaches it, he hears, with annoyance, the hotel clocks striking one. He +is annoyed, both because the length of his absence seems to argue an +indifference to the tidings he is expecting, and also because he knows +that it is the Wilsons' luncheon hour, and that he will probably find +that they have migrated to the _salle-à-manger_. In this case he will +have to choose between the two equally disagreeable alternatives of +following and watching them at their food, or that of undergoing a +_tête-à-tête_ with Sybilla, who, it is needless to say, does not +accompany her family to the public dining-room; a _tête-à-tête_ with +Sybilla, which is, of all forms of social intercourse, that for which he +has the least relish. + +But as he apprehensively opens the _salon_ door, he sees that his fears +are unfounded. They have not yet gone to luncheon; they are all sitting +in much the same attitudes as he had left them, except that Sybilla is +eating or drinking something of a soupy nature out of a cup. There are +very few hours of the day or night in which Sybilla is not eating +something out of a cup. There is that about the entire idleness of the +other couple which gives him a fright. Are they too unhappy? Have they +heard too bad news to be able to settle to any occupation? Urged by this +alarm, his question shoots out, almost before he is inside the door: + +"Has not he come yet? Has not the doctor come yet?" + +"He has been and gone; you see, you have been such a very long time +away," replies Cecilia. She has no intention of conveying reproach, +either by her words or tone; but to his sore conscience it seems as if +both carried it. + +"And what did he say?" + +"He did not say much." + +"Does he--does he think that it is anything--anything serious?" + +"He did not say." + +"Do you mean to tell me"--indignantly--"that you did not ask him?" + +"If you had been here," replies Cecilia, with a not inexcusable +resentment, "you might have asked him yourself." + +"But did not you ask him?" in too real anxiety to be offended at, or +even aware of, her fleer. "Did not he say?" + +"I do not think he knew himself." + +"But he must have thought--he must have had an opinion!" growing the +more uneasy as there seems no tangible object for his fears to lay hold +of. + +"He says it is impossible to judge at so early a stage; it may be a +chill--I told him about that detestable excursion yesterday, and he +considered it quite enough to account for anything--it may be +measles--they seem to be a good deal about; it may be malaria--there is +a good deal of that too." + +"And how soon will he know? How soon will it declare itself?" + +"I do not know." + + +"But has he prescribed? Is there nothing to be done--to be done _at +once_?" asks Jim feverishly, chafing at the idea of this inaction, which +seems inevitable, with that helpless feeling which his own entire +ignorance of sickness produces. + +"Do not you suppose that if there was we should have done it?" cries +Cecilia, rendered even more uncomfortable than she was before, by the +contagion of his anxiety. "We are to keep her in bed--there is no great +difficulty about that, poor soul; she has not the least desire to get +up; she seems so odd and heavy!" + +"So _odd and heavy_?" + +"Yes; I went in to see her just now, and she scarcely took any notice of +me; only when I told her that you had been to inquire after her, she lit +up a little. I believe"--with a rather grudging smile--"that if she were +dead, and someone mentioned your name, she would light up." + +A sudden mountain rises in Jim's throat. + +"If she is not better to-morrow, Dr. Coldstream will send a nurse." + +"But does he think it will be necessary?" + +"He does not know." + +Jim writhes. It seems to him as if he were being blind-folded, and +having his arms tied to his sides by a hundred strong yet invisible +threads. + +"Does no one know anything?" he cries miserably. + +"I have told you exactly what the doctor said," says Cecilia, with the +venial crossness bred of real anxiety. "I suppose you do not wish me to +invent something that he did not say?" + +"Of course not; but I wish I had been here--I wish I had been +here!"--restlessly. + +"Why were not you?" + +No immediate answer. + +"Why were not you?" repeats she, curiosity, for the moment, superseding +her disquiet. "What prevented you? I thought, when you left us, that you +meant to come back at once?" + +"So I did, but----" + + +"But what?" + +"I could not; I was with Byng." + +"With Byng?" repeats Cecilia, too genuinely astonished to remember even +to prefix a "Mr." to Byng's name. "Why, I should have thought that if +there were one day of his life on which he could have done without you +better than another, it would have been to-day!" + +"Were not you rather _de trop_?" chimes in Sybilla's languid voice from +the sofa. "Rather a bad third?" + +"I was not a third at all." + +"Do you mean to say," cries Cecilia, her countenance tinged with the +pink of a generous indignation, "that you were _four_--that Mrs. Le +Marchant stayed in the room the whole time? I must say that now that +they are really and _bonâ fide_ engaged, I think she might leave them +alone together." + +"Mrs. Le Marchant was not there at all." Then, seeing the open-mouthed +astonishment depicted on the faces of his audience, he braces his mind +to make the inevitable yet dreaded announcement. "I had better explain +at once that neither Mrs. nor Miss Le Marchant was there; they are +gone." + +"Gone!" + +"Yes; they left Florence at seven o'clock this morning." There is a +moment of silent stupefaction. + +"I suppose," says Cecilia, at last slowly recovering the power of +speech, "that they were telegraphed for? Mr. Le Marchant is dead or ill? +one of the married sisters? one of the brothers?" + +Never in his life has Jim laboured under so severe a temptation to tell +a lie, were it only the modified falsehood of allowing Cecilia's +hypothesis to pass uncontradicted; but even if he were able for once to +conquer his constitutional incapacity, he knows that in this case it +would be useless. The truth must transpire to-morrow. + +"I believe not." + +"Gone!" repeats Cecilia, in a still more thunderstruck key than +before--"and where are they gone?" + +"I do not know." + +"Why did they go?" + +Jim makes an impatient movement, fidgeting on his chair. "I can only +tell you their actions; they told me their motives as little as they did +you." + +"Gone! Why, they never said a word about it yesterday." + +This being of the nature of an assertion--not an interrogation--Jim +feels with relief that it does not demand an answer. + +"Gone, at seven o'clock in the morning! Why, they could not have had +time to pack their things!" + +"They left them behind." + +The moment that this admission is out of Burgoyne's mouth, he repents +having made it; nor does his regret at all diminish under the shower of +ejaculations from both sisters that it calls forth. + +"Why, it was a regular flit! they must have taken French leave." + +There is something so horribly jarring in the semi-jocosity of the last +phrase that Jim jumps up from his chair and walks towards the window, +where Mr. Wilson is sitting in dismal idleness. + +Mr. Wilson has never cared much about the Le Marchants, and is now far +too deeply absorbed in his own trouble to have anything but the most +inattentive indifference to bestow upon the topic which to his daughters +appears so riveting. Jim blesses him for his callousness. But the window +of a small room is not so distant from any other part of it that sounds +cannot, with perfect ease, penetrate thither, as Jim finds when +Cecilia's next eager question pursues him. + +"Did Mr. Byng know that they were going?" + +"No." + +There is a pause. + +"It is absolutely incomprehensible!" says Cecilia, with almost a gasp. +"I never saw any one human being so much in love with another as she was +yesterday--there was so little disguise about it, that one was really +quite sorry for her--and this morning at cockcrow she decamps and leaves +him without a word." + +"You are mistaken--she left a note for him." + +"Poor dear boy!" sighs Sybilla, "is not he quite prostrated by the blow? +I am not apt to pity men generally--they are so coarse-grained--but he +is much more delicately strung than the general run." + +"I suppose he is frightfully cut up," says Cecilia, with that +inquisitiveness as to the details of a great affliction which we are all +apt to experience. + +For some perverse reason, inexplicable even to himself, Jim would like +to be able to answer that his friend is not cut up at all; but truth +again asserting its empire, he assents laconically, "Frightfully!" + +"How did he take it?" + +"How do people generally take such things?" + +The impatience of the key in which this is uttered, coupled with the +implied side-allusion to an acquaintance with sorrows of a somewhat +similar nature on her own part, silences the younger and sounder Miss +Wilson for a moment, but only for a moment--a moment long enough to be +filled by another sighing "Poor dear boy!" from Sybilla. + +"You say that she left a note for him?"--with a renewed light of +curiosity in her eyes--"have you any idea what was in it?" + +Jim hesitates; then, "Yes," he replies; "but as it was not addressed to +me, I do not think that I have any right to repeat it." + +"Of course not!"--reluctantly; "but did it throw no light--absolutely no +light at all--upon this extraordinary stampede?" + +"No." + +"Did not she even tell him where they were going?" + +"No." + +"Nor whether they were coming back?" + +"No." + +"Nor ask him to follow her?" + +"If she did not tell him where she was going, is it likely that she +would ask him to follow her?" cries Jim irritably, deeply annoyed to +find that he is, by the series of negatives that is being forced from +him, doing the very thing which he had just denied his own right to do. + +"It is the most incomprehensible thing I ever heard in my life. I +wonder"--with an air of even alerter interest than before--"what Mr. +Greenock will say? Perhaps he will now tell what he knows about them; if +they are gone, there will no longer be any need to conceal it. I am +afraid this looks rather as if there were something!" + +For the second time in one day the mention of an amiable _flâneur's_ +name makes Jim vault to his feet. + +"Well, I will not keep you any longer from your luncheon," he cries +hastily. "I will call in again later." + +"Are you going?" asks Mr. Wilson dully, lifting his head from his chest, +upon which it is sunk. "Well, you are about right; we are not much good +to anyone when our mainspring is gone." + +The phrase strikes cold on Jim's heart. + +"Are you going back to the poor dear boy?" inquires Sybilla as he passes +her. "By-the-bye, if it is not too much trouble, would you mind tucking +the Austrian blanket a little closer in on the left side?" and as he +stoops to perform the asked-for service, she adds: "Let him know how +sincerely I sympathize with him; and if he wants anything quieting for +his nerves, tell him that there is nothing that I can more +conscientiously recommend than----" + +But what Sybilla can conscientiously recommend is shut into the closing +door. Outside that door Jim finds that Cecilia has joined him. Anxiety +has quite banished the not altogether disagreeable curiosity of five +minutes ago, from the troubled face she lifts to his. + +"You will come back, will not you?" she asks. "You are not of much use, +I suppose; but still, one feels that you are there, and we are all so +much at sea. You have not an idea how much we are at sea--without her." + +"I think that I have a very good idea," he answers mournfully. "Tell me, +Cis; do you think she is really very ill?" + +As he puts the question, he feels its irrationality. He knows that the +person to whom he is making his futile appeal has already given him all +the scanty tidings she has to give; yet he cannot help indulging a faint +hope that her response to this last query of his may perhaps set +Amelia's condition in a slightly more favourable light. A look of +helpless distress clouds Cecilia's already cloudy face. + +"I tell you I do not know; I am no judge; I have seen so little real +illness. Sybilla would kill me if she heard me say so, would not +she"--with a slight parenthetical smile--"but I have seen so little real +illness, that I do not know what things mean; I do not know what it +means that she should be so heavy and stupid. As I told you before, the +only time that she roused up at all was when I mentioned your--" + +He stops her, breaking rudely into her sentence. He cannot bear to hear +that it is only at the magic of his name that his poor faithful love +lifts her sick head. + +"Yes, yes; I remember." + +"Some one ought to sit up with her, I am sure," pursues Cecilia, still +with that same helpless air of disquiet; "she ought not to be left alone +all night; but who? I should be more than willing to do it, but I know +that I should fall asleep in five minutes, and I am such a heavy sleeper +that, when once I am off, there is no possibility of waking me. I am a +dreadfully bad sick-nurse; father can never bear to have me near him +when he has the gout." + +Burgoyne is too well aware of the perfect truth of this last statement +to attempt any contradiction of it. + +"Amelia has always been the one to sit up when any one was ill," +continues she woefully; "and even now, by a stupid confusion of ideas, I +catch myself thinking, 'Oh, Amelia will sit up with her!' before I can +realize that _her_ is Amelia herself." + +Jim can well sympathize with this same confusion, when, several times +during his walk back to the Piazza d'Azeglio, a muddled thought of +comfort, in the idea that he will go and tell Amelia what a terrible day +of anxiety about some one he has been having, taps at the door of his +brain. The portals of No. 12 are once again opened to him by Annunziata, +who indicates to him, by a series of compassionate gestures and liquid +Tuscan sentences, that the _povero_ is still within, and the Padrona, +who this time also appears on the scene, and who is possessed of +somewhat more English than her handmaid, intimates, albeit with a good +deal of sympathy for his sufferings, yet with still more of +determination, that it would be no bad thing were he to be removed, +since, whether the sun shines or the rain falls, people must live, and +the apartment has to be prepared for new occupants. + +Anything that speaks less intention of removing than Byng's pose, when +his friend rejoins him, it would be difficult to imagine. He is +stretched upon the parquet floor, with his head lying on the small +footstool that has been wont to support Elizabeth's feet; her rifled +workbasket stands on the floor beside him, while her bit of embroidery +half shrouds his distorted face. The needle, still sticking in it, may +prick his eyes out for all he cares; the book she last read is open at +the page where she has put her mark of a skein of pale silk; and the +yellow anemones, that he must have plucked for her yesterday in drenched +Vallombrosa, are crushed under his hot cheek. But outwardly he is quite +quiet. Jim puts his hand on his shoulder. + +"Come away, there is no use in your staying here any longer." + +As he receives no answer, he repeats the exhortation more imperatively, +"Come." + +"Why should I come? Where should I come to?" says the young man, lifting +his head, "where can I find such plain traces of her as here? I will +stay." + +He says this with an air of resolution, and once more lays down his face +upon the footstool, which, being entirely worked in beads, has impressed +the cheek thrust against it with a design in small hollows, a fact of +which the sufferer is quite unaware. + +"You cannot stay!" cries Burgoyne, the more impatiently that his own +share of anxiety is fretting his temper almost past endurance; "you +cannot stay, it is out of the question; they want to come into the +rooms, to prepare them for new occupants." + +"_New occupants!_" repeats Byng, turning over almost on his face, and +flattening his nose and lips against the beaded surface of his stool, +"other occupants than _her_. Never! never!" + +It is to be placed to the credit side of Mr. Burgoyne's account that he +does not, upon this declaration, withdraw the resting-place from his +young friend's countenance and break it over his head. It is certainly +not the temptation to do so that is lacking. Instead, he sits down at +some distance off, and says quietly: + +"I see, you will force them to call in the police. You will make a +discreditable _esclandre_. How good for her; how conducive to her good +name. I congratulate you!" + +The other has lifted his head in a moment. + +"What do you mean?" + +"Do you think," asks Jim indignantly, "that it is ever very advantageous +to a woman to have her name mixed up in a vulgar row? And do you suppose +that hers will be kept out of it? Come"--seeing a look of shocked +consternation breaking over the young man's face, and determined to +strike while the iron is hot--"I will call a fiacre, and we will go home +to the hotel. Put back her things into her basket. What right have you +to meddle with them? You have no business to take advantage of her +absence to do what you would not do if she were here." + +Byng obeys with a scared docility; his eyes are so dim, and his fingers +tremble so much, that Jim has to help him in replacing Elizabeth's small +properties. His own heart is pricked with a cruel smart that has no +reference to Amelia's illness, as he handles the departed girl's spools +and skeins, and awkwardly folds her scrap of broidery. Byng offers no +further resistance, and, equally indifferent to his own bunged-up eyes, +bead-marked cheeks, and dishevelled locks, follows his companion dully, +down the stone stairs, compassionately watched from the top by +Annunziata, whose heart is an inconveniently tender one to be matched +with so tough a face. They get into the fiacre, and drive in dead +silence to the Minerva. Arrived there, Jim persuades his friend, who now +seems prepared to acquiesce meekly in whatever he is told to do, to lie +down on his bed, since the few words that he utters convey the fact of +his being suffering from a burning headache, a phenomenon not very +surprising, considering his late briny exercises, since, even at the +superb age of twenty-two, it is difficult to spend six hours in banging +your forehead against a parquet floor, in moaning, bellowing, and +weeping, without leaving some traces of these gymnastics on your +physique. + +Burgoyne stands or sits patiently beside him, bathing his fiery temples +with eau-de-Cologne, not teasing him with any questions, having, indeed, +on his own part, the least possible desire for conversation; and so the +heavy hours go by. The day has declined to evening before Burgoyne quits +his _protégé's_ side to dine, shortly and solitarily, previous making a +third visit to the Anglo-Américain, to learn the latest news of his +betrothed. + +He had left Byng still stretched upon his bed, apparently asleep, and is +therefore the more surprised, on returning to take a final look at him +before setting out on his own errand, to find him up, with hat and stick +in hand, evidently prepared for a walk. + +"You are going out?" + +"Yes." + +"Where are you going?" + +The other hesitates. + +"I am going back there." + +"Impossible!" + +"But I am," replies Byng doggedly; "it will not do _her_ any injury, for +I shall not attempt to go in, I shall only ask at the door whether any +telegram has yet been received from--from them; they must telegraph to +direct where their things are to be sent to, and it is most probable +that they have done so already." + +"It is most _im_probable." + +"Well, at all events, it is possible, it is worth trying, and I mean to +try it." + +There is such a fixed resolution in his voice, which is no longer +quavering with sobs, and in his ashy face, that Jim offers no further +resistance. The only concession he can obtain from him is that of +permitting him to accompany him. + +"You will not mind coming with me to the Anglo-Américain first, will +you?" inquires Jim, as they set off walking across the Piazza. + +"It will delay us quite half-an-hour," answers the other restlessly. +"But stay" (a hazy look of reminiscence dawning over his preoccupied +haggard face), "did you tell me that Amelia was ill--or did I dream it?" + +"No, you did not dream it," replies the other sadly. "She _is_ ill." + +Perhaps the wretchedness that pierces through his friend's quiet tones +recalls the young dreamer to the fact that the world holds other +miseries than his own. There is at all events something of his old quick +sympathy in his next words, and in the way in which they are uttered: + +"Oh, poor Amelia, I _am_ sorry! By all means let us go at once and ask +after her. Is there nothing that we can get?--nothing that we can do for +her?" + +It is the question that Jim, in baffled anxiety, puts when he is +admitted inside the dull _salon_, where no love-glorified, homely face +to-night lights up the tender candles of its glad eyes, from over its +stitching, at his entry. + +Sybilla is lying less comfortably than usual on her sofa, her cushions +not plumped up, and her bottle of smelling-salts rolled out of her +reach. Mr. Wilson is walking uneasily up and down the room, instead of +sitting placidly in his chair, with the soothing voice--which he had +always thought as much to be counted on, and as little to be +particularly thankful for, as the air that fills his lungs--lullingly +reading him to sleep. + +"Cecilia is with her just now," he says, in a voice of forlorn +irritation. "I wish she would come down again; I have no great opinion +of Cecilia as a sick-nurse, and she must know how anxious we are." A +moment later, still pursuing his fidgety ramble from wall to wall, and +exclaiming peevishly, as he stumbles over a footstool: "If it would only +declare itself! There seems to be nothing to lay hold of, we are so +completely in the dark--if it would only declare itself!" + +A not very subdued sob from the sofa is the only answer he gets, an +answer which evidently irritates still further his fretted nerves. + +"I cannot think what Cecilia is doing!" he cries, hastening to the door, +opening it noisily, and then listening. + +"Let me run up and see," says Jim, his heart going out to the fractious +old man in a sympathy of suffering. "Yes, I know where her room is--_au +troisième_, is not it?" (a flash of recollection lighting up the fact +that Amelia's is distinctly the worst room of the suite occupied by the +Wilson family; the room with most stairs to climb to, and least +accommodation when you reach it). "I will knock quite gently. Do not be +afraid, I will not disturb her, and I will come down immediately to tell +you." + +Without waiting for permission, he springs up the stairs, and, standing +on the landing, taps cautiously on the closed door, whose number (by one +of those quirks of memory that furnish all our minds with insignificant +facts) he has recollected. His first knock is so superfluously soft that +it is evidently inaudible within, since no result follows upon it. His +second, a shade louder, though still muffled by the fear of breaking +into some little fitful yet salutary sleep, brings Cecilia out. His +first glance at her face shows him that she has no good news, either to +warm his own heart, or for him to carry down as a solace to the poor old +man below. + +"Oh, it is you, is it?" says she, shutting the door behind her with a +clumsy carefulness that makes it creak. "No, I do not think she is any +better; but it is so difficult to tell, I am no judge. She does not +complain of anything particular; but she looks so _odd_." + +It is the same adjective that Cecilia had applied earlier in the day to +her sick sister, and it fills Jim with an impotent terror. + +"If she is asleep, might not I just look in at her?" he asks. "I do not +know what you mean when you say she looks _odd_." + +"She is not asleep," replies Cecilia, in a noisy whisper, much more +likely to pierce sick ears than a voice pitched in its normal key; "at +least, I think not. But I am sure you ought not to see her; Dr. +Coldstream said she was to be kept very quiet, and nothing would upset +her so much as seeing you." + +"She need not see me; I would only take just one look at her from behind +the door," persists Jim who feels a desire, whose gnawing intensity +surprises himself, to be assured by the evidence of his own eyes that +his poor love's face has not undergone some strange and gruesome change, +such as is suggested by Cecilia's disquieting epithet. + +"Do you think she would not know you were there?" asks she scornfully, +"Why, she hears your step three streets off!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII. + + +So that night Jim does not see Amelia. After all, as Cecilia says, it is +better to be on the safe side, and to-morrow she will be brighter, and +he can sit by her, and tell her lovingly--oh very lovingly!--what a +fright she has given him. Yes, to-morrow she will be brighter. The +adjective is Cecilia's; but, apparently, he cannot improve upon it, for +he not only keeps repeating it to himself as he runs downstairs, but +employs it for the reassurance of Miss Wilson's anxious relatives. + +"She will be brighter to-morrow; sick people are always worse at night, +are not they?"--rather vaguely, with again that oppressive sense of his +own inexperience in illness. "Not that she is _worse_"--this is hastily +subjoined, as he sees her father's face fall--"Cecilia never said she +was _worse_--oh, no, not _worse_, only not distinctly better; and, after +all, it would have been irrational to expect that. She will be brighter +to-morrow--oh, yes, of course she will be brighter to-morrow!" + +He leaves the hotel with the phrase, which sounds cut and dried and +unreal, still upon his lips, after bidding a kinder good-night than +usual to Mr. Wilson, after having offered to supply Amelia's place by +reading aloud to him, a feat he has not performed since the evening of +his disastrous experience of the Provident Women of Oxford; and lastly, +having even--as a reward to Sybilla, who has been understood to murmur +something tearful about letting her maid look in upon Amelia at +intervals through the night--tucked in her Austrian blanket, and picked +up her smelling-bottle. He has expected to rejoin Byng outside, as he +had promised to wait for him with such patience as a cigar could lend, +and on the condition that his absence should not exceed a stipulated +period. But either the promise has been broken, or the period exceeded, +for Byng is gone. The fact does not greatly surprise Burgoyne, though it +causes him a slight uneasiness, which is, perhaps, rather a blessing for +him, distracting his mind in some slight measure from the heaviness of +his own trouble. + +He walks fast to the Piazza d'Azeglio; but he neither overtakes him of +whom he is in pursuit, nor finds him at 12 bis. He has been there, has +inquired with agitation for the telegrams, which have naturally not been +received, and has then gone away again immediately. Whither? The +Padrona, who has answered the door-bell herself and, with Italian +suavity, is doing her best to conceal that she is beginning to +think she has heard nearly enough of the subject, does not know. For a +few moments Jim stands irresolute, then he turns his steps towards the +Arno. It is not yet too late for the charming riverside promenade, the +gay Lung'Arno, to be still alive with _flâneurs_; the stars have lit +their lamps above, and the hotels below. The pale planets, and the +yellow lights from the opposite bank of the river, lie together, sweet +and peaceful upon her breast. In both cases the counterfeits are as +clear and bright as the real luminaries; and it seems as if one had only +to plunge in an arm to pick up stars and candles out of the stream's +depths. + +Leaning over the parapet near the Ponte Vecchio, Burgoyne soon discovers +a familiar figure, a figure which starts when he touches its arm. + +"I thought I would wait about here for an hour or so," says Byng, with a +rather guilty air of apology, "until I could go back and inquire again. +The telegram has not arrived yet--I suppose it is too early. Of course +they would not telegraph until they get in to-night. You do not +think"--with a look of almost terror--"that they are going through to +England, and that they will not telegraph till they get there?" + +"How can I tell?" + +"There is nothing in the world less likely," cries Byng feverishly, +irritated at not having drawn forth the reassurance he had hoped for. "I +do not for a moment believe that they have gone home; I feel convinced +that they are still in Italy! Why should they leave it, when they--when +she is so fond of it?" + +Jim looks down sadly at the calm, strong stream. + +"I do not know, I cannot give an opinion--I have no clue." + +"I will ask again in about an hour," says Byng, lifting his arms from +the parapet, "in an hour it is pretty certain to have arrived; and +meanwhile, I thought I would just stroll about the town, but there is no +reason--none at all--why I should keep you! You--you must be wanting to +go back to Amelia." + +He glances at his friend in a nervous, sidelong way, as he makes this +suggestion. + +"I am not going back again to-night," replies Jim quietly, without +giving any evidence of an intention to acquiesce in his dismissal. +"There is nothing that I can do for her--there is nothing to be done." + +His tone, in making this statement, must be yet more dreary than he is +aware, as it arouses even Byng's self-absorbed attention. + +"Nothing to be done for her?" he echoes, with a shocked look. "My dear +old chap, you do not mean to say--to imply--" + +"I mean to imply nothing," interrupts Jim sharply, in a superstitious +panic of hearing some unfavourable augury as to his betrothed put into +words. "I mean just what I say--neither more nor less; there is nothing +to be done for her to-night, nothing but to let her sleep--a good sleep +will set her up: of course a good sleep will quite set her up." + +He speaks almost angrily, as if expecting and challenging contradiction. +But Byng's spirit has already flown back to his own woes. He may make +what sanguine statements he pleases about Amelia's to-morrow, without +fearing any demurrer from his companion. What attention the latter has +to spare is evidently only directed to the solving of the problem, how +best, with amicable civility, to be rid of him. Before he can hit upon +any expedient for attaining this desired end, Burgoyne speaks again, his +eye resting with a compassionate expression upon his junior's face, +whose wild pallor is heightened by the disorder of his hair, and the hat +crushed down over his brows. + +"You have not had anything to eat all day--had not you better come back +to the hotel and get something to eat?" + +"Eat!" cries the other, with almost a scream; "you must have very little +comprehension of----" Then, checking himself and with a strong and +palpable effort for composure: "It would not be worth while, I should +not have time; in an hour--less than an hour now, for I must have been +here quite ten minutes at the least--I have to return to the Piazza +d'Azeglio." + +"Then go to Doney's; why not get something to eat at Doney's? It will +not take you five minutes to reach the Via Tornabuoni." + +"What should I do when I got there?" asks Byng impatiently. "If I tried +to swallow food, it would stick in my throat; no food shall pass my lips +till I learn where she is; after that"--breaking out into a noisy +laugh--"you may do what you please with me--we will make a night of it +with all my heart, we will-- + + "'Drink, drink, + Till the pale stars blink!'" + +Jim looks blankly at him. Is he going mad? + +"If you think that you will get me to go back to the hotel to-night, you +are very much mistaken," continues Byng recklessly; "no roof less high +than this"--jerking back his head, to throw his fevered look up to the +cool stars--"shall shelter my head; and besides, where would be the use +of going to bed when I should have to be up again so early? I shall be +off by one of the morning expresses: until I have learnt--as, of course, +I shall do to-night--where she has gone, I cannot tell which; but +neither of them starts much later than seven." + +For a moment Jim stands dumb with consternation at the announcement of +this intention; but, reflecting that it would not be a whit more +irrational to attempt to reason with a madman who had reached the +padded-room stage of lunacy, than with his present companion, he +contents himself with saying: + +"And supposing that you do not learn to-night where she has gone?" + +"There is no use in supposing anything so impossible!" + +But as the hours go by, the possibility becomes a probability, the +probability a certainty! Midnight comes, and the closed telegraph-office +puts a final extinguisher upon the expectation, which no one but the +unhappy lover had ever entertained, that Florence would be enlightened +before the dawn of another day as to the place whither her two truants +have fled. + +Burgoyne has accompanied his friend upon his last importunate visit to +the now-going-to-bed and justly-incensed 12 bis. He has been ashamed +again to present himself at the so-often-attacked door, so has awaited +at the bottom of the stairs, has heard Byng's hoarse query, and the +negative--curter and less suave than the last one--that follows it; has +heard the door shut again, and the hopeless footsteps that come +staggering down to him. + +"You will go home now?" + + "'Perchance, Iago, I shall ne'er go home!'" + +replies Byng; and, though he is compelled to admit that there is no +longer any possibility of his to-night obtaining the information for +which he so madly hungers, that there can consequently be no question of +his setting off by one of the early trains, since he would not know in +which direction to go, and might only be fleeing further from her whom +he would fain rejoin, yet he still keeps with fevered pertinacity to his +project of spending the night _à la belle étoile_. + +Finding it impossible to dissuade him, Jim resigns himself to bearing +him company. It is with very little reluctance that he does so. There is +no truer truism than that all sorrows, however mountainous, are more +easily carried under God's high roof than man's low ones, and he who +does not sleep has for compensation that at least he can have no +dreadful waking. So the two men wander about all night in the boon +southern air, and see-- + + "The moon exactly round, + And all those stars with which the brows of ample heaven are crown'd; + Orion, all the Pleiades, and those seven Atlas got; + The close-beam'd Hyades, the Bear, surnamed the Chariot, + That turns about heaven's axle-tree, holds ope a constant eye + Upon Orion, and of all the cressets in the sky, + His golden forehead never bows to the Ocean's empery." + +There are not many hours of a summer's night during which the stir of +life has ceased and has not yet reawaked in an Italian town, the talk +and the tread and the mule bells, and the flutes of the voiceful people +lasting on till near the small hours, and beginning again ere those +hours have had strength to grow big. But yet there is a space of time +when Florence lies silent, baring her beauty to the constellations +alone; and under this unfamiliar and solemn and lovely aspect the two +night-wanderers see her. They see her Campanile + + "Commercing with the skies," + +with no distracting human bustle about her feet; they see her Perseus +battling beneath her Loggia, and her San Giorgio standing wakeful at his +post on Or san Michele. They see her scowling palace rows, her stealing +river, and her spanning bridges--palaces out of which no head peeps, a +river on which no boat oars, bridges upon which no horse-hoof rings. +They have all her churches--Santa Croce, Arnolpho's great "Bride," that +_new_ Maria that is now four hundred years old or more, the humbly +glorious San Marco--to themselves; all her treasure houses, all her +memories, all her flower-embalmed air--for a few hours they possess them +all. She is but a little city, this fair Firenze, and in these few hours +they traverse her in her length and breadth, rambling aimlessly wherever +Byng's feverishly miserable impulses lead them. Burgoyne offers no +opposition to any of these, but accompanies his friend silently down +slumbrous thoroughfare, or across sleeping Piazza, by Arno side, under +colonnade or arch. It is all one to him; nor is he sensible of any +fatigue, when at length, at about the hour when Byng had meant to have +caught the early morning train, they return to the hotel, and the +younger man, happily dead-beat at last, worn out with want of food, +tears, and weariness, flings himself down, dressed, upon his bed, and +instantly falls into a leaden sleep. Jim feels no desire, nor indeed any +power of following his example. He is not easily tired, and his former +life of travel and hardship has made him always willing to dispense with +the--to him--unnecessary luxury of a bed; and, under ordinary +circumstances, a night passed in the open air would have had an effect +upon him rather exhilarating than otherwise. He has his bath, dresses, +breakfasts, and then jumps into a fiacre, and has himself driven to the +Anglo-Américain. + +The day is so exactly the counterpart of its predecessor, in its even +assured splendour, that Jim has a hazy feeling that they both make only +one divided into two parts by the narrow dark blue ribbon of the +exquisite brief night. When did yesterday end and to-day begin? As he is +borne along, his memory, made more alert by sleeplessness, +reproduces--merely, as it seems to him, the better to fill him with pain +and remorse--the different states of mind in which he has passed over +the often trodden ground. Here, at the street corner, what a nausea had +come over him at the thought of the interest he would have to feign in +those humdrum details, so dear to Amelia's soul, of their future +_ménage_, with all its candle-end economies and depressing restrictions. +Here, in the church shadow, how he had tried to lash himself up into a +more probable semblance of pleasure in her expected and dreaded +caresses. There seems to be scarcely an inch of the way where he has not +had some harsh or weary thought of her; he is thankful when the brief +transit, that has appeared to him so long, is over. And yet the change +is only from the sharp sting of recollected unkindness to the dull +bruising ache of anticipated ill. A _garçon_ is sweeping out the +_salon_, for the hour is not much beyond eight, so Jim goes into the +dreary little dining-room, where two places are laid with coffee-cups +and rolls. Only two. And, though he knows that nothing short of a +miracle could have already restored Amelia so completely as to enable +her to come down to breakfast, yet the ocular demonstration of the fact +that her place is and will be empty, strikes a chill to his boding +heart. He is presently joined by Cecilia, whose carelessly-dressed hair, +heavy eyelids, and tired puffy face, sufficiently show that not to her, +any more than to himself has night brought + + "Sweet child sleep, the filmy-eyed." + +"How fresh and cool you are!" she cries, with an almost reproachful +intonation. "Do not look at me!"--covering her face with her hot +hands--"I am not fit to be seen; but what does that matter? What do I +care?"--beginning to cry--"Oh, she is so bad! We have spent such a +dreadful night! As I tell you, I am a shocking sick-nurse; I never know +what to do; I lose my head completely; and she has been so odd--she has +been talking such gibberish!" + +"Delirious?" + +"Yes, I suppose that is what you would call it. I never saw anybody +delirious before, so I do not know. I have seen Sybilla in hysterics, +but I never believed that they were real--I always thought that a bucket +of water would bring her round." + +As a general rule, Jim may be counted upon for cordial co-operation in +any hit directed against Sybilla, but now he is too spiritless even to +notice it. + +"I was so frightened," continues Cecilia; "it is not cheerful being all +alone at the dead of night with a person talking such nonsense as she +was. Amelia, of all people, to talk nonsense! I could not quite make out +what it was about, but it seemed to have more or less reference to you. +She was begging you to forgive her for something she had done, as far as +I could gather; some treat she had prepared for you, and that you had +not liked. Have you the least idea what she could have meant?" + +He has every idea; but it would seem profanation to explain that her +poor wandering brain is still distressedly labouring with the abortive +project she had so happily framed for his enjoyment. + +"She is quieter now. Sybilla's maid is with her; Sybilla really has not +behaved badly--_for her_; she let her maid look in several times during +the night; but still, for the most part I was alone with her! Oh, I do +trust"--shuddering--"that I may never again have to be alone at night +with a person who is not right in her head!" + +This aspiration on the youngest Miss Wilson's part is, for the present +occasion, at least, likely to be gratified; for, by the time that +another night settles down on Florence, Amelia's illness has been +declared by Dr. Coldstream to have every symptom of developing into the +malarious Florentine fever, which not unfrequently lays low the chilled +or over-fatigued, or generally imprudent foreign visitor to that little +Eden. Amelia has Florentine fever; and the verification of this fact is +followed by all the paraphernalia of serious sickness--night and day +nurses, disinfectants, physic phials. + +The announcement of her being attacked by a definite and recognised +disease brings at first a sort of relief to Burgoyne's mind, which, +under Cecilia's frightened and frightening word-pictures, had been beset +by terrors great in proportion to their vagueness. Now that Amelia is +confessedly sick of a fever, there is nothing abnormal in her being +"odd," and "stupid," and "wandering," these being only the inevitable +stages on a road which will--which _must_ lead to ultimate recovery. His +heart is heavy, yet scarcely so heavy as it had been upon his arrival in +the morning, when, late in the afternoon--not sooner do the claims upon +him of the disorganized and helpless family of his betrothed relax--he +returns to the Minerva to look after Byng. Having had every reason to +fear that he will not find him at the hotel, but will be obliged again +to set off in pursuit of him through the streets and squares so +repeatedly traversed last night, he is relieved to learn from the hotel +servants that the young man is in his bedroom. He finds him there +indeed; no longer stretched in the blessed oblivion of deep sleep upon +his bed, but sitting on a hard chair by the open window, his arms +resting upon the back, and his face crushed down upon them. By no +slightest movement does he show consciousness of his friend's entrance. + +"I am afraid I have been a long time away," says the latter kindly. + +"Have you?" answers Byng, his voice coming muffled through lips still +buried in his own coat-sleeve. "I do not know; I have done with time!" + +"I do not know how you have managed that," rejoins Jim, still +indulgently, though a shade dryly. "Have you been here all day?" + +"I do not know where I have been. Yes,"--lifting his head--"I do; I have +been to the Piazza d'Azeglio." + +"Well?" + +"They know where she is. They were packing her things; through the door +I saw them tying the label on the box; if I had tried I could have read +the address on the label, but I did not. She had forbidden them to give +it to me; in her telegram she had forbidden them to give it to anyone." + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX. + + +Jim refrains from saying how likely this culmination of his friend's +woes has appeared to him, since it would have been the height of the +illogical for the Le Marchants to have put themselves to extreme +inconvenience in order to escape from a person to whom they immediately +afterwards gave the power of following them. He refrains from saying it, +because he knows of how very little consoling power the "told you so" +philosophy is possessed. + +"And what will you do now?" + +"Do! What is there to do? What does a man do when he is shot through the +heart?" + +"I believe that in point of fact he jumps his own height in the air. I +know that a buffalo does," replies Burgoyne with a matter-of-fact +dryness, which proceeds less from want of sympathy, than from an honest +belief that it is the best and kindest method of dealing with Byng's +heroics. + +"_Shot through the heart!_" murmurs the latter, repeating his own phrase +as if he found a dismal pleasure in it. "I had always been told that it +was a painless death; I now know to the contrary." + +"Shall you stay here? There is no longer any use in your staying here." + +"There is no longer any use in my doing anything, or leaving anything +undone. + + "'There's nothing in this world can make me joy; + Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale, + Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.'" + +So saying, he replaces his head upon his arms, and his arms upon the +chair-rail, with the air of one who, upon mature consideration, has +decided to maintain that attitude for the remainder of his life. + + * * * * * + +A week has passed; a week upon which Burgoyne looks back as upon a blur +of wretchedness, with distinct points of pain sticking up here and there +out of it. It is a blur; for it is a time-space, without the usual +limitations and divisions of time; a week not cut up into orderly +lengths of day and night, but in which each has puzzlingly run into and +overlapped each. There have been nights when he has not been in bed at +all, and there have been days when he has slept heavily at unaccustomed +hours. He has not dined at any particular time; he has shared forlorn +breakfast, dotted about the morning as the less or more anxiety about +Amelia dictated, with the Wilsons. He has drunk more tea than he ever +did in his life before, and the result of this whole condition of things +is, that he cannot for the life of him tell whether the day of the week +is Wednesday, or Thursday, or Friday, and that he has lost all sense of +proportion. He has not the least idea whether the dreadful moments when +he stood on the landing outside Amelia's door, and heard her +heartrendingly beg him not to go away from her for _quite_ so long, to +be a little gladder to see her when he came back; or again affectingly +assure him that she can do quite well, be quite cheerful without +him--whether, I say, those dreadful moments were really only moments, or +stretched into hours. + +Besides the agony of remorse that the impotent listening to those +pathetic prayers and unselfish assurances causes him, he suffers too +from another agony of shame, that the father and sister, standing like +himself with ears stretched at that shut door, should be let into the +long secret of his cruelty and coldness, that secret which for eight +years she has so gallantly been hiding. It is an inexpressible relief to +him that at least the old man's thickened hearing admits but very +imperfectly his daughter's rapid utterances. + +"Poor soul! I cannot quite make out what it is all about," he says, with +his hand to his ear; "but I catch your name over and over again, Jim; I +suppose it is all about you." + +Cecilia, however, naturally hears as well as he himself does, and +apparently pitying the drawn misery of his face, whispers to him +comfortingly-- + +"You must not mind, you know it is all nonsense. She talks very +differently when she is well." + +The Wilson family have never hitherto shown any very marked affection +for Burgoyne, but now it seems as if they could hardly bear him out of +their sight. They cling to him, not because he is _he_--Jim makes +himself no illusion on that head--but because they have got into such a +habit of leaning, that it is no longer possible to them to stand +upright. He had never realized till now how helpless they are. He had +known that Amelia was the pivot upon which the whole family turned; but +he had not brought home to himself how utterly the machine fell to +pieces when that pivot was withdrawn. + +In the course of the past week each member of the family has confided to +him separately how far more she or he misses Amelia, than can be +possible to either of the others. Upon this head Sybilla's lamentations +are the loudest and most frequent. She had at first refused to admit +that there was anything at all the matter with her sister, but has now +fallen into the no less trying opposite extreme of refusing to allow +that there is any possibility of her recovery, talking of her as if she +were almost beyond the reach of human aid. Sybilla's grief for her +sister is perfectly genuine; none the less so that it is complicated by +irritation at her own deposition from her post of first invalid, at +having been compelled to confess the existence in the bosom of her own +family of a traitor, with an indisputably higher temperature and more +wavering pulse than she. + +"It is ridiculous to suppose that a person in such rude health as +Cecilia _can_ miss her as I do," she says querulously; "I was always her +first object, she always knew by instinct when I was more suffering than +usual; who cares now"--breaking into a deluge of self-compassionating +tears--"whether I am suffering or not?" + +Then, when next he happens to be alone with Cecilia, it is her turn to +assert a superiority of woe; a superiority claimed with still more +emphasis the next half hour by the father. With a patience which would +have surprised those persons who had seen him only in his former +relations with the family of his betrothed he tries to soothe the sorrow +of each--even that of Sybilla--in turn; but to his own heart he says +that not one of their griefs is worthy to be weighed in the balance with +his. In the case of none of theirs is the woof crossed by the hideous +warp of self-reproach that is woven inextricably into his. They have +worked her to death, they have torn her to pieces by their conflicting +claims; their love has been exacting, selfish, inconsiderate; but at +least it has been love; they have prized her at almost her full worth +while they had her. For him it has been reserved as for the base Indian, +to + + "Throw a pearl away + Richer than all his tribe." + +In the intervals--neither long nor many--between his ministrations at +the Anglo-Américain, Burgoyne hurries back to the Minerva to see that +Byng has not blown his brains out. In the present state of mind of that +young gentleman this catastrophe does not appear to be among the least +likely ones. He has refused to leave Florence, always answering the +suggestion with the same question, "Where else should I go?" and if +pressed, adding invariably in the same words as those employed by him on +the first day of his loss, when his friend had urged the advisability of +his removing his countenance from the beaded stool--"Where shall I find +such recent and authentic traces of her as here?" + +He passes his time either on the Lung' Arno, staring at the water, or +stretched face downwards upon his bed. He walks about the town most of +the night, and Jim suspects him of beginning to take chloral. +Occasionally he rouses up into a quick and almost passionate sympathy +with his friend's trouble, asking for nothing better than to be sent on +any errand, however trivial, or however tiresome, in Amelia's behalf. +But no sooner have the immediate effects of the appeal to his +kind-heartedness died away, than he sinks back into his lethargy, and +Jim is at once too much occupied and too miserable to use any very +strenuous endeavours to shake him out of it. But yet the consciousness +of the tacit engagement, under which he lies to the young man's mother, +to look after him, coupled with the absolute impossibility, under his +present circumstances, of fulfilling that engagement, and his uneasiness +as to what new form the insanity of Byng's grief may take on, from day +to day, add very perceptibly to the weight of his own already +sufficiently ponderous burden. + +It is the ninth day since Amelia fell sick, that ninth day which, in +maladies such as hers, is, or is at least reckoned to be, the crisis and +turning-point of the disease. Jim has been up all night, and has just +rushed back to the Minerva, for the double purpose of taking a bath, and +of casting an uneasy eye upon his charge. He finds the latter not in his +room, but leaning over the little spiky balcony, out of his window, +hanging over it so far, and so absorbedly, that he does not hear his +friend's approach, and starts violently when Jim lays a hand on his +shoulder. + +"What are you looking at?" + +"I; oh--nothing particular! What should I be looking at? What is there +to look to? I was only--only--wondering as a mere matter of curiosity, +how many feet it is from here to the pavement? Sixteen? eighteen? +twenty?" + +Jim's only answer is to look at him sadly and sternly; then he says +coldly: + +"I do not recommend it; it would be a clumsy way of doing it." + +"What matter how clumsy the way, so that one attains the end?" asks Byng +extravagantly, throwing off even the thin pretence he had at first +assumed; "who cares how bad the road is so that it leads him to the +goal? + + "'Oh, amiable lovely death! + Thou odoriferous stench, sound rottenness!'" + +Jim shudders. Death has been so near to him for the last nine days, that +the terrific realism of Constance's apostrophe seems to be almost more +than he can bear. + +"It is silliness to live when to live is a torment, and then, have we a +prescription to die, when death is our physician?" continues Byng loudly +and wildly, clasping his hands above his head, and apparently perfectly +indifferent as to whether the other inmates of the hotel, or passers-by +on the piazza, overhear him. + +"If you stay here much longer you will spare yourself the trouble of +putting an end to your existence," replies Jim, glancing at the other's +head, exposed hatless to the scorch of the Tuscan sun, "for you will +certainly get a sunstroke." + +So saying, he takes him quietly, yet decidedly, by the arm, and leads +him within the room. Either his matter-of-fact manner, or the sight of +his face, upon which, well-seasoned as it is, vigil and sorrow have +begun to write their unavoidable marks, brings the young madman back to +some measure of sense and self-control. + +"I had no fixed intention," he says apologetically, still looking white +and wild; "you must not think I meant anything; but, even if I had--do +you know--have you ever happened to read anything about the statistics +of suicide? Do you know what an increasing number of people every year +find life intolerable?" + +"I know that you are fast making _my_ life intolerable," answers Jim, +fixing his tired, sleepless eyes with melancholy severity upon his +companion. "Amelia is--you are as well aware of it as I am--probably +dying, and yet even now, thanks to you, into my thoughts of her is +continually pushing the fear that I may have to tell your mother that +you have had the colossal selfishness to rush out of the world, because, +for the first time in your pampered life, the toy you cried for has not +been put into your hand." + +Burgoyne's hopes have not been high, as to any salutary result of his +own philippic while uttering it. But our words, sometimes, to our +surprise, turn from wooden swords to steel daggers in our hands. For a +moment Byng stands as if stunned; then he breaks into a tornado of sobs +and tears, such tears as have often before angered his friend, but which +now he welcomes the sight of, as perhaps precursors of a saner mood. + +"Oh, my dear old chap!" he cries, catching at Jim's unresponsive hand, +and wringing it hard, "she is not dying _really_? You do not mean it? +You are only saying it to frighten me? Oh! dear, kind Amelia. Not dying! +not dying?" + +"I do not know: to-day is the turning-point, they say; even now it may +have come." + +"And why are not you with her? Why do not you go back to her?" cries +Byng, in a broken voice of passionate excitement, the tears still racing +down his face. + +"And leave you to go tomfooling out there again?" asks Jim, with a nod +of his head towards the balcony, seen from where they stand, grilling in +the midday blaze. + +The verb employed, if closely looked into, bears a ludicrous +disproportion to the intended action indicated, but neither of the men +sees anything ridiculous in it. + +"I will not!" cries Byng, in eager asseveration; "I give you my word of +honour I will not; if you do not believe me, take me with you! Keep me +with you all day! Do you think that I, too, do not want to know how +Amelia is? Do you think that I am indifferent as to whether she lives or +dies? Poor, good Amelia! When I think of that drive to Vallombrosa, only +ten days ago! They two sitting side by side, so happy, laughing and +making friends with each other!" + +He covers his face with his hands, and through them the scalding drops +trickle; but only for a moment. In the next, he has dashed them away, +and is moving restlessly about the room, looking for his hat. + +"Let us go this instant," he says urgently; "my poor old man, do you +think I would willingly add a feather weight to your burden? I should +never forgive myself if I kept you a second longer from her at such a +time; let us go at once." + +Burgoyne complies; but under pretext of making some change in his dress, +escapes from his friend, for just the few minutes necessary to write and +despatch a telegram to the young man's mother. It runs thus: + +"_No cause for alarm, but come at once. He is perfectly well, but needs +you._" + +If, as is to be hoped, Mrs. Byng is still in London, reaping the +succession of the old relative whose death-bed she had quitted Florence +to attend, his message will bring her hither within forty-eight hours, +and the burden of responsibility, now grown so insupportable, will be +shifted from his shoulders. Until those forty-eight hours have elapsed, +he must not again let Byng out of his sight. + +The day rolls by, the critical ninth day rolls by on its torrid wheels +to eventide, and when that eventide comes, it finds Cecilia Wilson +running down from Amelia's room, to give the last news of her to the +three men and one woman waiting below. + +"I think he seems quite satisfied," she says, in answer to the silent +hungry looks of question addressed to her, and alluding to the doctor, +who is still with the patient; "the strength is maintained; the +temperature lower." What a dreadful parrot-sound the two phrases, so +familiar to us all in the newspaper bulletins of distinguished men on +their death-beds, have during the last week assumed in Burgoyne's ears; +"you can speak to him yourself when he comes down, of course, Jim; but I +am sure he is satisfied." + +"She is better!--she is saved!" cries Byng, rushing forward and +snatching both Cecilia's hands--"do you say that she is really saved?" + +"Oh, are you here still, Mr. Byng? how very kind of you!" replies +Cecilia, a tinge of colour rushing over her mealy face--that face, ten +days ago, clothed in so many roses--"well, I am afraid he does not go +quite so far as that, but he says it is as much as we can expect, and +even I can see that she is not nearly so restless." + +"Thank God!--thank God!" + +In the ardour of his thanksgiving he presses her hands closer, instead +of dropping them, a fact of which he is entirely unaware, but so is not +she; and who knows, even at that serious moment, what tiny genial hope +may slide into her plump heart! + +Again this night Burgoyne does not go to bed, from a superstitious fear +that if he does, if he seems to take for granted an improvement, that +very taking for granted may annul it--may bring on a relapse. But when +the next morning finds no such backsliding to have taken place, when +each hour through the cheerfully broadening day brings falling fever and +steadying pulse, then indeed he cautiously opens the door of his heart +to let a tiny rose-pinioned hope creep in--then at last, on the third +night, he stretches his tired limbs in deep slumber upon his bed. + +He has received a brief telegram from Mrs. Byng to announce her arrival +as fast as boat and train can bring her; and seven o'clock on Saturday +morning--he having sent his despatch to her on the previous +Wednesday--finds him pacing the platform of the railway-station, +awaiting the incoming of the morning express from Turin. He is pacing it +alone, for he has thought it best not to reveal to her son the fact of +her expected return, not being at all sure in what spirit he will +receive it, nor whether indeed the news of it might not even drive him, +in his present unsound state of mind, to fly from the place at her +approach. + +The morning air, in its early clear coolness, blows sweet here, under +the station-roof, unconquered even by engine smoke, and on Jim's face as +he walks up and down--careworn as it still is--there comes, now and +again, a half-born smile. He is never one to hope very easily, but +surely now--now that yet another night has been prosperously tided over, +there can, even to him, seem no reasonable ground for doubt that Amelia +has turned the corner. Amelia, with the corner turned--Byng, in five +minutes wholly off his hands! The only wonder is, that the small smile +never comes quite to the birth. + +The train is punctual, and almost at its due moment draws up in dusty +length at the platform. Its passengers are comparatively few; for at +this latening season most of the English are winging home to their rooky +woods; and he has no difficulty in at once discovering among them the +tall smart figure--smart even after forty-eight hours of the unluxurious +luxury of a _wagon-lit_--of the lady he is awaiting. As he gives her his +hand to help her down the high step, the admiring thought crosses his +mind of what a large quantity of fatigue, dust, and uneasiness of mind a +radically good-looking Englishwoman, in radically good clothes, can +undergo without seeming much the worse for them. Before her neat narrow +foot has touched the pavement, a brace of eager questions shoots out of +her mouth. + +"Am I in time? Am I too late?" + +"In time for _what_? Too late for _what_?" + +"Has he--has he done anything--anything irrevocable? Is he--is he? I +suppose that horrid woman has got hold of him? I suppose that is why you +sent for me!" + +By this time she is safely landed at his side, which is possibly the +reason why he at once lets fall her hand. + +"I am not aware that there is any 'horrid woman' in the case." + +"Oh, what does it matter what I call her?" cries the mother, fast +becoming frantic at the delay in answering her passionate questions. "I +will call her what you please; you know perfectly whom I mean; she _has_ +got hold of him, I suppose. I always knew she would! Did not I tell you +so? but is it too late? is there no way of getting him off?" + +Now that Burgoyne has a nearer view of Mrs. Byng, he sees that she has a +more fagged and travel-worn air than he had at first supposed, and her +dusty eyes are fastened upon him with such a hunger of interrogation, +that, angered and jarred as he is by her tone, he has not the heart any +longer to keep her in suspense. + +"If you are alluding to Miss Le Marchant, I may as well tell you at once +that she has left Florence." + +"Left Florence! Do you mean to say that she has run away with someone +else?" + +She puts the question in all good faith, her lively imagination having +easily made the not very wide jump from the fact already established in +her own mind of Elizabeth being an adventuress, to the not much more +difficult one to swallow, of her having devoured another _fils de +famille_, as well as Mrs. Byng's own. + +For a moment, Burgoyne turns away, voice and countenance alike beyond +his control. He has by no means perfectly recovered either, when he +answers-- + +"Yes, with someone else--she has reached the pitch of turpitude of +leaving Florence with her mother." + +"She is gone?" cries Mrs. Byng, with an accent of the highest relief and +joy; "gone away altogether, do you mean?--oh, thank God!"--then, with a +sudden lapse into affright, she adds rapidly--"and he is gone after +her?--he is not here?" + +"No, he is here." + +"Then why has not he come to meet me?"--suspiciously. + +"He did not know you were expected." + +"You did not tell him?" + +"No." + +"Why did not you tell him?" + +"I did not know how he would take it." + +"Do you mean to say"--falling from her former rapidity of utterance to a +dismayed incredulous slowness--"that he will not be glad to see +me?--that _Willy_ will not be glad to see _me_?" + +"I mean to say that I am afraid you will not find him very much in +sympathy with you; I do not think he will find it easy to hear you speak +of Miss Le Marchant in the terms, and make the implication about her +that you did just now," replies Jim, avenging by this sentence the +wrongs done to Elizabeth, and doing it so well, that a moment later a +feeling of compunction comes over him at the success of his own attempt +at retributive justice. + +Mrs. Byng turns pale. + +"Then she has got hold of him?" she says under her breath. + +"Got hold of him?" repeats Jim, his ire aroused again, no sooner than +allayed, by this mode of expression; "you certainly have the most +extraordinary way of misconceiving the situation! _Got hold of him?_ +when she had to leave Florence at a moment's notice to escape his +importunities!" + +But at this, Mr. Burgoyne's auditor looks so hopelessly bewildered that +he thinks it the simplest plan at once, in the fewest possible words, to +put her in possession of the tale of her son's achievements and +disasters. He does this, partly to stem the torrent of her questions, +the form that they have hitherto taken producing in him a feeling of +frenzied indignation, which he doubts his own power much longer to +conceal--partly in order to set Elizabeth's conduct with the least +possible delay in its true light before her. Surely, when she has been +told of her magnanimous renunciation, she will do her justice, will +cease to load her with those hard names and insulting assertions that +have made him grind his own teeth to listen to. But in this expectation +he soon finds that he is mistaken. The wrath of Mrs. Byng against +Elizabeth for having "drawn in" her son, as she persists in stating the +case, is surpassed only by indignation at her insolence in having +"thrown him over." As to the genuineness of this last action she +expresses, it is true, the most complete incredulity. + +"It was only to enhance her own value. Do you suppose that she expected +him to take her at her word? She thought, of course, that he would +follow her--that he would employ detectives--it is a proof"--with an +angry laugh--"that he cannot be quite so bad as you make him out, that +he has not done so." + +"I would not put it into his head, if I were you," replies Jim, with an +anger no less real, and a merriment no less spurious than her own. + +By this time they have reached the hotel; and Jim, having helped his +companion out of the fiacre, shows symptoms of leaving her. + +"Will not you stay to breakfast with me?" she asks, a little aghast at +this unexpected manoeuvre; "I cannot make my toilette till the luggage +arrives: and I suppose that he"--her eyes wandering wistfully over the +hotel front till they rest on her son's closed persiennes--"that he is +not up yet; it would be a sin to wake him; do stay with me." + +"I am afraid I cannot." + +"Why cannot you?"--with an impatient but friendly little mocking +imitation of his tone. "You are not"--with a conciliatory smile--"angry +with an old hen for standing up for her own chick?" + +Jim smiles too. + +"I do not think that the old hen need have clucked quite so loudly; but +that is not why I am leaving her; I _must_ go." + +"Where _must_ you go?" + +"To the Anglo-Américain." + +She lifts her eyebrows. + +"At this hour--you forget how early it is. Well, Amelia _has_ got you +into good training; but I can assure you that you will still find her in +bed." + +He sighs. + +"I am afraid that there is not much doubt of that." + +"What do you mean?--she is not ill, surely?"--in a tone of lively +surprise--"Amelia ill?--impossible!" + +He looks at her with an irrational stupefaction. It appears to him now, +in the distortion of all objects that the last fortnight has brought, as +if Amelia's illness had spread over the whole of his life, as if there +had never been a time when she had not been ill, and yet of this event, +immense as it seems to him in its duration, the woman before him +obviously has never heard. When he comes to think of it, how should she? +In point of fact it is not a fortnight since Miss Wilson fell sick, and +during that fortnight he himself has not written her a line; neither, he +is equally sure, has her son. + +"I am evidently very much behind the time," she says, noting the, to +her, unintelligible astonishment in his face; "but you must remember +that I have been kept completely in the dark--has she been ill?" + +In answer he tells her, with as much brevity and compression as he had +employed in the tale of Elizabeth's disappearance, that of Amelia's +illness, often interrupted by her expressions of sympathy. At the end +she says: + +"I am so thankful I did not hear till she was getting better! It would +have made me so wretched to be such a long way off!" + +Her adoption of his trouble as her own, an adoption whose sincerity is +confirmed by her impulsive seizure of his hand, and the feeling look in +her handsome eyes make him forgive the exaggeration of her statement, +and go some way towards replacing her in that position in his esteem +which her diatribes against Elizabeth had gone near to making her +forfeit. + +"But it will be all right now," continues she sanguinely; "there will be +nothing to do but to build up her strength again, and she is young--at +least"--as the reminiscence of Amelia's unyouthful appearance evidently +flashes across her mind, of that prematurely middle-aged look which an +unequal fortune gives to some plain women--"at least, young enough for +all practical purposes." + +Whether it be due to the possession of this modified form of juvenility, +to an excellent constitution, or to what other reason, certain it is +that the next two days go by without any diminution, rather with a +sensible and steady increase, in Miss Wilson's favourable symptoms, and, +on the afternoon of the latter of these days, Cecilia, in rather +impatient answer to Jim's long daily string of questions about her, +says: + +"You could judge much better if you saw her yourself. I do not see why +you should not see her to-morrow for a minute, that is to say, if you +would promise not to talk or ask her any questions." + +"But would it be safe?" inquires he, with a tremble in his voice. He +desires passionately to see her; until he does he will never believe +that she is really going to live; he has a hunger to assure himself that +no terrible metamorphosis has passed over her in these nightmare days; +and yet, coupled with that hunger, is a deep dread, which translates +itself into his next halting words. + +"Shall I be--shall I be very much shocked? is she--is she very much +changed?" + +"She does look pretty bad," replies Cecilia half sadly, yet with the +sub-lying cheerfulness of assured hope; "for one thing she is so wasted. +I suppose that that is what makes her look so much older; but then you +know Amelia never did look young." + +It is the second time within two days that the fact of his betrothed's +maturity has been impressed upon him, and formerly it would have caused +him a pang; but now, of what moment is it to him that she looks a +hundred, if only she is living, and going to live? + +"Has she--has she asked after me?" + +"We do not allow her to speak, but if anyone mentions your name there +comes a sort of smile over her face; such a ridiculous-sized face as it +is now!" + +The tears have come into Cecilia's large stupid eyes, and Jim himself +is, with regard to her, in the position of the great Plantagenet, when +he heard the lovely tale of York and Suffolk's high death. + + "I blame you not + For hearing this; I must perforce compound + With mistful eyes; or they will issue too!" + +As he walks away he is filled with a solemn joy, one of those deep +serious gladnesses with which not the stranger, no, nor even the close +friend or loving kinsman intermeddleth. He is under an engagement to +meet Mrs. Byng at a certain hour, but although that hour has already +come and passed, he feels that he cannot face all her sincere +congratulations without some preparatory toning down of his mood. + +The streets, with their gay _va-et-vient_, their cracking whips and +shouting drivers, seem all too secular and every-day to match the +profundity of his reverent thankfulness. He takes it with him into the +great cool church that stands so nigh at hand to his hotel, Santa Maria +Novella. The doors fall behind him noiselessly as he enters, shutting +out the fiery hot piazza, and the garish noises of the world. In the +great dim interior, cold and tranquil, there is the usual sprinkling of +tourists peering up at its soaring columns, trying to read themselves, +out of their guide-books, into a proper admiration for Cimabue's +large-faced Virgin and ugly Bambino, folded, with all its gold and +sombre colours, in the dignity of its twice two centuries of gloom. +There are the usual three or four blue-trousered soldiers strolling +leisurely about, there is a curly-tailed little dog trotting hither and +thither unforbidden, ringing his bell, and there are the invariable +tanned peasant-women kneeling at the side-altars. He does not belong to +the ancient Church, but to-day he kneels beside them, and the tears he +had hastened away to hide from Cecilia come back to make yet dimmer to +his view the details of the dim altar-pieces behind the tall candles. +His eye, as he rises to his feet again, falls on the contadina nearest +him. What is she praying for? In the expansion of his own deep joy he +longs to tell her how much he hopes that, whatever it is, she will +obtain it. It is not the contadina who, standing a little behind, joins +him as he turns away from the altar. + +"I saw you go into the church," says Mrs. Byng, her smile growing +somewhat diffident as she sees the solemnity of his face, "so I thought +I would follow you; do you mind? shall I go away?" + +He would, of the two, have preferred that she had not followed him, that +he had been given five more minutes to himself; but he naturally does +not say so. + +"Since we are here, shall we go into the cloisters?" and he assents. + +A small Dominican monk, with a smile and a bunch of keys, is opening a +door to some strangers, prowling like our friends about the church. The +latter follow, the little monk enveloping them too in his civil smile. +Down some steps into the great cloister, under whose arches pale +frescoes cover the ancient walls--where in Florence are there not +frescoes?--and the hands that painted them seem all to have wielded +their brushes in that astounding fifteenth century, which was to +Florence's life what May is to Italy's year. For some moments they stand +silent, side by side, perhaps picking out familiar scenes from among the +sweet faded groups--a slim Rebecca listening to Eliezar's tale, and +looking maiden pleasure at his gifts; a shivering Adam and Eve chased +out of Paradise; an Adam and Eve dismally digging and stitching +respectively; Old Testament stories that time has blurred, that +weather--even in this dry air--has rubbed out and bedimmed, and that +yet, in many cases, still tell their curious faint tale decipherably. + +"Good news this evening, I hope?" says Mrs. Byng presently, growing a +little tired of her companion's taciturnity, being indeed always one of +those persons who are of opinion that the gold of which silence is said +to be made has a good deal of alloy in it. + +"I am to see her to-morrow." + +He speaks almost under his breath, either because he has no great +confidence in his voice, if he employ a higher key, or because there +seems to him a certain sanctity in this promised meeting on the kindly +hither side of the grave which has so lately yawned. + +Mrs. Byng is much too old and intimate a friend of Jim's not to have +been pretty well aware of the state of his feelings during the past +eight years, though certainly not through any communication from him. So +it is, perhaps, scarcely to be wondered at that she presently says, in a +tone tinged with admiring surprise: + +"How fond you are of her!" + +He receives the remark in a jarred silence, his eye resting on the +square of neglected graves in the middle of the cloister, how unlike our +turfy quads and lawns. A commonplace nineteenth century photographer, +with his vulgar camera planted on the time-worn stones, is evidently +trying to persuade the little monk to pose for his picture. The +gentle-looking Fra laughs, and draws up his cowl, then lowers it again, +folding his arms, and trying various postures. + +"You are so much fonder of her than you were!" + +This speech--though such is certainly far from the good-natured +speaker's intention--stings Burgoyne like a whip-lash. + +"I was always fond of her--I always thought her the very best woman in +the world; you know!"--with an accent of almost anguished appeal--"that +I always thought her the very best woman in the world." + +"Oh, yes; of course, I know you did," replies she, astonished and +concerned at the evident and extreme distress of his tone. "That is not +quite the same thing as being _fond_ of her, is it? But"--with a laugh +that is at once uneasy and reassuring--"what does that matter _now_? +_Now_ your fondness for her is as indisputable as Tilburina's madness; +and, for my part, I always think people get on quite as well, if not +better, afterwards, if they do not begin quite so volcanically." + +But her light and well-meant words fail to remove the painful impression +from her hearer's mind. Has she, during all these years, been crediting +him with a wish for Amelia's death, that she should be so much +astonished at his thankfulness for her being given back to him? + +"I believe that this illness is the best thing that could have happened +to you both," continues Mrs. Byng, feeling uncomfortably that she has +not been happy in her choice of a topic, and yet unable to leave it +alone. "It will have drawn you so much together: in fact"--again +laughing nervously--"I think we are all looking up. As I told you, after +the first shock, Willy really was rather glad to see me; and you would +not believe how discreetly I handle the burning subject--yes, everything +is on the mend, and we are all going to have a lovely time, as the +Yankees say!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXX. + + + "The world's a city full of straying streets, + And Death the market-place where each one meets." + +The words are scarcely out of Mrs. Byng's mouth before she adds, in a +changed key, and with an altered direction of the eyes-- + +"Is this person looking for you? He seems to be coming straight towards +us." + +Jim turns his head at her speech, and at once recognises in the figure +hastening towards them the porter of the Anglo-Américain hotel. The man +looks strangely, and carries a slip of paper, unfolded and open, in his +hand. + +In a second Jim has sprung to his side, has snatched the paper, and is +staring at its contents. They are hardly legible, scrawled tremblingly +with a pencil, and for a moment he cannot make them out. Then, as he +looks, in one horrible flash their import has sprung into his eyes and +brain. + +"_She is gone; come to us!_" + +Mrs. Byng is reading too, over his shoulder. + +In going over the scene in memory afterwards, he believes that she gives +a sort of scream, and says, "Oh, what does it mean? It is not true!" But +at the time he hears, he knows nothing. + +He is out of the church; he is in the fiacre waiting at the door: he is +tearing through the streets, with the hot summer air flowing in a quick +current against his face. He thinks afterwards at what a pace the horse +must have been going, and how the poor jade must have been lashed to +keep it up to that useless speed. At the time he thinks nothing, he +feels nothing. He rushes through the court of the hotel, rushes through +what seem to be people; he thinks afterwards that they must have been +waiters and chambermaids, and that there came a sort of compassionate +murmur from them as he passed. He is up the stairs, the three flights; +as he tears up, three steps at a time, there comes across his numbed +intelligence a flash of wonder why they always give Amelia the worst +room. He is at that door, outside which he has spent so many hours of +breathless listening; he need no longer stay outside it now. It is open, +inviting him in. He is across that, as yet, unpassed threshold, that +threshold over which he was to have stepped in careful, soft-footed joy +to-morrow. He has pushed through the people--why must there be people +everywhere?--of whom the room seems full, unnecessarily full; he is at +the bedside. Across the foot a figure seems thrown--he learns afterwards +that _that_ is Sybilla. Another figure is prostrate on the floor, +heaving, in dreadful dry sobs; that is Cecilia. A third is standing +upright and tearless, looking down upon what, an hour ago, was his most +patient daughter. They have left her alone now--have ceased to tease +her. They no longer hold a looking-glass to her pale mouth, or beat her +tired feet, or pour useless cordials between her lips. They have ceased +to cry out upon her name, having realized that she is much too far away +to hear them. Neither does he cry out. He just goes and stands by the +father, and takes his thin old hand in his; and together they gaze on +that poor temple, out of which the spirit that was so much too lovely +for it has fleeted. Later on they tell him how it came about; later on, +when they are all sitting huddled in the little dark _salon_. Cecilia is +the spokeswoman, and Sybilla puts in sobbing corrections now and again. + +"She was sitting up the moment before; the nurse was holding her propped +up--she said she was so tired of lying. She had been quite laughing, the +nurse said." + +"Almost laughing," corrects Sybilla, who has forgotten to lie down upon +her sofa, and is sitting on a hard chair like anyone else. + +"Quite laughing," continues Cecilia, "at her own arm for being so thin. +She had pushed up her sleeve to look at it, and had said +something--something quite funny, only the nurse could not remember the +exact words--and then, all in a minute, she called out, in quite an +altered voice, 'The salts! Quick! Quick!' and her head just fell back, +and she was gone!" + +"And she had not bid one of us good-bye!" cries Sybilla, breaking into a +loud wail. + +Then comes a dreadful and incongruous flash of that ridiculous, which is +the underlining to all our tragedies, across Jim's mind at this last +lament. The going, "taking no farewell," naturally seems to Sybilla the +most terrible feature in the whole case, to her who has so repeatedly +taken heartrending last farewells of her family. + +"Who would ever have thought that I should have survived her?" pursues +Sybilla, still sobbing noisily, and without the least attempt at +self-control. Cecilia, who is sitting with her head on her arms resting +on the table, lifts her tear-blurred face and answers this apostrophe in +a voice choked with weeping. + +"Jim always did; he always said that you would see us all out." + +Again that dreadful impulse towards mirth assails Burgoyne. Is it +possible that, at such an hour, he can feel a temptation to laugh out +loud? But, later again, this horrible mood passes; later, when they have +all grown more composed, when their tears run more gently, when their +voices are less suffocated, and they are telling each other little +anecdotes of her, aiding each other's memories to recall half-effaced +traits of her homely kindness, of her noiseless self-denials, of her +deep still piety. + +They bring out her photographs, mourning over their being so few, and +such old and long-ago ones. There are effigies by the dozen of Cecilia, +and even touching presentments of Sybilla stretched in wasted grace upon +her day bed; but it had never occurred to anyone--least of all to Amelia +herself--that there is any need for _her_ image to be perpetuated. And +now they are searching out, as treasures most precious, the scanty faded +likenesses that exist of her, planning how they can be enlarged, and +repeated, and daintily framed, and generally done homage and tender +reverence to. + +Jim listens, occasionally putting in a low word or two, when appealed to +to confirm or correct the details of some little story about her. But it +seems to him as if his anguish only begins when the stream of their +reminiscences turns into the channel of her love for him. + +"Oh, Jim, she _was_ fond of you! We were none of us anywhere, compared +to you; she worshipped the ground you trod upon. We all knew--did not +we, Sybilla?--did not we, father?--when you used to be away for so long, +and wrote to her so seldom----Oh, I know!"--hastily--"that you were not +to blame, that you were in out-of-the-way places, where there was no +post: but there were sometimes long gaps between your letters; and we +always knew--did not we?--when she had heard from you by her face, long +before she spoke." + +Next it is-- + +"How she fired up if anyone said anything slightingly of you: she never +cared in the least if one abused herself; she always thought she quite +deserved it; but if anybody dared to say the least disparaging thing of +_you_"--it is pretty evident, though at the moment in his agony of +preoccupation the idea does not occur to Jim, that this has not been an +uncommon occurrence--"she was like a lioness at once." + +"The saddest thing of all," says Sybilla, taking up the antiphonal +strain, "is that she should have died just as she was beginning to be so +happy!" + +_Just beginning to be so happy?_ And he might have made her heavenly +happy so easily, since she asked so little--for eight years. The groan +he utters is low in proportion to the depth of the fountain whence it +springs, and they do not hear it. If they did, they would in mercy stop; +instead, they go on. + +"Did you ever see anything so radiant as she was--that last fortnight? +She used to say that she was quite ashamed of being so much more +fortunate than anyone else, she seemed always trying to make up to us +for not being so happy as she. Oh, she was happy that last fortnight!" + +This time he does not groan, he seems to himself to have passed into +that zone of suffering which cannot be expressed or alleviated by the +utterance of any sound. Perhaps, by-and-by, Cecilia dimly divines +something, some faint shadow of what he is enduring; for she begins with +well-intentioned labour to try to assert lamely that Amelia had always +been happy, well, _fairly_ happy, as happy as most people. You could not +expect, in this dreadful world, to be always in the best of spirits, but +she had never complained. And, oh! that last fortnight she _had_ been +happy, it was a pleasure to see her! And, oh, what a comfort it must be +now to Jim to think that it was all owing to him. + +She puts out her hand kindly to him as she speaks, and he takes it, and +silently wrings it in acknowledgment of the endeavour--however +clumsy--to lay balm upon that now immedicable wound. + +He stays most of the night with them; and when at length, overcome with +weariness and sorrow, they rise from their grief-stricken postures to go +to bed, he kisses them all solemnly, even the old man. He has never +kissed any of them before, except once or twice Cecilia on some return +of his from the Antipodes, and because she seemed to expect it. + + * * * * * + +Three days later Burgoyne leaves Florence; and, as his arrival in the +City of Flowers had been motived by Amelia alive, so is his departure to +companion her dead. + + +END OF PART ONE. + + + + +PART II. + +Elizabeth. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + + "It was a chosen plot of fertile land, + Amongst wide waves set like a little nest, + As if it had by Nature's cunning hand + Been choycely picked out from all the rest, + And laid forth for ensample of the best. + No daintie flower or herb that grows on ground, + No arborete with painted blossomes drest, + And smelling sweete, but there it might be found + To bud out faire, and throwe her sweet smell all around." + + +Time has stepped upon another year; not much more than stepped, since +that year's first month is not yet out; and Burgoyne has stepped upon +another continent before we again rejoin him. There are few, if any of +us, who, in the course of our lives, have not had occasion to wish that +certain spaces in those lives might be represented by the convenient +asterisks that cover them in books; but this is unfortunately impossible +to Jim, as to the rest of us; and he has fought through each minute and +its minuteful of pain (happily no minute can contain two minutefuls) +during the seven months that have elapsed since we parted from him. At +first those minutes held nothing but pain; he could not tell you which +of them it was that first admitted within its little compass any alien +ingredient; and he was shocked and remorseful when he discovered that +any such existed. But that did not alter the fact. He has not sold his +guns; on the contrary, he has bought two new ones, and he has visited +his old friends, the Rockies. Since Amelia's funeral--immediately after +which he again quitted England--he has seen no member of his dead +betrothed's family, nor has he held any intercourse, beyond the exchange +of an infrequent letter, with Mrs. Byng or her son. From the thought of +both these latter he shrinks, with a distaste equal in degree, though +inspired by different causes. From Mrs. Byng, because he knows that she +was aware of his weariness of his poor love--that poor love whom, had he +but known it, he had so short a time to be weary of; and from Byng, +because, despite the ocean of sorrow, of remorse, of death that rolls in +its hopelessness between him and her, he cannot even yet think, without +a bitter pang, of the woman who had inspired the young man's hysterical +tears and sincere, though silly, suicidal impulses. Jim took that pang +with him to the Rockies, stinging, even through the overlying load of +his other and acknowledged burden of repentant ache and loss, and he has +brought it back with him. He packs it into his portmanteau as much as a +matter of course as he does his shirts--in fact more so, for he has once +inadvertently left his shirts behind, but the pang never. + +It is the 20th day of January; here, in England, the most consistently +detestable month in the year. The good Januaries of a British +octogenarian's life might be counted upon the thumbs of that +octogenarian's hands. The favoured inhabitants of London have +breakfasted and lunched by gaslight; have groped their way along their +dirty streets through a fog of as thick and close a fabric as the furs +gathered round their chilled throats; have, even within their houses, +seen each other dimly across a hideous yellow vapour that kills their +expensive flowers, and makes their unwilling palm-trees droop in +homesick sadness. There is no fog about the Grand Hotel, Mustapha +Supérieur, Algiers; no lightest blur of mist to dim the intensity of the +frame of green in which its white face is set. It is not so very grand, +despite its unpromising big name, as it stands high aloft on the +hillside, looking out over the bay and down on the town, looking down +more immediately upon tree-tops, and on the Governor's summer palace. It +is an old Moorish house, enlarged into an hotel, with little arched +windows sunk in the thick walls, with red-tiled floors, and balconies, +with low white balustrades of pierced brick, up which the lush creepers +climb and wave--yes, climb and wave on this 20th of January. + +From the red-floored balcony over the creepers, between the perennial +leafage of the unchanging trees, one can daily descry in the azure bay +the tiny puff of smoke that tells that the mail steamer from Marseilles +has safely breasted the Gulf of Lyons, threaded her away among the +Isles, and brought her freight of French and English and American news +to the hands and ears of the various expectant nationalities. To-day, +blown by a gently prosperous wind, the boat is punctual. It is the +_Eugène Perrère_, the pet child of the Transatlantic Company, the narrow +and strong-engined little vessel which is wont to accomplish the transit +in a period of time less by an hour than her brother craft. To-day she +has brought but one guest to the Grand Hotel, who, having left the bulk +of his luggage to be struggled for by Arabs, and by the hotel-porter at +the Douane, arrives at the modest Moorish-faced hostelry, having, with +British mercifulness, walked up the break-neck green lane that leads +from the steep main road in order to spare the wretched little galled, +pumped horse that has painfully dragged him and his bag from the pier. +He has travelled straight through from London--fifty-five hours without +a pause--so that it is not to be wondered at that his thoughts turn +affectionately towards a wash and a change of raiment. Having extracted +from the case of unclaimed letters in the bar two or three that bear the +address of James Burgoyne, Esq., he is ushered to his room by the civil +little fussy Italian landlord, who, in order to enhance his appreciation +of the apartment provided for him, assures him, in voluble bad French, +that only yesterday he had been obliged to turn away a party of eight. + +It is not until refreshed by a completed toilette--and who can overrate +the joy of a bath after a journey?--that it occurs to him to look out of +window. His room possesses two. One faces the hill's rich-clothed +steepness, and a row of orange-trees covered with fruit, and at whose +feet tumbled gold balls lie. But the dusk is falling fast, and he can +only dimly see the prodigality of green in which the modest Grand Hotel +lies buried. The other window looks out--but a very little way lifted +above it, for the room is on the ground floor--upon the red-tiled +terrace. It is growing very dim too. At the present moment it is empty +and deserted, but the chairs studded over its surface in talkative +attitudes, as if sociable twos and threes had drawn together in chat, +tell plainly that earlier in the day it had been frequented, and that +several people had been sitting out on it. Jim's London memories are too +fresh upon him for him not to find something ludicrous in the idea of +sitting out of doors on the 20th of January. How pleasant it would have +been to do so to-day in Hyde Park! He turns back to the table with a +smile at the idea, and, taking out a writing-case, sits down to scribble +a line. Jim's correspondence is neither a large nor an interesting one. +On the present occasion, his note is merely one of reminder as to some +trifling order, addressed to the landlord of his London lodgings. It +does not take him ten minutes to pen, and when it is finished he turns +to have one final look out of window before leaving the room. How +quickly the dark has fallen! The empty chairs show indistinct outlines, +and the heavy green trees have turned black. But the terrace is no +longer quite empty. A footfall sounds--coming slowly along it. One of +the waiters, no doubt, sent to fetch in the chairs; but, no! an +overworked Swiss waiter, hurried by electric bells, and with an imminent +swollen table _table d'hôte_ upon his burdened mind, never paced so +slowly, nor did anything male ever step so lightly. + +It must be a woman; and even now her white gown makes a patch of light +upon the dark background of the quickly on-coming night. A white gown on +the 20th of January! Again that pleasing sense of the ludicrous tickles +his fancy. She must be one of the persons who lately occupied the empty +chairs, and have come in search of some object left behind. He +recollects having noticed an open book lying on the low parapet. She has +a white gown; but what more can be predicated of her in this owl-light? +The radiance from the candle behind him makes a small illuminated square +upon the terrace, falling between the bars of the window through which +the Moorish ladies once darted their dark and ineffectual ogles. + +Having apparently accomplished her errand, the white-gowned figure +obligingly steps into the illumined square, and still more obligingly +lifts her face and looks directly up at him. It is clear that the action +is dictated only by the impulse which prompts all seeing creatures to +turn lightwards, and no gleam of recognition kindles in the eyes that +are averted almost as soon as directed towards him. Placed as he is, +with his back to the light, his own mother could not have distinguished +his features; and, after her one careless glance, the white-gowned lady +turns away and disappears again into the gloom. She has one more oasis +of light to traverse before she reaches the hotel porch, just +discernible, gleaming in its whitewash, at the far end of the terrace; +just one more lit window throws its chequered lustre on the tiles. He +presses his face against the bars of his own lattice, and holds his +breath until she has reached and crossed that tell-tale patch. Her +traversing of it does not occupy the tenth part of a second, and yet it +puts the seal upon what he already knows. + +Five minutes later he is standing before the case, hung on the wall of +the entrance hall, which contains the names and numbers of the rooms of +the visitors, eagerly scanning them with eye and finger. He scans them +in vain. The name he seeks is not among them. Had it not been for that +five minutes' delay--that five minutes of stunned and stupid staring out +into the dark after her--he must have met her in the hall. He is turning +away in baffled disappointment, when the little host again accosts him. + +Monsieur must excuse him, but he must explain that the list of visitors +that monsieur has been so obliging as to peruse is by no means a full or +correct one. To-morrow morning he shall have the pleasure of placing +beneath monsieur's eye a proper and complete list of the visitors; but, +in point of fact, there has been such a press of business, he has been +daily obliged to turn away such large and _comme il faut_ families from +the door, that time has been inadequate for all his obligations, which +must be his excuse. + +Burgoyne accepts his apologies in silence. It would seem easy enough to +inquire whether among the English visitors there are any of the name of +Le Marchant; but the question sticks in his throat. It is seven months +since he has pronounced that name aloud, and he appears to have lost the +faculty of doing it. The host comes to his aid. + +Is there perhaps a family--a friend whom monsieur expects to meet? But +monsieur only shakes his head, and moves away. He has ascertained that +the _table d'hôte_ is at seven, and it is now half-past five. He has, +therefore, only an hour and a half of suspense ahead of him. She will +surely appear at the _table d'hôte_? But will she? + +As the hour of seven approaches, ever graver and graver doubts upon this +head assail his mind, both when he reflects upon how much it is a habit +with the better sort of travelling English to dine in their own rooms, +and also when he calls to mind the extremely retired character of +Elizabeth's and her mother's habits. Even if she does appear in the +public room--and the more he thinks of it, the less probable, it +seems--it is most unlikely that he will be placed near her. But he might +possibly intercept her in the hall on her way to the _salle à manger_. + +In pursuance of this project he takes up his position before the bell, +tingling so lengthily as to reach the ears of the deafest and most +distant, has summoned the company together; and it is several minutes +before enough are assembled to justify, according to the etiquette +prevailing at the Grand Hotel, a move to the dining-room. Men, at that +hotel, although in a very distinct minority--as when, indeed, are they +not?--are yet not quite the same choice rarities as at some of the Swiss +and Italian ones. But the young of the one sex are perennially +interesting to the other; and Burgoyne, as "the new man," is an object +of some attention to half a dozen young girls, and even to two or three +sprightly-hearted old ones. His eyes are eagerly shining as each opening +door, each step on the staircase, raises his hopes afresh. But neither +door nor staircase yields the form he seeks, and he is at last obliged, +under penalty of exciting remark, reluctantly to follow the band that go +trooping hungrily down a flight of steps to the whitewashed dining-room. +He finds himself placed between a bouncing widow who is too much +occupied in fondling an old valetudinarian on her other side to have +much notice to spare for him; and a sparkling creature of +five-and-thirty in a red shirt, who, before dinner is over, confides to +him that she fears she has not got a nice nature, and that she cannot +get on at home because her mother and the servants insist upon having +cold supper instead of dinner on Sunday. When she tells him that she has +not a nice nature, he absently replies that he is very sorry for it, and +her confidence about the Sunday supper provokes from him only the +extremely stupid observation that he supposes she does not like cold +meat. It is a wonder that he can answer her even as rationally as he +does. It is more by good luck than good management that there is any +sense at all in his responses. And yet he may as well give his full +attention to his neighbour, for now every place at the E-shaped table is +filled up, and, travel as his eye may over those who sit, both at the +long and cross-boards, it fails to discover any face in the least +resembling that which lifted itself from the dusk terrace into his +candle-light. + +Was it her little ghost, then, that he had seen, her dainty delicate +ghost? But why should it appear to him _here_? Why haunt these +unfamiliar shores? The only places in the room which still remain +untenanted are those at a round table laid for three, in the embrasure +of a Moorish window, not very distant from where he sits. On first +catching sight of it his hopes had risen, only immediately to fall +again, as he realizes that it is destined for a trio. Why should three +places be laid for Elizabeth and her mother? + +With a disheartened sigh he tums to his neighbour, intending to put to +her a question as to the habitual occupants of the empty table; but she +is apparently affronted at his tepidness, and presents to him only the +well-frizzled back of her expensive head. He is reduced to listening to +the conversation of his _vis-à-vis_, an elderly couple, who have been +upon some excursion, and are detailing their experiences to those around +them. They have been to Blidah apparently, and seen real live monkeys +hopping about without organs or red coats on real palm trees. He is +drawn into the conversation by a question addressed to him as to his +journey. + +It is five minutes before he again looks towards the table in the +window. His first glance reveals that the three persons for whom it is +destined have at length arrived and taken their seats. Idiot that he is! +he had forgotten Mr. Le Marchant's existence. + +"They are nice-looking people, are they not?" says his neighbour in the +red shirt, apparently repenting of her late austerity, and following the +direction of his eyes; "but they give themselves great airs; nobody in +the hotel is good enough for them to speak to. M. Cipriani evidently +thinks them people of importance; he makes twice as much fuss about them +as he does about anyone else. Look at him now!" + +And in effect the obsequious little host may be seen hanging anxiously +over the newcomers, evidently asking them with solicitous civility +whether the not particularly appetizing fish (the strongest point of the +blue Mediterranean does not lie in her fishes, of which some are coarse, +some tasteless, and some even lie under the suspicion of having +poisonous qualities)--whether it is not to their liking. + +At something that M. Cipriani says they all laugh. Elizabeth, indeed, +throws back her little head, and shows all her perfect teeth, in a +paroxysm of the most genuine mirth. It gives Burgoyne a sort of shock to +see her laugh. + +Not a day, scarcely an hour, has passed since he last saw her in which +he has not pictured her as doing or suffering, or living through +something; he has never pictured her laughing. It seems to him now but a +moment since he was reading her broken-hearted, tear-stained note; since +he was seeing Byng grovelling in all the utter collapse of his +ungoverned grief on the floor of the little Florentine _entresol_. What +business has she to laugh? And how unchanged she is! How much less +outwardly aged than he himself is conscious of being! Sitting as she now +is, in her simple white tea-gown, with one slight elbow rested on the +table, her eyes all sparkling with merriment and laughter, bringing into +prominence that one enchanting dimple of hers, she does not look more +than twenty. But a few moments later he forgives her even her dimple. +However _empressé_ may be the little landlord, he has to move away after +a time; and the merriment moves away, too, out of Elizabeth's face. Jim +watches it decline, through the degrees of humorous disgust, as she +pushes the coarse white fish about her plate, without tasting it (she +was always a very delicate eater), into a settled gravity. And now that +she is grave he sees that she is aged, almost as much as he himself, +after all. Her eyes had ever had the air of having shed in their time +many tears; but since he last saw her, it is now evident to him that the +tale of those tears has been a good deal added to. + +There is no pleasing him. He was angry with her when he thought her gay, +and now he quarrels with her for looking sad. As if, in her +unconsciousness of his neighbourhood, she was yet determined to give him +no cause of complaint, she presently again lays aside her sorrowful +looks, and, drawing her chair confidentially nearer to her mother's, +makes some remark of an evidently comic nature upon the company into her +ear. + +They stoop their heads together--what friends they always were, she and +her mother!--and again the blue twinkle comes into her eyes; the +dimple's little pitfall is dug anew in her white cheek. Was there ever +such an April creature? Mr. Le Marchant appears to take no part in the +jokes; he goes on eating his dinner silently, and his back, which is +turned towards Burgoyne, looks morose. + +How is it that Elizabeth's roving eye has not yet hit upon himself? He +sees presently that the cause lies in the fact of her look alighting +upon old and known objects of entertainment, rather than going in search +of new ones. But it must sooner or later embrace him in its range. The +fond fat widow beside him must surely be one of her favourites, and, in +point of fact, as he feverishly watches to see the inevitable moment of +recognition arrive, he perceives that Miss Le Marchant and her mother +are delightedly--though not so openly as to be patent to the rest of the +room--observing her. And then comes the expected careless glance at him, +and the no less expected transformation. Her elbows have been carelessly +resting on the table, and she has just been pressing her laughing lips +against her lightly-joined hands to conceal their merriment. In an +instant he sees the right hand go out in a silent desperate clutch at +her mother's, and the next second he knows that she also has seen him. +They both stare helplessly at him--at least, the one _at_ him, and the +other beyond him! How well he remembers that look of hers over his +shoulder in search of someone else. But yet it is not the old look, for +that was one of hope and red expectation. Is there any hope or +expectation lurking even under the white dread of this one? His jealous +heart is afraid quite to say no to this question, and yet an +indisputable look of relief spreads over her face as she ascertains that +he is alone. She even collects herself enough to give him a tiny +inclination of the head--an example followed by her mother; but they +are, in both cases, so tiny as to be unperceived, save by the person to +whom they are addressed. + +He would not have been offended by the minuteness of their salutations, +even had he not divined that it was dictated by a desire--however +futile--to conceal the fact of his presence from their companion. His +heart goes out in all the profundity of his former pity towards them, as +he sees how entirely that one glance at him (for she does not look again +in his direction) has dried the fountain of Elizabeth's poor little +jests; of how white and grave and frightened, and even shrunk, his mere +presence has made her. Now that they have detected him, good breeding, +and even humanity, forbid his continuing any longer his watch upon them. +The better to set them at ease he turns the back of his head towards +their table, and compels the reluctant widow to relinquish her invalid +booty for fully ten minutes in his favour. Perhaps when Elizabeth can +see only the back of his head she may resume her jokes. But all the same +he knows that, for her, there will be no more mirth to-day. + +"That is what they always do!" cries a voice on Burgoyne's left +hand--the voice of his other neighbour, who begins to think that his +attention has been usurped quite long enough by her plump rival. "That +is what they always do--come long after dinner has begun, and go out +long before it has ended. Such swagger!" + +There is a tinge of exasperation in both words and voice, nor is the +cause far to seek. + +The table in the window is again empty. In the meantime the "swaggering" +Elizabeth is clinging tremblingly about her mother's neck in the privacy +of their own little salon. The absence of the husband and father for the +moment in the smoking-room has removed the irksome restraint from both +the poor women. + +"Did you see him?" asks Elizabeth breathlessly, as soon as the door is +safely closed upon them, flinging herself down upon her knees beside +Mrs. Le Marchant, who has sunk into a chair, and cowering close to her +as if for shelter. "What is he doing here? Why has he come? When first I +caught sight of him I thought that of course--" She breaks off, sobbing; +"and when I saw that he was alone I _was_ relieved; but I was +disappointed too! Oh, I must be a fool--a bad fool--but I _was_ +disappointed! Oh, mammy! mammy! how seeing him again brings it all +back!" + +"Do not cry, dear child! do not cry!" answers Mrs. Le Marchant +apprehensively; though the voice in which she gives the exhortation is +shaking too. "Your father will be in directly; and you know how +angry----" + +"I will not! I will not!" cries Elizabeth, trying, with her usual +extreme docility, to swallow her tears; "and I do not show it much when +I have been crying; my eyes do not mind it as much as most people's; I +suppose"--with a small rainy smile--"because they are so used to it!" + +"Perhaps he will not stay long," murmurs the mother, dropping a fond +rueful kiss on the prone blonde head that lies on her knees; "perhaps if +we are careful we may avoid speaking to him." + +"But I _must_ speak to him," breaks in the girl, lifting her head, and +panting; "I _must_ ask him; I _must_ find out; why, we do not even know +whether Willy is dead or alive!" + +"He is not dead," rejoins the elder woman, with melancholy common-sense; +"if he had been, we should have seen it in the papers; and, besides, why +should he be? Grief does not kill; nobody, Elizabeth, is better able to +attest that than you and I." + +Elizabeth is now sitting on the floor, her hands clasped round her +knees. + +"He is aged," she says presently; and this time it is evident that the +pronoun refers to Burgoyne. + +Mrs. Le Marchant assents. + +"He must have cared more for that poor creature than we gave him credit +for. Get up, darling; dry your eyes, and sit with your back to the +light; here comes your father!" + + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +One of the reasons, though not the sole or even the main one, of +Burgoyne's visit to Algiers is that the Wilson family are wintering +there. And yet he dreads the meeting with them inexpressibly. When they +last parted, immediately after having stood together round Amelia's open +grave, they had all been at a high pressure of emotion, and of +demonstrative affectionateness, which nothing in their tastes, habits, +or natures could possibly make continuous. He has a horrible fear that +they will expect to take up their relations at the same point at which +he had left them. He would do it if he could, but he feels that it is +absolutely impossible to him. The door of that room in his memory which +is labelled "Amelia" is for ever locked. It is only in deepest silence +and solitude that he permits himself now and again to turn the key and +sparely and painfully look in. How will he bear it if they insist on +throwing the portals wide, dragging its disused furniture to the light, +rummaging in its corners? + +He sleeps ill on this, his first night of Africa; and even when at +length he succeeds in losing importunate consciousness, he is teased by +absurd yet painful dreams, in which Amelia and Elizabeth jostle each +other impossibly with jumbled personalities and changed attributes. +Extravagant as his visions are, they have yet such a solid vividness +that, at his first waking, he feels a strange sense of unsureness as to +which of the two women that have beset his pillow is the dead, and which +the living one. In dreams, how often our lost ones, and those whom we +still possess, take hands together on equal terms! Even when he is wide +awake, nay more, dressed and breakfasted, that feeling of uncertainty, +that something akin to the + + "Blank misgivings of a creature, + Moving about in worlds not realized," + +remains strong enough to drive him once again to the list of visitors in +the entrance-hall, in order to assure himself that his brain has not +been the dupe of his eye. + +M. Cipriani has been as good as his word. The corrected list, promised +overnight, has replaced the incomplete one, and almost the first names +that Jim's eye alights upon are those of "Mr., Mrs., and Miss Le +Marchant, England." His own name immediately follows, and he takes as a +good augury what is merely an accident due to the fact of his room and +theirs being on one floor. Elizabeth is, beyond question, beneath the +same roof as himself; nay, even now she may probably be sunning herself +like a white pigeon on that terrace, whose red tiles he sees shining in +the morning sun through an open side-door. + +The thought is no sooner formed than he follows whither it leads him; +but she is not on the terrace; and though a moment ago his nerves were +tingling at the thought of speech with her, yet he is conscious of a +feeling of relief that their meeting is, for the moment, deferred. What +can he say to her? What can she say to him? + +He stands looking down on the green sea of richly-clothed dark trees +beneath him--ilex and eucalyptus, and all the unfamiliar verdure of the +soft South. From the fiercely-blazing red purple of a Bougainvillia, so +unlike the pale, cold lilac blossom, to which in our conservatories we +give that name, his eye travels over tree-tops and snowy villas, cool +summer palace and domy mosque, to the curving bay, round which the Atlas +Mountains are gently laying their arms; and Cape Matifou, with the haze +of day's young prime about it, is running out into the Mediterranean. + +He is alone at first, but presently other people come forth; the old +valetudinarian, for once delivered from his fostering widow, sits down +with a pile of English newspapers to enjoy himself in the sun, which +does not yet ride so high as to be sun-strokey. Jim's last night's +neighbour in the red shirt comes out too, bonneted and prayer-booked. +She is going to church; so is he: but he does not tell her so, for fear +she should offer to accompany him. She observes to him that the climate +is a fraud; that this is the first day for three weeks in which she is +able to go out without a mackintosh and umbrella. + +"We are not so green for nothing, I can tell you," says she, with a +laugh, and a rather resentful glance at the splendid verdure around her, +and so leaves him. + +He, too, as I have said, is going to church, and is presently asking his +way to the English chapel. The Wilson family will certainly be there, +and it has struck him that the dreaded meeting will be robbed of half +its painful awkwardness if it takes place in public. At a church-porch, +crowded with issuing congregation, Sybilla cannot fall into +hysterics--it is true that Sybilla never attends divine service--nor can +Cecilia weepingly throw her arms about his neck. But whatever means he +may take to lessen the discomfort and smart of that expected encounter, +the thought of it sits like lead upon his spirits, as he walks +quickly--it is difficult to descend slowly so steep a hill--down the +precipitous lane, which is the only mode of approach for man or +labouring beast to the high-perched hotel he has chosen. But he is +young, and presently the cheerful, clean loveliness of the day and the +sight of Nature's superb vigour work their natural effect upon him. It +must, indeed, be an inveterate grief that refuses to be soothed by the +influences of this green Eden. + +What a generosity of vegetation, as evidenced by the enormous garlands +of great-leaved ivy, waving from tree to tree as for some perpetual +fête! Along the high hill bank that skirts this steep by-road, +eucalyptus rear their lofty heads and their faintly-scented blossoms, +aloe draws her potent sword, and thick-fleshed prickly pear displays her +uncouth malignity. Beneath, what a lush undergrowth of riotous +great-foliaged plants--acanthus, and a hundred other green sisters, all +flourishing and waxing, so unstinted, so at large! He has reached the +main road--the shady road that leads by a three-mile descent from +Mustapha Supérieur to the town. + +How shady it is! Pepper-trees hang their green hair, so thick and fine, +over it; and ilexes hold the thatch of their little dark leaves. Past +the Governor's summer palace, with its snowy dome and Moorish arcades +gleaming through its iron gates. From a villa garden a flowering shrub +sends a mixed perfume of sweet and bitter, as of honey and hops, from +its long yellow flower-tassels to his pleased nostrils. + +At a sharp turn, where the hill falls away more precipitously than +before, the bay, the mole, the shipping, the dazzling little city, burst +upon him--the little city swarming up her hill, from where the French +town bathes its feet in the azure ripples, to where the Arab town loses +the peak of its triangle, in the Casbah and the fort of the now +execrated Emperor. Blinding white, ardent blue, profound green--what a +pleasant picture for a summer Sunday morning! And how gay the road is +too, as the East and the West step along it together! + +Here is a tram tearing down the steep incline with five poor little thin +horses abreast. It is full of English church-goers, and yet, oh anomaly! +standing up in the vulgarest of modern vehicles, with his slight dark +hands grasping the tramrail, is a tall Arab, draped with the grave grace +of the Vatican Demosthenes. But alas! alas! even upon him the West has +laid its claw, for, as the tram rushes past, Jim's shocked eyes realize +that he, who in other respects might have fed the flocks of Laban in +Padan-aram, wears on his feet a pair of old elastic-sided boots. + +Here come clattering a couple of smart Chasseurs d'Afrique, in blue and +red, followed by a woman dressed as Rachel was at the palmy well--so +dressed, that is to say, as to her white-shrouded upper woman, for, +indeed, there is no reason for supposing that Rachel wore a pair of Rob +Roy Tartan trousers! Past the Plateau Saulière, where, in the +lichen-roofed lavoir Frenchwomen are sousing their linen in water +that--oh, hideous thought!--is changed but once a week; along an ugly +suburb, and past a little wood; through the arch in the fortifications, +the Porte d'Isly, till at length the Episcopal chapel--why are the +Protestant places of worship scattered over the habitable globe +everywhere so frightful?--stands before him. + +He had thought himself in good time, but he must have loitered more than +he had been aware of, as the bell is silent and the porch closed. He +enters as quietly as may be, and takes his place near the door. The +building strikes damp and chilly, despite the warming presence of the +whole English colony, emptied out of the four hotels sacred to +Anglo-Saxons, and out of many an ilex-shaded orange-groved campagne +besides. The building is quite full, which is, no doubt, the reason why +Jim fails to catch any glimpse of the Wilson family throughout the +service. He has plenty of time to interrogate with his eye the numerous +rows of backs before him, as the sermon is long. Jim had known that it +would be so from the moment when the clergyman entered the pulpit with +an open Bible--no written sermon--in his hand. The sound of a brogue, +piercing, even through the giving out of the text, soon puts him in +possession of the further fact that he is in the clutches, and at the +mercy, of an entirely uneducated yet curiously fluent Irishman. + +Is Elizabeth writhing under the infliction too? Never, in the Moat days, +was she very patient under prolonged pulpit eloquence. He can see her +with his memory's eye not very covertly reading her hymn-book--can hear +her foot tapping. Several people around him now are, not very covertly, +reading _their_ hymn-books, but she is not among them. He has no more +sight of her than he has of Cecilia; but in neither case--such are the +disadvantages of his position--does his failure to see prove the absence +of the object he seeks. He is one of the first persons to be out of +church when at length set free, and stands just outside the porch while +the long stream of worshippers defiles before him. It takes some time to +empty itself into the sunshine, and nearly as long before he catches +sight of any member of either of the families he is on the look-out for. +Of the Le Marchants, indeed, he never catches sight, for the excellent +reason that they are not to be caught sight of, not being there. In the +case of the Wilsons he is more fortunate, though here, too, a sort of +surprise is in store for him. He has involuntarily been scanning, in his +search for them, only those of the congregation who are dressed in +mourning. The picture that the retina of his eye has kept of Cecilia is +of one tear-swollen and crape-swaddled; and though, if he had thought of +it, his reason would have told him that, after seven months, she is +probably no longer sobbing and sabled, yet even then the impression that +he would expect to receive from her would be a grave and a black one. +This is why, although he is on the look-out for her, she yet comes upon +him at last as a surprise. + +"Jim!" cries a voice, pitched a good deal higher than is wont to make +itself heard within the precincts of a church--a female voice of +delighted surprise and cheerful welcome; "father, here is Jim!" + +Burgoyne turns, and sees a lady in a very smart bonnet, full of spring +flowers, and with a red _en tout cas_--for they have now issued into the +day's potent beam--shading her rosy face; a lady whose appearance +presents about as wide a contrast to the serious and inky figure he had +expected to see as it is well possible to imagine. + +Cecilia, indeed, is looking, what her maid admiringly pronounced her +before sending her forth to triumph, "very dressy." Mr. Wilson is black, +certainly--but, then, clergymen always are black--and he still has a +band upon his hat; but it is a very narrow one--sorrow nearing its +vanishing-point. In answer to his daughter's joyous apostrophe, he +answers: + +"'Sh, Cecilia! do not talk so loud. How are you, Jim?" + +And then the meeting is over--that first meeting which Jim had shrunk +from with such inexpressible apprehension--as certain to be so fraught +with intolerable emotion; with calls upon him that he would not be able +to answer; with baring of incurable wounds. The contrast with the +reality is so startling that at first it makes him almost dizzy. Can the +showy creature beside him, preening herself under her gay sunshade, be +the same overwhelmed, shrunk, tear-drenched Cecilia whom at their last +meeting he had folded in so solemn an embrace? Her cheerful voice +answers for herself: + +"It is so nice to see you again! When did you come? We did not expect +you quite so soon; in your last letter you were rather vague as to +dates; I can't say that you shine as a correspondent. You will come back +to luncheon with us, of course, will not you? _déjeûner_, as they call +it here; I always thought _déjeûner_ meant breakfast. You will come, +will not you? Sybilla will be so glad to see you--glad, that is to say, +in her dismal way." + + +She ends with a laugh, which he listens to in a silence that is almost +stunned. The sound of her voice, though set to so different a tune from +what he had anticipated, has brought back the past with such astonishing +vividness to him; her very fleer at Sybilla seems so much a part of the +old life that he half turns his head, expecting once more to see +Amelia's deprecating face, to hear her peace-making voice put in a plea, +as it has done so many hundred times, for the peevish _malade +imaginaire_. + +They have been strolling towards the carriages waiting outside, and have +now reached one, driven by an _indigène_, a Moor, dusky as Othello, +solemn as Rhadamanthus, and with his serious charms set off by a striped +yellow and white jacket and a red sash. + +"Is not he beautiful?" asks Cecilia, with another laugh, alluding to her +coachman, as she and Burgoyne set off upon their _tête-à-tête_ drive, +Mr. Wilson seeing, apparently, no reason in the fact of his (Burgoyne's) +appearance on the scene for departing from his invariable custom of +walking home from church; "is not he beautiful? When first we came here +we were in mourning; as if"--catching herself up with a stifled +sigh--"there were any need to tell _you_ that; and father wanted to put +him into black, but I would not hear of it: was not I right? He would +have been nothing in black; it is his red and yellow that give him his +_cachet_." + +Jim feels inclined to burst out laughing. There is something so +ludicrous in the disproportion between his fears and their fulfilment, +in the fact of the whole importance of Amelia's death resolving itself +into a sash or no sash for an Arab coachman, that he has some difficulty +in answering in a key of which the irony shall not be too patent: + +"I think you were perfectly right." + +He does not know whether she perceives the dryness of his tone; he +thinks probably not, as she goes on to ask him a great many questions as +to his journey, etc., talking quickly and rather flightily, scarcely +leaving room between her queries for his monosyllabic replies, and +ending with the ejaculation: + +"How nice it is to see you again!" + +"Thank you." His acknowledgment seems to himself so curt that, after a +moment, he feels constrained to add something to it. That something is +the bald and trivial inquiry: "And you--how have you all been getting +on?" + +Cecilia shrugs her shoulders. + +"We are better off than we were; you know that, of course. Nobody ever +thought that father's brother would have died before him. Wait till you +see our villa--it is one of the show ones here; and of course it is very +pleasant having more money; but one cannot help wishing that it had come +earlier." She sighs as she speaks; not an ostentatious sigh, but a +repressed and strangled one; and, despite the flower-garden in her +bonnet, his heart softens to her. Perhaps his look has rested on that +flower-garden with a more open disapprobation than he knows, for she +says presently: "I think that one may be very bright-coloured outside, +and very black inside. Father and I are sometimes very black inside." + +"Are you?" + +"We do very well when we are alone together, father and I; we like to +talk about her. Dear me! what a place Algiers is for dust! that is why +there are so many blind people here. How it gets into one's eyes!" She +puts her handkerchief up hastily to her face as she speaks; but Jim is +not taken in by the poor little ruse, and he listens to her in a silence +that is almost tender, as she goes on: "Sybilla begins to cry if we even +distantly allude to her; yet I know"--with exasperation--"that she talks +of her by the hour to strangers--to her new doctor, for instance; yes, +she has picked up a new doctor here--a dreadful little adventurer! She +will probably talk of nothing else but her to you." + +"God forbid!" + +They have by this time left the town behind them, and have turned +through a stone-pillared gate down an ilex and ficus-sheltered drive, +along which the _indigène_, whipping up his horses to an avenue canter, +lands them at the arched door of a snowy Moorish house, whose whitewash +shows dazzling through the interstices of a Bougainvillia fire blazing +all over its front. + +Two minutes later Jim is standing by Sybilla's couch. She is holding +both his hands in hers, and there is something in her face which tells +him that she means that he shall kiss her. + +"When I think--when I think of our last meeting!" she says hysterically. + +"Yes," he says, gasping; "yes, of course. What a beautiful villa you +have here!" + +The observation is a true one, though, for the moment, he has not the +least idea whether it is beautiful or not, as he turns his tormented +eyes round upon the delicious little court, with its charming +combination of slender twisted marble columns, of mellow-tinted tiles, +of low plashing fountain. Originally it has been open, roofless to the +eye and the breath and the rains of heaven; but its Northern purchaser +has covered it in with glass, and set low divans and luxuriantly +cushioned bamboo chairs about its soft-tumbling water. + +Sybilla has let fall her hands, and the expression of the wish for a +sisterly embrace has disappeared out of her face. For a few moments she +remains absolutely silent. He looks round anxiously for Cecilia, but she +has gone to take off her bonnet, and Mr. Wilson has not yet come in. +Under pretence of examining the tiles, he walks towards the lovely +little colonnade of horseshoe arches that form the court, and his uneasy +look rests, scarcely seeing them, upon the vertical lines of lovely old +faïence that intersect the whitewash with softest blues and greens and +yellows. + +When will Cecilia return? Behind him he presently hears the invalid's +voice, steadied and coldened. + +"It is very beautiful; and, of course, it is everything for weary eyes +to have such pleasant objects to rest upon. I believe"--with a little +laugh--"that we sick people really take in most of our nourishment +through the eyes. Was not it wonderfully enterprising of us to come +here? I suppose your first thought when you heard the news was, 'How mad +of Sybilla to attempt it!'" + +It is needless to say how innocent of the mental ejaculation attributed +to him Jim has been, and the consciousness of it makes him inquire with +guilty haste: + +"But you were none the worse? you got over it all right?" + +"I was really wonderful," replies she; "we sick people"--with a little +air of playfulness--"do give you well ones these surprises sometimes; +but I must not take the credit to myself: it is really every bit due to +Dr. Crump, my new doctor, who is a perfect marvel of intuition. I always +tell him that he never need ask; he _divines_ how one is; he says he is +a mere bundle of nerves himself; that is, I suppose, why one can talk to +him upon subjects that are sealed books with one's nearest and dearest." + +Her voice has a suspicious tremble in it which frightens Jim anew. + +He looks again apprehensively for help towards the two tiers of curving +column and rounding arch, which rise in cool grace above each other, and +sees, with relief, the figure of Cecilia leaning over the balustrade +that runs along the upper tier, and looking down upon him. At the same +moment Mr. Wilson enters, and shortly afterwards they all go to +luncheon. It is not a very pleasant repast, although the cool +dining-room, with its beautiful old pierced stucco ceiling and its +hanging brass lamps, contributes its part handsomely towards what should +be their enjoyment. There is no overt family quarrel, but just enough of +covert recrimination and sub-acid sparring to make an outsider feel +thoroughly uncomfortable, and to prove how inharmonious a whole the +soured little family now forms. + +"We quarrel more than we used to do, do not we?" says Cecilia, when Jim, +a little later, takes leave, and she walks, under her red sunshade, up +the ilexed drive with him to the pillared gate; "and to-day we were +better than usual, because you were by. Oh, I wish you were always by!" + +He cannot echo the wish. He had thought that he had already held his +dead Amelia at her true value; but never, until to-day, has he realized +through what a long purgatory of obscure heroisms she had passed to her +reward. + +"I do hope you will not drop us altogether. Of course, now that the link +that bound us to you is broken"--her voice quivers, but he feels neither +the fear nor the rage that a like phenomenon in Sybilla has produced in +him--"there is nothing to hold you any longer; but I do trust you will +not quite throw us over." + +"My dear old girl, why should I? I hope that you and I shall always be +the best of friends, and that before long I shall see you settled in a +home of your own." + +"You mean that I shall marry? Well, to be sure"--with a recurrence to +that business-like tone which had always amused him formerly in her +discussion of her affairs of the heart--"I ought to have a better chance +now than ever, as I shall have a larger fortune; but"--with a lapse into +depression--"this is not a good place for men--I mean Englishmen. There +are troops of delightful-looking Frenchmen, Chasseurs d'Afrique, and +Zouaves; but, then, we do not know any of them--not one. Well, +perhaps"--philosophically--"it is for the best; one always hears that +Frenchmen make very bad husbands." + + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +Notre Dame d'Afrique--Lady of Africa--is an ugly lady, homely and black; +and the church that is dedicated to her is ugly too--new and +mock-Moorish; but, like many another ugly lady, being very nobly placed, +she has a great and solemn air. It is Our Lady of Africa who first gives +us our greeting as we steam in from seawards; it is to Our Lady of +Africa that the fisher-people climb to vespers, and to the touching +office that follows, when priests and acolytes pass out of the church to +the little plateau outside, where, sheer against the sky, stands a small +Latin cross, with a plain and, as it seems, coffin-shaped stone beneath +it, on which one reads the inscription: + + "À la mémoire de tous ceux, qui ont péri dans la mer, et ont + été ensevelis dans ses flots." + + "_All those who have perished in the sea, and been buried in + her waves._" + +What a gigantic company to be covered with one little epitaph! + +Notre Dame d'Afrique stands grandly on the cliff-tops, overlooking the +sea, whose cruel deeds she is so agonizedly prayed to avert, whose +cruelty she is sometimes powerful to assuage, witness the frequent +votive tablets with which the church walls are covered: + + "Merci, oh ma mère." + "J'ai prie, et j'ai été exaucé." + "Reconnaissance à Marie." + "Reconnaissance à Notre Dame d'Afrique." + +She does not look very lovable, this coal-black Marie, who stands in her +stiff brocade, with her ebon hands stretched straight out above the +high-altar; but how tenderly these poor fisherwives must have felt +towards her when she brought them back their Pierre or their Jean, from +the truculent deeps of the ocean! + +Burgoyne has been told, both by his guide-book and by his _table-d'hôte_ +neighbour, that he ought to see Notre Dame d'Afrique; nor is he loth to +pay further obeisance to that high lady who already yesterday beckoned +to him across the blue floor of her waters. He does not tell Cecilia of +his intention, as he knows that she would offer to accompany him; but on +leaving her he takes his way through the gay French town, along its +Arab-named streets, Bab-a-Zoun and Bab-el-Oued, towards the village of +St. Eugène, and breasts the winding road that, with many an elbow and +bend, heading a deep gorge that runs up from the sea to the church-foot, +leads him within her portals. The congregation is sparse--a few +peasants, a blue and red Zouave, and several inevitable English. Now and +again a woman, clad in humble black that tells of prayers in vain, goes +up with her thin candle, and, lighting it, sticks it in its sconce among +the others that burn before the altar. For awhile Burgoyne finds it +pleasant after his climb to sit and watch her, and speculate pityingly +with what hope of still possible good to herself she is setting her +slender taper alight--now that her treasure has all too obviously gone +down beneath the waves; to sit and speculate, and smell the heady +incense, and listen to the murmur of chanted supplication; but +presently, growing weary of the uncomprehended service, he slips outside +to the little plateau, with its view straight out--no importunate +land-object intervening--towards the sea, across which a little steamer +is cutting her way; and on the horizon two tiny shining sails are lying. + +Here, on this bold headland, it seems as if one were one's self in +mid-ocean; and one has to lean far over the low wall in order to realize +that there is some solid earth between us and it; that two full cities +of the dead--a Jewish and a Christian--lie below. From the +land-cemeteries to the vast sea-cemetery--for read by the light of that +plain inscription upon which his eyes are resting, what is even the +azure Mediterranean but a grave? For the matter of that, what is all +life but a grave? + + "First our pleasures die, and then + Our hopes, and then our fears, and when + These are dead, the debt is due: + Dust claims dust, and we die too." + +He turns away, and, muttering these words half absently between his +lips, begins to make the circuit of the church; and in doing so, comes +suddenly upon three persons who are apparently similarly employed. The +party consists of a man and two ladies. Being a little ahead of him, +they are, for the first moment or two, not aware of his presence, an +ignorance by which he, rather to his own discomfiture, profits to +overhear a scrap of their conversation certainly not intended for his +ears. + +"I suppose that you were wool-gathering, as usual?" Mr. Le Marchant is +saying, with an accent of cold severity, to his daughter; "but I should +have thought that even _you_ might have remembered to bring a wrap of +some kind for your mother!" + +Jim starts, partly at having happened so unexpectedly upon the people +before him, partly in shocked astonishment at the harshness both of +voice and words. + +In the old days Elizabeth had been the apple of her father's eye, to +oppose whose lightest fancy was a capital offence, for whom no words +could be too sugared, no looks too doting. Yet now she answers, with the +sweetest good-humour, and without the slightest sign of surprise or +irritation, or any indication that the occurrence is not a habitual one: + +"I cannot think how I could have been so stupid; it was inexcusable of +me." + +"I quite agree with you," replies the father, entirely unmollified; "I +am sure you have been told often enough how liable to chills +insufficient clothing makes people in this beastly climate at sundown." + +"But it is not near sundown," breaks in Mrs. Le Marchant, throwing +herself anxiously, and with a dexterity which shows how frequently she +is called upon to do so, between the two others; "look what a great +piece of blue sky the sun has yet to travel." + +"You shall have my jacket," cries Elizabeth impetuously, but still with +the same perfect sweetness; "it will be absurdly short for you, but, at +least, it will keep you warm." So saying, she, with the speed of +lightning, whips off the garment alluded to, and proceeds to guide her +mother's arms into its inconveniently tight sleeves, laughing the while +with her odd childish light-heartedness, and crying, "You dear thing, +you do look too ridiculous!" + +The mother laughs too, and aids her daughter's efforts; nor does it seem +to occur to any of the three that the fatal Southern chill may possibly +strike the delicate little frame of Elizabeth, now exposed, so lightly +clad in her tweed gown, to its insidious influence. + +"I wish you had a looking-glass to see yourself in!" cries she, rippling +into fresh mirth; "does not she look funny, father!" appealing to him +with as little resentment for his past surliness as would be shown by a +good dog (I cannot put it more strongly), and yet, as it seems to Jim, +with a certain nervous deprecation. + +The next moment one of them--he does not know which--has caught sight of +himself, and the moment after he is shaking hands with all three. It is +clear that the fact of his presence in Algiers has been notified to Mr. +Le Marchant, for there is no surprise in his coldly civil greeting. He +makes it as short as possible, and almost at once turns to continue his +circuit of the church, his wife at his side, and his daughter meekly +following. Doubtless they do not wish for his (Jim's) company; but yet, +as he was originally, and without any reference to them, going in their +direction, it would seem natural that he should walk along with them. + +He is hesitating as to whether or no to adopt this course, when he is +decided by a very slight movement of Elizabeth's head. She does not +actually look over her shoulder at him, and yet it seems to him as if, +were her gesture completed, it would amount to that; but it is arrested +by some impulse before it is more than sketched. Such as it is, it +suffices to take him to her side; and it seems to him that there is a +sort of satisfaction mingled with the undoubted apprehension in her +face, as she realizes that it is so. Her eyes, as she turns them upon +him, have a hungry question in them which her lips seem afraid to put. +Apparently she cannot get nearer to it than this--very tremblingly and +hurriedly uttered, with a timid glance at her father's back, as if she +were delivering herself of some compromising secret instead of the mere +platitude which she so indistinctly vents: + +"A--a--great many things have happened since--since we last met!" + +Her eye travels for a moment to his hat, from which, unlike Cecilia's +rainbow raiment, the crape band has not yet been removed; and he +understands that she is comprehending his troubles as well as her own in +the phrase. + +"A great many!" he answers baldly. + +He has not the cruelty to wish to keep her on tenterhooks, and he knows +perfectly what is the question that is written in the wistful blue of +her look, and whom it concerns; but it would be impertinence in him to +take for granted that knowledge, and answer that curiosity which, +however intense and apparent, has yet not become the current coin of +speech. Probably she sees that he is unable or unwilling to help her, +for she makes another tremendous effort. + +"I hope that--that--all your friends are well." + +"All my friends!" repeats he, half sadly; "they are not such a numerous +band; I have not many friends left still alive." + +His thoughts have reverted to his own loss, for, at the moment, Amelia +is very present to him; but the words are no sooner out of his mouth +than he sees how false is the impression produced by his reply--sees it +written in the sudden dead-whiteness of her cheek and the terror in her +eye. + +"Do you mean"--she stammers--"that anybody--any of your friends--is--is +lately dead?" + +"Oh no! no!" he cries reassuringly; "you are making a mistake; nobody is +dead--nobody, that is"--with a sigh--"that you do not already know of. +All our friends--all our common friends--are, as far as I know----" + +"Elizabeth!" breaks in Mr. Le Marchant's voice, in severe appellation; +he has only just become aware that his daughter is not unaccompanied, +and the discovery apparently does not please him. + +Without a second's delay, despite her twenty-seven years, she has sprung +forwards to obey the summons; and Jim has the sense to make no further +effort to rejoin her. By the time that their circuit is finished, and +they have again reached the front of the church, vespers are ended, and +there is a movement outwards among the worshippers. They stream--not +very numerous--out on the little terrace. The priests follow, tonsured, +but--which looks strange--with beards and whiskers. The acolytes, in +their red chasubles, carry a black and white pall, and lay it over the +memorial stone below the cross. On either hand stand a band of decently +clad youths--sons of drowned seamen--playing on brass instruments. It is +a poor little music, doubtfully in tune; but surely no rolling organ, no +papal choir, could touch the heart so much as this simple ceremonial. +The little Latin cross standing sheer out against the sea; the black +pall thrown over the stone that commemorates the sea's innumerable dead; +the red-clad acolytes, standing with eyes cast down, holding aloft their +high tapers, whose flickering flame the sea-wind soon puffs out; and the +sons of the drowned sailors, making their homely music to the +accompaniment of the salt breeze. The little service is brief and those +who have taken part in it are soon dispersing. As they do so, Jim once +more finds himself for a moment close to Elizabeth. + +The sun has nearly touched the sea-line by this time, and he sees, or +thinks he sees, her shiver. + +"You are cold," he says solicitously; "you will get a chill." + +She looks back at him, half surprised, half grateful, at the anxiety of +his tone. + +"Not I!" she answers, with a gentle air of indifference and +recklessness; "naught never comes to harm!" + +"But you shivered! I saw you shiver." + +"Did I? It was only"--smiling--"that a goose walked over my grave. Does +a goose never walk over your grave?" + +And once more she is gone. + +He does not see her again that day. Of the three places laid for dinner +at the round table in the _salle à manger_, only two are occupied; hers +is, and remains, empty. She is not with her parents, and, what is more, +she does not appear to be missed by them. It fills Jim with something of +the same shocked surprise as he had felt on hearing the cold and surly +tone in which she had been addressed by her father, to see how much +more, and more genially, that father talks; how much less morose his +back looks than had been the case on the previous evening. + +The next morning rises superb in steady splendour, and Jim, on issuing +out on the little red-tiled terrace, finds the whole strength of the +hotel gathered upon it. Even the worst invalids, who have not shown +their noses outside their rooms for a fortnight, are sunning themselves, +wrapped in apparently unnecessary furs. The Arabs and Turks have spread +their gay rugs and carpets, and displayed their bits of stuff, their +brasswork, and their embroidery. They make a charming garden of colour +under the blue. One is lying beside his wares, in an azure jacket and a +rose-red sash, twanging a "gunébri," or little Arab mandolin. Apart from +the rest of the company, at the extreme end of the terrace, in a place +which is evidently hers by prescriptive right, close to the balustrade, +upon whose blue and white tiled top her books are lying, Elizabeth is +sitting--and sitting alone, neither truculent father not frightened +mother barring approach to her. He makes his way at once to her. + +"You were not at dinner last night?" + +"No." + +"I hope that did not mean that you were ill?" + +Her eyes are not lifted to his--resting rather on the balustrade, +through whose pierced brickwork little boughs of Bougainvillia are +pushing. + +"No, I was not ill," she replies slowly; "but I had made such a figure +of myself by crying that mammy thought I had better stay away. When I +looked in the glass," she adds humorously, "I thought so myself." + +"There was not much sign of tears about you when we parted at Notre Dame +d'Afrique," he says brusquely. + +"No, but"--with a sudden lifting of her pretty lashes--"you know there +is never any medium in me; I am always either laughing or crying; and, +of course, seeing you again brought--brought things back to me." + +She looks wistfully at him as she makes this leading remark. + +He can no longer have any doubt as to her wish to embark upon the +subject which, even in the three minutes of their meeting on the +previous day, she had sought to approach. If he is kind, he will enter +into her wish, he will make her path easier for her; but for the moment +he does not feel kind--angry, rather, and rebellious. + +Is his intercourse with her to be a mere repetition of that which, +although now seven months ago, makes him still writhe, in the +recollection of his latter intercourse with Byng? Is he again to be +spitted upon the skewer of reminiscences of the Vallombrosan wood? +_Never!_ + +He looks obstinately away from her--towards where first an ivied bank +rises, with red gladioli flowering upon it; then a little space of bare +ground, then a row of orange-trees; then some young stone-pines, holding +their heads against the blue to show what an exquisite contrast they +make to it; then, topping, or seeming to top the hill, a white villa, +with little blue jewels of sky, seen through the interstices of the +balustrade on its roof, its whitewash making the solid wall of sapphire +behind it look even more desperately and unnameably blue than elsewhere. +What a blue! sapphire! turquoise! lapis! To what poor shifts are we +driven to express it! How could we describe its glory to a blind person? +If to such a one the colour of scarlet is represented by the sound of a +trumpet, surely this divine tint above us can be best conveyed by the +whole heavenly hierarchy of burning seraphs and winged angels, harping +and quiring together. + +"I always think," says Elizabeth, following the direction of his +eyes--"perhaps it may be fancy--that this particular corner of the sky +is much bluer than any other." + +There is a shade of disappointment in her tone at his failure to take up +her challenge, but she is far too gentle to make any further effort in a +direction which, for some reason, is disagreeable to him; and since he +will not follow her inclination, she is pliantly willing to follow his. + +The Arabs have come up in might to-day, and, no longer fearing rain, +have carpeted almost the whole terrace with their wares. They hang over +the low wall, and cover the red tiles; blue and purple, and Moslem +green, and Venetian red; dazzling white _haiks_, blinding in the +blinding sunshine; carpets, embroidered jackets, flashing back gold in +the gold light. A pert English miss is standing over them, and saying +disparagingly about each: + +"You can get this 7-1/2d. cheaper at Whiteley's. I saw a much better one +than this for half the price at Marshall's," etc., etc. + +One longs to ask the "miss" whether she saw the sunlight, and the cobalt +sea, and the glorified whitewash, with its amethyst shadows, for 7-1/2d. +at Whiteley's too, and, if so, why she did not stay there? + +Burgoyne's friend in the red shirt is beating down a one-eyed Kabyle, +and having a happy haggle with him over a Mozambique coat. + +"She does not get on with her own family at home, and she has quarrelled +with all her travelling companions!" says Elizabeth, in a delighted +explanatory whisper. Wistfulness and disappointment have alike vanished +out of her small face, which is one ripple of mischief. "The fat widow +in the weepers, who is preening herself like a great pouter pigeon, is +trying to marry the wizened old gentleman in the bamboo chair. Sometimes +we think she will succeed; sometimes we think she will not: it is _so_ +interesting!" + +Jim looks down at her with an astonishment bordering on indignation. + +Is this the woman who cried herself sick last night over memories of the +so recent past? In this mobile nature, is there nothing that one can lay +hold of? + +"Mammy and I get an infinity of amusement out of them," continues she, +still playfully, but faltering a little under the severity of his look; +"oh, we know a great deal about them all; and those that we do not know +about we make stories for!" + +"Indeed!" + +His tone is so curt that the stream of her gaiety dries up under it, and +she relapses into silence, looking towards the flashing sea, and the +ficus-tree, that is casting its now grateful shade. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +"You said just now that seeing me brought things back to you." + +It is partly remorse at having snubbed her, and partly perversity, which +dictates this sentence on Jim's part. The perversity is, perhaps, the +predominating element in his motive--a perversity which, having chilled +her away from the subject when she was eagerly seeking an opening to it, +now forces her to return to it. She starts a little. + +"Yes--yes," she answers; "but 'brought things back' is not quite the +right phrase; they"--her voice growing low and tremulous--"had not very +far to come." + +The quiver in her voice annoys him almost as much as Byng's tears used +to do. + +"If you would like to ask me any questions," he says stiffly, "I am +ready to answer them." + +"Are you?" she cries hungrily; "oh, that is kind of you! but, then, you +always _were_ kind; but not here"--looking apprehensively round--"I +could not trust myself to talk about--about him here; I--I should break +down, and nothing"--with a smile that, though watery, is still +humorous--"would induce me to make a fool of myself before the widow +Wadman." Then, seeing him look at a loss: "Come indoors!" she says +impulsively, standing up, and half stretching out her hand as if to draw +him after her. "Come into our salon--no, you need not be afraid; we +shall have it all to ourselves; father and mother have gone out for +their usual constitutional on the Boulevard Mustapha." + +He follows her silently, and neither speaks till they find themselves +_tête-à-tête_ in the private apartment of the Le Marchants. + +It is on the _rez-de-chaussée_, a suite of three little whitewashed +rooms, transmogrified from their original hotel nakedness by flowers and +brocade bits. Three large green jars on the chimney-piece, full of +generous rose-branches, and boughs of salvia and iris, and stalwart +yellow jessamine, make the air sweetly and lightly perfumed. On the +table is a litter of Tauchnitz novels, disastrously old English papers, +the little scurrilous Algerian sheet, and, lastly, Elizabeth's +workbasket--the big workbasket which Jim had last seen standing on the +floor in the _entresol_, at the Piazza d'Azeglio, with its contents +strewn all over his friend's prostrate body. At the sight a bitter smile +breaks over his face. + +"An old acquaintance!" he says, making a mock salutation to it; "it is +in better order than when last I had the pleasure of seeing it." + +"Do you mean in Florence?" she asks, very slowly. + +"Yes"--still with that acrid smile--"after you were gone, I had the +honour of helping to pack it to send after you. I am afraid I was rather +clumsy over it; but, at any rate, I managed better than he. By-the-bye, +did you find any rust on your scissors and thimble when next you had +occasion to use them? Poor boy! he cried enough over them to take all +the polish off!" + +She has sunk down upon the sofa, over which a great woollen _haik_, dyed +with harmonious dull tints, is thrown. + +"Do not sneer at me!" she says faintly. "You would not if you knew how +you hurt me. Is he--is he--how is he?" + +"He is not ill." + +The answer ought to be reassuring; but there is something in the manner +in which it is uttered that tells her that it neither is, nor is meant +to be so. It is so ominous that her lips, after a feeble effort or two, +give up the endeavour to frame any query. All her power of interrogation +has passed into those eyes, out of which her companion has been so +brilliantly successful in chasing their transient morning mirth. + +"When a man," says Jim gravely, "at the outset of his life, gets such a +facer as he did, if he has not a very strong character, it is apt to +drive him off the rails, to give him a shove downwards." + +"I see; and you think I have given him a shove downwards?" + +"Yes." + +There is a pause. Jim's eyes are resolutely turned away from the face of +Elizabeth, upon whose small white area twitches of pain are making cruel +disfigurement. He does not want to have his heart softened towards her, +so he stares persistently over her head at a Mussulman praying-carpet, +which, old and still rich-toned, despite the wearing of pious knees, +hangs on the wall. At length she speaks, in a key as low as--were not +the room so entirely still--would be inaudible. + +"If I had married him, I should have given him a much worse shove down." + +Jim holds his breath. Is he about to hear from her own lips that secret +which he has magnanimously resisted all opportunities of hearing from +other sources? But the words that, after a pause, follow this almost +whispered statement are not a confession. They are only an appeal. + +"You would be doing the kindest thing that you ever did in your life, if +you could bring yourself to say that you thought I did it for the best." + +He feels that if he submits his eyes to hers, his will must go with +them; he will have no power left of dissent from any request she may +choose to make; so he still stares over her head at a screen which hides +the doorless entrance to the third room of the little suite. One leaf, +folded back, gives a peep through the little chamber, through its +deep-arched window to where a date-palm stands up straight against the +sea. + +"I could not possibly say that unless I knew the circumstances of the +case," he answers judicially. + +He hears a low sigh, not of impatience, but of melancholy acquiescence. + + +"Then you must go on thinking ill of me." + +There is such a depth of dejection, as well as such an unalterable +sweetness, in her voice, that the words of little Prince Arthur, +addressed to Hubert, flash upon his mind: + + "If Heaven be pleased that you should use me ill, + Why, then you must!" + +After all, what power in earth or sky has appointed him her executioner? + +"I do not wish to think ill of you," he answers sadly. "Good heavens! do +I need to tell you that? I have tried all along to keep myself from +judging you; but I should not be human--you must know that I should not +be human--if I did not ask myself why you did it." + +"Why I left Florence?" + +"Yes." + +She sits stock-still for a moment, the very little colour that there +ever was in it retreating out of her face. + +"If I told you that, I should be telling you everything." + +He is looking at her now; after all, he cannot keep his gaze pinned to +the screen for ever, and, as he looks, he sees an emotion of so +transcendently painful a nature set her little sad features working, +that the one impulse that dominates him is to ease her suffering. + +Poor little docile creature! She is going to tell him her secret, since +he exacts it, though it is only with a rending asunder of soul and body +that it can be revealed. He puts out his hand hurriedly, with a gesture +as of prohibition. + +"Then do not tell me." + +She sinks back upon her _haik_ with a movement of relief, and puts up +her fine handkerchief to her pale lips. There is a perfect silence +between them for awhile. At his elbow is a great un-English, unwintry +nosegay of asphodel and iris. He passes his fingers absently over the +freakish spikes. + +"How did he take it? how did he take it at first?" + +Her voice, though now tolerably distinct, is stamped with that character +of awe which fills us all at approaching a great calamity. + +"He would not believe it at first; and then he cried a great deal--oh, +an immense deal!"--with an accent of astonishment, even at the +recollection of his friend's tear-power--"and then--oh, then, he thought +of putting an end to himself!" + +Jim had meant to have made this relation in a tone of dispassionate +narrative, but against his will and intention, as his memory recalls +what seem to him the unworthy antics played by Byng's grief, his voice +takes a sarcastic inflection. The horror written on his auditor's face +as he utters the latest clause of his sentence recalls him to himself. + +"Do not be afraid!" he says, in a tone which has no longer anything akin +to a sneer in it, though it is not devoid of bitterness; "the impulse +was a short-lived one; he is not thinking of putting an end to himself +now, I can assure you of that; he is only thinking of how he can best +amuse himself. Whether he is much more successful in that than he was in +the former, I am not so sure." + +Her eyes have dropped to her own fragile, ringless hands as they lie on +her lap. + +"Poor boy! poor boy!" she says over softly twice, moving her head up and +down with a little compassionate movement. + +At the pity expressed by her gesture, an unjust and unjustifiable hard +anger takes harsh possession of him. + +"It was a pity you let it go so far," he says austerely; "you must allow +me to say that much; but I suppose, in point of fact, the ball once set +rolling, it was past your power to stop it." + +She listens to his philippic, with her head meekly bent. + +"I did not try," she answers, in a half·whisper; then, after a pause, +raising her down-dropped eyes, lit with a blue fire of excitement, +almost inspiration, to his, "I said to myself, 'If I have any luck, I +shall die before the smash comes;' and I just lived on from day to day. +I had not the heart to stop it; I knew it would stop of itself before +long; I had never--hardly ever"--correcting herself, as it seems, with a +modifying afterthought--"in my life before known what happiness meant; +and oh! _oh!_ OH!"--with a groan of deepening intensity at each repeated +interjection--"what a big word it is!" + +_Never--hardly ever--known what happiness meant before!_ Why, surely she +was happy at the Moat! and before his mind's eye there rises an image of +her in her riotous rosy gaiety; but even as it does, there flashes upon +him a comprehension of her speech. + +It is not the careless merriment of childhood to which she is alluding; +it is to _the_ happiness, _par excellence_, of life. If this is the +case, why did she correct herself and modify her negative with a +"hardly"? A jealous feeling of someone else--someone beside Byng; a +jealousy none the less keen for being vague--for not knowing on what +object it can lay hold--sharpens his tone as he repeats aloud, and with +an accent of interrogation, her qualifying adverb: + +"_Hardly_ ever, that implies----" + +But she breaks in hurriedly, as if dreading--and at the same time +doubting her own power of baffling--cross-examination upon that subject +on whose borders they are continually hovering. + +"Talking of happiness makes one think of unhappiness, does not it? We +both know something about that, do not we?" + +She pauses, and he sees that she is alluding to his own sorrow, and that +her eye is sounding his to see whether he would wish her to approach it +more nearly. His eye, in answer, must give but a dubious beam, since he +himself is quite unsure of what his wishes on the subject are; and she +goes on with the haste and yet unsteadiness of one who is treading on +swampy ground, that gives beneath his feet. + +"We saw it in the papers; I could not believe it at first. It was the +last thing I ever expected to happen. I thought of writing to you, but I +did not." + +She looks at him rather wistfully, and although but two minutes ago she +had been confessing to him her passion for another man, he sees that she +is anxious he should tell her that her sympathy would have been precious +to him. He feels the same sensation as before of mixed anger and +fascination at the ductility of her nature. What business has she to +care whether he would have liked to hear from her or not? + +"It seemed such a pity that it was she, and not I!" + +Again her eye interrogates his, as if asking for acquiescence in this +suggestion, but he cannot give it. With a shock of surprise--nay, +horror--at himself, he finds that he is unable to echo the wish that +Elizabeth had died and Amelia lived. + +"I said so to mammy at the time. Ah, here is mammy!" + +And, indeed, as she speaks the door opens, and Mrs. Le Marchant enters +in her walking-dress. At the sight of Jim, a look, which certainly does +not betoken pleasure, though good breeding prevents its representing the +opposite emotion, crosses her handsome, worn face. + +"I brought Mr. Burgoyne in here," says Elizabeth, in what seems rather +precipitate explanation, "because we could not talk comfortably out on +the terrace; they listen to everything we say: they have such long +ears--the Widow Wadman and Miss Strutt!" + +"I do not know what State secrets you and Mr. Burgoyne can have to +discuss," replies the mother, with a smile that, though courteous, but +ill disguises the underlying anxiety. "Yes, dear child, I shall be very +much obliged if you will take my bonnet upstairs for me"--this in answer +to little tender overtures from Elizabeth, overtures that remind Jim of +12 _bis_, Piazza d' Azeglio. "I do not know whether you have yet found +it so" (to Jim); "but this _is_ a slack place." + +No sooner has the door closed upon her daughter than her tone changes. + +"What have you been talking about to her," she inquires rapidly; "not, I +hope, about _him_?" + +"I could not help it; she asked me." + +Mrs. Le Marchant strikes her hands together, and gives utterance to that +short and shapeless monosyllable which has a prescriptive right to +express vexation. + +"Th! th!" A moment later, "I am sure you will understand that I do not +mean to imply any ill-will to you; but it _is_ unlucky that we should +have happened to meet you here; it has brought it all back to her, and +she was just beginning to pluck up her spirits a little." + +"Did she--did she take it so much to heart?" inquires Jim, in a tone of +almost as awed concern as Elizabeth had employed but a quarter of an +hour before in putting nearly the same question with regard to Byng. + +"_Did she take it to heart!_" repeats Mrs. Le Marchant, with the +irritation of one to whom a perfectly senseless and superfluous inquiry +is put; "why, of course she did! I thought at one time that she would +have gone out of her mind!" + +No one can feel less merry than Jim; and yet his lips at this juncture +cannot resist the impulse to frame themselves into a gloomy smile. + +"And I thought that _he_ would have gone out of _his_ mind," he rejoins. + +As he speaks, it flashes upon his memory that one of the hypotheses that +have formerly occurred to him to account for the mystery that hangs over +Elizabeth's past was that she had been mad; and though he had long +abandoned the idea, her losing her wits now recurs to him with a shock +as a possibility. Might not that changeful, mobile, emotional mind lose +its balance under the blow either of a sudden calamity or of a long +wearing sorrow? It has escaped--evidently but barely escaped the first. +Will it escape the second too? + +His heart goes out in a great yearning to her at the thought of what a +touching little lunatic she would make; and, with an oblivion of his own +personal feelings, which is generous, if not very lasting, he says +compassionately: + +"It seems a pity--a great pity!" + +"A pity!" repeats the mother, with a sort of wrath, down which he +detects a broad stripe of agony running; "I should think it _was_ a +pity! Pity is a weak word! The whole thing is piteous! her whole +history! If you only knew----" + +She breaks off. + +He is silent, waiting to see whether that impulse towards confidence in +him will go any further; but it does not. She has evidently gone beyond +her intention, and is passionately vexed with herself for having done +so. + +"They were so well suited to each other," continues Jim slowly, but +still generously. Possibly his generosity becomes more easy as he sees +how hopeless is the plea upon which he employs it. "Is it--I do not wish +to intrude upon your confidence, but in the interests of my friend you +will allow me to say that much--is it quite out of the question?" + +"Quite! quite!" replies the mother, in painful excitement; "what, poor +soul, is not out of the question for her that has any good or happiness +in it? and that--_that_ more than anything! If you have any mercy in +you, do not put it into her head that it is not!" + +"If it is not in her head already, I could not put it there," replies +Jim gravely; "but I will not--I promise you I will not." + +As he speaks, a slight smile touches the corners of his serious mouth as +he reflects how entirely easy it is to comply with a request _not_ to +urge Byng's suit upon its object, and how cheaply a character for +magnanimity may sometimes be bought. + +"That is very kind of you!" replies the poor woman gratefully; "and I am +sure when you say a thing I can depend upon you for it; and though, of +course, it was unlucky our happening to meet you, yet you need not see +much of her. Although it is not in the least 'out of sight, out of mind' +with her"--sighing--"yet she _is_ very much influenced by the objects +around her; and when you are gone--I dare say you do not mean to make a +long stay; this is not a place where there is much for a man to do--for +a man like you----" + +She breaks off, and her imploring eye invites him to reassure her by +naming a speedy day for his own departure. But magnanimity may have +calls made upon it that exceed its power to answer, and Jim's silence +sufficiently proves that he is not going to allow himself to be seduced +into a promise to go. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +The next morning proves the truth of Miss Strutt's words that "we are +not so green here in Algiers for nothing." The weather changes some time +after dark has fallen. A mighty wind arises. Jim's slumbers are broken +by the fact that somebody's outside shutters bang, loose and noisy all +night. The great sign at the top of the hotel swings and creaks and +groans. In the morning, as far as can be seen through blurred panes, the +trees--eucalyptus, ilex, stone-pine--are all cowering and stooping +before the wind's lash. The fan palm before Mrs. Le Marchant's window, +with its fans all pinched and bent, is staggering before the gale. One +cannot conceive what that unlucky tropical product can be doing in this +galley, and it requires a strong effort of reason and will to resist the +conviction that the oranges and lemons are tied upon the shivering trees +instead of growing naturally there. + +"And this is 'Afric's burning strand'!" says Jim to himself, over his +breakfast in the _salle à manger_, through whose shut windows the mad +rain forces itself; and the blast, coming to his wet sister's aid, +bursts them open now and again. + +The day seems enormously long. He gets through the morning tolerably +well with letter-writing, and after the twelve o'clock _déjeûner_ he +faces the gale in a determined walk down into the town. Seldom in the +course of his wide wanderings has he felt the furious scourge of more +tremendous rain. The side-path is whitened with big hailstones; red +torrents tear with ferocious speed and violence down the steep incline. +The great acanthus-leaves, and all the plentiful undergrowth, are +dripping and rejoicing. + +Through the blinding white deluge he gets forlorn peeps of the villas +that had shone yesterday with the white splendour one associates with +the city of the saints of God; and instead of, as yesterday, "laced with +heaven's own tinct," the Mediterranean is whitening the bay's rounded +curve with its angry breakers, and the snow is sprinkling the Atlas +crests. A few Arabs are sitting on the ground under the Pont d'Isly, +packed up into whitish woollen parcels, knees to nose, and arms and +hands all withdrawn into the protection of the sheltering burnous. But +no one else, who can help it, is abroad. + +It seems to Jim as if his disagreeable tussle with the elements had +lasted a long time, and yet, on his return to the hotel, he finds that +it is only half-past two. He thinks at first that the clocks must have +stopped, but finds, on examination, that they are all ticking, and all +unanimous. His drenched condition is at least a resource, necessitating +an entire and fundamental change of raiment; but even this expedient, +though dragged out to its utmost possible limit, does not carry him +further than three. How is he to dispose of the seven or eight hours +that must elapse before he can seek refuge in bed? He has exhausted his +correspondence, which is never a large one, and he has seldom in his +life been so short of books. + +He makes his way through the hall, which is crammed with young people +playing battledore, and noisily counting; with elder persons, dreadfully +short of a job, looking on and applauding; to the _salon_, in hopes of +there finding a Tauchnitz novel, or even a superannuated _Pall Mall_ or +_World_. But half a dozen other weather-bound sufferers have been before +him, and the tables are swept clean of all literature save a +three-months-old _Court Journal_. + + +Miss Strutt and the pert votary of Whiteley are sitting shawled, and +with their heads close together. By their titters, and the fragments he +catches of their talk, they seem to be concocting a practical joke of +some kind. The widow Wadman, shawled too, and her valetudinarian in a +comforter, are stopping over a wood-fire, which refuses to burn, the +souches being wringing wet. Jim rather injudiciously approaches them, +and offers his assistance in piling the damp logs; but he is so +evidently _de trop_, that he retires discomfited. On the other hand, the +invitation in Miss Strutt's and her coadjutor's eye is so apparent that +he beats a hasty retreat out of the room, in dread lest he should be +drawn into their mysterious pleasantry. + +He never is quite clear afterwards how he gets over the hours that +intervene before dinner--whether sleep comes to his aid, or whether he +is after all reduced to perusing in the _Court Journal_ the narrative of +which direction the Queen and Princess Henry of Battenburg took their +walk in, in October. But at length the welcome bell rings, drowning +even, for two minutes, the banging of the wind; and the whole hotel, +unwontedly punctual, rushes in answer to its summons. People who have +hitherto scarcely exchanged words, have eyed each other with hardly +veiled distrust, now show a feverish desire to enter into conversation, +to detain one another after dinner on the steps of the _salle à manger_. + +As the evening advances, Jim sees an intention among the younger portion +of the company to launch out into noisy, romping games, to institute a +Dumb Crambo. He feels it is far from impossible that he himself may fall +so low as to be drawn into it. Miss Strutt's eye is on him, but before +he succumbs he will make one effort on his own behalf. He embraces a +desperate resolution. He has seen the Le Marchants eating their dinner +near, and yet hopelessly far from him. Elizabeth had given him one +furtive smile, and her mother a hurried bow; this is, to tell the truth, +all the encouragement he has to go upon--all that he can find to keep +his courage up as he knocks at their door, telling himself that his +excuse--that of asking them to lend him a book--is a quite sufficient +and legitimate one. He knocks, and Elizabeth's voice at once answers: + +"Herein!" + +It is clear that she takes him for the German waiter, Fritz. She remains +in this belief even after he has opened the door, since she does not at +first look up. She is alone--not in the pretty flowered room in which +she had yesterday received him, but in the first and less adorned of the +little series--one that he had, on his former visit, cursorily supposed +to be chiefly used as an ante-room--sitting alone at a table, and before +her are spread writing-materials, over which she is stooping. An odious +and ridiculous thought darts, with a prick, across his mind. + +Is she sitting here, all alone, in order to write to Byng? + +"I came----" he begins; and at the unexpected voice she looks up with a +start: + +"Oh, it is you!" she says, in a low key, glancing rather apprehensively +at the closed door, which separates them from the inner room, in a +manner which tells him that her parents are within. + +"I came"--his voice almost unconsciously sinking to the level hers has +indicated to him--"to ask you to lend me a book." + +"A book!" she repeats doubtfully, with another and still more nervous +glance at the shut door; "I am afraid that they are all in there." + +"Oh, it is of no consequence!" rejoins Burgoyne hastily, unwittingly +quoting the words of the immortal Mr. Toots; "it does not matter in the +least." + +As he speaks, he begins to retreat towards the door, but so slowly as to +give her plenty of time to recall him had she so wished. But she does +not. She only stands looking uncertain and distressed. He cannot take +such a melancholy impression of her little face away for the whole night +with him--it would give him the blues too seriously after this dismal +day--so he takes a step or two forward again. + +"Are not you rather lonely?" he asks, with an expressive look round. + +She gives a small, uncomplaining smile. + +"Oh no; I do very well. I am generally alone at this time of day; they +like to have their evenings to themselves--at least, father likes to +have mammy to himself; I am sure it is quite natural." + +There is not the slightest trace of any sense of being aggrieved in +either words or tone. + +Again that picture of the adored Elizabeth of former days, of whose +prattle her father was never weary, whose jokes were always considered +so unequalled, and whose pre-eminence in favour was so allowed that her +intercession and influence were always employed by the others as certain +in their efficacy, rises before Jim's eyes. + +"They are like lovers still," continues Elizabeth softly; "it is very +pretty when people are lovers still after nearly thirty years." + +"And you--you write letters?" + +"No, I do not; I have not anyone to write to." + +A pang of shame at his unworthy suspicion, coupled with a sense of +astonishment at her simple confession of friendlessness, prevent his +speaking; and it is she who goes on: + +"I was writing an Italian exercise; I began to learn Italian in +Florence"--with the inevitable low sigh that always accompanies her +mention of that name--"and to-day, for something to do, I took it up +again. It has been a long day, has not it? Oh, _what_ a long day!" + +"_Long!_" repeats Jim emphatically; "it might choose to call itself a +_day_; but many a century has been shorter." + +"Someone was playing battledore and shuttlecock in the hall. I wonder to +what number they kept it up? how many years it is since I have played +battledore and shuttlecock!" + +There is a suppressed envy in her tone, which tells how far from +disagreeable the innocent noisy pastime to which she alludes would be to +her even now. She has sat down again on the straight-backed chair from +whose elevation she had commanded her Italian studies; a large grayish +cloak, lined and heavily collared, and bordered with fur, hangs, +unfastened at the throat, about her. Out of the dark beaver her delicate +neck and head rise, like a pale primrose from out of piled dead +oak-leaves in a yet wintry wood. Through the door, which he has left +open behind him, come bursts of maniac mirth from the votaries of Dumb +Crambo. + +"What a noise they are making!" + +"I should think they were!" + +"I wonder what they are doing?" + +"I can inform you on that point; they are playing Dumb Crambo." + +She repeats the words after him with a lingering intonation, in which +there again is, or, at least, he thinks that he detects it, a tinge of +envy. + +"Dumb Crambo!" + +"Would you like to join them?" + +"No"--slowly--"not quite that; but--it sounds ridiculous--but I should +like to play Dumb Crambo again. We used"--in an affectionate, lingering +tone--"to play it when we were children." + +It is the first time that she has ever voluntarily alluded to the Moat, +and he calls to mind her earnest prohibition addressed to him at +Florence against any mention of it. + +"I know you did; once or twice I played with you." + +"_You?_" + +She starts. It is evident that the unimportant fact of his having taken +part in their games has quite escaped her; but, a moment later, her soft +and courteous nature evidently making her fear that he will look upon +her obliviousness as unkind-- + +"Oh yes, to be sure!" Then again lapsing into reminiscence, "What odd +words we used to choose sometimes--words that nobody could guess! I +wonder what words they have chosen?" + +He thinks of saying jocosely, "Shall I go and ask them?" but refrains, +because he fears it would put it into her head to send him away. + +A sort of piercing squeal makes itself heard from the _salon_. + +"Do you think that that can be meant for a _pig_?" asks Elizabeth, her +line ears pricked in unaffected interest. "Oh!"--with a return of +uneasiness--"I wish that they would not make so much noise; father does +so dislike noise. They might as well have put it off till to-morrow." + +"Why would to-morrow's noise be more endurable than to-night's?" + +"It would not have mattered to-morrow; father will not be here; he is +going to Hammam Rhira." + +Burgoyne's jaw drops. Is this the alternative course decided upon by + +Mrs. Le Marchant? Having failed to dislodge him from Algiers, is she +going to remove herself and her daughter out of his reach? + +"Do you mean--are you _all_ going to Hammam Rhira to-morrow?--_all_ +going away?" + +Is it some effect of light from the rose-shaded lamp that makes it seem +to him as if a tiny smile, and a yet smaller blush, swept over +Elizabeth's face at the aghastness of his tone--an aghastness much more +marked than he had intended it should be. + +"Not to-morrow; not all of us. Father and mammy are going there for a +couple of nights to see what the place is like--one hears such +contradictory accounts; and if they are pleased with it--" + +"Yes?" + +"If they are pleased with it we shall all probably move on there in a +day or two." + +He would like to be sure that this sentence ends with a sigh, but a +prodigious storm of hand-clapping from the extempore theatre prevents +his hearing whether it has that regretful finish. + +"And they are going to leave you behind?" + +"Why not? there would not be much use in taking me; and, as I tell you, +they love being _tête-à-tête_." + +"And you love being alone?" + +The moment that the question is out of his mouth, he realizes its full +unkindness. He is perfectly aware that she does _not_ like being alone; +that she is naturally a most sociable little being; that, even now, +these frightened five minutes of unsatisfactory broken talk with himself +have made her look less chilled, less wobegone, less white. Her answer, +if it can be looked upon as one, must be taken by him as a rebuke. It is +only that she says nervously: + +"One certainly does hear dreadfully plainly here with the door open." + +Her tone is of the gentlest, her look no angrier than a dove's, and yet +he would be obtuser than he is if he did not at once comprehend that her +remark implies a wish that he should presently shut that door behind him +on the outside. He complies. With that newly-gained knowledge as to +to-morrow's Hammam Rhira, he can afford to comply. + + +The next morning's light reveals that the weather, pleased with having +so indisputably proved its power of being odious, has recovered its +good-humour. + +Beyond the tree-tops a radiant sea is seen laughing far below; and the +wet red tiles on the little terrace shine like jewels. A sea even more +wonderful than radiant; no servile copy of the sky and clouds to-day, +but with astonishing colours of its own--a faint yet glorious green for +a part of its watery breadth; then what our poverty compels us to call +blue; and then a great tablecloth of inky purple, which looks so solid +that the tiny white boats that are crossing it seem to be sailing on dry +land. From amongst the glossy green of the wooded hill, mosque and +campagne start out, dazzling, in their recovered lustre; one cool +entrancing villa in especial, backed with a broken line of dusky +stone-pines, stands, snowy-arcaded, enthroned high up among the verdure. + +Jim is very anxious to be out of the way at the hour of the Le +Marchants' departure. He has a panic fear of being waylaid by the +mother, and having some earnest supplication addressed to him to +abstain, during her absence, from any converse with Elizabeth. He is not +quite clear at what time they will set off, so, to insure himself +against mistakes, he resolves to spend the morning and lunch at the +Villa Wilson. Arrived there, he is shown by an Arab man-servant into the +court, and, finding it empty, sinks down into a cane chair, and lets his +eyes wander round to the fountain, lullingly dripping into its basin; to +the tiles, the white-arched doorways, carved in low relief, and +themselves so low that it must be a humble-statured person who enters +them without stooping. What a home for love in idleness! Who can picture +any of the vulgar work of the world done in such a house? any harder +labour ever entered upon than a listening to some lady singing "with +ravishing division to her lute"? + +The lady who presently joins Jim appears, by her ruffled air, to have +been engaged upon no such soothing occupation as luting to a recumbent +lover. + +"You will not mind staying here?" asks Cecilia; "Dr. Crump is in the +drawing-room with Sybilla; I am sure that you do not want to see Dr. +Crump!" + +"I cannot express how little I wish it." + +"I cannot think what has happened to Sybilla"--wrinkling up her forehead +into annoyed furrows--"but she is so dreadfully sprightly when he is +there; she never was sprightly with Dr. Coldstream, and he is such an +impossible man!--the sort of man who, when first he comes in, always +says, 'Well, how are we this morning?' Do not you think that it stamps a +man to say 'How are we?'" + +"I think it does." + +"He talks such nonsense to her!"--with irritation--"he tells her that +he, too, is a bundle of nerves! if you could only see him! And one day +he told her that when first he came here he had seen the Angel of Death +waving his fans above her head! and she swallows it all!" + +"I am not at all surprised." + +"It makes me sick!" cries she energetically; "let us go into the +garden." + +So into the garden they go; both the new one, whose luxuriant growth of +verdure is the outcome of but eight or nine years; and the old one, +along whose straight walks the feet of the Moorish ladies used to patter +under the orange-trees. Beneath them now there are no white bundles of +muslin; only on the ground the oranges lie thick, no one in this +plenteous land thinking it worth while to pick them up. Jim and his +companion pace rather silently to a pretty Moorish summer-house, dug, a +few years ago, by the English architect out of a farm-house, into which +it had been built. It is dainty and cool, with a little dome and lovely +green and blue tiles; and an odd small spring, which is taught to wander +by tiny snaky channels into a little basin. They go into the +summer-house and sit down. + +"Yes, it is pretty," says the girl absently! but her mind is evidently +preoccupied by some other subject than the beauty of the giant bignonia +which is expanding the multitude of its orange-red clusters all over a +low wall, making it into one burning hedge, and has called forth an +exclamation of delight from Burgoyne. What that subject is immediately +appears. + +"Do you know who is in Algiers--whom I saw driving through the Place +Bressant on Sunday afternoon?" + +"Who?" + +"The Le Marchants. Ah, you are not surprised!"--rather suspiciously. +"You knew already!" + +Jim hesitates a second; then, reflecting that, whether or not he +acknowledges the fact now, Cecilia is certain to learn it in a day or +two at latest, he answers with a slight laugh: + +"It would be odd if I did not, seeing that they are staying at my +hotel." + +"You knew that when you went there?"--very quickly. + +"Of course not!"--with a movement of impatience. + +A pause. + +"I suppose," says Cecilia, rather cautiously, as if aware that she is +treading on dangerous ground, "that you have not found out why they +stampeded from Florence in that extraordinary way? Oh no, of course +not!"--as this suggestion is received with a still more accented writhe +than her former one. "It is not a thing upon which you could question +them; and, after all, it was their own affair; it was no business of +ours, was it?" + +"Not the slightest." + +"I always used to like them," continues Cecilia pensively; "at +least"--becoming aware of an involuntary movement of surprise at this +statement on the part of her neighbour--"at least, they never gave me +the chance of _liking_ them; but I always _admired_ them. I wonder are +they more accessible than they were in Florence? There are so few nice +English here this year; everybody says that there never was a year when +there were so few nice English!" + +The tentative towards sociability implied in this last speech is +received by Jim in a discouraging silence. He has not the slightest +desire to promote any overture on the part of Cecilia towards intimacy +with Elizabeth. He knows that they would be unsuccessful; and, moreover, +he is conscious that he would be annoyed if they were not. + + +"I can fancy that this would be a very pleasant place if one had someone +to go about with," continues she; "but father grows less and less +inclined to move. Poor dear! he is not so young as he was, and I am not +quite old enough yet, I suppose, to go about alone." + +She makes a rather wistful pause--a pause which he feels that she +intends him to fill by an offer of himself as her escort. But none such +comes. Realizing this, she goes on with a sigh: + +"There are not many advantages in being old; but, at least, one is +freer, and in a youth spent as mine is, there is really not much profit +or pleasure." + +The tone in which she makes this lugubrious reflection is so extremely +doleful that Jim cannot refrain from a laugh. + +"Cheer up, old girl! there is a good time coming! It is a long lane that +has no turning." + +But he contents himself with these vague forms of consolation. He has no +engagements of his own. Why, then, is he conscious of so strong a +reluctance towards tying himself by any promise to the broadly-hinting +lady beside him? There is another pause, during which Cecilia looks down +on the floor with a baffled air, and traces the outlines of the tiles +with the point of her red sunshade. + +"There is a band plays twice a week in the Place de Gouvernement--plays +admirably. Now, I suppose that there would be nothing odd; that no one +could say anything; that it would not be the least improper, considering +our connection and everything, if you were to take me to hear it some +day?" + +"I never have the slightest idea of what is improper and what is not," +replies he; but there is more of alarm than of encouragement in his +tone. + +"No more have I"--laughing rather awkwardly--"but in this case I am +pretty sure. Tuesdays and Fridays are the days on which the band plays." + +"Oh!" + +"To-day is Tuesday, is not it?" + +"Yes." + +Another pause. + +"I thought that perhaps, if you had nothing better to do, you might take +me to-day?" + +The direct proposal which he has in vain tried to avert has come. If he +accept it, of what profit to him will the absence of the Le Marchant +parents be? He does not formulate this fact to himself, not having, +indeed, owned to his own heart that he has any set design upon +Elizabeth's company for the afternoon. + + +"I am afraid----" he begins slowly. + +"You are vamping up an excuse!" cries Cecilia, reddening. "I see it in +your eyes. You cannot have made any engagements here yet. You do not +know anybody, do you, except the Le Marchants?" + +"And they have gone to Hammam Rhira," replies he precipitately. + +He is ashamed the moment that the words are out of his mouth, for he +knows that they convey a falsehood. + +"At least----" + +But she interrupts him before he can add his conscience clause. + +"To-morrow, then?" + +Again he hesitates. The same objections apply with even greater force to +the morrow. + +"But the band does not play to-morrow." + +"Oh! what does that matter?" rejoins she impatiently. "I had just as +soon go somewhere else--the Arab town, the Kabyle village, anywhere." + +He is driven into a corner, and remains there silent so long that there +is a distinct element of offence in the tone and large sigh with which +the girl resumes. + +"Well, times are changed! I always used to make one in those happy +excursions at Florence; and somehow--thanks to her, I suppose--I never +felt a bad third." + +She rises as she speaks, and takes a couple of huffy steps towards the +house; but he overtakes and stops her. The allusion to Amelia has +annoyed and yet stirred in him the sea of remorse, which is always lying +but a very little way below the surface in his soul. + +"Why, Cis!" he says, in a tone of affectionate rallying, "are we going +to quarrel at this time of day--you and I? Of course I will take you to +the band and the Kabyle village, and any other blessed sight you choose +to name, only tell me by which of them you would like to begin to ride +round." + +As he leaves the house and the appeased fair one, after luncheon, an +hour and a half later, he tells himself that he has got off cheaply in +having vaguely sacrificed the whole of his Algerian future, but having +preserved to-day and to-morrow. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + "And therein sat a lady fresh and fayre, + Making sweet solace to herself alone. + Sometimes she sang as lowd as lark in ayre, + Sometimes she laught, as mery as Pope Joan." + + +Jim's first care on returning to his hotel is to ascertain that the +departure for Hammam Rhira has really taken place, and, having been +reassured on this point, retires to his own bedroom to reconnoitre the +terrace, upon which it gives. The sun has long drunk up the rain from +the tiles, and the chairs have been set out again. The hotel guests, in +all the sociability of their after-luncheon mood, are standing and +sitting about. The widow Wadman, with great play of eyebrow and lip, is +pacing up and down in arch conversation with her habitual victim. +Snatches of her alluring talk reach Jim behind his muslin curtain as she +comes and goes: + +"I think that caged birds ought to be _loved_!" "The Prophet was a +wise man, was not he? he knew a little about us," etc. + +In her usual place, aloof from the rest of the company, Elizabeth is +sitting in a clinging white gown of some woolly stuff. With a dainty +white kerchief twisted about her head, and a bundle of many-tinted +Eastern stuffs on her knees, she looks like a little Romney. Now and +again, as fragments of the widow's siren strains reach her ears, he sees +her lips curl up into delighted laughter; but, for the most part, she +seems to be looking round rather uneasily, as if seeking something or +someone. Can it be himself that she, in her innocence of being observed, +is on the watch for? He has no right to be playing the spy on her in any +case. It is clear that, dressed as she is, she cannot be meditating +going out. He must not frighten her by any too direct or sudden +attentions. In a little while the other occupants of the terrace will +drift away, and he will stroll out and join her, and together they will +watch the shade of the ficus-tree, lengthening over the red flags. But +she presently baffles his calculations by rising, and, with her +rainbow-tinted pile of brocades clasped in her slender arms, slowly +passes into the house. Has she retreated thither for good? and will he +have to frame some new flimsy excuse for knocking at her door? But again +he is out of his reckoning, for in about a quarter of an hour she +re-issues, dressed for walking; and after one more lingering and, as it +seems to him, disappointed glance around her, paces, a solitary little +figure, down the hill. He lays his watch before him, and, having counted +five minutes on its dial-plate, sets off in pursuit. He overtakes her +just as she reaches the point where the lane debouches into the +highroad. She stands, looking rather disconsolately, first up the hill, +then down it, evidently uncertain which direction to choose. + +"You cannot make up your mind?" he says, pausing beside her, and taking +off his hat. + +She gives a slight start, and a friendly, pleased smile runs all over +her face and up into her eyes--a smile that makes him say to himself +confidently that it _was_ he whom her glance had been seeking on the +terrace. + +"Which do you advise?" + +"I advise the town." + +He has long known her teachableness, so it is no great surprise to him +that she at once turns in the direction counselled. + +"As I am going there myself, will you allow me to walk a little way with +you?" + +He makes the request with respectful diffidence; and she, after one +small troubled look, evidently given to the memory of her father, +assents. + +They set off down the hill together, the air, sharp after the rain--as +sharp, at least, as Algiers' stingless air ever is--bringing the colour +to Elizabeth's cheeks, as she steps along light-heartedly, scarcely +refraining from breaking into a run, down the steep incline. Her spirits +are so evidently rising at every yard that he hazards his next step. + +"I am going to see the Arab town; Miss Strutt says that I ought." + +"She meant you to ask her to show it you!" cries Elizabeth, with a +laugh; "but she was quite right--it is delightful; I am sure you will +like it." + +"You have been there?" + +"Yes, once or twice; not half so often"--regretfully--"as I should like +to have been." + +Dare he speak upon the last innocent hint? But while he is doubting she +goes on: + +"You must take care not to lose yourself; it is such a puzzling place; +all the streets are exactly like each other." + +"You do not feel inclined to show me the way about it?" + +He throws out the suggestion in a semi-bantering voice, so that if it +meet with obvious disapproval he may at once withdraw it. She stops +suddenly stock-still, and faces him. + +"Are you speaking seriously? It would be very delightful; but do you +think I might? do you think I ought?" + +She lifts her eyes, widely opened, like a child's at hearing of some +unexpected treat, to his. How astonishingly clear they are! and how +curiously guileless! He has not the least doubt that she will sweetly +acquiesce in his decision, whichever way it tends; and, for a second, a +movement of irritation with her for her pliability crosses his mind. She +ought to be able to have an opinion of her own. While he hesitates, she +speaks again. + +"It is just the afternoon to do something pleasant on," she says +wistfully, and yet gaily too. "Oh, how good the air tastes! and how +dearly I love the sun!"--lifting her face with sensitive lips, half +open, as if to suck in his beams, to the great gold luminary pouring +down his warmth through the pepper-trees upon them. "But I will take +your advice; I know of old"--with a pretty flattering smile--"that you +always give good advice. Do you think that I ought--do you _really_ +think that I ought?" + +He throws conscience to the winds, and although not two hours ago he had +professed to Cecilia his inability to decide upon the propriety or +impropriety of any given course of female action, now answers with an +almost brutal decisiveness: + +"I do not think that there is the smallest doubt about it." + +A relieved look crosses her features. + +"Then I am sure it is all right," she says, with a joyful surrendering +of her judgment into his keeping, and so, once again, steps along with +her quick feather-light feet at his side. + +For the moment she is the happier of the two, since he is not perfectly +pleased either with himself or her. It is in vain that he tells himself +that it is no babe whom he is beguiling; that, difficult as it is to +believe it, those limpid eyes have looked at the sun for +seven-and-twenty years. He still has a lingering sense of discomfort at +having availed himself, for his own profit, of her ductility. And yet, +five minutes later, he takes yet further advantage of that quality in +her. They have reached the Plateau Saulière, and the stand of fiacres +that "stationnent" there. Jim pauses. + +"It is a good distance to the Arab town, I fancy, and very tiring +walking when you get there." + +"It is as steep as the side of a house; we shall be like flies on a +wall," cries she delightedly. + +"It would be a pity to be too tired to enjoy it before you got there, +would not it?" says he doubtfully, and eyeing her bright slenderness +with an air of uncertainty as to her powers of endurance. "Had not we +better--would you mind--our driving there?" + +"I am not at all tired," replies she; "I do not feel as if I ever should +be tired to-day; but if you think it better----" + +Still he looks at her dubiously. To him there appears to be a much +greater degree of the compromising in a _tête-à-tête_ drive than in a +walk. In the one case the meeting may have been accidental; in the other +there can be no mistake as to the deliberate intention. But either this +does not strike Elizabeth, or she thinks, "In for a penny, in for a +pound"; or, lastly, and most probably, having given up her judgment into +his keeping, she finds it easiest and most natural to acquiesce in +whatever he may propose. + +The ungenerous thought flashes across him that if this is the principle +on which she has guided her life, it is small wonder if she have made +shipwreck of it. He hails a fiacre, and silently hands her in, and again +they are off. + +Elizabeth has disclaimed fatigue, and yet the restful position is +evidently agreeable to her delicate body; and she thanks him so +gratefully for his thought of her that his hard thoughts of her dissolve +into remorse, and by-and-by change into an enjoyment almost as entire +and uncalculating as her own. + +Elizabeth has astonishing powers of enjoying herself. If he had not +known that fact before, the afternoon would have revealed it to him. + +She must have driven through the French town almost every day since her +arrival, and yet its cheerful white-shuttered houses, its boulevards of +glossy-leaved ficus-trees, its cafés, its arcaded streets with their +polyglot promenaders, seem to fill her with as lively a pleasure as if +she had but just landed from the steamboat that brought her. + +The three Spahis, eternally sitting in a row on a bench outside some +general officer's quarters, robed in their great red cloaks, with +muslin-swathed swart heads and long red-leather boots, dimly descried +beneath the stately sweep of their mantles, sitting there motionless, +solemn and silent as the Fates; a venerable Arab, only to be +distinguished from Abraham or Isaac by his carrying a vulgar brown +umbrella; a short Kabyle seen in back view, with his rope-bound +headdress, his brown-and-white striped frock, and his bare red legs +striding along, looking exactly like a ludicrous and indelicate old +woman; a Biskrah water-carrier, poising a great burnished copper pot on +his shoulder; two little baggy trousered white ladies waddling along; a +dozen of smart blue Turcos. She is enraptured with them all. + +They leave their fiacre in the Place de la Cathédrale, and enter upon +the mysterious recesses of the Arab town. Up and down endless flights of +steps, up street after street--if streets they can be called, that are +not wider than a yard in their widest part--and above their heads the +rafter-supported houses lean together, letting scarce a glint of +daylight drip down upon the dusky path far below. + +They pass arched doorways, with pretty designs in plaster--doorways +whose doors open inwards upon mysterious interiors--house or court, or +mosque or Marabé. All along stand tiny shops, like wild-beast dens, as +far as light and space go, lit only by the tempered light--in reality, +only semi-darkness--that enters in front. How can they see to +work--plait straw, for instance? as the three ebon-black negroes are +doing, upon whom they stare in, asquat upon the ground. The turbans, and +the red sashes, and the burnouses glimmer out of the little dim +frontages, where charming pierced-brass Moorish lamps hang and swing +aloft; and tempting piles of dully splendid brocades and bright +gold-laminated gauzes gleam from the crowded shelves. + +The narrow streetlets are full of unbusy, un-hurrying Easterns, hideous +old negresses grinning like monkeys, idle Arabs sauntering along in +their lazy grace, draped like Greek statues, sauntering along between +the blue-washed walls that look in their effective variation upon the +blinding whitewash as if some of the sky-colour had rubbed off upon +them. + +Jim and Elizabeth have paused, in their leisurely strolling and staring, +to look from the straight shadowed alley in which they are standing up a +long flight of steps to a low carved doorway, and a bit of starch-blue +wall at the top. Down the steep flight a veiled, trousered woman is +waddling, her immense pantaloons waggling awkwardly as she descends. + +Elizabeth stands still, shaking with laughter at the sight. Jim laughs +too. + +"There is no expense spared in material there, is there? It would not be +a bad dress for a fancy ball. Did you ever go to a fancy ball as a +Moorish lady?" + +Her laughter lessens, though her face is still alight with mirth. + +"I never was at a fancy ball." + +"_Never?_" + +"Never; I never was at any ball in my life." + +Her laughter is quite dead now. + +"Never at any ball in your life!" repeats he, his surprise betraying him +into one of those flights back into the past for which she has always +showed such repugnance. "Why, you used to love dancing madly! I remember +your dancing like a dervish. What is more, I remember dancing with you." + +"Oh, do not remember anything to-day!" cries she, with a sort of writhe +in her voice; "do not let either of us remember anything! let us have a +whole holiday from remembering!" + +So saying, she moves on quickly; and yet with the dance gone out of her +feet. It never quite comes back. They look into an Arab club, where men +are squatting, playing with odd-looking cards and drinking muddy coffee. +Then a loud noise of jabbering young voices makes them peep in upon an +Arab school, where a circle of little Moslems is sitting on the ground, +scribbling Arabic on slates; while between the knees of the turbaned +master a tiny baby scholar, of three or four, is standing in a lovely +dull green coatlet. Elizabeth strokes the baby-learner's coppery cheek +with her light hand, and says, with a laugh, that it seems odd to see +little street-boys writing Arabic; but her laughter is no longer the +bubbling, irrepressible joy-drunk thing it was before he had indulged in +his tactless reminiscences; it is the well-bred, civil, grown-up sound +that so often has no inside gladness to match it. In his vexation with +himself for the clouding over of his little heaven that he himself has +effected, he tries to persuade himself that it is caused by bodily +fatigue. + +"If I were asked," he says, by-and-by, looking down affectionately at +her pallid profile, "I should say that you had had about enough of this; +your spirit"--smiling--"is so very much too big for your body that one +has to keep an eye upon you." + +"It would not be much of a spirit if it were not," replies she, with a +pretty air of perfectly sincere disparagement of her own slight +proportions; "I know that I look a poor thing, but I am rather a fraud: +I do not tire easily; I am not tired now." + +"Bored, then?" with a slight accent of pique. + +She lifts her sweet look, with a sort of hurry of denial in it. + +"Most distinctly not." + +"You would like to go on, then?" + +"Yes." + +"Or back?" + +She hesitates, her eye exploring his with, as he feels, a genuine +anxiety in it to discover what his own wishes are, so that her decision +may jump with them. + +"Yes--perhaps; I have really no choice." + +He both looks at and speaks to her with a streak of exasperation. + +"Do you never have a will--a preference of your own?" + +It is evidently no unfamiliar thing to her to be addressed with +causeless irritability. The recollection of her father's tone in +speaking to her flashes back remorsefully upon Jim's memory. Is he +himself going to take a leaf out of that book? It would be a relief to +him were she to answer him sharply; but to do that is apparently not +within her capabilities, though the tender red that tinges her cheek +shows that she has felt his snub. + +"In this case I really have not," she answers gently; "but I dare say +that it was tiresome of me not to speak more decidedly; let us--let +us"--another swift and apparently quite involuntary glance at him to see +that she is not, after all, running counter to his inclinations--"let us +go home!" + +So they go home. It is near sun-setting as they drive along the +Boulevard de la République, the fitting end to so princely a day. At the +quay the moored vessels lie, their masts and spars making a dark design +against an ineffable evening sky of mother-of-pearl and translucent +pink. The sea, which to-day has not been of sapphire, but of +"watchet-blue," pierced and shot with white, now copies exactly the +heavens. It, too, shades from opal to translucent pink. How many changes +of raiment there are in the wardrobe of the great wet mother! + +"If I had as many gowns as the Mediterranean, how well-dressed I should +be!" says Elizabeth, with a smile. + + +It is the first time she had spoken since they had set off on their +return-drive. She is lying back, with her hands carefully shielding in +her lap a few little crockery pots that she has bought of a fat Turk for +some children at her hotel Her face looks tired; and yet over its small +area is spread an expression of content that makes his heart warm. Is it +only the pageant of sky and ocean that has called forth that look of +real, if passing, happiness on the features of her who is always so +tremblingly sensitive an instrument for all influences of beauty and +grandeur to play upon? or has his own neighbourhood anything to say to +it? Before he can give himself an answer to this anxious question, she +speaks again. + +"You do not mind my not talking, do you?" she asks, half apologetically, +and yet with a confidence in his sympathy that still further quickens +the beats of his already not very still heart. + +"No, I am sure you do not. Somehow--it is a great gift--you always feel +in tune with one, and one does not chatter most when one is most greatly +pleased, does one? Oh, what a treat you have given me!" + +As she speaks, her humid eyes travel from his face to where, beyond the +long Atlas range, delicately toothed and cut out, rises the gold-washed +snow of the Kabyle mountains, that retire majestically invisible on dull +days, and only come out, candescent and regal, when the great sun rides +in pomp. Above their heads wild plumes of deep rose, that it seems +ridiculous to call clouds, tuft the sky. + +Jim's look has followed his companion's; the chins of both are in the +air; the cheerful _va et vient_ of the boulevard is lost upon them. They +see neither the Frenchmen nor plump Frenchwomen drinking coffee outside +the cafés, nor the idle _indigènes_ leaning draped against the sea-wall. +(Never does that industrious race seem to attempt any severer exertion.) + + "Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired." + +But it is brought back to life with a jump. + +"_Arrêtez! arrêtez!_" cries a female voice. "Jim! Jim! do you not see +us? _Arrêtez! arrêtez!_" + +Obedient to his ears, Burgoyne's eyes make one bound from the heavenly +spectacle down to earth, and alight upon the Wilsons' carriage, which, +going in the same direction as himself, has just been brought to a +standstill alongside of his fiacre, by the solemnly beautiful, +yellow-jacketed native coachman. + +It is, of course, Cecilia's voice that has apostrophized him, but oh, +portent! does his vision, so lately recalled from the skyey bowers, play +him false? or is it really the moribund Sybilla, stretched beside her, +with only two instead of three cushions at her back, with a bonnet on +her head--he did not even know that she possessed a bonnet--and with a +colour in her cheek and a lustre in her eye that may owe their origin +either to the freshness of the evening air, or to the invigorating +properties of the conversation of the very ordinary-looking young man +seated opposite to her? + +In a second Jim has leapt out of his own vehicle, and gone to the side +of the other. It is a perfectly futile impulse that leads him to do so. +Not all the leaping in the world from her side now can alter the fact +that he has been driving _tête-à-tête_ with Elizabeth Le Marchant, and +that the Wilson sisters have seen him so doing; but yet it is a dim +instinct of preservation towards, and shielding of her, that leads him +to adopt this useless course of action. It is Cecilia who has summoned +him, and yet, when he reaches her side, she does not seem to have +anything particular to say to him. Sybilla is the one to address him. + +"A miracle! a miracle! I know you are saying to yourself!" cries she, in +a sprightly voice; "and well you may! This is the miracle-monger!" +indicating with a still sprightlier air her _vis-à-vis_. "Dr. Crump, let +me present to you Mr. Burgoyne--Jim, our Jim, whom I have so often +talked to you about." + +The person thus apostrophized responds by a florid bow, and an +over-gallant asseveration that any person introduced to his acquaintance +by Miss Sybilla needs no further recommendation. + +"It is an experiment, of course; there is no use in pretending that it +is not an experiment," continues she, with a slight relapse into +languor; "but"--lowering her voice a little--"they wished me to make the +effort." + +It is a favourite allocation of Sybilla's that any course of action +towards which she is inclined is adopted solely under the pressure of +urgent wishes on the part of her family. Burgoyne has long known, and +been exasperated by, this peculiarity; but at present she may say what +she pleases; he hears no word of it, for his ear is pricked to catch the +sentences that Cecilia is leaning over the carriage-side to shoot at +Elizabeth. + +"Oh, Miss Le Marchant! is it you? I beg your pardon, I did not recognise +you at the first moment. One does not recognise people--does one?--when +one is not expecting to see them"--is an intended sting lurking in this +implication? "How are you? How do you like Algiers? I hope Mrs. Le +Marchant is well. What a long time it is since we met! I hope we shall +see something of you." + +(No, evidently no sting was meant. Cecilia, with all her faults, is +really a good soul, and he will take her to hear the band play next +Tuesday.) + +There seems to him to be a slight falter in the tone with which +Elizabeth responds, and her voice sounds curiously small and low; but +that may be merely owing to its flute quality, following upon and +contrasting the other's powerful organ. + +It is not till the two parties have again separated, and that he is once +more seated by her side in the fiacre, that he dares steal a look at her +face to see how plainly written on it are the traces of vexation caused +by a meeting which has produced in his own breast such acute annoyance. +Good heavens! it is even worse than he had expected. Down the cheek +nearest to him two good-sized tears are unmistakably trickling. No doubt +the consciousness of the mysterious story attaching to her past makes +her smartingly aware of how doubly discreet her own conduct should +be--makes her bitterly repent of her present indiscretion. + +He is a strait-laced man, and it seems to him as if there were something +gravely compromising to her in this _tête-à-tête_ drive with himself, in +the known absence of her parents at Hammam Rhira. Why was he fool enough +this morning to admit to Cecilia that they had gone thither? He had no +business to have led her into temptation, and she had no business to +have fallen into it. Remorse and irritation give a tartness to his tone +as he says: + +"After all, I do not think you need take it so much to heart." + +"Take what to heart?" she asks, in unaffected surprise, turning her full +face, and her eyes, each with one hot raindrop dimming its slate-blue, +upon him. "Oh, I see"--a sudden enlightenment coming to her, and +changing her with instant spring from a snowdrop to a carnation--"I see +what you mean; but you are mistaken. I--I--it had not occurred to me; I +was only thinking--only remembering that the last time I saw her was +at--at Vallombrosa." + +_Vallombrasa!_ Is he never to hear the last of Vallombrosa? + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + + +The latest waking impression left on Jim's fancy is that it is the +golden rule of Elizabeth Le Marchant's life to comply with any and every +request that is made to her; moreover, that in her mind the +boundary-line which parts the permitted from the unpermitted is not so +clearly defined as, did she belong to him (the naked hypothesis makes +his strait-laced heart give a jump), he should wish it to be. If on the +morrow, with the sun shining and the leaf-shadows dancing on the fretted +balcony-wall, he invite her to some fresh junket, he is sure that she +will readily and joyfully acquiesce; that her spirits will go up like +rockets at the prospect; and that her one anxiety will be that she may +be sure to hit in her choice upon the form of dissipation most congenial +to him. He will therefore not invite her. He will have a greater care +for her reputation than apparently she has for it herself. Not until the +return of her parents, not until the difficulties of intercourse with +her are centupled, and the pleasure minimized, will he again seek her. + +To put himself beyond the reach of temptation, he sets off immediately +after breakfast on a long walking expedition, which he means to occupy +the whole of the daylight hours. He wanders about the great plain of the +Metidje; he visits a Kabyle village, with its hovels cowering among its +hideous fat-fleshed cactus; later on in the afternoon he finds himself +in the little French hamlet of Biermandreis, and finally drops down upon +the Jardin d'Essai, that delightful botanic garden which is one of the +many blessings for which Algerian France has to thank the +much-vilipended Napoleon III. + +It is difficult for even the reddest Republican to think hardly of that +dead ruler as he walks down the avenue of gigantic palms that lead, +straight as a die, to where, like a deep blue gem far away, the +Mediterranean shows + + "No bigger than an agate stone + On the forefinger of an alderman." + +Jim walks along beneath the huge date-palms that give him a crick in the +neck to gape up at ere he can perceive their towering head of waving +plumes far up against the blue. They remind him absurdly of the pictures +in the missionary books of his youth--the palm-tree, the log cabin, the +blackamoors, and the missionary in a palm hat. Is _he_ the missionary, +and is this inky negress in a black bonnet, scarcely distinguishable +from her face, his one catechumen? + +Alternating with the date are superb fan-palms, of which it is difficult +to realize that it is their stunted, puny brothers which, anxiously +tended, sponged, and cosseted, drag out a languid existence in London +drawing-rooms. Among their Titan fans lies their mighty fruit, like a +bunch of grapes, a yard and a half long, strung upon ropes of yellow +worsted. + +Half-way down its length the main avenue is intersected by a splendid +alley of bamboos, which lean their smooth-jointed stems and their +luxuriant narrow leaves towards each other across the dimmed interspace, +and unite in a pointed Gothic arch of living green. + +Jim paces objectlessly down the long arcade, stooping now and again to +pick up a fragment of the peeled bark that looks so strangely like a +papyrus roll with a mother-of-pearl glaze upon it. He pulls it idly +open, as if expecting to find the secret of some forgotten race written +upon its shining surface; but if he reads any secret there, it is only +his own, which, after all, is not much of a secret. He merely sees +written there that it is too early to go home yet; that there is no +security that Elizabeth may not still be sitting on the terrace +stitching away with her gold thimble and her coloured silks. The sun, it +is true, has left the garden, but he departs thence over-early. It will +be safer to stay away yet half an hour or so. + +Thus resolving, he retraces his steps, and explores in a new direction; +saunters down a rose-alley, where, climbing immoderately high up tall +palms, seeming as if they would strangle them with their long bowery +arms, rose-trees wave far above him in the still air; and upon them, +though it is still but the month of January, when people are skating, +blue-nosed, in England, creamy tea-roses show their pale-yellow hearts, +fair and frequent, on the unpruned boughs, rioting in licensed liberty +above his head. The walk ends in a circle of gigantic magnolias, which +take hands round a square fountain-basin. Each huge trunk is, as it +were, a little commonwealth of trees rolled into one, instead of a +single tree. Beneath them benches stand. Upon one his negress sits, +chatting with a French _bonne_; on a second there is also something +female and slender, something with its little white profile--how white +it looks in this deceiving light!--lifted, although white, yet smiling, +animated, and talking to a man standing beside it. + +He has dawdled and kicked his heels, and run the chance of contracting a +spiteful Southern chill, in order to avoid Elizabeth; and he has +succeeded in running straight into her arms. + +He does not at the first glance recognise her companion, but a second +look shows him that he is one of the inmates of the hotel--a French +Vicomte; and though Jim knows that he is both consumptive and the father +of a family, that knowledge does not hinder the rising in his breast of +the jealous and censorious thought that he has detected Elizabeth in +throwing a great deal more than the necessary modicum of amiability into +her manner to him. + +As Jim comes into sight, the Frenchman clicks his heels, doubles up his +body, lifts his hat, and walks away. It is evident, at all events, that +their meeting was a casual one; and the reflection brings with it a +sense of relief, coupled with a feeling of shame at his own rooted +readiness to suspect her, on any or no evidence, which yet, on the other +hand, is not strong enough, when she turns her sweet bright look towards +him, to hinder the thought that it is scarcely, if at all, sweeter or +brighter than that which he had caught her squandering on the casual +_table d'hôte_ acquaintance who has just quitted her. + +"You, too!" she says; "why, the whole hotel seems to be emptied out into +these gardens; the widow Wadman is buying violets--mark if they do not +appear upon Uncle Toby at dinner to-night. The Vicomte----" + +"Yes, I saw you engaged in animated dialogue with him," interrupts Jim, +with slight acrimony; "I had no idea that you were such allies." + +"Had not you?" rejoins she innocently. "He was telling me about his +English governess, what a treasure she is"--her face dimpling +mischievously--"and how wonderfully pure her accent. So it is--pure +Cockney. You should hear the little Vicomte talk of the b_i_by and the +p_i_pers." + +He rewards her small pleasantry only by an absent smile, and she speaks +again--rather wistfully this time. + +"Have you been on another expedition?" + +"No, not an expedition; only a walk. If"--yielding to the temptation of +putting a question which no one would have judged more severely than he, +had it been put by anyone else--"if I had invited you to do me the +honour of making another excursion with me to-day, do you think that you +would have consented?" + +As he speaks, he departs yet further from the line of conduct he has +marked out for himself by sitting down on the bench at her side. + +Her eyes are fixed upon the soaring date-palm, which stands, instead of +a water-jet, in the middle of the fountain-basin, and on which last +year's dead plumes hang sapless, and ready to fall off, in contrast to +this year's verdant vigour. + +"Is not that rather a tantalizing question when you did not ask me?" +inquires she, with soft archness. "Yes, I suspect that I should; I was +so very happy yesterday; and although you told me the other +night"--swallowing a sigh--"that you supposed I must love my own +society, in point of fact, I do not think I do." + +After all, the sun is not quite gone; there are flashes of light in the +verdant gloom, and green reflections in the water. + +"And yet," says Jim thoughtfully, "you seem to have a good deal of it; I +suppose, in your position, it is unavoidable." + +He had meant an allusion to her situation as bad third to her uxorious +parents; before his mind's eye has risen a picture of the little forlorn +shawled figure he had seen studying its Italian Grammar with the door +shut upon its loneliness; but almost before the words have left his +lips, he sees of how different, of how cruel, a construction they may be +capable. + +He snatches a glance of real terror at her, to see whether she has made +that erroneous, yet all too plausible application--a glance which +confirms his worst fears. She has turned as white as the +pocket-handkerchief which she is passing over her trembling lips. + +"Yes," she says in a hollow whisper; "you are right. In my position it +_is_ unavoidable, and it is cowardly of me not to accept it as such." + + +"I mean"--he cries desperately--"I only meant--I mean----" + +But she does not suffer him to finish his stuttered explanation. + +"It is cold," she says, rising. "I will go home." + +He does not attempt to accompany or follow her. + +After she is gone, he rages about the garden, and passes beyond it to +where--still sunlight-smitten--the blue Mediterranean is breaking in +joyous foam. + +He sits down on the shelly strand, and, in futile anger, hurls back the +wet pebbles into the sea's azure lap. Away to the left, the +three-cornered town swarms candescent up the hill, and the white +lighthouse stands out against the lapis-coloured air. + +How sharp-cut and intense it all is!--none of our dear undecided grays. +Here, if you are not piercing blue, you are dazzling white or profound +green. There is, indeed, something less sharp-cut and uncompromising--a +something more of mystery in the glory that--bright, too, but not making +its full revelation--envelopes the long hill range that, ending in Cape +Matifou, stretches away to the far right. Round the corner, to the right +too, a party of Arabs, sitting sideways on little donkeys, white draped, +with their _haik_-swathed heads, are disappearing on their small beasts +in the clear air. It is like a page out of the Bible--a flight into +Egypt--and they are going towards Egypt too. + +Jim's eye follows the placid Easterns, but without catching the +infection of their tranquillity. "Whenever I see her, I stick a knife +into her! It is impossible! There is no use trying! I will give up the +attempt. It is out of the question to have any happy relations with a +woman who has a past!" + + * * * * * + +After all, Mr. Le Marchant does not like Hammam Rhira. He thinks the +hotel cold and the roads bad. Jim overhears him telling someone this, +and his own heart leaps. + +It is true that he takes it to task for doing so. Perhaps, after all, +Elizabeth's removal would have been the best solution of his problem. +Had she left Algiers, he could scarcely have followed her, and she would +have been freed from the chance of his clumsy stabs. + +But all the same his heart leaps. It leaps yet higher a day or two later +when he discovers that, though Hammam Rhira has not met with Mr. Le +Marchant's approbation, yet that, by his trip to it, he has been bitten +with a taste for travel, the outcome of which is his solitary departure +on an expedition to Constantin, Tunis, etc., which must occupy him at +least a week. His wife accompanies him to the station, but his daughter +is not allowed to go beyond the hotel steps. + +Jim surreptitiously watches her hovering with diffident affection round +her father, unobtrusively and unthanked fetching and carrying for him. +He sees the cold kiss that just brushes her cheek, and hears the chill +parting admonition to look well after her mother and see that she does +not overtire herself. + +It is accepted with ready meekness, but leaves the recipient so +crestfallen, as she stands looking after the departing vehicle, that +Burgoyne cannot forbear joining her, with some vague and, as he knows, +senseless velleity of championship and consolation. + +"He is gone for a week, is not he?" is the form that his sympathy takes, +in a tone which he is at but small pains not to render congratulatory. + +"Yes, quite a week." + +"Are you"--he is perfectly conscious while asking it that he has not the +slightest right to put the question--"are you glad or sorry?" + +She starts perceptibly. + +"Why should I be glad? Do you mean"--with an unconquerable streak of +satisfaction in her own voice--"because I shall have mammy all to +myself? You must not think"--with an obvious rush of quickly following +compunction--"that I am not fond of him, because he sometimes speaks a +little roughly to me." After a pause, in a lowered voice: "You see, when +you have broken a person's heart, you can scarcely blame him for not +having a very high opinion of you." + +So saying, she suddenly leaves him as she had left him in the Jardin +d'Essai. He does not again approach her that day, but at dinner-time he +has the answer to his question as to her being glad or sorry at her +father's departure. She is apparently in the best of spirits, sitting +nestled close up to her mother for the better convenience of firing a +series of little jokes and comments into that parent's appreciative ear. + +"They make fun of the whole hotel," observes Miss Strutt with +exasperation. "I do not believe that one of us escapes! When he is not +there to check them, there is no holding them!" + +_No holding_ Elizabeth! The phrase recurs to him several times during +the next few days, as not without its justness, when he sees its object +flitting about the house, gay as a linnet; when he meets her singing +subduedly to herself upon the stairs; when he watches her romping with +the French children, and mischievously collecting flowers of Clapham +eloquence from their governess, which she is good enough to retail for +his own and her mother's benefit when evening unites the three in the +retirement of their little salon. For, strange and improbably blissful +as it seems, he has somehow, ere three days are over, effected an +entrance into that small and fragrant sanctuary. + +Mrs. Le Marchant's first fears that the meeting with him again would +re-open sorrow have disappeared in the light of her daughter's childish +gaiety, and are even exchanged for a compunctious gratitude to him for +having been in part the cause of her new light-heartedness. The weather +has again broken, a fact which he alone of the whole hotel does not +deplore, since it was his own ostentatiously displayed wet-day +dreariness that was the cause of his first admission within the doors +that are closed upon all others. Moreover, had it not been wet weather, +could he have held an umbrella over Elizabeth's head when he met her in +the eucalyptus wood, and they walked among the naked trunks, while the +long, loose, pale foliage waved like dishevelled hair in the rain, and +the pungent asphodels grew thick about their feet in the red earth? And +when, by-and-by, the clouds disperse again, and there comes a fair day, +bracketed between three or four foul ones--the usual Algerian +proportion--it has grown quite natural to all three that he should sit +opposite to them in their drives; that he should haggle with Arabs for +them, and remonstrate with the landlord, and generally transfer all the +smaller roughnesses of life from their shoulders to his own. Brought +into more intimate communion with them than he has ever been before, +Burgoyne realizes how much they belong to the kneeling, leaning, +spoiling type of womankind. Elizabeth would be the easiest woman in the +world to manage. How is it that in her ten years of womanhood no man has +been found to undertake the lovely facile task? He himself knows +perfectly the treatment that would befit her; the hinted wishes--her +tact is too fine and her spirit too meek to need anything so coarse as +commands--the infinitesimal rebukes and the unlimited--oh! +limitless--caresses: + + "Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles." + +Every day he finds himself repeating Wordsworth's line, and every day, +in his fancied guidance of her, he tells himself that the blame should +be less and the kisses more. + + * * * * * + +Mr. Le Marchant has been gone more than a week, and February has come +wetly in, with rain wildly weeping against the easements, and +angry-handed rain boxing the unlucky orange-trees' ears. It has rained +for forty-eight hours without a break. The Grand Hotel is at the end of +its resources. Uncle Toby, his struggle ended, lies vanquished in the +widow's net; and there is murder in the lurid eye which Miss Strutt +turns on the votary of Whiteley. + +Jim alone, outdoor man as he habitually is, looking upon a house merely +in the light of a necessary shelter, has no quarrel either with the +absent sun or the present deluge? for are not they the cause of his +having spent two whole afternoons in the company of Elizabeth and her +mother? To-day has not Elizabeth been singing to him, and cutting him +orange-flower bread-and-butter, when Fritz brought in the afternoon tea, +and set the real English kettle fizzing over its spirit-lamp? And, in +return, has not he now, after dinner, been helping her to weed out her +own and her mother's photograph-books? As he does so the idea strikes +him of how very meagre her own collection of acquaintances seems to be. +From that weeding have they not, by an easy transition, at her +suggestion, passed to the more playful and ingenious occupation of +amputating the heads of some of the rejected friends and applying them +to the bodies of others? Each armed with a pair of scissors, and with +Mrs. Le Marchant for umpire, they have been vying with each other as to +who can produce the most startling results by this clever process. + +The palm has just been awarded to Elizabeth for a combination which +presents the head of an elderly lady, in a widow's cap, mounted upon the +cuirass and long boots of a Life Guardsman. Jim's application of the +cornet's discarded head to the body of a baby in long clothes, although +allowed to be a pretty conceit, commands but little real admiration--an +instance of nepotism which he does not allow to pass without protest. + +Elizabeth, elated by her triumph, has flown out of the room to examine +her private stores for fresh material, and Jim and her mother--for the +first time, as it happens, since that early meeting, when her anxious +eye had so plainly implored him to leave Algiers--are _tête-à-tête_. Her +changed aspect towards him as she sits, with a lingering laugh still on +her face, beside the wood fire--which, after having twice gone out, as +it almost always does, the souches being invariably wet, burns bright +and crackly--strikes him with such a feeling of warm pleasure that he +says in a voice of undisguised triumph: + +"What spirits she is in, is not she?" + +"Yes; is not she?" assents the mother eagerly. "Oh, I cannot say how +grateful I am to you for having cheered her up as you have done! Oh," +with a low sigh that seems to bear away on its slow wings the last +echoes of her late mirth, "if it could only last!" + +"Why should not it last?" + +"If nothing fresh would happen!" + +"Why should anything fresh happen?" + +She answers only indirectly; + + "'Fear at my heart, as at a cup, + The life-blood seemed to sip.' + +"Sometimes I think that Coleridge wrote those lines expressly for me." +After a pause, in a voice of anxious asking: "She has not mentioned him +to you lately, has she?" + +"No." + +"That is a good sign. Do not you think that that is a good sign? I think +that she is getting better; do not you?" + +For a moment he cannot answer, both because he is deeply touched by the +confidence in him and his sympathy evidenced by her appeal, and for a +yet more potent reason. Little she guesses how often, and with what +heart-searchings and spirit-sinkings, he has put that question to +himself. + +"I do not know," he replies at last, with difficulty; "it is hard to +judge." + +"You have not told him that we are here?" in a quick, panic-struck tone, +as of one smitten with a new and sharp apprehension. + +"Oh no!" + +"You do not think that he is at all likely to join you here?" + +"Not in the least!" with an almost angry energy, which reveals to +himself how deeply distasteful the mere suggestion of Byng's +reappearance on the scene is to him. + +Mrs. Le Marchant heaves a second sigh. This time it is one of relief. + +"Then I do not see," with a sudden bound upwards into sanguineness which +reminds him of her daughter, "why we should not all be very +comfortable." + +Jim is pondering in his mind upon the significance of this "all," +whether it is meant to include only Mr. Le Marchant, or whether, under +its shelter, he himself may creep into that promised comfort, when she +of whom they have been speaking re-enters. She has a packet of +photographs, presumably suitable for amputation, in her hand, in which +is also held a telegram, which she extends to Burgoyne. + +"I met M. Cipriani bringing you this. It seems that you ought to have +had it two days ago, but, by some mistake, it was put into another +gentleman's room--a gentleman who has never arrived--and there it has +remained. He was full of apologies, but I told him what culpable +carelessness it showed. I do trust," with a sweetly solicitous look, +"that it is not anything that matters." + +"It cannot be of much consequence," replies Jim indifferently, while a +sort of pang darts through him at the thought of how strangely destitute +he is of people to be uncomfortably anxious about, and so tears it open. + +An English telegram transmitted by French clerks often wears a very +different air from that meant to be imparted to it by the sender, which +is, perhaps, the reason why Jim remains staring so long at his--so long +that the two women's good manners prompt them to remove their +sympathetic eyes from him, and to attempt a little talk with each other. + +"I hope you have no bad news?" + +The elder one permits herself this inquiry after a more than decent +interval has elapsed, during which he has made no sign. + +He gives a start, as one too suddenly awaked out of deep sleep. + +"Bad news?" he repeats in an odd voice--"what is bad news? That depends +upon people's tastes. It is for you to judge of that; it concerns you as +much or more than it does me." + +So saying, he places the paper in her hand, and, walking away to the +little square window--open, despite the wildness of the weather--looks +out upon the indigo-coloured night. + +Although his back is turned towards them, he knows that Elizabeth is +reading over her mother's shoulder--reading this: + + "BOURGOUIN, + "Grand Hotel, + "Algiers. + + "Have heard of Le Marchants. If you do not wire to the + contrary, shall cross to-morrow.--BYNG, Marseille." + +He is not left long in doubt as to their having mastered the meaning of +the missive. + +"He is coming!" says Mrs. Le Marchant with a species of gasp; "and you +told me--not five minutes ago you told me"--with an accent of +reproach--"that there was not the remotest chance of it. Oh, stop him! +stop him! Telegraph at once! The office will be open for two or three +hours yet! There is plenty, plenty of time! Oh, telegraph at once--at +once!" + +"It is too late," replies Jim, retracing his steps to the table; "you +forget that it is two days old. You see, they have spelt my name wrong; +that accounts for the mistake. _Bourgouin!_ It looks odd spelt +_Bourgouin_, does not it?" + +He hears himself giving a small, dry laugh, which nobody echoes. + +"He must have sailed yesterday," continues the young man, wishing he +could persuade his voice to sound more natural; "he may be here at any +moment. If the weather had been decent, he would have arrived ere now." + +"Then there is nothing to be done!" rejoins Mrs. Le Marchant in a tone +of flat desperation, sitting down again on the chair out of which she +had instinctively risen at the little stir of the telegram's arrival. + +Elizabeth is dead silent. Though there is no direction by the eye to +show that Jim's next remark is aimed at her, there can be no doubt that +it is awkwardly thrown in her direction. + +"If this had not been delayed--if it had not been too late, would you +have wished, would you have decided to stop him?" + +"What is the use of asking me such a question now that it _is_ too +late?" replies she, with more of impatience, almost wrath, in her voice +than he has ever before heard that most gentle organ express. + +But besides the ire and irritation, there is another quality in it which +goads him to snatch a reluctant glance at her. She is extremely +agitated, but underlying the distress and disturbance of her face there +is an undoubted light shining like a lamp through a pale pink shade--a +light that, with all her laughter and her jokes, was not there half an +hour ago. He had often reproached himself that, by his clumsiness, he +had stuck a knife into her tender heart. She is even with him to-night. +To-night the tables are turned. It is she that has stuck a knife into +him. It is clear as day that she is _glad_ it is too late. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + +"After all," says Mrs. Le Marchant presently, rallying a little, her +naturally buoyant temperament--that temperament which she has +transmitted with such curious fidelity to her child, coming to her +rescue; "after all, there is no reason why you should see him, +Elizabeth. There is no reason why she should see him, is there, Mr. +Burgoyne? It could serve no possible end--could it?--and only be +exceedingly painful to them both. You will explain to him, will not you? +You will take any message from her? You will tell him that she really is +not up to it, will not you? It is quite true, I am sure. You are not, +are you darling? She is not, is she?" + +The mother turns as she speaks eagerly from one to the other, addressing +each in turn; but from neither does she obtain any answer. + +"Or I would speak to him myself; if you thought that better," continues +she, still interrogating them with her handsome, careworn eyes. "I would +say anything you wished said to him, and I would be careful to say it as +kindly as possible. I am sure he would understand; he would see the +sense, the justice of it, would not he? There is no need for her to +expose herself to such useless suffering, is there, Mr. +Burgoyne?"--appealing desperately to him by name, since he will not +respond to any less direct address--"when either you or I are more than +ready to shield her from it, are not we?" + +Thus apostrophized, Jim is compelled to break the silence, which seems +to himself to wall him round like a petrifaction. It is to Elizabeth +that he offers his hardly-won speech. + +"I think I need not tell you," he says gravely, and with passable +steadiness, "that I would help you in any way I could." + +She stands a moment or two irresolute, her features all quivering as if +with pain; and yet, underlying and under-shining the pain, something +that is not pain. Then she puts out a hand impulsively to each. If the +one that gives itself to Burgoyne had struck him on the mouth, instead +of offering itself with affectionate confidence to his clasp, it could +not have hurt him more than do those small fingers that lie in his, +trembling with a passion that is not for him. + +"You are both very good to me," she says brokenly. "As to you, mammy, +that is an old story. But I really believe that there is nothing +disagreeable that you, too"--with a slight grateful pressure of the +lifeless hand that so slackly keeps possession of hers--"would not do +for me. But do not think me obstinate if I say that I think--I am +sure--that it would be better--that it would hurt him less--if I spoke +to him myself." + +"It is not a question of what will hurt him least," cries Mrs. Le +Marchant, with an agony of impatience in her tone. "The thing to be +considered is what will hurt _you_ least. Mr. Burgoyne, am I not right? +Do tell her that I am! Ought not she to think of what will hurt her +least?" + +But Jim is incapable of coming a second time to her rescue. His eyes are +painfully fastened upon Elizabeth, and he is watching the pain fall off, +as it were, from her face, and the light spread rosily over it. Some +instinct makes her withdraw that hand of hers which he has shown so +little eagerness to retain, ere she says, in a low but perfectly firm +voice: + +"Well, then, I think it will hurt me least, too." + +Five minutes later Jim has left the room--ostensibly to make +arrangements for his friend's arrival, in reality because he cannot +count upon his own self-control if he remain in it. The survivors of +Elizabeth Le Marchant's acquaintance remain undecapitated. The +widow-headed Life Guardsman and the baby-bodied cornet lie unregarded on +the table, while Elizabeth herself is stretched along the floor, with +her face pressed against her mother's knees. Jim has decided to sit up +for his friend. He is perfectly aware that neither will the two women go +to bed. But he has no desire that their vigil should be shared in +common. It is equally impossible to him to take part in the noisy mirth +of the rest of the hotel, which, having taken the place of their +measureless daylight ennui, now boils over in ebullient laughter, in +dancing, squeaking, and noisily scampering out of the public +drawing-room into the hall and up the stairs. It is not till the clamour +has declined, until, indeed, its total cessation tells him that the +promiscuous revellers have retired to their apartments, that he issues +from his, and takes possession of the now empty smoking-room, whence he +can hear more distinctly than from his own bedroom any noise of wheels +approaching the hotel. The wind has risen again, and it needs an ear +very finely pricked to dissever from its mad singing, and from the +storming of the frantic rain, any lesser and alien sound. What a +terrific night in which to be out on the raging sea! Worse even than +that one last week, when the _Moïse_ broke her shaft, and tossed for +twenty-four hours at the mercy of the waves. Possibly the weather may +have already yesterday been so rough at Marseille as to prevent his +setting off. But the idea--at the first blush eagerly welcomed by +him--is dismissed from his mind almost as soon as entertained. If the +boat has started--and it is only under such heavy penalties that the +mail-boats do not start, that this contingency hardly ever occurs--Byng +will have started too. A terrific bang at the casement seems to come as +a comment upon this conviction. He will have started; but will he ever +arrive? It is said that in eight years during which they have been +running no catastrophe has ever sent one of this line of steamers to the +bottom; but yet they are cranky little craft, with engines too big for +them--built rather for speed than safety. The clock has struck, with a +repetition that seems strangely frequent through the sleeping house: 11, +11.30, 12, 12.30. + +"I will give him half an hour more," says the watcher to himself, "and +then I will turn in." + +Of this allotted half-hour only five minutes are yet left to run, when, +in a lull in the hurricane, the sound which Jim's hearing has been so +long stretched to catch--the sound of wheels on the gravel--is at length +audible. During the last two hours he has heard many phantom +wheels--many of those ghostly coaches that the wind drives shrieking +through the winter nights. But these are real ones. Before the drowsy +porter, nodding in his little den, can reach the hall-door, Jim has +opened it--opened it just in time to admit a man who, his pace still +further accelerated by the mighty hands of the pushing blast, is +bounding up the steps. If any doubt as to this person's identity +lingered in Jim's mind, his first words would dispel it. + +"She is here? There is no mistake? She is here?" + +"How late you are!" cries the other, apparently regarding the new +arrival's utterance more as an ejaculation than as a question expecting +or needing an answer. "Why are you so late? Did the engines break down?" + +"She is here?" repeats Byng insistently, taking no notice of the queries +addressed to him. "You have not deceived me? For mercy's sake say that +you have not deceived me!" + +"Why should I deceive you?" rejoins Jim impatiently. "Yes; certainly she +is here." + +They are in the hall by now--the hall which, the Grand Hotel being +gasless, is lit by only one weak paraffin lamp, which the gust from the +door, necessarily still open to admit of the carrying in of the +traveller's bags and rugs, is making even more faint and flickering than +its wont. + +"You must have had a fine tossing!" + +"I believe you; they all thought we were going to make a dinner for the +fishes--ha, ha! All but I. I knew better. I knew that I could not come +to grief when _she_ had called me to her." + +Byng's hat is rammed down over his brows, and his fur coat turned up so +high round his ears that it is impossible in the obscurity to see his +face; but there is something in the tone of his voice--a loud, wild +rollicking--that makes the idea cross Jim's mind that he has been +drinking. What a shock it will give to Elizabeth if, in her covert +vigil--he has no more doubt that she has been watching than that he has +been doing so himself--she overhears that thick, raised voice! Prompted +by this thought, he says hastily: + +"Come into the dining-room. I told them to put something to eat for you +there." + +Byng complies; and when they have reached the empty _salle à manger_, +whose whitewash looks weird and unnatural in the chill of the night, he +sends his hat skimming down one of the long tables, and, grasping both +Jim's hands in his, cries out, in the same loud tone of intoxicated +triumph: + +"Oh, my dear old chap, how good it is to see your ugly old mug again! If +you had known--oh, if you had only known!--what I went through during +the twenty-four hours after I sent you that telegram, when through every +hour, through every minute and second of every hour, I said to myself, +'It may come _now_--my death-warrant may come _now_! In five minutes it +may have come!' But it did not, it did not! I ought to have known"--with +an accent of ecstasy--"that of her pitifulness she would relent at last. +She is infinitely pitiful, is not she? but I shall upbraid her a +little--oh, do not be afraid; it will be gently, _most_ gently--for +having kept me so long, so inhumanly long, upon my gridiron! I had +always"--breaking into a rather wild laugh--"something of a tenderness +for St. Lawrence, but during the last seven months I have loved him like +a brother!" + +He goes on again, with scarcely a pause, or apparently any consciousness +of the unresponsive silence of his auditor: + +"But what does it matter now?" beginning to stride about with his eyes +cast up to the beamed ceiling and his lifted hands locked +together--"what does it matter? 'After long grief and pain, to feel the +arms of my true love round me once again!' You may think that I word it +extravagantly," returning to Jim as he leans downcast and shocked upon +one of the chairs of the monotonous _table-d'hôte_ row; "but in the hope +itself, the more than hope, there is nothing extravagant; you must own +that yourself. If she had not meant to put an end to my long agony, she +would not have sent for me; _not_ to stop me was to send for me." + +"You are labouring under a mistake," says Jim coldly, and yet with an +inward quaking as to the effect that his words may produce; "she had not +the option of stopping you. By some accident I did not receive your +telegram till four hours ago. She could not have stopped you if she had +wished." + +The idea, as I have already said, has occurred to Burgoyne that his +companion is under the influence of intoxication; but either this is not +the case, or the shock of the last words has the effect of instantly +sobering him. + +"I--I--do not understand," he says in a voice out of which all the +insane exhilaration has been conjured as if by magic; "I do not follow +you. What do you mean?" + +"I mean," replies Jim, in a matter-of-fact, level tone, meant to have a +calming effect upon his auditor, "that owing, I suppose, to my name +being spelt wrongly--Bourgouin instead of Burgoyne--your telegram was +given to someone else, and did not reach me till nine o'clock this +evening." + +Byng puts up his hand to his throat, and, unfastening the collar of his +fur coat as if it were strangling him, throws back the coat itself. Now +that he sees him freed from enveloping wrap and concealing hat-brim, Jim +can realize the full amount of change and deterioration that are visible +in his appearance; can see how bloodshot his eyes are; how lined his +mouth; and how generally ravaged and dimmed his good looks. + +"I am to understand, then, that--that she would have stopped my coming +if she could." + +Jim is silent. He cannot answer that question with any certainty even to +himself. + +"She would have escaped me again if she had had the chance! What am I +saying?"--with a sudden access of terror in his tone--"she may have +escaped me already! She may be gone! Tell me the truth--do not dare to +tell me anything but the bare truth. I saw that you hesitated when I +asked you whether she was really here. Is she gone?" + +"Gone!" repeats Jim, with an exasperated jerk of the head towards the +window, against which the rain and wind are hurling themselves with +threefold rage, as if to recapture the victim just escaped them. +"To-night--in this storm? How likely! Come, be rational; try to keep +your head, and let us have a truce to this ranting. I give you my word +of honour that she is here, under this roof; asleep, I should hope, if +your bellowings have not awoke her." + +The latter clause may perhaps come under the head of a pardonable +fiction; at all events, it has, despite its incivility, the desired +effect of soothing, to some extent, the agitation of him to whom it is +addressed. + +"Asleep!" he repeats, while an ecstatic smile breaks over his handsome, +dissipated face. "Good angels guard her slumbers! But"--with a rather +ominous return of excitement--"are you sure that she _is_ asleep--that +she has gone to bed yet? They used to sit up very late in Florence +sometimes. If she has not gone to bed, why should not I see her; why +should not I fall at her feet _now_--to-night?" + +"My dear boy," rejoins Jim, with a praiseworthy attempt to answer this +modest and sensible proposal with patient good-humour, "have you any +idea what time it is? I should have thought it might have occurred even +to you that 1.30 A.M. is scarcely a suitable hour for paying a morning +call! Do not be a fool! Pull yourself together. I swear to you that she +has every intention of seeing you to-morrow. Come"--trying to +laugh--"you will not have long to wait! It is to-morrow already; and, +meantime, sit down and eat something; you must be as empty as a drum." + +But to this prudent if homely counsel Byng opposes an obstinate +negation, adorned with excited asseverations that food shall never cross +his lips until they have pastured upon his lady's pardoning hand. + +The same prohibition does not, however, apparently apply to drink, as he +pours more than half the bottle of happily not very potent wine, +prepared for his refreshment, into a tumbler, and tosses it off at a +draught. He offers an even stouter refusal to Burgoyne's suggestion that +he should go to bed; and as he utters it a flash of cunning suspicion +comes into his eyes, shocking his friend with a gleam as of possible and +scarcely latent madness. Across the latter's brain darts the query, +which had proposed itself more than once to him last spring at Florence: + +"Is there insanity in Byng's blood" + +Not certainly on the distaff side, the side of his eminently sane and +wholesome mother; but can he be throwing back to some distempered +ancestor? + +"What security have I if I go to bed that she will not steal away from +me in the night? It was in the night--almost in the night--that she +stole away from me before." + +From this logic it is impossible to move him; and although, with some +return to his old sweet-natured kindliness of manner, he begs his friend +not to think it necessary to keep him company, yet the latter is far too +ill at ease as to his condition, both of mind and body, to comply. + +The porter, having drawn the natural inference that as soon as the +traveller has refreshed his body he will wish to retire to rest, has put +out the lights in the smoking-room; the _salle à manger_ is therefore +the only room in the hotel where lamps still burn, and in it the two men +spend the dreary remaining hours of the night, Byng walking up and down +like a captive beast, frequently going to the door, opening it, putting +his head out into the darkness, and listening suspiciously if, +perchance, he may hear the footfall of Elizabeth fleeing away from him +even through the hurricane. As the time goes on, his restlessness +increases rather than diminishes. Jim has vainly tried to distract his +thoughts by putting questions to him as to his pursuits and companions +since their last parting--by inquiries as to the extent and direction of +his travels. + +Did he get as far as Palestine? How long is it since he left Cairo? etc. +But to all his interrogations Byng gives brief and unsatisfactory +answers, putting a final stop to them by breaking out excitedly: + +"Why do you go on questioning me as to where I have been, and what I +have done? I tell you I have been nowhere, and done nothing; I believe +that my body has been here and there, but my soul has been nowhere; it +has been lying dead! Would you expect a man who has been lying six +months in his coffin to give you a catalogue of his adventures? My soul +has been dead, I tell you--dead and putrescent. What is the use of +putting me through a catechism about its doings?" + +Before the long-delaying dawn shows its pale profile upon the deep +obscurity, it seems to Jim as if six midwinter nights must have pieced +themselves end to end. But it comes at last; and at last also, by dint +of strenuous representations to his companion as to how unfit he is, in +his present travel-stained and disordered condition, to offer himself to +Elizabeth's eyes, he induces him to let himself be led to the bedroom +prepared overnight for him, and to refresh himself with a bath and a +change of clothes. Even this concession he obtains only in exchange for +an exacted promise to seek out Elizabeth at the earliest possible hour +at which she may be presumed accessible, and urgently to entreat of her +an instant interview with his friend. + +Jim feels that he is keeping his word handsomely when, not a minute +later than nine o'clock, he finds himself knocking at the door of the Le +Marchants' apartment--that door with which of late his knuckles have +grown so pleasantly and friendlily familiar. It is opened to him by +Elizabeth herself, and he follows her silently through the ante-room +into the little _salon_. Arrived there, he looks mournfully round with a +sort of feeling as of taking farewell of the familiar objects. + +It is impossible that Elizabeth can have spent the just-past stormy +night in gathering flowers, and yet the flowers have a freshened air. +She must have been carefully rearranging them. The bits of brocade, too, +the Turkish embroideries, the _haiks_, and the praying-carpets, wear a +more festal appearance than usual. The little room looks decked as if +for a gala. His jealous fancy cannot but admit that Elizabeth herself is +dressed in her ordinary morning gown, but even over it some holiday +transmutation has passed. He cannot trust himself to verify whether that +holiday look is on her face too. + +"He has come; you know that, I suppose?" + +"Yes." + +What a catch in her breath! He must steal a glance at her. She will +think it unnatural if he does not; and perhaps his eye may not be +offended by so much radiance as he feared. In her voice there was +something not very distant from a sob. The result of his glance shows +itself in what sounds like a reproach. + +"I do not believe that you went to bed at all." + +"Yes, I did! yes, I did!" hurrying away eagerly from the subject of +herself, as from something irrelevant and importunate; "and--he--how is +he? How does he look? Had not he a dreadful crossing? Does he want to +see me? to see me soon? to-day?" + +There is such a breathless passion in her tone, coupled with something +so apologetic for putting her questions to him, that his heart, hitherto +half touched, half angered by the pathos of her little preparations, +melts wholly towards her. + +"Of course he wants to see you--wants it very, very much," replies he; +and, to his credit, replies without any harshness marring the cordial +kindness of his tone. "As much as"--with a rather melancholy smile--"you +want to see him. No, do not be angry. Why should not you wish to see +each other?" + +"Oh, there is every reason!" cries she miserably--"the same reason that +there always was. But"--with rising agitation--"where is it to be? How +soon? When does he wish it?" + +"He is waiting outside now." + +She starts painfully. + +"_Now!_ Oh, poor fellow! we must not keep him waiting; and +yet"--stretching out her hand in detention--"tell me, before he comes +in--tell me, is he changed? Is he? Is he the same as he was?" + +Jim hesitates, and the painful perplexity written on his brow is misread +by her. + +"You are vexed with me for teasing you with so many tiresome questions. +Oh, forgive me! I ought not to take advantage of your kindness; but we +have grown to depend upon you so; and I will promise not to worry you +with any other, if you will only answer me this one. Is he changed--much +changed?" + +"I am afraid," replies Jim, with the slowness of one who is trying to +convey unpleasant tidings in the least unpleasant terms, "that you must +be prepared to find him a good deal altered." + +"Altered! How?" + +"I do not quite know how to describe it"--uneasily--"but you must not be +shocked if you find him a good deal changed in looks; and he is--he +seems, in a very excited state." + +She makes a clutch at his hand. + +"Do you mean"--her voice has sunk to a horror-struck whisper--"that he +is--mad?" + +"Mad! Oh, of course not," with a strained laugh; "you must not jump to +such conclusions. But I do not think he is quite himself, that is all. +He looks as if he had not eaten or slept for a fortnight; and if you +play such tricks as that with yourself, you must expect to get a little +off your balance." + +She is still terrifiedly clutching his hand, though with no +consciousness of doing so, nor that the fingers so tightly gripped by +her are not made of dry stick. + +"You must not look so frightened," he says soothingly. "I would not have +said anything to you, only that I thought it better you should be +prepared--that it should not take you quite by surprise; and also +because I wanted to give you a hint, that you might be a little careful +what you say to him, or, at all events, how you say it." + +Still she does not speak, and there is scarcely any diminution of the +horror of her look. + +"If you do not mind, I think it would be as well to have someone within +call, if he--he--became--unreasonable." + +"Do you think," she asks, with a sort of scorn, "that I am afraid of +him--afraid for myself?" + +"No, that I am sure you are not; but I cannot shake off the idea +that--poor fellow!--he may be on the verge of some grave illness; and in +that sort of case one never knows what may happen. So, if you do not +mind----" + +"As you please," she answers, docile even now. "Do as you think best; +and will you tell him that I am ready to see him?" + +The misgivings with which Jim complies with this request are not much +allayed by the manner and voice of him who receives it, and who has been +raging up and down the narrow corridor. + +"She will not see me, I suppose?" + +"On the contrary, she will see you now. But stay!" catching him by the +arm as he springs past him. "One moment! For God's sake control +yourself! Behave like a gentleman. Do not make her a scene; she is not +up to it." + +Byng's answer is to fling resentfully away the detaining hand of his +Mentor, while he says, with a furious look coming into his bloodshot +eyes: + +"What do you mean by keeping me here, preaching to me, while _she_ is +waiting for me?" + +The rudeness of both words and actions is so unlike the real Byng, that +it is with an even more sinking spirit than before that Jim follows him +with his eyes as he passes out of sight into the _salon_. As soon as the +door is shut behind him, he himself takes up the position he had +suggested in the ante-room. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + + +There are few things more trying to an active-minded person than to sit +occupationless, vaguely waiting. At first, it is true, the keenness of +Jim's alarm prevents his feeling the ennui which would be the natural +result of his situation. Poignantly anxious questions succeed each other +in his mind. Has he had any right to permit the interview at all? How +far is Byng accountable for his actions? What chance is there that his +already rocking reason will stand the shock of a meeting which, even in +his sanest moments, would have so wildly excited him? And if not, what +may be the consequences? Grisly headings of newspaper paragraphs write +themselves in the air before him--"Homicidal Mania," "Murder and +Suicide." + +The details of a tragic story which, illustrated by sensational +woodcuts, he had idly read a day or two ago in a venerable _Police +News_, left lying on the smoking-room table, recur to his memory. It was +a tale of a groom who, in an access of jealous madness, had shot a +scullion sweetheart through the head, and then blown his own brains out. +The tale had made but little impression on him at the time--unhappily, +it is scarcely possible to take up a journal without the eye alighting +upon some such--but it comes back to him now with terrifying vividness. +What security is there that such tragedies may be confined to grooms and +kitchen-maids? How does he know that Byng has not a revolver hidden in +his breast-pocket? How can he tell that he is not at this very moment +drawing it out? He (Jim) ought to have made sure, before exposing her to +such a peril, that the danger was minimized by Byng's being weaponless. +Is it too late to make sure of that even now? + +He takes one step towards the _salon_ door, then hastily retraces it. +Pooh! he is growing as mad as Byng. They will come out and find him +eavesdropping. + +He retreats to the table, which is at the greatest distance allowed by +the room's narrow enceinte from the scene of the drama whose +_dénouement_ he is expecting, and, sitting down, takes up a book. It +happens to be Elizabeth's Italian exercise-book, and the sight of it +conjures up before his memory her forlorn figure stooping disconsolately +over the page, wrapped in her brown furs, as he had seen it on that +rainy night that seems now so distant. He had pitied her for being +lonely then. Well, whatever else she may be, she is not lonely now. + +He catches his breath. It is quite a quarter of an hour since he began +his watch. How quiet they are! There is a murmur of voices, but there is +nothing that in the least indicates violence. Before his eyes there +flashes in grotesque recollection the hideous picture in the _Police +News_ which illustrates the high words with which the catastrophe of the +groom and kitchenmaid had been heralded. He has been making a mountain +out of a mole-hill; has been exaggerating his friend's emotional +temperament, naturally further heightened by sleeplessness and want of +food, into incipient insanity. If he were mad, or at all tending that +way, would he be talking in the low rational key which he obviously must +be? It is evident that her presence, her eye, her--yes, what more +likely?--her touch have soothed and conjured away what of excessive or +perilous there was in his emotion. + +They have been together half an hour now. All danger is certainly over. +Why should he any longer continue his officious and needless +watch?--superfluously spying upon them? + +Relieved as to what he had thought his worst fear, and yet with an +uncommon bitterness about his heart, he turns to withdraw, and his hand +is already on the lock of the door which leads into the corridor, when +suddenly, without any warning, there reaches his ear the noise of a +loud, crashing fall, followed--accompanied, rather--by a piercing +scream. + +In infinitely less than a second he finds himself on his knees beside +the prostrate body of Byng, who, with blood pouring from his forehead, +is stretched upon the floor of the _salon_. Even at this second there +flashes upon him, ludicrous and dreadful, the memory of the _Police +News_. This scene has a grotesque likeness to the final one of the groom +and kitchenmaid series, only that in the present case the heroine, +instead of staggering backward with the top of her head flying up to the +ceiling, is hanging unharmed over her fallen lover. + +"Are you hurt?" cries Jim in frantic anxiety, looking at her across the +prostrate figure, and unable to eradicate from his mind the revolver +idea. "Did he hit you? I did not hear a shot." + +"Oh no, no! but he," fetching her breath in terrible gasps, and hanging +over the bleeding man with that utter abandonment of all disguise, in +which a great naked grief sweeps away our sophistications--"he is dead!" + +"Oh no, he is not," answers Jim hastily, tearing open Byng's waistcoat +and laying his hand upon his heart. "He has only fainted. Get some +water! Have you got any salts? No; do not lift his head"--seeing that +she is agonizedly trying to raise his prone head and rest it upon her +knees--"he had better be as flat as he can. Quick, some water!" + +She does not need to be twice told. In an instant she has sprung to the +table, and brought thence the china jug out of which she is wont to +water her flowers, and also the big cut-glass bottle of smelling-salts +with which Jim has often seen poor Mrs. Le Marchant solacing herself +when racked with that neuralgic headache which means worry. He splashes +water out of the one upon Byng's ashy face, and holds the other to his +pale nostrils; while Elizabeth, once more flinging herself upon her +knees, wipes the blood from his temples with her little useless gossamer +inch of handkerchief. + +"How did it happen?" asks Jim rapidly. "What did he do to himself?" + +The heads of the two ministrants are very close to each other as they +bend together over the swooned youth. Jim can see a little smear of +Byng's blood upon one of her white cheeks. The sight gives him a +shudder. Byng seems to have made her more his own by that gory baptism +than by all his frenzied vows and tears. + +"Oh, I do not know," she answers, still fetching both breath and words +with difficulty. "He was standing up, and he seemed quite right; and +then, all of a sudden, in a minute, he went down like a log, and hit his +forehead against the sharp corner of the table"--with a convulsive +shiver at the recollection. "I ought to have saved him! I ought; but I +was not quick enough. I stood stock-still, and now he is dead! You say +that he is not; but I am sure he is dead!" + +"Oh no, nonsense! he is not," replies Jim brusquely, thinking a certain +harshness of manner the best recipe for her. "He is alive, sure enough; +and as for the cut on his forehead, now that you have wiped the blood +away, you can see for yourself that it is not at all a deep one. It is +merely a big scratch. I have often had a worse out hunting from a +bramble, in jumping through a hedge. Oh, Mrs. Le Marchant, here you are! +That is all right. We have had an accident, you see. He has fallen down +in a faint, and given himself a bit of a knock. That is all; do not be +frightened. It looks worse than it is--Oh, M. Cipriani, vous voilà! +Envoyez chercher un médecin tout de suite! Il y a un M. Crump"--catching +in his destitution at the thought of even Sybilla's objectionable +friend. + +But hereupon half a dozen voices--for by this time even more than that +number of inmates of the hotel have thronged into the little room--raise +themselves to pronounce another name--the name of one who both stands +higher in medical fame and is more quickly procurable. In search of him +Zameth, the porter, is instantly despatched, and meanwhile about the +inanimate body sympathizers stand three deep, until reluctantly +dispersed by a hint of a nature so broad as not to be misunderstood from +Jim, to the effect that the patient would have a better chance of coming +to himself if he were allowed to have a breath of air. By the time the +doctor arrives--there is some small delay before he appears--all are got +rid of, and, Mrs. Le Marchant having gone to give directions for having +Jim's room arranged for the sick man, both because it is on the +ground-floor and also of a better size than that allotted to him, Jim +and Elizabeth are once again left _tête-à-tête_. + +Once again they kneel on either side of the prone figure. How dreadfully +dead and how extravagantly long it looks! Once again he sees that +blood-smear on her face. It is just above her one dimple, and stands out +in ghastly incongruity over that little pitfall for love and laughter. +How passionately he wishes that he might ask her to go and wash it off! +If he did she would not hear him. She has no ears left, no eyes, no +sense, save for that livid face, splashed with the water which has not +brought him back to life, and with the red drops still slowly trickling +from the wound on his brow, and which have stained here and there the +damp tendrils of his hair--for that livid face and for the flaccid +hands, which she rubs between her own with an ever more terrified +energy, as he still gives no sign of returning consciousness. + +By-and-by he is taken out of her custody. She is robbed even of the +wretched satisfaction of chafing his poor senseless fingers. On the +arrival of the doctor he is carried off, and laid upon the bed that has +been made ready for him. She follows them miserably as they bear him +staggeringly across the hall--a powerfully-built young man of over six +feet high, in the perfect inertness of syncope, is no light weight--and +looks hungrily over the threshold of the bedroom; but when she attempts +to cross it Jim puts her gently back. + +"No, dear, no!" he says. (He is almost sure afterwards that for that +once in his life he calls her "dear.") "You had better not. We think he +is coming round, and if you are the first person he sees when he comes +to himself it might be bad for him--might hurt him. You would not hurt +him, would you?" + +"No, I would not hurt him," she answers slowly. And so turns in her +utter tractableness, and goes away meekly without a word. + + * * * * * + +It is evening again now, almost the same hour at which Jim and Elizabeth +were beheading photographs twenty-four hours ago. Twenty-four hours! It +feels more like twenty-four years. This is what he says to himself as he +once again opens the door of the Le Marchants' apartment. It is the +first time during the whole day, except to snatch a couple of mouthfuls +of food, that he has left Byng's side; and it is only due to the fact +that Mrs. Le Marchant is supplying his place, and has sent him on a +message to her daughter, that he has quitted his post. He knows that she +has meant to do him a kindness in despatching him upon this errand; but +he is not sure that it is one. + +Elizabeth is not in the _salon_, but the screen that masks the door +separating that room from the little alcove beyond is folded back. Over +the doorway is a hanging of Eastern embroidery--as to the meaning of the +strange gold scrolls that look like Arab letters on whose red ground +Elizabeth and he have often idly speculated. He pushes it aside, and +sees her standing with her back towards him, the flimsy muslin +window-curtains drawn back as she looks out on the night. The alcove is +on ordinary occasions scarcely ever occupied, and there is something +uneasy and uncomfortable that matches the wretchedness of her other +circumstances in finding her standing there alone and idle. + +The elements have long finished their raging, and fallen to boisterous +play. It has been a fine day, and though the sun has long laid down his +sceptre, he has passed it on with scarcely diminished, though altered, +radiance to his white imitator. It is broad moonlight--startlingly +broad. The moon hangs overhead, with never a cloud-kerchief about her +great disk. The winds that, loudly sporting, are up and abroad have +chased every vapour from the sky, which is full of throbbing white +stars. Before he reaches her side she has heard him, and turned to meet +him, with a mixed hunger and pitiful hope in her wan face. She thinks +that he has come to fetch her. He must kill that poor hope, and the +quicklier the more mercifully. + +"Mrs. Le Marchant sent me. I came to tell you that he has recovered +consciousness. You see, you were wrong"-with an attempt at a reassuring +smile--"he is not dead, after all. He is conscious; that is to say, he +is not insensible; but I am afraid he is not quite himself yet, and you +must not--must not mind--must not be frightened, I mean--if he begins to +shout out and talk nonsense by-and-by: the doctor says it is what we +must expect." + +"And may I--mayn't I--will not you let me?" + +What a quivering voice the hope has, and yet how alive it is! However +clumsily, and with whatever bitter yearnings over the pain he is causing +her, he must knock it on the head at once. + +"Go to him?--impossible! quite out of the question! The great object is +to keep him perfectly quiet, and if once he caught sight of you--" + +"But if he is not himself," interrupts she, with a pathetic pertinacity, +"he would not know me. I could not do him any harm if he did not know +me, and I might do something--oh, ever such a little thing for him! If +you knew what it was to stand here and do nothing--_do nothing_ +indeed!"--with a change of tone to one of agonized self-reproach;--"have +not I done enough already? Oh, would anyone have believed that it would +be I that should kill him!" + +She turns back to the window again, and dashes her forehead with +violence against the frame. Outside the tall date-palm is shaken through +all its plumes by the loud breeze; it is swaying and waving and blowing, +and not less is its solid shadow cut out by the moonshine's keen knife +on the terrace, wavering and shaking too, as if convulsed by laughter. +The porch of the hotel--mere whitewash and plaster, as memory and reason +tell one that it is--stands out in glorified ivory like the portals of +such a palace as we see in vision, when + + "Good dreams possess our fancy." + +"I can't have you talking such nonsense," says Jim, in an exceedingly +kind and not very steady voice, for his own feelings are horribly +harrowed; and on thinking over the scene afterwards, he cannot swear +that, at this point, he did not pass a most brotherly arm for one moment +round the poor little heaving shoulder, which is shaking almost as much +as the palm-tree's shadow. "He is not going to die; he is not thinking +of dying. Nobody has killed him--least of all you." + +She makes him no answer, nor lifts her stricken head, over which he +looks out, while the ghostly mirth shakes the landscape; at his wits' +end, in search of consolation. Below waves a sea of foliage, out of +which the strong elfin light has stolen all the colour. From that +colourless dark ocean rises far away to the right the dazzling little +snowy dome of a mosque, showing like a transfigured mushroom; and down +below the rounding bay is seen laying its foam-lips in white glory on +the land. + +"Dr. Stephens feels sure that he must have had a sunstroke. You know +that he has been in the East. He was a month in Cairo; the sun has great +power there, even in winter, and he is sure to have exposed himself +recklessly. He was on his way home--had got as far as Paris, it +seems--when he accidentally heard that you were here. Since then, no +doubt, he has neither eaten nor slept; so you see how little you are to +blame. You know that I told you how odd he was before you even saw him. +Do not you remember?"--trying to recall every circumstance that may tend +to reassure her--"I warned you that you would have to be careful what +you said to him?" + +His words have a very different effect from that intended by him. + +"Oh, that is why I cannot forgive myself!" says she, with what sounds +almost like a cry of physical pain. "You _did_ warn me; I had no excuse. +In his state I ought never--it was murdering him to tell him--" + +She breaks off. To tell him what? Jim bites his lips hard to hinder +himself from putting this question, as he again, in mercy to her, looks +away from her out into the night. + +The moon has swum over the housetop by now; but one can see her +handiwork as plainly as ever in the broad argent fringe, like the border +of a cloak, that marks where the waves are breaking on the beach. + +One often talks of a fringe without really meaning that there is much +likeness to one; but to-night the moon-washed breakers really do wear +that aspect--a fringe of silver with long silver tags and ends. + +"But I was so deceived," she continues, with that wail still in her +voice; "he was not violent. After what you had told me, I expected him +to be violent; but he was not: he was quite gentle and quiet, and he did +beg so hard, and I was so glad to see him again, that I felt I was +giving in--that I should give way altogether if I did not tell him--tell +him at once, without giving myself time to think; and so I did"--growing +very breathless and incoherent--"and in a second; and then all in a +minute, without any warning, just as if I had shot him through the head, +he went down with a crash. I did not see it, for I was not looking at +him. I could not bear to look at him while I told him. I had both hands +over my face, and then--and then--I heard him fall." + +What can Jim say to her? Fear lest any dastardly unchivalrous curiosity +may seem to pierce through whatever sympathetic question he might put to +her keeps him dumb, and stupidly staring at the bowing, ironically merry +palm. + +"And now," she goes on, lifting her face, and he is shocked to see how +livid it is in the moonlight, "he will go out of the world thinking me +much worse than I really am, for I had not time to tell him all. He +heard only the bare fact; he did not hear what excuse I had--that I was +not really so wicked as--as--he will die thinking me." + +The sob with which she ends alarms him by its kinship to a convulsion. + +"I do not know what to say to you," he says, desperately making a snatch +at her two hands, as if by the violence of his grip he could convey to +her some little portion of the deep compassion that is swelling up in +his heart for her; "I am so much in the dark. No, no, no!" with a return +of that terror lest this ejaculation should seem the outcome of any +inquisitiveness; "I do not want you to tell me anything! What is more, I +will not listen to you if you attempt it; but what there is not the +least manner of doubt about is that his fainting had no sort of +reference to what you said to him: he would have fainted whatever you +had said to him, or if you had said nothing at all. He was as mad as a +hatter when he went in to you. It is all part of the same +thing--over-fatigue, sunstroke. But he is not going to die"--with a +hurried trip back to his former strain of consolation--"he is not +thinking of it; I promise you, I give you my word of honour"--becoming +perfectly reckless and completely insensate--"that he shall not!" + +But she is too strangled with sobs to make any rejoinder. + +"He shall have the best of nursing," goes on Jim. "I have telegraphed +for a nurse to Nice. How astonishing it is that in a place of this size +you cannot get a decent sick-nurse! I hoped we might have caught the one +who nursed General Smith before----" + +He stops abruptly, with a too tardy recollection that the allusion is +not a happy once, since the General died two days ago. Unfortunately, +she also remembers, as is evidenced by the strong shudder that passes +over her. + +"If he dies, will he be buried in that deep narrow, red grave that they +showed us in the Protestant cemetery, and which they said that they +always kept open for English visitors? If he dies! if he dies! Oh, if I +could but have told him! if he would but have waited for me to tell him +how it really was!" + + + + +CHAPTER X. + + +Though "February Fill-dyke" was never and nowhere truer to her name than +this year, and in Algiers--coming laden with wet days to make the green +Sahel, if possible, greener than it was before; yet the inhabitants of +the Grand Hotel do not again, for a matter of three weeks, relieve their +ennui or let off their energies in far from Dumb Crambo, or loud +charade. The voice of the battledore is silent in the entrance-hall, and +the shuttlecock sleeps. M. Cipriani has scarcely had to do more than +mention his request that they would lay aside their more noisy pastimes, +for they are, most of them, rather good-natured persons than otherwise, +since, indeed, it is quite as uncommon to be very ill-natured as to be +very selfless, or very foolish, or very wise. Those of them who have +been fortunate enough to be present at the catastrophe have carried away +such a moving image of a wounded Adonis, apparently several yards long, +stretched upon Mrs. Le Marchant's Persian carpet, that they have +infected those less happy persons who know of him only by hearsay with a +compassionate interest scarcely inferior to their own. + + +The only person in the hotel who makes much noise is poor Byng himself, +and for awhile he falls it with clamour enough to furnish two or three +of those bump suppers of which, not so long ago, he was a conspicuous +ornament. + +There had never, even when he was in his wits, been much disguise as to +the state of his feelings; now that he is out of them, the whole house +rings with his frantic callings upon the name of Elizabeth, uttered in +every key of rage, expostulation, tenderness, and appeal. These cries +reach Elizabeth herself as she sits cowering in that one of the little +suite of rooms which is nearest the door of entrance--sits there +cowering, and yet with the door, through which those dreadful sounds +penetrate to her, ajar, in order the better to hear them--cowering, and +for several days alone. + +Owing to various accidents, similar in their results, though differing +in character, almost a week elapses from the first breaking out of +Byng's malady before the arrival of either the hospital nurse or of Mrs. +Byng. When the latter event occurs, Mrs. Le Marchant retires from her +post at the sick man's bedside with the same unostentatious +matter-of-factness with which she had assumed it, and Elizabeth is no +longer alone. But to set against this advantage is the counterbalancing +evil that, after the arrival of Byng's mother, she can no longer steal +out, as she had before done a hundred times a day, to his door, to glean +fragments of tidings from any outcomer thence. She is never able to +repeat those little surreptitious excursions after that occasion when +Mrs. Byng, coming suddenly out upon her, passes her with such speaking, +if silent, hostility and scorn in her tired and grief-stricken eyes, +that the luckless spy slinks back sobbing to her own tender mother; and +there Jim, flying out a while after to carry them a crumb of +reassurance, finds them, to his indignation, mingling their bitter +tears. + +Whatever else his faults may be, Mr. Burgoyne is a man of his word; he +certainly keeps his promise to Elizabeth that Byng shall be well nursed. +He keeps his other promise, too--though that is more by good luck than +good management--that Byng shall not die. Whether to hinder his friend +from being made a liar, or because he himself is loth to leave a world +which he has found so pretty, cruel, and amusing, Byng does not +die--Byng lives. + +By her 25th day February has dried her tears, though they still hang on +her green lashes, and a great galleon of a sun steers through a +tremendous sea of blue, as Jim persuades Byng's mother to go out for her +first delicious drive in that fresh and satin-soft air of the Algerian +February, which matches our best poets' May. He takes her along the +Route des Aqueduques, that lovely route which runs high along the +hillside among the villas above the town, so high as to be on a level +with the roofs of the lofty-standing Continental and Orient Hotels. It +is a most twisting road, which in curves and loops winds about the head +of narrow deep gorges, full of pale olive-trees, caroubiers, and ilex. +Below lies the red-roofed white town. Slowly they trot past the campagne +of the "English Milor," "L'Epicier Anglais," and many others, over whose +high walls bougainvillias light their now waning purple fires, and big +bushes of fleurs de Marie stoop their milky stars. + +Mrs. Byng's eyes, sunk and diminished by watching and weariness, have +been lying restfully on the delightful spring spectacle--on the great +yellow sorrels by the wayside; she now turns them tear-brimmed to her +companion. + +"I could jump out of my skin!" she says shakily. "What a sun! what a +sea! And to think that, after all, we have pulled him through." + +Jim's only answer is a sympathetic pressure of the extremely +well-fitting glove nearest him. If Willy had died instead of lived, her +gloves would have fitted all the same. + +"But we are not out of the wood yet," continues she, with a shake of the +head. "He is cured, or nearly cured, of one disease, but what about the +other?" + +"What other?" inquires he, obstinately stupid, and with somewhat of a +heart-sinking at the prospect of the engagement which he sees ahead of +him. + +How many elbows the road makes! It seems to have been cut in places +right through the wet red rock, now overhung by such a torrent of +vegetation. + +At the head of one of the deep clefts that run up from the sea they +pause, and look down upon a second sea of greenery that would seem to +belong to no month less leafy than June. To June, too, belong the murmur +and hum and summer trickle of running water at the ravine bottom. + +"I do not see why, if he goes on as swimmingly as he is now doing," says +Mrs. Byng in a restless voice--"why we should not get him off in a week, +even if he were carried on board the boat." + +"A week? Is not that rather sanguine?" + +"I do not think so, the sooner the better; and during that week I should +think she could hardly make any attempt to see him." + +"Has she shown any signs of making one hitherto?" + +"Well, no"--rather grudgingly. "In fact, between you and me, considering +that it is they who have brought him into this plight, I think they +might have shown a little more solicitude about him. In the last ten +days I do not believe that they have been once to the door to inquire." + +"You do not seem to be aware," says Jim, in a voice which, though quiet, +is not pacific, "and that is odd, considering how often I told you, that +until you came Mrs. Le Marchant nursed him like a mother; not like a +mother, indeed"--correcting himself with a somewhat malicious +intention--"for mothers grow flurried, and she never did." + +"You mean that she nursed him better than I do," in a jealous tone. +"Well"--more generously--"how shabby of me to mind, if she did! I do not +mind. God bless her for it! I always thought"--compunctiously--"that +she looked a nice woman." + +"She _is_ nice--as nice"--descending into a slang unworthy of his ripe +years--"as they make 'em." + +"And the girl--I suppose one can hardly call her a girl--_looks_ nice +too." + +They are passing the Casbah, the solid Moorish fortifications, about +which now hang only a few gaitered, sunburnt, baggy Zouaves. + +Jim has a silly hope that, if he maintains an entire silence, the +current of his companion's ideas may drift into another channel; but he +is soon undeceived. + +"I suppose that she must have been quite, _quite_ young when--when those +dreadful things happened that Willy talked about in his delirium?" + +"Is it possible"--indignantly--"that you take the ravings of a +fever-patient au pied de la lettre?" + +"No, I do not; but"--with an obstinate sticking to her point--"there was +a substratum of truth in them; that was only too evident." + +Jim shuts his teeth tight together. His vow of silence is harder to keep +than he had thought. + +"Since he came to himself he has never mentioned her to me," continues +his companion anxiously; "has he to you?" + +"No." + +"I quite tremble whenever he opens his lips, lest he should be going to +begin the subject, and one could not contradict him yet awhile; he is so +quixotic, it is quite likely that he may have some distorted idea that +her being--how shall I say?--_flétrie_--is an additional reason for +standing by her, rehabilitating her, marrying her. He is so chivalrous." + +They have left the Prison Civile and the Zouave Barracks behind them. A +longer interval than that usually supposed to elapse between a remark +and its rejoinder has passed, before Jim can bring himself to utter the +following sentence with the calmness which he wishes: + +"Has it never occurred to you that she may be chivalrous too?" + +Perhaps Mrs. Byng does not readily find a response to this question; +perhaps it sets her off upon a train of speculation which does not +conduce to garrulity. Certain it is that, for the rest of the drive, she +is as silent as Jim could wish her. It is a sharp surprise to him two +days later to be mysteriously called outside the sick man's door by her, +in order to be informed that she has invited Miss Le Marchant to +accompany her on a drive. + +"I went to call upon them," she says, avoiding--or so he fancies it--his +eye as she speaks; "and I asked the girl to drive with me to the Mole, +and get a good blowing about." + +"How kind of you!" cries Jim, a flash of real pleasure in his serious +look; "how like you--like your real self, that is!" + +And he takes her hand to thank it by a friendly pressure. But she draws +it away rather hastily. + +"Oh, it was nothing so very wonderful--nothing to thank me for." + +She seems confused and a little guilty, and escapes with some +precipitation from his gratitude. Mrs. Byng is not a woman addicted to +double-dealing, and if she ever makes any little essays in that +direction, she does them, as on this present occasion, villainously. + +Burgoyne is not at the hall-door to help the ladies into the carriage +when they set off. Perhaps this may be because he is in attendance upon +the invalid. Perhaps because--glad as he had at first felt and expressed +himself at their friendliness--some misgiving may, upon reflection, have +beset him at so strange a conjunction. At all events, it is only Fritz +who throws the light Arab rug over their knees and gives them his +encouraging parting smile. + +Poor Miss Le Marchant needs his encouragement, for, indeed, it is in a +very frightened spirit that she sets forth on her pleasuring. But before +the horse-bells have jingled to the bottom of Mustapha Supérieur, her +spirits are rising. The sun shines, and he has shone so seldom in +Elizabeth's life that a very few of his beams, whether real or +metaphorical, suffice to send up her quicksilver. She does not +consciously admit for a second the hope that in the present overture on +the part of her companion lies any significance. But yet a tiny +trembling bliss now and then taps at her heart's door, and she pushes it +away but feebly. + +Before they have reached the Amirauté, where they are to get out, she +has thanked Mrs. Byng with such pretty and unsuspecting gratitude for +bringing her, and has made her laugh so irrepressibly by her gay and +naïve comments upon the motley passers-by, that the latter is filled +with a compunctious regret that a person with such lovely manners, and +such a sense of a joke, should have made so disastrous a fiasco of her +life as renders necessary the extremely distasteful errand on which she +herself is at present bound. At the Amirauté, as I say, they get out; +and, turning under a groined roof that looks as if it were the crypt of +a church, find themselves presently upon the long stone breakwater that +runs out into the bay. It was built, they tell us, in old days by the +wretched Christian captives; but the sea has taken care that not much of +the original labour of blood and tears has survived. + +The wind is high, and the sunshine ardent and splendid. On their right +as they walk, with the wind officiously helping them from behind, is a +world of dancing sapphire, each blue billow white-tipped. On their left +are great blocks of masonry, built strong and square, with narrow +intervals between to break the might of the water. How little their +strength has availed against that of their tremendous opponent is seen +at every step, since nearly half the blocks are overthrown or in +semi-ruin; though the date engraved upon them shows for how few seasons +they have been exposed to the ravages of the tempestuous sea. They walk +on to the end, till they can go no further, since, just ahead of them, +the waves are rolling in half-fierce play--though the day is all +smiles--over the breakwater; and even where they stand, their footing is +made unsure by lengths of slimy seaweed that set them slipping along. +Elizabeth insists upon the elder woman taking her slight arm--insists +upon carrying her wraps, and generally waiting upon and ministering to +her. From the bottom of her heart Mrs. Byng wishes that she would not, +since every instance of her soft helpfulness, so innocent and +spontaneous, makes more difficult the answer to that question which she +has been asking herself ever since they set foot upon the Mole: + +"How shall I begin?" + +It is unanswered still, when, retracing their steps a little, they sit +down under the lee of one of the half-wrecked blocks to enjoy the view. + +From here the sea is a lake, the distant mountains and the breakwater +seeming--though in reality parted by how wide a wet waste--to join in +embracing it. The mountains are dim and filmy to-day, Cape Matifou +scarcely visible; but the Koubah shows white-domed on the hillside, and +all the dazzling water is shot through with blinding light. The town, +Arab-French, is dazzling too; the arcaded quay, the fortifications, one +can scarcely look at any of them. Two or three steamers, with a little +vapour issuing from their ugly black and red funnels, lie moored; and +other smaller craft lift their spars against the heaven. Near by a man +is sitting with his legs dangling over the water, fishing with a line; +and two or three Arabs, draped in the dignity of their poetic rags, lie +couched round a fire that they have kindled. Beneath and around them is +the banging and thundering of the sea. August noise! "A voice like the +sound of many waters." Could there be a more awful comparison? Just +underneath them, where the sea has made a greater breach than usual, it +is boiling as in a caldron. Looking down and in, they see the water +comparatively quiet for a moment; then, with a shout of its great +jubilant voice, rushing and surging in, tossing its mane. Elizabeth's +eyes are resting on the heavenly sapphire plain. + +"_How_ blue!" she says, under her breath; "one cannot believe that it is +not really blue; one feels that if one took up a little in a spoon it +would be just as blue as it is now." + +"I dare say it will not _feel_ so blue when we are on it," replies Mrs. +Byng, lugging in somewhat awkwardly, as she feels, the subject which she +finds it so hard to introduce, "as I suppose we shall be within a week +now." + +Her charity bids her not glance at her companion as she speaks, so she +is not quite sure whether or not she gives a start. + +"Mr. Burgoyne thinks that I am sanguine; but I am all for moving him as +soon as possible; it cannot be too soon." + +She tries to throw as much significance as they are capable of holding +into the latter words, and feels that she has succeeded. + +"Of course he may refuse to go," continues she, with a rather strained +laugh. "Do you remember Victor Hugo's definition of heaven as a place +where children are always little and parents are always young? I am +continually quoting it. But, unfortunately, one's children will not stay +little; they grow big, and get wills of their own, and it is quite +possible he may refuse to go." + +"Yes?" almost inaudibly. + +"But"--reddening slightly at the patently-intended application of her +next sentence--"anyone that was fond of him--anyone that liked him +_really_ and--and _disinterestedly_, I mean, must see that the only +happy course for him would be to go; that it would be his salvation to +get away; they--they would not try to hinder him." + +"I should think that no one would do that." + +There is not a touch of asperity in the dove-soft voice; but there is a +shade of dignity. + +"When he was ill--while he was delirious" ("How dreadfully unpleasant it +is!" in an anguished internal aside)--"I could not help +hearing--gathering--drawing inferences." + +The ardour of the chase has vanquished her charity, and she is looking +at her victim. But, to do her justice, the success of her labours shocks +her. Can this little aged, pinched face, with its dilated eyes, so full +of woe and terror, be the same one that dimpled into riotous laughter +half an hour ago at the sight of the two dirty old men, in Jewish +gaberdines and with gingham umbrellas, kissing each other by the Mosquée +de la Pêcherie? + +"Of course it was all incoherent," she goes on hurriedly, snatching at +the first expression that occurs to her as likely to undo, or at least a +little modify, her work--"nothing that one could make sense of. Only +your name recurred so incessantly; it was nothing but 'Elizabeth, +Elizabeth.' I am sure"--with a remorseful if clumsy attempt to be kind, +and a most uneasy smile--"that I do not wonder at it!" + +In the narrow interspace between the blocks and the path--not more than +a couple of fingers wide--how the sea forces itself! and up race its +foam-fountains, throwing their spray aloft in such mighty play, as if +they would hit heaven's arch. What exhilaration in its great glad noise, +superb and battle-ready! + +"I cannot express how distasteful a task this is to me"--in a tone that +certainly gives no reason to doubt the truth of her statement; "but, +after all, I am his mother; he is all I have in the world, and I am sure +that you are the very last person who would wish to do him an injury." + +"No; I do not think that I would do him an injury." + +How curiously still and slow her voice is! Mrs. Byng has resolutely +averted her eyes, so that her purpose may not again be shaken by the +sight of the havoc she has wrought, and has fixed them upon some sea +gulls that are riding up and down upon the merry waves, making them, +with their buoyant motion, even more jocund than they were before. + +"It seems an impossible thing to say to you--a thing too bad to +apologize for--but yet I _must_ say it"--in a tone of excessive +distress, yet firmness. "Under the circumstances, it would--would throw +a blight over his whole life." + +"Yes, I know that it would; I have always known it; that is why we left +Florence." + +"And very good it was of you, too! Not that I am quite certain of the +judiciousness of the way in which you did it; but, however, I am sure +you meant it for the best." + +"Yes, I meant it for the best." + +The sea-gulls have risen from the billow, and are turning and wheeling +in the air. The light is catching their wings, and making them look like +whitest silver. It seems as if they were at conscious play with it, +trying experiments as to how they can best catch their bright +playfellow, and again shake it off, and yet again recapture it. + +"What a monster you must think me!" breaks out the elder woman +presently. + +Now that the impression has somehow been conveyed to her mind that her +mission is likely to be completely successful, the full brutality of the +method by which she has accomplished it bursts upon her mind. + +"How treacherous! luring you out here, under the pretence of +friendliness, to say such horrible things to you!" + +Elizabeth's narrow hands are clasped upon her knee, and her small +heart-broken, white face is looking out straight before her. + +"No, I do not think you a monster," she answers--"you are a kind-hearted +woman! and it must have been very, very unpleasant to you. I am quite +sorry"--with a sort of smile--"for you, having to do it; but you are his +mother. If I had been his mother, I should have done the same; at least, +I suppose so." + +"I am sure, if things had been different, there is no one that I should +have--I do not know when I ever saw anyone whom I took such a fancy to. +If it had not been for the disparity--I mean, if he had been less young +and unfit to take upon himself the serious responsibilities of life----" + +How deplorably lame even to Mrs. Byng's ears sound her tardy efforts to +place the grounds of her objection on a less cruel basis than that which +she has already made so nakedly plain to be the real one! Even the +sweet-mannered Elizabeth does not think it necessary to express +gratitude for such insulting civilities. + +"I do not quite understand what you wish me to do," she says, with quiet +politeness; "if you will explain to me----" + +"Oh, I do not want to dictate to you; please do not imagine I could +think of being so impertinent; but, of course, he will be asking for +you. Since he came to himself, he has not mentioned you as yet; but of +course he will. I am expecting it every moment; probably he has not felt +up to embarking on the subject. He will ask for you--will want to see +you." + +"And you wish me not to see him?" + +Her delicate suffering mouth quivers; but she is perfectly composed. + +"Oh, but of course you must see him! you quite, _quite_ misunderstand +me! Much chance there would be"--with a wretched stunted laugh--"of +getting him away without a sight of you! How little you know him!" + +Elizabeth does not dispute the fact of her want of acquaintance with +Byng's character, nor does she help his floundering parent by any +suggestion. She merely goes on listening to her with that civil white +look, while the sportive sea-mews still play at hide-and-seek with the +sun-rays on the wide blue fields of heaven. + +"It is dreadful that I should have to say these things to you," says +Mrs. Byng, in a voice of the strongest revolt and ire against her +destiny--"insult you in this unprovoked way; but, in point of fact, you +are the only person in the world who can convince him that--that--it is +impossible--that it cannot be. Of course he will be very urgent and +pressing, and I know how persuasive he is. Do not you suppose that I, +his own mother, know how hard it is to refuse him anything? and of +course, in his present weak state, it must be very carefully done. He +could not stand any violent contradiction. You would have to be very +gentle; dear me!"--with a fresh access of angry remorse--"as if you ever +could be anything else." + +This compliment also its pale object receives in silence. + +"You know one has always heard that there are two kinds of 'No,'" goes +on Mrs. Byng with another dwarfish laugh, which has a touch of the +hysteric in it--"a woman's 'No,' as it is called, that means 'Yes'; and +a 'No' which anyone--which even _he_--must understand to be final. If +you _could_--I dare say I am asking you an impossibility--but if you +_could_ make him understand that this time it is final!" + +There is a silence between them. An unrulier billow than usual, yet more +masterless in its Titan play, is hurling itself with a colossal thud and +bang against the causeway; and Elizabeth waits till its clamour is +subsided before she speaks. + +"Yes," she answers slowly, "I understand; thank you for telling me what +you wish. I think I may promise that I shall be able to--that I shall +make him understand that it is final." + +A moment or two later they are on their way back to the Amirauté. The +ocean is at its glorious pastimes all around them; the hill-climbing, +shining town smiles upon them from its slope; but upon both has fallen a +blindness. The feelings of Mrs. Byng are perhaps the least enviable of +the two. + +They are nearly back at the beginning of the breakwater, when she stops +short. Probably when cool reflection comes, when she is removed from the +charm and pathos of Elizabeth's meek white presence, lovely and +unreproachful, she will not repent her work; but at the present moment +of impulse and remorse she feels as if the expunging of the last +half-hour would be cheaply purchased by the sacrifice of six months of +her remaining life. + +"I suppose it is not the least use my asking you to try and forgive +me--to make allowances for me?" she says, with unsteady-toned humility; +"oh, _how_ you must hate me! If the case were reversed, _how_ I should +hate you! How you will hate me all your life!" + +The tears are rolling down her cheeks, and in an instant Elizabeth's +hand has gone out to her. As it does so, the grotesque regret flashes +across the elder woman's mind that any future daughter-in-law of hers +will be most unlikely to be the possessor of such a hand. + +"Why should I hate you? you cannot"--with a heart-wrung smile--"possibly +think me more undesirable than I do myself; and even if it were not so, +I do not think it is in me to hate anyone very much." + +On their drive home they meet with one or two little incidents quite as +funny as the old Jews kissing each other; but this time they do not move +poor Miss Le Marchant to any laughter. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + + "I do remember an apothecary,-- + And hereabouts he dwells." + + +Two days later she is called upon to perform the task she has +undertaken. Probably she has spent those two days, and also the +appertaining nights, in bracing her mind to it, for Jim can plainly see +the marks of that struggle, though he is not aware of its existence, +graved upon her face, on the third morning after the excursion to the +Mole, when he comes in search of her. He does not find her in her +accustomed corner of the terrace, but, looking down over the balustrade, +sees her sitting below and alone on a small tree-shaded plateau that +seems to have been levelled for lawn-tennis or bowls. Probably the +giggling and chaffering of the girls on the terrace, and the respectful +but persistent importunities of the Omars and Ahmeds to buy their +colourful wares outspread on the hot flags have oppressed her spirits. + +Fritz has carried down for her an arm-chair, a cane table, and a Persian +rug for her feet, and she looks as if she were established for the day. + +Since Byng has been out of danger Elizabeth has returned to her +embroidery. She is one of those women to whom needlework is unaffectedly +dear, like that other sweet woman "who was so delicate with her needle." + +Before she catches sight of him he watches for a few moments her bright +bent head and flying white fingers, and is able to perceive how many +sighs she is sewing into the pattern. + +"What a morning!" he says, running down the steps and joining her. "No +one has any excuse for being an invalid to-day, has he?" + +There is no second seat, so he stands beside her, looking up over her +head at the tall trees above her, from which immense garlands of ivy are +hanging and swinging in the warm breeze. That potent ivy has killed one +tree altogether. + +She glances up at him mutely, knowing that he has not come merely to +tell her that the day is fine. + +"We can hardly keep him on his sofa; he is virtually almost well, so +well that he is quite up to seeing people. He would like--he has been +asking--to see _you_." + +He had thought her nearly as pale as it was possible for her to be when +he had first come upon her. He now realizes how many degrees of colour +she then had left to lose. While he speaks she has been mechanically +pulling her thread through, and as he ceases, her lifted hand stops as +if paralyzed, and remains holding her needle in the air. + +It has come, then. For all her two days' bracing, is she ready for it? + +"_Now?_" + +The whisper in which this monosyllable is breathed is so stamped with a +fear that borders on terror, that his one astonished thought is bow best +to reassure her. + +"Not if you do not feel inclined, of course--not unless you like. It can +perfectly well be put off to another time. I can tell him--there will +not be the least difficulty in making him understand--that you do not +feel up to it this morning: that you would rather have more notice." + +"But I would not," she says, standing up suddenly, and with trembling +hands laying her work down upon the table, and beginning from dainty +habit to pin it up in its protecting white cloth. "What good would more +notice--a year's notice--do me?" + +She turns away from him and fixes her unseeing eyes, glassy and dilated, +upon a poplar tree that is hanging tasselled catkins out against the +sky. Then once again she faces him, and he sees that there are cold +beads of agony upon her forehead. + +"Wish for me," she says huskily--"wish very hard for me, that I may get +through it--that we may both get through it--alive!" + +Then, motioning to him with her hand not to follow her, she walks +quickly towards the hotel. + +It is impossible to him to stay quiet. He wanders restlessly away, +straying he knows not whither. The mimosas are out charmingly in the +gardens, sending delicious whiffs of perfume from the soft yellow fluff +of their flowers. The pinky almond-trees are out too, but not till long +afterwards does he know it. + +By-and-by he finds himself strolling, unhindered by a gardener placidly +digging, through the grounds of a villa to let. Gigantic violets send +their messages to his nostrils, the big and innumerable blue blossoms +predominating over the leaves, which in England have to be so carefully +searched for them. Superabundant oranges tumble about his feet; arum +lilies, just discovering the white secret hid in their green sheaths, +stand in tall rows on either side of him; a bed of broad beans points +out the phenomenon of her February flowers to him. He sees and smells +none of them. Have his senses stolen away with his heart into Byng's +bedchamber? They must have done so, or he could not see with such +extraordinary vividness the scene enacting there. He has himself helped +to place it in such astonishing reality before himself. Does not he know +the exact position of the chair she is to occupy? Did not he place it +for her before he went to fetch her? Nor can his reason prevent his +distorted fancy from presenting the interview as one between happy and +confessed lovers. Even the recollection of her features, ghastly and +with beads of agony dewing them, cannot correct the picture of his mind +as he persistently sees it. That she meant, when he parted from her, to +renounce Byng, he has no manner of doubt. But does not he know the +pliancy of her nature? Is not he convinced that the rock on which her +life has split is her inability ever to refuse anyone anything that they +ask with sufficient urgency or with enough plausibility to persuade her +that she can do them a kindness by yielding? + +How much more, then, will she be incapable of resisting the importunate +passion of her own heart's chosen one, freshly risen from a bed of +death? Presently his restless feet carry him away out of the villa +grounds again. He finds himself on the Boulevard Mustapha, and sits down +on the low wall by the roadside, staring absently at a broken line of +dusky stone-pines, cutting the ardent blue of the African sky on the +hill opposite, and at an arcaded campagne throned high up among the +verdure. He knows that it belongs to an Englishman who made reels of +cotton, and the idle thought saunters across his mind how strange it is +that reels of cotton should wind anyone into such a lofty white Eden! +Can the interview be lasting all this while? Is not it yet ended? May +not his tormented fancy see the chair by Byng's sofa once again empty or +occupied by nurse or mother? Will not Mrs. Byng, will not Elizabeth +herself; have seen the unfitness of taxing the sick man's faint powers +by so extreme a strain upon them? But no sooner has this suggested idea +shed a ray of light upon his darkness than an opposing one comes and +blows it out. Has not Byng a will of his own? Will he be likely so soon +to let her go? Nay, having once recovered her, will he ever let her out +of his sight again? The thought restores him to restless action, and, +although with sedulous slowness, he begins to retrace his steps towards +the hotel. At a point about a quarter of a mile distant from it, the +lane which leads to the Villa Wilson debouches into the road, and +debouching also into the road he sees the figure of Cecilia, who, +catching sight of him, as if unable to wait for him to join her, almost +runs to meet him. + +"I was coming to call upon you," says she eagerly. "Oh!"--with a +laugh--"to-day I really cannot stay to think of the proprieties, and you +have not been to see us for such centuries!" + +"I have been nursing Byng." + +"Oh yes; poor man! How dreadfully ill he must have been! I was so glad +to hear he was better." + +There is such a flat tepidity in the tone of these expressions of +commiseration, something so different from the tender alertness of +Cecilia's former interest in their object, that Jim, roused out of his +own reflections to regard her more attentively than he has yet done, +sees that she is preoccupied by some subject quite alien to the invalid. + +"I have a piece of news to tell you"--with a sort of angry chuckle. +"Such a piece of news! I am sure you will be delighted at it." + +At her words a wonder as idle and slack as his late thought about the +reels of cotton crosses him as to what possible piece of news to be told +him by the buxom and excited person, before him could give him the +faintest pleasure. That wonder sends up his eyebrows, and throws a mild +animation into his voice. + +"Indeed?" + +"Do you like"--still chuckling--"to be told a piece of news or to guess +it?" + +"I like to be told it." + +"Well, then"--with a dramatic pause--"we are going to have a wedding in +the family!" + +"My dear girl!" cries he, smiling very good-naturedly, and with a +sensation that, though not violent, is the reverse of annoyance. +"Hurrah! So he has come at last! Who is he? How dark you have kept him!" + +Cecilia shakes her head and gives a short and rosy laugh. + +"Oh, it is not I! You are wide of the mark." + +"Your father?"--in a shocked voice. + +He has a confused and illogical feeling that a second marriage on the +part of Mr. Wilson would be a slight upon Amelia's memory. + +"_Father!_"--with an accent that plainly shows him he is still further +afield than in his first conjecture--"poor father! No, indeed; Heaven +forbid! Fancy me with a stepmother!" + +She pauses to give a shudder at the idea, while Jim gapes blankly at +her, wondering whether she has gone off her head. + +"Oh no; it is neither father nor I! No wonder you look mystified. It +is--_Sybilla!_" + + +"SYBILLA!!!!" + +Although Mr. Burgoyne has not got it on his conscience that he has ever +either expressed or felt anything but the most strenuous and entire +disbelief in Sybilla's maladies, yet it has never occurred to him as +possible that she should engage in any occupation nearer akin to the +ordinary avocations of life than imbibing tonics through tubes and +eating beef essences out of cups. + +"She is going to marry Dr. Crump!" continues Cecilia, not on the whole +dissatisfied with the effect of her torpedo. "When she told father, she +said that he had saved her life, and that the least she could do was to +dedicate the poor remainder of it to him. She tells other people that +she is marrying him because we wish it! You know that that was always +her way." + +"SYBILLA!!" + +"I thought that there must be something in the wind, as since the +beginning of the month she has never once wished us good-bye; and the +housemaid upset the ink-bottle over the book of prescriptions without +her ever finding it out; and the clinical thermometer has not appeared +for a week!" + +"SYBILLA!!!" + +"I thought I should surprise you; it gives one a disgust for the idea of +marrying altogether, does not it? I have come to the conclusion that I +do not care now if I never marry. Father and I get on quite happily +together; and when one is well off, one can really be very fairly +content in a single state; and, at all events, I am sure I do not envy +Sybilla." + +"Nor I Crump"--with an emphasis so intense that Cecilia bursts out into +a laugh of a more genuine character than any she has yet indulged in. + +"You will have to give her away!" she cries, as soon as she can again +speak distinctly. "Father will marry her, of course, and you must give +her away. I am sure she will insist upon it." + +"She will have to make haste, then," returns he, recovering enough from +his first stupefaction to join Cecilia in her mirth; "for I shall not be +here much longer." + +"You are not going away?"--raising her eyebrows, and with a tinge of +meaningness in her tone which vaguely frets him. + +"Why should not I go?" he asks irritably, his short and joyless +merriment quite quenched. "What is there for a man to do here? I have +stayed already much longer than I meant. I am engaged to meet a friend +at Tunis--the man with whom I went to the Himalayas three years ago; we +are going to make an excursion into the interior. I am only waiting for +some guns and things. Why should not I go?" + +"There is no earthly reason," replies she demurely; "only that I did not +know you had any such intention. But then, to be sure, it is so long +since I have seen you--not, I think," glancing at him for confirmation +of her statement rather too innocently, "since the lovers--ha! ha!--and +I met you and Miss Le Marchant driving on the quay." + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + + +Elizabeth's feeble tap at Byng's door is instantly answered by the +nurse, who, opening it smilingly to admit her, the next moment, +evidently in accordance with directions received, passes out herself and +shuts it behind her. Elizabeth, deprived of the chaperonage of her cap +and apron, and left stranded upon the threshold, has no resource but to +cross the floor as steadily as a most trembling pair of legs will let +her. + +The room is a square one, two of its thick walls pierced by Moorish +windows. Drawn up to one of those windows--the one through which Jim had +caught his first glimpse of Elizabeth on the night of his arrival--is +the sick man's sofa. At the side of that sofa his visitor has, all too +soon, arrived. She had prepared a little set speech to deliver at +once--a speech which will give the keynote to the after-interview; but, +alas! every word of it has gone out of her head. Unable to articulate a +syllable, she stands beside him, and if anyone is to give the keynote, +it must be he. + +"This is very, _very_ good of you. It seems a shame to ask you to come +here, with all this horrid paraphernalia of physic about; but I really +could not wait until they let me be moved into another room." + +She has not yet dared to lift her eyes to his face, in terror lest the +sight of the change in it shall overset her most unsure composure. +Already, indeed, she has greedily asked and obtained every detail of the +alteration wrought in him. She knows that his head is shaved, that his +features are sharp, and that his voice is faint; and when, as he ceases +speaking, she at last wins resolution enough to look at him, she sees +that she has been told the truth. His head is shaven, his nose is as +sharp as a pen, and his voice is faint. She has been told all this; but +what is there that she has not been told? What is his voice besides +faint? + +"Will not you sit down? It seems monstrous that I should be lying here +letting you wait upon yourself. Will you try that one?" pointing to the +chair which is figuring at the same moment so prominently in Jim's +tormented fancy. "I am afraid you will not find it very comfortable. I +have not tried it yet, but it looks as hard as a board." + +She sits down meekly as he bids her, glad to be no longer obliged to +depend upon her shaky limbs, and answers: + +"Thank you; it is quite comfortable." + +"Would not it be better if you had a cushion?"--looking all round the +room for one. + +His voice is courteous, tender almost, in its solicitude for her ease. +But is she asleep or awake? Can this be the same voice that poured the +frenzy of its heartrending adjurations into her ear scarce a month ago? +Can this long, cool, white saint--he looks somehow like a young saint in +his emaciation and his skull-cap--be the stammering maniac who, when +last she saw him, crashed down nigh dead at her feet, slain by three +words from her mouth? + +At the stupefaction engendered by these questions, her own brain seems +turning, but she feebly tries to recover herself. + +"I--I am so glad you are better." + +"Thank you so much. Yes, it _is_ nice; nice to be + + "'Not burnt with thirsting, + Nor with hot fingers, nor with temples bursting.' + +Do you remember Keats?" + +After all, there is something of the original Byng left, and the ghost +of his old spouting voice in which he recites the above couplet gives +her back a greater measure of composure than could almost anything else. + +"It is nice, only one would like to be able to jump, not 'the life to +come'--ha! ha!--but the convalescence to come. My mother is even more +impatient than I am. She has made up her mind that we are to be off in +three days, even if I am carried on board on a shutter." + +She can see now that he is very much embarrassed--that his fluency is +but the uneasy cover of some emotion--and the discovery enables her yet +further to regain possession of herself. + +"I should think," she says in her gentle voice, "that you would be very +glad to get out of this room, where--where you have suffered so much." + +"Well, yes; one does grow a little tired of seeing + + "'The casement slowly grow a glimmering square;' + +but"--with a rather forced laugh--"at least, I have had cause to be +thankful that there is no wall-paper to count the pattern of. I have +blessed the white wall for its featureless face." + +She moves a little in her chair, as if to assure herself that she is +really awake. That stupefaction is beginning to numb her again--that +hazy feeling that this is not Byng at all, this polite invalid, making +such civil conversation for her; this is somebody else. + +"But I must not tire myself out before I have said what I want to say to +you," he continues, his embarrassment perceptibly deepening, while his +transparent hand fidgets uneasily with the border of the coverlet thrown +over him, "or"--laughing again--"I shall have that tyrant of a nurse +down upon me, and--and I do wish--I have wished so much--so +unspeakably--to see you, to speak to you." + +She sits immovable, listening, while a ray of something--can it be hope? +why should it be hope?--darts across her heart. After all, this may be +Byng--her Byng; this strange new manner may be only the garment in which +sickness has dressed his passion--a worn-out garment soon to drop away +from him in rags and tatters, and in which cannot she already discern +the first rent? After all, she may have need for her armour--that armour +which, so far, has seemed so pitifully needless. + +"I knew that it would be no use asking leave to send for you any sooner; +they would have told me I was not up to it--would have put me off with +some excuse; so I kept a 'still sough.' Do you know that I never +mentioned your name until to-day? But it has been hard work, I can tell +you; for the last two days I have scarcely been able to bear it, I have +so _hungered_ to see you." + +Her eyelids tremble, and she instinctively puts up her hand to cover her +tell-tale mouth. Surely this is the old language. Surely there is, at +all events, a snatch of it in his last words; and again that prick of +illogical joy quickens the beats of her fainting heart, though she tries +to chide it away, asking herself why she should be in any measure glad +that the love which she has come here for no other purpose than to +renounce, still lives and stirs. + +"You may think I am exaggerating, but in point of fact I cannot by any +expression less strong than the gnaw of downright hunger convey the +longing I have had to see you." + +He pauses with a momentary failure of his still feeble powers. + +She catches her breath. Now is the time for her to strike in, to arrest +him before he has time to say anything more definite. Now is the time +for her to fulfil her promise, her inhuman promise, which yet never for +one instant strikes her as anything but irrevocably binding. Does he see +her intention, that he plunges, in order to anticipate it, into so +hurried a resumption of his interrupted sentence? + +"To see you, in order to beg--to supplicate you to forgive me for my +conduct to you." + +She gives an almost imperceptible start. This ending is not what she had +expected, not the one to defend herself against which she has been +fastening on her buckler and grasping her shield. The words that it +demands in answer are not those with which she has been furnishing +herself, and it is a moment or two before she can supply herself with +others. He must be referring, of course, to his last meeting with +her--that one so violently broken off by the catastrophe of his +collapse. + +"I do not know what I am to forgive," she says, half bewildered. "You +were not accountable for your actions. You were too ill to know what you +were doing." + +"Oh, you think I am alluding to that last time," cries he, precipitately +correcting her. "No, no; you are right. I was not accountable then. You +might as well have reasoned with a wild beast out of a menagerie. I was +a perfect Bedlamite then. No"--going on very rapidly, as it in desperate +anxiety to make her comprehend with the least possible delay--"what I am +asking you--asking you on my knees--to forgive me for, is my whole +conduct to you from the beginning." + +The two white faces are looking breathlessly into each other, and though +of late he has been tussling with death on a bed, and she has been +walking about, and plying her embroidery, and dining at a public table, +hers is far the whiter of the two. It must be the unwonted exertion of +talking so much that makes him bring out his next speech in jerks and +gasps. + +"I forced my acquaintance upon you at the very beginning; I watched you +like a detective; I beset you wherever you went; I pestered you with my +visits. Jim always told me that it was not the conduct of a gentleman, +but I would not believe him--not even when"--how difficult it is! he +finds it almost as hard work as his mother had done upon the Mole--"not +even when, by my importunities, I had driven you away--obliged you to +rush away almost by night from a place you liked--a place you were happy +in--to escape me. And I have no excuse to offer you--none; unless, +indeed, as I sometimes think, my mind was off its balance even then. I +express myself wretchedly!"--in a tone of deep distress--"but you will +overlook that, will not you? You will--will understand what I mean?" + +She makes an assenting motion with her head. At this moment she cannot +speak: she will be able to do so again directly, but she must have just +a minute or two. Yet she must not leave him for an instant in doubt that +she understands him. Oh yes, she understands him--understands that he is +apologizing for having ever loved her; that he is awkwardly trying to +draw the mantle of insanity over even the Vallombrosan wood. It is true +that he does it with every sign of discomfort and pain; and he looks +away from her, as Mrs. Byng, too, had found it pleasanter to do. + +"Do you remember what Schiller said when he was dying? 'Many things are +growing clearer to me.' I thought a good deal of those words as I lay +over there"--glancing towards the now neatly-arranged and empty bed. +"One night they thought it was all up with me--I heard them say so. They +did not think I was conscious, but I was; and it did strike me that I +had made a poor thing of it, and that if ever I was given the chance I +would make a new start." + +Again that little assenting movement of her fair head. How perfectly +comprehensible he still is! How well she understands that he is +renouncing her among the other follies of his "salad days"--college +bear-fights, music-halls, gambling clubs. Well, why should not he? Has +not she come here on purpose to renounce him? Can she quarrel with him +for having saved her the trouble? + +"And I thought that I could not begin better than by falling on my knees +to you. I wish I could fall on my real knees to you!"--with a momentary +expression of extreme impatience at his own bodily weakness--"and ask +you most humbly and tenderly and reverently to pardon me." + +She looks at him, and sees his wasted face flushing with fatigue and +worry and mental suffering. Oh, what a bitter wave of desolateness rolls +over her! But she smiles. + +"I still do not understand what I am to forgive you for. I suppose that +you could no more help having once thought you loved me, than you can +help"--she stops abruptly in compassion for the look of acute regret, +shame and remorse that crosses his sharp features, and, in her mercy to +him, gives a different close to her phrase from that which its beginning +had seemed to bespeak--"than you can help having been so ill." + +Her tone, quite unconsciously to herself is inexpressibly touching; and +Byng, weakened by illness, turns his face upon the pillow, and breaks +into violent weeping. His mother had cried too. It seems to be in the +family. + +She has risen--what further is there for her to stay for?--and pauses +quietly at his side till the paroxysm is past. Her standing posture +tells him that she is going, and he consequently struggles to recover +himself in some degree; but having never cultivated self-control when he +was in health, it declines to come at his enfeebled bidding now. + +"Forgive me! forgive me!" is all he can stammer. + +She looks down upon him with a strange and tender smile, in which for +the moment the selfless, pitying sweetness has swallowed up the misery. + +"Which am I to forgive you for--for having loved me? or for having +ceased to love me? For having been mad? or for being sane? Yes, of +course I forgive you from the very bottom of my heart! God bless you! +Make haste and get well!" + +She walks cheerfully to the door, and, reaching it, turns, still wearing +that smile, that he may see how perfectly friendly is her last look; but +he does not see it. He has rolled over on his face, and the whole sofa +is shaking with his sobs. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + + "The pity of it, Iago! The pity of it!" + + +The Byngs are gone, having got off just within the time first suggested +by the sick man's mother. But, after all, he has to be carried on board +the _Eugène Perrère_. Since his interview with Miss Le Marchant, his +progress towards recovery has scarcely been so smooth or so fast as +before; and perhaps his mother is right to bear him away with what seems +such overhaste, even though it be on men's shoulders that he has to make +his exit. At all events, he is gone. The hotel--of which a part of the +inmates have seen him only prostrate and bleeding, and the other and +larger part have not seen him at all, but have had their curiosity +whetted by the tale of his calamitous arrival, only to have it balked by +his hurried departure--crowd into the entrance-hall, some on one +pretext, some on another, most on no pretext at all, to see him go. +There are only two of the visitors whose faces cannot be seen among the +good-naturedly curious and sympathetically pitiful group that watch the +exodus of the little party. Who shall say how those two spend the hour +of Byng's departure out of their lives? Jim has accompanied the invalid +to the quay to see the last of him; has stayed with him till the final +bell warns non-passengers off the boat; has left him with all the proper +requests and adjurations to let him know how the sick man bears the +voyage; how they get on, etc. But as Mrs. Byng stands on the upper deck +and watches the trail of churned water lengthening between her and the +dwindling high white town, she has a feeling that her old friend does +not like her as well as he did, and that it will never again be quite +the same thing between them. + +The Byngs are gone--have been gone a fortnight--and March is here. Over +the villa faces the begonias have broken into riotous flower, and the +snowy-blossomed fruit-trees, that have put on their snowy garments but +lately, stand out in bright fragility against the heavy green that +never, even in January, ceases to wrap itself about the lovely Moslem +town. + +Every day for the last fortnight, Jim, too, has been going, but he is +not yet gone. His guns have arrived ten days ago, and his friend has +expressed by post and wire his weariness of exploring the bazaars of +Tunis alone. But he is not yet gone to join that impatient friend. Why +does he still linger in a place where, as he had justly explained to +Cecilia, there is nothing for him to do? Why indeed? It is a question +that, by night and day, by the insolence of the staring moonlight which +slides in upon his restless open eyes by night, under the fires of the +great spring sun at noon, he asks himself. All the answer he can give is +that it would be hardly friendly to choose this moment, when she is so +down in the world, to leave Elizabeth. + +She is down in the world; there can be no mistake about that. Even her +father, who has returned from his wanderings, must be aware of this +fact. Perhaps that is the reason why he no longer snubs her as much as +he did; why he even accepts, with some semblance of graciousness, those +affectionate and watchful ministrations which she tenders him with as +gentle an assiduity as in her brighter days. But he has still no great +appetite for her society; and she, unresentfully divining it, gives up +to him, without repining, the one great solace of her melancholy--her +mother's company. If Jim were gone, the more part of her life would be +spent alone. She tells him so--tells him, with a sweet flattering smile, +how much his comradeship is to her. Has he any right to rob her of that +last prop? It is only to himself that the breathless clamberings up the +steep short cut to El Biar, deep and brambly as her own Devonshire +lanes, that the gazings in common over the pigeon-necked sea and the +amaranth hills, can do any harm. They may put a sting into his own +after-life--a sting that all the empty years that follow may be +powerless to extract; but to her they serve only as a narcotic to numb +the intensity of that ache which the cured madness of Byng has left +behind it. Some day, of course, he must leave her; he cannot pass his +whole life at her side; some day soon leave her to walk and sit and +study her Italian Grammar forlornly alone. But it must not be until she +has a little plucked up her spirits. + +As soon as he sees any signs of this occurring, he will quit +Algiers--quit it comfortably, with the consciousness of having done a +good-natured thing, by which nobody is the worse. This is the compromise +at which he arrives with the inward adviser--conscience, common-sense, +what you will--that is hourly admonishing him to be gone. Does Elizabeth +guess that her retention of the companion, to whom she so desolately +clings, hangs on her remaining always as crushed as the first ten days +after those cruel interviews with the Byngs, mother and son, had left +her? If she did, she would probably seek to check the first faint +revivings of cheerfulness in her inveterately gay spirit. Instead, while +her heart is yet at its sickest, she earnestly tries to foster the tiny +seeds of cheerfulness, saying to herself that it is mere selfishness in +her to inflict her dismalness upon her one friend; seeking rather to +lift his spirits, which seem scarcely less drooping than her own. + +Does he enter into her motive? Does not it rather strike him with a +species of shock how superficial must be the nature, how on the surface +the suffering, of one who can already begin again to take a mischievous +interest in the Widow Wadman's amours, and to mimic afresh the Cockney +twang of the French Vicomte's English governess? + +It is three weeks to-day since the Byngs left. The weather is fine, and +a hot sunbeam is lighting up the painful indecision of Jim's face, as he +stands in his bedroom with an open telegram in his hand, which two hours +ago was put into it. It is from his friend at Tunis, and is conceived in +terms which demonstrate that the indignation of the sender has got the +better of his economy. It contains a stringent representation of his +inability any longer to dance attendance upon Burgoyne's whims, and a +peremptory request, answer paid, to be at once informed either that he +will join him immediately, or that the idea of their joint excursion has +been entirely abandoned. He is standing holding the paper in miserable +uncertainty, torn by doubts, rent in twain by conflicting emotions, when +the noise of voices and laughter outside the house draws him to the +window. + +The room he has occupied since he vacated his own for Byng looks out +over the hall-door, and in front of that door a small group is +gathered--the Vicomte, his two boys, his girl, her governess, a +coal-black negro who serves as kitchenmaid to the establishment, +and--Elizabeth. They are all gathered round a tiny donkey, such a +_bourriquot_ as the valiant Tartarin slew, which has evidently been +brought up for sale by its Arab master. Attached to its head gear are +two long reins, and holding these reins is Miss Le Marchant. As Jim +looks out, the _bourriquot_, taking some strange freak into its little +brown head, sets off galloping at a prodigious rate; and +Elizabeth--white gown and blonde hair flying--gallops after it. As she +is dragged at racing pace down the drive, her immoderate laughter comes +borne back on the wind to the spectator of whom she is unconscious. + +The latter has turned away from the window, and sat down to his +writing-table, where he is scribbling a hasty answer to the missive +which has cost him such long deliberation. It does not take a minute to +pen now that he has once made up his mind, nor can it be more than five +from the moment of the donkey's start to that when the telegram is on +its way to the Post Office in Zameth the porter's hand. The die is cast. +When this is the case after long irresolution, there must always be a +sense of relief, and perhaps, therefore, it is relief which Jim's face, +thrown down upon his arms rested on the table, expresses. Since no one +can see that hidden face, it is impossible to say. He has certainly no +wish that Elizabeth should be unhappy. Her patient white misery had +filled him with tender pity and ruth; and yet her laugh, sweet and +delicate as it was with all its excess of merriment, rings jarringly in +his ears. She is incapable of a great constancy. He had promised himself +to stay with her until her spirits were restored. Well, he has kept his +promise handsomely. He has done with her and her contradictions now. It +will be someone else's turn with her next. Whose? The Vicomte's, +perhaps. + +By-and-by he rouses himself. Only a part of his task is yet done. He +must tell them that he is going. As he passes the looking-glass, he sees +that his hair is roughened and erected by his late attitude. He passes a +brush hastily over it. He must not look a Bedlamite like Byng. He finds +Mr. and Mrs. Le Marchant sitting under the ficus-tree on the +terrace--the terrace which, at this hour, they have to themselves. She +is reading aloud to him paragraphs out of the Algerian paper, +translating as she goes along, since his French is about on a par with +that of most Englishmen of his standing. + +He is leaning back in a wicker chair, with an expression of placid +good-humour on his face. Across his knees the hotel cat--a plain and +ill-natured animal--lies, loudly purring, while he obligingly scratches +her judiciously whenever she indicates a wish for that relaxation. As +Burgoyne remembers, Mr. Le Marchant had always been on very friendly +terms with the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air. About the +little group there is such an air of content, of harmony, of +completeness in itself, that none can connect the idea of a third person +with it in anything but an interloping attitude. And yet there is a +third person whose presence must be continually infringing its happy +duality, since niche of her own in life has she none. + +"Are you looking for Elizabeth?" asks Elizabeth's mother, laying down +her paper as the new-comer draws near; "she has walked to Biermandreis." + +The intimate friendliness of her smile as she gives him this bit of +information--the matter of course taking for granted that he must be +seeking her whose society he has so wholly monopolized of late--plants a +new sting in Jim's sore heart, and robs him for the moment of the power +to make his announcement. + +"She has not been gone more than ten minutes"--still with that bright +look of kindly confidence that she is answering his thoughts. + +"I am looking for you all," he answers abruptly. "I came to tell you +that I am off to-morrow." + +The shaft is sped. Though he is not looking at Mrs. Le Marchant, he +knows that her face has fallen. Upon Mr. Le Marchant's, on the contrary, +an added shade of cheerfulness is visible. Mr. Le Marchant has ceased +any overt opposition to the young man's intimacy with his family; but +none the less is the young man aware that the father has acquiesced but +grudgingly in the footing on which he had found Jim on his return from +his tour. + +"I have had a wire from my friend in Tunis; he is becoming +dangerous"--laughing, oh, how forcedly! + +"You are going to Tunis?" says Mr. Le Marchant, almost cordially. "You +are quite right; it is a very interesting place. One does really see the +genuine East there, not the mongrel hotch-potch one has here." + +"Is not it rather late for a trip into the interior?" asks the wife. The +geniality has gone out of her tone, and the sunshine out of her face. +There is a touch of involuntary wistfulness in both. + +"The interior? Oh yes, of course. My dawdling"--more laughter--"has +knocked that on the head. I have let the time for that go by. We intend +to run over to Spain and see the Alhambra and the Escurial." + +There is a general silence. Well, it is done. Neither husband nor wife +makes any effort to alter his resolution or detain him. They do not even +put any questions to him as to his future projects. He has nothing to do +but remove himself and allow them to resume that happy little duet which +he had disturbed. + +"The train sets off at such an unearthly hour to-morrow morning--six +o'clock or thereabouts; it would take three days to get there if it did +not--that I must put my things together this afternoon. I shall see you +again, of course, before I go." + +"Oh, of course," replies Mr. Le Marchant, in the easy and comfortable +tone of one to whom it is a matter of supreme indifference whether or +not that farewell meeting ever takes place, and Mrs. Le Marchant says +nothing at all. + +He has adduced his necessary packings as an excuse for leaving them; +though, indeed, they neither wished for nor asked any excuse; yet +nothing is further from his intentions than to enter at once upon that +occupation. She has walked to Biermandreis. In five minutes he is +walking thither too. There are a couple of roads that lead there, and of +course he takes the wrong one--the same, that is, that she had taken, so +that, although he walks fast, yet, thanks to her start of him, he has +reached the pretty little flower-shaded French village which, with its +white church and its École Communale, looks as if it were taken to +pieces at night and put to bed in a toy-box--he has reached it, and has, +moreover, traced half his homeward way, before he overtakes her. The +path by which he returns is a rough Arab track, cut in low steps up the +hill, each step a mass of fossil-shells--whelk, and scallop and oyster +shells, whose inhabitants died--strange thought!--before Adam saw Eden's +fair light. It is a charming road, cut, in part, through the red rock, +over which the southern greenery tumbles. He has approached quite close +to her before she sees him. She is sitting on a camp-stool by the +wayside, looking vacantly before her. Her figure is rather stooped, and +her straight back bent, as if it were not worth the trouble to hold it +up. Beside her, on the ground, lie a little tin colour-box and +water-bottle and a drawing-board. He wishes, with a new pang, that he +had not come upon her so suddenly. He is afraid that this is one of the +aspects of her that will stick most pertinaciously in his memory. +Catching sight of him, her whole sad, listless face lights up. + +"It is you! I was sure you would come. I told them to tell you where I +had gone. I meant to sketch"--with a glance at her neglected +implements--"but"--with a sigh--"as you see, I did not." + +"Are you down on your luck?" he asks, sitting down by her side; "you did +not seem so"--trying to harden his heart by forcing a recollection of +her extravagant gaiety--"a little while ago, when you were prancing +after that jackass." + +"Is not he a darling?" cries she, hurrying up the end of her sigh to +make room for a smile of pleasure. "I want to buy him; only I am afraid +he might die of sea-sickness going home." + +"Perhaps"--scarcely knowing what he is saying. + +"I should like to buy a little cart to harness him to--such a one as I +saw just now going along the road, drawn by a tiny _bourriquot_ that +might have been twin brother to mine. Some Arab children had dressed out +both him and his cart with branches of that great yellow fennel--his +long ears and his little nose peeped out so pathetically between; +another child walked after barefoot, waving a great acanthus-leaf. You +never saw anything so pretty! Yes, you must break mine in for me," +smiling again; "it will not take more than a week, I am sure." + +"If it did not take more than a day even, I am afraid I should have to +decline the appointment"--seizing this opening to blurt out his news. "I +am off at six o'clock to-morrow morning. I--I want to see the Escurial." + +She had been almost garrulous about the little donkey, and he had wished +to stop her. In that he has undoubtedly succeeded. + +How the asphodels cover the banks on either hand! They have come into +full flower since last he passed this way: tall branching stem, white +blossom, and pinky bud; here they are in thousands. + +It is a soft day, on which scents lie heavy, and their strong +odour--that is scarcely perfume, and yet has an odd, acrid charm--fills +the air. + +"Everything must come to an end," he says baldly. + +She is apparently not going to make any more effort to detain him than +had her mother. He has every right to come and go where and when he +pleases. Since Amelia died, to no human being is he accountable for his +actions, and yet there is both guilt and misery in his voice as he +utters his platitude. + +"It has been great good luck for me that you have stayed so long; I know +that it is out of pure kindness that you have done it, and it has made +all the difference to me. I--I am quite set up again now, thanks to you; +and--and summer is coming on, and I shall do very well--capitally!" + +She has detected--what is, indeed, pretty obvious--the deep distress of +his face and voice, and, in her habitual unselfishness, her one thought +is to relieve him of any self-reproachful misgiving that he is doing +aught cruel in robbing her of the support of his companionship. In her +tone is nothing but the meekest gratitude. It is her misfortune, not her +fault, that in it there is not cheerfulness too. But her "gentle +physic," instead of curing, seems to aggravate his ill. + +"It must come to an end some time or other!" he murmurs wretchedly, as +if to himself. + +"Yes!" + +Dead silence. + +Below the slight eminence where they sit, the road winds white, and upon +the opulent low green hills on its further side, what a banquet of +colour! On one steep slope the plough is driving its difficult furrows, +turning up the rich red earth, shaded with deeper claret and lighter +pink stains. + +Beneath, a square of stone-pines looks like a green velvet handkerchief +spread on the hillside, and over the rest of the upland eucalyptus, and +olive, and cactus hold their riot of various verdure; while, on the +tiptop of everything, against a weirdly pale-blue sky-field, a Moorish +villa lifts its white flank. + +How long have they both been staring dully at that fair prospect before +Elizabeth again speaks!-- + +"You were a very good friend to me!" + +She had not meant that past tense as an arrow to shoot into his heart; +but it sticks there, barbed. + +"I do not know how." + +"And friends--real, good friends--should not have concealments from each +other, should they? They should tell one another about themselves?" + +"Yes." + +A pause. + +"I have often wished--often tried to tell you about myself; but I could +not. I never could! I can tell you to-day if you wish, if you care to +hear. Do you care?" + +"_Do I care?_" + +What a small battlefield those three words make for the anger and agony +they express to fight upon! + +Another longer pause. + +She has taken off her hat, and now passes her handkerchief over her damp +forehead. + +"I shall be all right when I have once begun, but it is bad to make a +start." + +"Do not make it! do not tell me! I adjure you not to tell me! it hurts +you too much!" + +"It would hurt me more to let you go without telling you. Do you +remember"--rushing desperately into her subject--"at the time you stayed +with us at the Moat, that there was a great talk among us of my having +my portrait painted?" + +He knits his brow in an eager straining of his memory. + +"Yes, I recollect." + +"Father was wonderfully proud of me in those days; it seems impossible +to believe it now"--with a passing look of incredulity at her own +statement--"but he was." + +"Yes, yes." + +"Do you remember all the arranging and planning as to who was to be the +artist, and that he was to come and stay in the house to paint it?" + +Jim has put his hand up to his forehead as if to quicken the return of +those faint and distant impressions which are coming out in stronger and +stronger colours on memory's surface. + +"Yes, yes; he was not an Englishman, was he? We used to laugh about +him"--adding stroke to stroke in order to convince her of the accuracy +of his recollections--"used to call him the 'distinguished foreigner.'" + +"Did we? Yes"--slowly--"I remember now that we did. Well"--gathering +herself up for a supreme effort, panting painfully, and turning her head +quite aside so that he may have no glimpse of her face--"he came, and he +stayed two months, and at the end of those two months I--I--ran away +with him!" + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +VALE? + + +One would have thought that Jim had been in some measure prepared for +the just-fallen blow, both by the overheard fragments of Mr. Greenock's +conversation with the Devonshire clergyman at Florence last year; by the +accumulated evidence of there being some blight upon Elizabeth's life; +and, lastly and chiefly, by the ravings of Byng. But there is something +so different from all these, so infinitely more dreadful, in hearing +this naked statement from her own lips, that it stuns him as much as if +he had never received any hint of that ruinous secret in the background +of her life. + +Having now uttered it, she stops, either to pick up her own spent +strength or to give him the opportunity for some question or comment. + +He makes neither. + +"I thought--I hoped--that you had guessed, from what Mr. Byng said. I +believed that when he was not himself----" + +Again she breaks off, but still no sound comes from Jim. + +"You understand, of course, that that was what I told him. I wanted to +tell him the rest, but that time he could not hear it, and the last time +he--he--did not care to hear it." + +His continued muteness must daunt her, for she here makes a longer pause +than before. Indeed, it is only the fear lest she should mean it for a +final one that enables him to force out the two husky monosyllables: + +"Go on." + +She is always most obedient, and she now obeys. + +"He came only two days after you left us; that was why the sight of you +was so--so painful to us at first. It was not your fault, but we could +not help mixing you up with him. You remember how we tried to avoid +you--how discourteous we were? You forgave us afterwards, but you must +have observed it." + +The listener makes a slight motion of assent. + +"He was a Hungarian, and had been recommended to father by Sir ----, +who, as you know, is always so extraordinarily kind to struggling +artists, and who thought highly of his talent, and wished to get him +commissions. He was almost starving in London; that was one great +reason, I think, why father employed him." + +Even at this moment the thought darts across Jim's mind that he has +never known Elizabeth miss an opportunity of implying some praise of +that father whose harshness towards herself he has so often had an +opportunity of witnessing. + +"He was quite young--not more than twenty-three--and he looked very ill +when he first came; indeed, he was really half starved. It has always +been the surest passport to mammy's heart to be poor and sick and down +in the world, and nothing could have been kinder than they both were to +him." + +"And well he repaid their kindness," says Jim, indignation at last +giving him words. + +She puts out her hand, as if to stop him. + +"Wait, wait!" she says, almost authoritatively; "do not abuse him. He +seemed very grateful to them, and they all--we all--became quite fond of +him. When he grew stronger, he turned out to be very lively and +light-hearted--almost as light-hearted as we." + +She pauses, pulled up by a deep sigh, at the reminiscence of that young +gaiety, then hurries on, as if afraid of his again breaking in upon her +narrative with some scathing ejaculation. + +"Before three weeks were over--you know how cheerful and easy-going we +were--he was quite one of us--quite as--as intimate as you were." + +Jim stirs uneasily, galled by the comparison. + +"He was a long time painting my picture--could not satisfy himself with +the likeness--and began it over again several times. At first there was +always someone in the room with us when I sat to him, but by-and-by, as +he became more and more one of us--as his presence among us grew to be a +matter of course--we were allowed often to be _tête-à-tête_." + +She stops to let pass two Frenchmen and a Frenchwoman of the _petit +bourgeois_ class who are sauntering homewards, frisked about by two +little cheerful curs, and with armfuls of hawthorn--yes; real English +hawthorn--in their embrace. They look inquisitively, but not rudely, at +the pale couple, and now they are out of sight. + +"It was a very fine autumn, as you may remember, and we used to go out +sketching together. He was supposed to give us sketching lessons--the +children and me. The governess was by way of always being there, but she +was a sentimental creature, generally straying away by herself with a +poetry-book, and we were virtually alone." + +Jim sees how increasingly, how horribly difficult of relation is the +tale as it nears its catastrophe; but he is quite incapable of helping +her. + +"We fell in love with one another"--almost brusquely--"and he asked me +to marry him. What did his miserable poverty matter to us? He knew +almost as little of the practical business of life as I, and he was full +of hope and ambition. He was convinced that he had a future before him. +Perhaps he had. Who knows?" + +There is mixed with the hurry and shame and anguish of her tone such an +element of almost regretful compassion as she pronounces these last +words, that Jim's jealous wrath awakes. Does she, then, love him still? +In her heart for how many is there lodging at once? For Byng? For this +unknown? For how many more? + +"Even he, high-flown as he was, knew that it was impossible that father +could permit our marriage if we asked his consent; but what he laboured +to convince me of was, that if the thing were once done and irrevocable, +father would soon, doting as he did on me--you know he _did_ dote on me, +poor father!--he would soon forgive us; and I, after awhile--oh! it was +after awhile; do not think it was at once"--with a piteous effort to +mitigate the severity of her silent judge--"and I have always all my +life been terribly easily persuaded--I gave in." + +Far away a dull cloud, rain-charged, is settling over the Kabyle +mountains, rubbing out their toothed ridge. Can she hold out to the end? + +She has not reached the worst yet. + +"We were soon given an opportunity. Father and mother went away for a +couple of nights upon a visit, and left us under the nominal chaperonage +of a deaf old aunt of mother's, and of the governess, who, as I have +told you, was worse than useless. You know that our railway-station was +not more than a mile from the lodge gates; we had, therefore, no +difficulty in slipping away from the others while we were all out +walking, making our way there, and getting into the little branch-line +train which caught the London express at Exeter." + +She has repeatedly put up her handkerchief, and passed it over her brow, +but it is useless. The cold sweat breaks out afresh and afresh. + +"That journey! I did not know that it was the end of my life. We both +set off laughing and saying to each other what a good joke it was. That +was at the beginning, but long and long before we reached London--it was +not till very late that we did so--I would have given all the world to +go back. I did not tell him so, because I thought it would hurt him, but +I have often thought since that perhaps he was feeling the same." + +Again that touch of almost tender ruth in her voice makes her auditor +writhe. + +"We went to an hotel. I think it must have been in some very +out-of-the-way part of the town, probably the only one he knew of, and +at first they would not take us in because we had no luggage; but they +consented at last. I heard him telling the landlady that I was his +sister. I suppose she did not believe it, as she looked very oddly at +me. I did not understand why she should; but it made me feel very +wretched--so wretched that I could scarcely swallow a mouthful of the +supper he ordered. I do not think that he had much more appetite than I; +but we tried very hard to laugh and keep up each other's spirits. They +gave me a very dismal bedroom--I can see it now"--shuddering--"and as I +had no change of clothes I lay all night outside my bed. It took a great +deal to keep me awake in those days, and, wretched as I was, I slept a +good deal. The next morning I awoke, feeling more cheerful. We should be +married in the forenoon, return home in the afternoon, to spring our +surprise upon the children and Fräulein, and be ready to receive and be +pardoned by father and mother on their return to-morrow. It had not +occurred to either of us that there would be the slightest difficulty in +pursuing this course. We had decided upon at once inquiring the name and +address of the clergyman in whose parish the hotel was--going together +to ask for an interview, and beg him to marry us at once. We had a vague +idea that a licence might be needed, but relied upon the clergyman also +to inform us where that might be got. In one respect our plans had to be +at once modified. When I came down I found that there was such a dense +fog that he would not hear of my venturing out into it, particularly, he +said, as my staying behind would entail no delay; since, when he had +obtained the licence and engaged the clergyman, he would, of course, at +once come back to fetch me to church. I gave in, though I had rather +have gone with him, and fought my way through the fog than stayed +behind, alone in that dreary sitting-room. I was there nearly all day by +myself until late in the afternoon. The fog was so thick that I could +not see a finger's length beyond the window, nor even across the room. I +had neither book nor work. I had nothing to do but walk up and down by +the flickering light of the bad gas, which was burning all day, and look +at a wretched little dead aucuba in a pot. Sometimes I went out on the +landing to see if there were any signs of his return. I had done this +for the fiftieth time, when at last I saw him through the gas and the +fog, coming up the staircase. I could not wait till he had reached me, +but called out over the banisters, 'Well? Well?' His only answer was a +sort of sign to me to go back into the room; but I did not understand it +at first. Not until I saw, coming up the stairs too, a little behind +him, the face of--of--that clergyman you saw at Certosa--our clergyman +whom we used to make fun of. Oh, why did we?" + +She breaks off with a low moan, but at once resumes as if she could not +trust herself to pause: + +"As soon as I caught sight of him I ran back; but it was too late. I +knew that he had recognised me. I do not, to this day, understand how he +came to be in that out-of-the-way place; whether it was a most +unfortunate coincidence, or whether he had seen us in the train or at +Paddington, and tracked us there. I ran back, as I have said, into the +room; but I did not really mind much his having seen me; it would all be +explained so soon, and I was too much taken up with the bitter +disappointment in store for me to give him more than a passing thought. +Of course you will understand that it was not in the power of any +clergyman to marry us, as neither of us had lived in the parish for the +requisite time beforehand, nor could we be married at a registry office, +as our names had not been entered in the registrar's book for the legal +time. I think I should have broken down altogether when I heard this if +I had not had to comfort him. He was so overwhelmed with the fear that I +should think that it was his fault--that he had not done his best. +Heaven knows I had no such hard thought of him! Although we consulted +together all that evening, and till late into the night, we could not +hit upon any expedient. He had been told vaguely that the Scotch +marriage law differed from the English, and that in Edinburgh we might +be married at once. But we had not enough money to take us there. Our +whole stock would only just buy an ordinary licence, keep us one day +more at the hotel, and take us home third class. What _should_ we do? We +did not even try to laugh that evening--that last evening!" + +In her voice is the same echo of some pitying sorrow that had before +offended him; but his interest is now too strung up for him to notice +it. + +"I did not once close my eyes that night, and when I came down next +morning I had made up my mind to beg him to let me go home and ask +father to make everything right. I had such confidence that father could +set everything right. When I came into the sitting-room he was not +there. I waited for him, and after awhile the breakfast was brought up; +but still he did not come. I waited on. It seemed to me odd that, at +such a crisis, when we were both so miserable, he should be able to +oversleep himself I am afraid"--with an accent of most regretful +remorse--"that I did think hardly of him then. I looked at the clock; I +had been down an hour. I rang for the waiter, and asked him to go and +tell the gentleman this. He was so long in coming back that I lost +patience, and went out into the passage. I saw a little group of people +gathered round a door some way down it. They seemed to be whispering and +speaking excitedly, and one chambermaid was crying. In an instant I was +among them, through them, in the room. It was his bedroom. He was lying +half on, half off the bed. He had evidently not undressed all night, and +had taken off nothing but his coat. Before they could stop me--I believe +that they humanely tried--I had caught a glimpse of his face, and had +heard someone, as if at a great distance off, pronounce the word +'_dead_'! Then everything went away. I believe I crashed down like a +log, as Mr. Byng did. When next I came to myself mammy was leaning over +me. The people in the hotel had found a letter in my pocket, with my +address, and had telegraphed for her and father. They took me home. I do +not remember anything about that, but so I was told afterwards, as I was +also told that he had died of deep-seated heart-disease, aggravated by +his anxiety about me. I have never brought good-luck to anyone that had +to do with me!" + +She is crying quietly now. Is it her tale or her tears that have +softened Jim's heart? He no longer grudges her that tribute to the lover +of her youth. + +"For the first few days after I came home I did not feel anything at +all, and I saw nobody but mammy. At the end of a week she came to me, +and told me that I must pull myself together, for that my father wished +me to go with him to an agricultural meeting at Exeter, which we were +always in the habit of attending. She said that there were reports about +me in the county, which nothing but my appearing in public would +contradict She said she knew how hard it was for me, but that she knew, +too, that I would try to make the effort for their sakes. _For their +sakes!_"--in a heart-wrung voice--"was not it the least I could do, _for +their sakes_? I got up; my legs felt as if they did not belong to me. +She dressed me herself--darling mammy!--and she tied on my veil, +and--put some rouge on my cheeks! Think of mammy rouging anyone! If you +remember, we had had some charades while you were with us, and had +bought some rouge for them. And then she took me down to father, and we +went--he and I." + +Her breath has grown shorter, and her narrative more disjointed; but she +perseveres. Is not she near the end? + +"We went--and we walked about--among the shorthorns--and the prize +poultry--and the tents--father and I--and we met a great many people +whom we knew--the whole county was there--but we were too late. Our +Rector had been before us with them--and not one of them would speak to +me! Not one of them would have anything to say to me! And then we went +home. Oh, poor father!" + +She has covered her face with her transparent hands. The emotion that +she would not permit herself for herself has mastered her at the +recollection of that father's abasement and agony. + +"He was quite right--it was quite natural that he should not allow me to +live at home, after that. He said I must not blight the children's +lives--must not stand in the light of the others. So I was sent away to +live with some old friends of mammy's--two kind old ladies--with whom +she had been at school; and they were very good to me, and I lived with +them until, as Miriam and Rose were married, father thought I could not +do anyone any more harm, and he let me come home again. There! that is +all!" + +She stops, her tale ended, sighing with the inexpressible relief of that +lifted load. Speech from him now would be no interruption--would be +kindly, rather, and welcome. Yet he still stares blankly before him. Why +has she told him that painful tale? Is it that he may carry a more +lenient judgment of her through the rest of his life--that life to be +finally severed from hers? Or is it with some hope that that told tale +may keep him for ever beside her? She does not love him. She loves Byng. +But, as he has often told himself, she is not of the stuff of which +great constancies are made. And, since Byng has forsaken her, whom has +this pliant creature, that nature made so clinging and circumstances so +lonely, left to throw her tendrils round, except him? She does not love +him, and yet in the depth of his heart he knows that, if he wished it, +he could make her love him. Shall he wish it? Shall he stay--stay to +have those exquisite eyes, tear-washed, and yet laughing, watching for +his lightest wish; that tripping step keeping time to his up the hills +and through the valleys of life; that delicate sympathy, soaring with +his highest thoughts, and yet playing with his lightest fancies? Shall +he? + +Elizabeth is looking down upon the asphodels, stooping to stroke, as if +it were a sentient thing, a great plumy plant, like a sort of glorified +fennel, out of whose fluthery breast a puissant sheath rises, from which +an unfamiliar flower is pushing. What a fascination there is in this +alien vegetation, in which every shut calyx holds a delightful secret! + +Shall he? For himself, he believes her story implicitly, feeling, +indeed, with a shock of mixed surprise and remorse, what a past want of +faith in her is evidenced by his unspeakable relief at its being no +worse a one. But who else will believe it? And the more penetratingly +sweet, the more poignantly dear she is to him, the sharper to him will +be the agony of the eye averted from her, the suspicious whisper, or the +contemptuous smile. Is his heart stout enough, is his courage high +enough, to support and uphold her through her life's long contumely? +Dares he undertake that hard task? Dares he? + +Elizabeth is never one apt to take offence, or she might resent his +delay in making any observation on her ended story. Probably she divines +that whatever may be the cause of his slowness, it is certainly not want +of emotion. + +At length his tardy speech makes itself heard. + +"I do not know how--I have not words strong enough with which to thank +you for telling me." + +"I did not want my one friend to go away thinking more hardly of me than +he need," she answers, with a poor, small smile. + +This is one of the bitterest cups to which her lips have ever been set +in the course of her sad history. + +His next sentence is almost inaudible. + +"I could not well think much better of you than I have done all along." + +He knows, without seeing it, that her trembling hand makes a half-motion +to go out to him at those kind-sounding words, but it is drawn back +again before the action has passed much beyond the stage of a project. + +The wind has fallen. With how almost disagreeable a strength does the +sharp and pungent smell of the innumerable asphodels assail the +nostrils. The light grows lower. Dares he? Has he the steady selfless +valour that will be needed to fight through many years by the side of +this forlorn creature against an enemy uglier--and, oh! how much more +potent!--than any of the fierce forest creatures in contest with which +he has so often lightly perilled his life? Dares he? He has never been +lacking in self-reliance--been, perhaps, too little apt to blench at the +obstacles strewn in his life-path. Is he going to blench now? Whether it +be to his credit or his shame, the answer does not come all at once. +Dares he? The response comes at last--comes slowly, comes solemnly, yet +comes certainly: + +"Yes." + +He can never again laugh at Byng for his tears, for he is undoubtedly +crying himself now. + +"Elizabeth! Elizabeth!"--he cannot get further than that at +first--"you--you are the worst-used woman in the world! and I--I have +not the least desire to see the Escurial!" + + + +THE END. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Alas!, by Rhoda Broughton + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALAS! *** + +***** This file should be named 34428-8.txt or 34428-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/4/4/2/34428/ + +Produced by Meredith Bach, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +book was produced from scanned images of public domain +material from the Google Print project.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Alas! + A Novel + +Author: Rhoda Broughton + +Release Date: November 24, 2010 [EBook #34428] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALAS! *** + + + + +Produced by Meredith Bach, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +book was produced from scanned images of public domain +material from the Google Print project.) + + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/tp.jpg" alt=""/> +</div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h1>ALAS!</h1> + +<h3>A Novel</h3> + +<h2>BY RHODA BROUGHTON</h2> + +<h3>AUTHOR OF 'COMETH UP AS A FLOWER,' 'RED AS A ROSE IS SHE,' 'SECOND +THOUGHTS,' 'GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!,' 'NANCY,' 'DOCTOR CUPID,' ETC.</h3> + + +<h3><i>A NEW EDITION</i></h3> + +<h3>LONDON<br /> +RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON<br /> +Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen<br /> +1891<br /> +[<i>All rights reserved</i>]</h3> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><i>TO<br /> +MRS. ANDREW SPOTTISWOODE</i></h3> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. --> +<p> +<a href="#PART_I">PART I.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">CHAPTER XXVII.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">CHAPTER XXVIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">CHAPTER XXIX.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXX">CHAPTER XXX.</a><br /><br /> +<a href="#PART_II">PART II.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IA">CHAPTER I.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IIA">CHAPTER II.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IIIA">CHAPTER III.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IVA">CHAPTER IV.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VA">CHAPTER V.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VIA">CHAPTER VI.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VIIA">CHAPTER VII.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VIIIA">CHAPTER VIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IXA">CHAPTER IX.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XA">CHAPTER X.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIA">CHAPTER XI.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIIA">CHAPTER XII.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIIIA">CHAPTER XIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIVA">CHAPTER XIV.</a><br /> +</p> +<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. --> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>ALAS!</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="PART_I" id="PART_I"></a>PART I.</h2> + +<h3>Amelia.</h3> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>"If you will allow me, I shall have the pleasure of reading aloud to you +some passages from 'Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings,' by Charles Dickens. I do +not know much about the book myself, as I have never read it. I dare say +that you know more about it than I do; but I am given to understand" +(with a glance at the page before him) "that Mrs. Lirriper was a +lodging-house-keeper, that she kept lodgings in London. She was a very +good sort of woman, I believe" (another hasty glance), "but she +sometimes had trouble with her servants. I am told that servants are +troublesome sometimes" (a slight nervous laugh, the more nervous because +it does not seem to be followed by any echo from the audience). "If you +will allow me then, as I say, and if you think it will amuse you, I will +read you a little of what she says about these troubles."</p> + +<p>The foregoing remarks are uttered in a loud, shy, dogged voice by James +Burgoyne to the "Oxford Women's Provident Association." His voice is +loud because, being quite unused to public reading, he does not know how +to modulate it; it is shy from the same cause of unaccustomedness; it is +dogged because he is very much displeased with his present occupation, +and has not been successful in concealing that displeasure. When a man +runs down to Oxford for a couple of nights, to see how the six years +that have passed since he turned his undergraduate back upon the old +place have treated her—runs down to a college chum unseen for the same +six years—this is certainly not the way in which he expects to spend +one of his two evenings.</p> + +<p>"I hope you will not mind, Jim"—ominous phrase—the college friend has +said; "but I am afraid we shall have to turn out for half an hour after +dinner. It is rather a nuisance, particularly as it is such a wet night; +but the fact is, I have promised to read to the 'Oxford Women's +Provident Association.' Ah, by-the-bye, that is new since you were +here—we had no Provident Women in your day!"</p> + +<p>"On the other hand, we had a great many improvident men," returns Jim +dryly.</p> + +<p>"Well, the fact is, my wife is on the committee, and a good deal +interested in it, and we give them a sort of entertainment once a month +through the winter terms—tea and buns, that kind of thing, sixpence a +head; they enjoy it far more than if we gave it them for nothing; and +after tea we get people to recite and read and sing to them. I am sure I +wish them joy of my reading to-night, for I do not see how I am to make +myself audible; I am as hoarse as a crow."</p> + +<p>"I know those Oxford colds of old," returns Burgoyne, with that +temperate compassion in his voice which we accord to our neighbours' +minor diseases. He is sorry that his friend has a cold; but he little +knows how much sorrier he will be in the course of the next hour as he +adds: "Do not distress yourself about me; I shall be quite happy in your +den with a book and a cigarette. Mrs. Brown does not object, does she? +And I dare say you will not be very long away."</p> + +<p>As he speaks he realizes, with a sort of pang—the pang we pay sometimes +to our dead pasts—that, though it is only three hours since he was +reunited to his once inseparable Brown, he is already looking forward +with relief to the prospect of an hour's freedom from his society—so +terribly far apart is it possible to grow in six years. But, before his +half-fledged thought has had time to do more than traverse his brain, +Brown has broken into it with the eager remonstrances of a mistaken +species of hospitality.</p> + +<p>"Leave you behind? Could not hear of such a thing! Of course you must +come too! It will be a new experience for you; a wholesome change. Ha! +ha! and we can talk all the way there and back; we have had no talk +worth speaking of yet."</p> + +<p>Again it flashes across the other's mind, with the same pensive regret +as before, that talk worth speaking of is for ever over between them; +but, seeing that further attempts at evasion will seriously hurt the +good-natured Brown, he acquiesces, with as fair a grace as he may.</p> + +<p>While putting on his own mackintosh, he watches, with a subdued wonder, +his friend winding himself into a huge white woollen comforter, and +stepping into a pair of goloshes (he had been rather a smart +undergraduate in his day), while outside the opened hall door the rain +is heard to swish, and the wind to bellow.</p> + +<p>"Had not we better have a hansom?" suggests Burgoyne, blinking, as the +slant gust sends two or three stinging drops into his eyes.</p> + +<p>"A hansom! nonsense!" returns the other, laughing, and with difficulty +unfurling an umbrella in the teeth of the blast. "It is all very well +for a bloated bachelor like you; but a man whose family is increasing at +the rate mine is cannot afford himself such luxuries; come along, you +are not sugar or salt."</p> + +<p>Burgoyne feels that at this moment he can at all events conscientiously +disclaim affinity with the first of the two.</p> + +<p>It is indeed a wet night, wet as the one immortalized by Browning in +"Christmas Eve and Easter Day;" and who ever brought a wet night and wet +umbrellas "wry and flapping" so piercingly home to us as he? The talk so +cheerfully promised by Burgoyne's sanguine friend is rendered absolutely +impossible by the riot of the elements. It is a good step from the +suburban villa, which is the scene of Brown's married joys, to the room +in the heart of the town where the Provident Matrons hold their +<i>sabbat</i>; and by the time that the two men have reached that room there +is, despite his mackintosh, little of Burgoyne left dry except his +speech. They are under shelter at last, however, have entered the +building, added their umbrellas to many other streaming wrecks of +whalebone huddled in a corner, and exchanged the dark blustering drench +for a flare of gas, a reek of tea, and a sultry stream of wet clothes +and humanity. The tea, indeed, is a thing of the past—all its apparatus +has been removed. The rows of chairs are all set to face the platform, +and on those chairs the Provident Women sit, smiling, if damp, with here +and there a little boy, evidently too wicked to be left at home, +comfortably wedged between a couple of matronly figures.</p> + +<p>The entertainment has already begun, and an undergraduate—damp, like +everyone else—is singing, in a booming bass voice, something of a +vaguely boastful nature about what he once did "In Bilboa's Bay." +Burgoyne has for the moment lost sight of his chaperon, and remains +standing near the door, looking upon the scene around him with an eye +from which philanthropy is all too criminally absent. About him are +grouped a few ladies and gentlemen—more of the former than the +latter—who are obviously about to give their services, judging by their +rolls of music and the books in their hands. His look passes over them +indifferently—he has no acquaintance among them. He had never known +many of the Oxford householders, and there is no place where a man +becomes superannuated after so short a lapse of years.</p> + +<p>Here are new arrivals. He turns his head mechanically as the opening +door reveals the advent of more umbrellaed and mackintoshed waterfalls. +Two men and a lady. As his eye alights on the woman, he does not +start—we Anglo-Saxons are not apt to make our slow grave bodies the +indexes of our emotions—but he is conscious of an odd and puzzling +sensation. Where has he seen that face before?</p> + +<p>"Bilboa's Bay" has come to an end without his perceiving it. He is +putting his memory through her paces, trying to find some niche in his +three happy Oxford years in which to place that strangely known yet +unknown figure. There is no such niche. It is not an Oxford memory at +all. What is it then? An earlier or a later one? His eyebrows are drawn +together in the effort of recollection, making him look, if possible, +crosser than before, when he is made aware of the return of Brown by +finding his arm seized, and his friend's voice—a good deal hoarser even +than when they left home—in his ear, "Jim, do you feel inclined to do a +very good-natured thing?"</p> + +<p>"Not in the least," replies Burgoyne promptly; "if anyone wishes to +borrow £5 from me, I should advise him to choose a moment when I am +drier about the legs."</p> + +<p>Burgoyne has very often stood up to and over his knees in water for +hours, watching for ducks among whistling reeds on winter mornings, and +never thought himself at all to be pitied; but he is thoroughly vexed +now at his moist trousers. Brown, however, is not so easily rebuffed.</p> + +<p>"I should be awfully obliged to you," he says croakily; "you would be +laying me under a very real obligation if you would——" He stops to +cough.</p> + +<p>"If I would what?" returns the other curtly, and looking apprehensively +at a book which Brown is expanding before his eyes.</p> + +<p>"If you would read instead of me."</p> + +<p>"I!"</p> + +<p>"Why, the fact is"—coughing noisily again as if to show that there is +no imposition—"I suppose the fog must have got down my throat; but I +find I cannot speak above a whisper. I should not be heard beyond the +front row; come, old man, do a good-natured thing for once in your +life."</p> + +<p>There is a pause; Burgoyne is not very fond of being asked to do a +good-natured thing. He can do a big one every now and then, but he is +not particularly fond of being asked to do a small one.</p> + +<p>"Surely there must be many people here much better suited for it than I +am," he says presently, looking uncomfortably round in search of the +little group of booked and musicked persons whom he had seen but now +standing near him, but it had melted.</p> + +<p>"That is just what there are not," rejoins Brown, pressing his point +with the more eagerness, as he thinks he sees signs of yielding; "we are +very short of hands to-night, and my wife has just heard that the girl +upon whom she was counting for a couple of songs is in bed with +influenza."</p> + +<p>"Happy girl! I wish I too was in bed with influenza," says Jim +sardonically, for he sees his fate about to overtake him.</p> + +<p>And so it comes to pass that, five minutes later, as described at the +opening of this chapter, he is seated on the platform with "Mrs. +Lirriper's Lodgings" before him, rows of Provident Matrons' eyes +fastened expectantly upon him, and horrid qualms of strange shyness +racing over him.</p> + +<p>Brown has indicated by a dog's-ear the page at which he is to begin; so +he is spared indecision on this head. But has Brown indicated the page +at which he is to stop? He is gnawed by a keen anxiety as to this point +all through his performance. It is hot upon the platform, the smell of +tea potent, and the naked gas-jets close above his head throw an ugly +yellow glare upon his book.</p> + +<p>Having offered his prefatory observations in the manner I have +indicated, he rushes <i>in media res</i>. "Girls, as I was beginning to +remark, are one of your first and your lasting troubles, being like your +teeth, which begin with convulsions, and never cease tormenting you from +the time you cut them till they cut you, and then you do not want to +part with them, which seems hard, but we must all succumb, or buy +artificial." (Do his ears deceive him? Is there already a slight titter? +Have the simile of the convulsions and the necessity for a <i>râtelier</i> +already struck a chord in the matrons' breasts?) "And, even where you +get a will, nine times out of ten you get a dirty face with it, and +naturally lodgers do not like good society to be shown in with a smear +of black across the nose, or a smudgy eyebrow!" (Is he managing his +voice alright? Is he mumbling, or is he bellowing? He rather inclines to +a suspicion of the latter. Why did not they laugh at the "smudgy +eyebrow"? They ought to have done so, and he had paused to give them the +opportunity. Perhaps it is among them too familiar a phenomenon to +provoke mirth.) "Where they pick the black up is a mystery I cannot +solve, as in the case of the willingest girl that ever came into a +house, half-starved, poor thing; a girl so willing that I called her +'Willing Sophy;' down upon her knees scrubbing early and late, and ever +cheerful, but always with a black face. And I says to Sophy, 'Now, +Sophy, my good girl, have a regular day for your stoves, and do not +brush your hair with the bottoms of the saucepans, and do not meddle +with the snuffs of the candles, and it stands to reason that it cannot +be.'" (Ah! what welcome sound is this? "Willing Sophy" has produced an +undoubted giggle, which Burgoyne hears spreading and widening through +the room. Heartened by this indication, he goes on in a more emphatic +and hilarious voice:) "Yet there it was, and always on her nose, which, +turning up, and being broad at the end, seemed to boast of it, and +caused warning from a steady gentleman, an excellent lodger, with +breakfast by the week."</p> + +<p>There can be no mistake about it now; the giggle has changed into a +universal resonant laugh, which goes on swelling and rising, until, in +the final roar of approbation which greets the concluding paragraph, the +reader's voice is drowned. The matrons have all along been ready to be +amused; it is only that, owing to the gravity of his face and solemnity +of his manner, it was some time before they recognised that his +intention was comic. As soon as they do so, they reward that intention +with more than adequate mirth. Burgoyne has reached the second +dog's-ear, that dog's-ear which his eye has been earnestly searching for +throughout. His task then is ended. He heaves a deep sigh of relief, +and, with a reflection that, after all, he is glad he was obliging, is +preparing to shut the volume, when he feels the inevitable Brown's hand +on his shoulder, and his husky voice in his ear.</p> + +<p>"Capital! you got on capitally! Could not be better; but you will not +mind going on a little longer, will you? You have only read for ten +minutes. I want you to try something different this time—a little +pathos, for a change. I have marked the page. Here!"</p> + +<p>What is there to do but acquiesce? Burgoyne, complying, finds himself at +once in the middle of a melancholy tale of a poor young woman left +ruined and deserted in Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings, and only rescued from +suicide by the efforts of that good lady, who, however, is unable to +save her from a tragic and premature death. The reader has reached the +point at which Mrs. Lirriper has met the poor creature on her way to the +river.</p> + +<p>"'Mrs. Edson, I says, my dear, take care! However, did you lose your +way, and stumble in a dangerous place like this? No wonder you're lost, +I'm sure.'" (What is this sound? Is it possible that the giggle is +rising again? the giggle which he was so glad to welcome a little while +ago, but which is so disastrously out of place here. He redoubles his +efforts to put an unmistakably serious and pathetic tone into his +voice.) "She was all in a shiver, and she so continued till I laid her +on her own bed, and up to the early morning she held me by the hand and +moaned, and moaned, 'Oh, wicked, wicked, wicked!—--'"</p> + +<p>What can the Provident Matrons be made of? They are laughing +unrestrainedly. Too late Burgoyne realizes that he had not made it +sufficiently clear that his intention is no longer comic. The idea of +his being a funny man has so firmly rooted itself in his hearers' minds, +that nothing can now dislodge it. Such being the case, he feels that the +best thing he can do is to reach the end as quickly as possible. He +begins to read very fast, which is taken for a new stroke of +facetiousness, the result of which is that the last sigh of the poor +young would-be suicide is drowned in a storm of hilarity even heartier +and more prolonged than that which greeted "Willing Sophy's" smudged +nose. In much confusion, greatly abashed by the honours so mistakenly +heaped upon him, Burgoyne hastily leaves the platform. Twenty thousand +Browns shall not keep him there!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Tell me now in what hidden way is<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Lady Flora the lovely Roman?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where is Hipparchia, and where is Thais?<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Neither of them the fairer woman.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where is Echo beheld of no one,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Only heard on river and mere?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She whose beauty was more than human,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But where are the snows of yester-year?"<br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>"There is no reason why we should not go home now; are you ready?" cries +Brown, bustling up to his friend, who has not waited for this question +to make straight, as the needle to the pole, for the corner where the +collected umbrellas stand in their little area of lake.</p> + +<p>Burgoyne would probably have laughed at the unconscious irony of this +inquiry if he had heard it; but he has not, his attention being +otherwise directed. On the same umbrella quest as himself, being helped +on with her mackintosh by one of the two men who had accompanied her, a +pepper-and-salt-haired, sturdy gentleman of an obviously unacademic cut, +is the lady whose face had flashed upon him with that puzzling sense of +unfamiliar familiarity. Since they are now in close proximity, and both +employed alike in struggling into their wraps, there is nothing more +natural than that she should turn her eyes full upon him. They are very +fine eyes, though far from young ones. Is it a trick of his imagination, +or does he see a look of half-recognition dawn in them, such as must +have been born in his own when they first alighted on her? At all +events, if there is such a look of half-recognition in her eyes, she is +determined that it shall not have a chance of becoming a whole one. +Either he is mistaken, and she has not recognised him, or she is +determined not to acknowledge the acquaintance, for she looks away again +at once, nor does she throw another glance in his direction. Indeed, it +seems to him that she hurries on her preparations with added speed, and +walks out into the night accompanied by her double escort before him.</p> + +<p>The weather has changed, and for the better. The rollicking wind has +lulled, the pattering rain ceased. Between the ragged, black +cloud-sheets star-points shine, and a shimmering moon shows her wet face +reflected in the puddles. Talk, which had been impossible on their way +to the meeting, is not only possible but easy now, and Brown is +evidently greatly inclined for it. Burgoyne, on the other hand, had +never felt more disinclined. It is not so much that he is out of humour +with his tiresome friend, though he is that too, as that his whole mind +is centred on making his memory give up the secret of that face that has +come back to him out of some vague cavern of his past.</p> + +<p>Who is the woman whom he knows, and who knows him (for on reflection he +is sure that that look of hers was one of half—of more than +half—recognition), and yet whose place in his history, whose very name, +he seeks so vainly? She does not belong to his Oxford days, as he has +already ascertained. He has learnt from Brown that she does not belong +to the Oxford of to-day, being apparently a stranger, and, with her +husband, a visitor to the Warden of —— College, in whose company they +had arrived. He explores the succeeding years of his life. In vain; she +has no place there; in vain he dives and plunges into the sea of his +memory; he cannot fish up the pearl he seeks. He must hark back to +earlier days—his school-time, the six months he spent in Devonshire +with a coach before he came up to New. Ah! he has it—he has it at last! +just as they have reached Brown's door, while he is fumbling with his +latch-key for the keyhole, imprecating the moon for withdrawing her +shining at the very instant he most needs her, Burgoyne has come up with +the shy object of his chase. It is conjured back into his mind by the +word Devonshire.</p> + +<p>"I have it," he says to himself; "her hair has turned white, that was +why I did not recognise her; it used to be raven-black. But it is +she—of course it is she! To think of my not knowing her again! Of +course it is Mrs. Le Marchant."</p> + +<p>What a door into the distance that name has opened!—a door through +which he passes into a Devonshire garden, and romps with rose-faced +Devonshire children. The very names of those children are coming back to +him. Tom and Charles, those were the schoolboys; Rose and Miriam, +and—Elizabeth. He recalls—absurd trick of freakish memory—those +children's pets. Tom and Charles had guinea-pigs; Miriam had a white +rat; Rose—what had Rose? Rose must have had something; and Elizabeth +had a kangaroo. Elizabeth's kangaroo was short-lived, poor beast, and +died about hay-time; the guinea-pigs and the white rat have been dead +too for ages now, of course. And are Tom and Charles, and Rose and +Miriam, and bright Elizabeth dead also? Absurd! Why should they be? +Nothing more unlikely! Why, it is only ten years ago, after all.</p> + +<p>He is roused from his meditations by Brown's voice, to find himself in +Brown's study, where its owner is filling himself a pipe, and festally +offering him whisky-and-water. But it is only an abstracted attention +that Burgoyne lends, either to the whisky or the whisky's master; and +his answers are sometimes inattentively beside the mark, to talk, which +indeed is not without some likeness to the boasted exploits in Clement's +Inn, and the affectionate inquiries after Jane Nightwork, of a more +famous fool than he.</p> + +<p>It is a relief to the guest when, earlier than he had expected—a +blessing he, no doubt, owes to Mrs. Brown—his host breaks up the +séance, and he is free to retire to his own room. At once he is back in +that Devonshire garden, he is there almost all night, between sleep and +wake. It is strange that persons and circumstances banished from his +memory for ten long years should rush back with such tyrannous +insistence now.</p> + +<p>Such silly recollected trifles crowd back upon his mind. The day on +which Tom nearly choked himself by swallowing a barley beard; the day on +which the lop-eared rabbit littered—ah, rabbits, of course! those were +what Rose had!—the day on which Tom pushed Miriam into the moat, and +Elizabeth fell in, too, in trying to fish her out. Elizabeth, the +eldest, the almost grown-up one, embarrassed by her newly lengthened +petticoats, so harassing at cricket, in races, in climbing apple-trees. +Elizabeth was sixteen; he remembers the fact, because her birthday had +fallen two days before his own departure. He had given her a gold +thimble set with turquoises upon the occasion; it was not a surprise, +because he recalls measuring her finger for the size. He can see that +small middle finger now. Elizabeth must now be twenty-six years of age. +Where is she? What is she—maid, wife, or widow?</p> + +<p>And why has Mrs. Le Marchant's hair turned snow-white? Had it been +merely gray he would not have complained, though he would have deplored +the loss of the fine smooth inky sweep he remembers. She has a fair +right to be gray; Mrs. Le Marchant must be about forty-six or +forty-seven, bien sonné. But white, snow-white—the hue that one +connects with a venerable extremity of age. Can it be bleached? He has +heard of women bleaching their hair; but not Mrs. Le Marchant, not the +Mrs. Le Marchant he remembers. She would have been as incapable of +bleach as of dye. Then why is she snow-haired? Because Providence has so +willed it is the obvious answer. But somehow Burgoyne cannot bring +himself to believe that she has come fairly by that white head.</p> + +<p>With the morning light the might of the Devonshire memories grows +weaker; and, as the day advances, the Oxford ones resume their sway. How +can it be otherwise, when all day long he strays among the unaltered +buildings in the sweet sedate college gardens, down the familiar "High," +where, six years ago, he could not take two steps without being hailed +by a jolly fresh voice, claiming his company for some new pleasure; but +where now he walks ungreeted, where the smooth-faced boys he meets, and +who strike him as so much more boyish than his own contemporaries had +done, pass him by indifferently, unknown to the whole two thousand as he +is. He feels a sort of irrational anger with them for not recognising +him, though they have never seen him before.</p> + +<p>Yes, there is no place where a man is so quickly superannuated as in +Oxford. He is saying this to himself all day, is saying it still as he +strolls in the afternoon down Mesopotamia, to fill up the time before +the hour for college chapel. Yes, there is no place where men so soon +turn into ghosts. He has been knocking up against them all day at every +street-corner; they have looked out at him from every gray window in the +Quad at New—jovial, athletic young ghosts, so much painfuller to meet +than rusty, century-worn old ones. They are rather less plentiful in +Mesopotamia than elsewhere; perhaps, because in his day, as now, +Mesopotamia on Sundays was given over to the mechanic and the +perambulator. Oh, that Heaven would put it into the head of some +Chancellor of the Exchequer to lay a swingeing tax upon that +all-accursed vehicle! But not even mechanic and perambulator can hinder +Mesopotamia from being fair on a fine February day, when the beautiful +floods are out, the floods that the Thames Conservators and the Oxford +authorities have combined to put down, as they have most other beautiful +things within their reach. But they have not yet quite succeeded. +To-day, for instance, the floods are out in might.</p> + +<p>Burgoyne is pacing along a brown walk, like a raised causeway, with a +sheet of white water on either hand, rolling strong ripples to the bank. +Gnarled willows stand islanded in the coldly argent water. A blackbird +is flying out of the bushes, with a surprised look at finding himself +turned into a sea-bird. No sun; an even sweep of dull silver to right +and left. No sun; and yet as he looks, after days of rain, the "<i>grand +décorateur</i>," as someone happily called him, rides out in royalty on a +cleared sky-field, turning the whole drenched country into +mother-of-pearl—a sheet of opal stretched across the drowned meadows; +the distance opal too, a delicate, dainty, evanescent loveliness +snatched from the ugly brown jaws of winter.</p> + +<p>Burgoyne is leaning over the wooden bridge beneath which, in its normal +state, the water of the lasher rushes down impetuously; but it is now +raised to such a height that it lies level, almost flush with the +planking. He is staring across the iridescent water-plain to where, in +the poetic atmosphere of sun and mist, dome, and schools and soaring +spires stand etherealized.</p> + +<p>"Dear old place!" he says, under his breath, "everybody is dead; and I +am dead; and Brown is deader than anyone. I am glad that you, at least, +are still alive!"</p> + +<p>Are these more ghosts coming round the corner? A man and a woman ghost +strolling along, and looking about them as strangers look. When they are +within a pace or two of him the woman says something—something about +the floods—to her companion, and at the sound Burgoyne starts.</p> + +<p>"She did not speak last night; if she had spoken I should have known her +at once. She always had such a sweet voice."</p> + +<p>He raises his arms from the bridge-top, and, turning, meets them face to +face, eye to eye, and in an instant he has seen that both recognise him. +At the same instant he is aware of a simultaneous inclination on the +part of man and wife to avert their heads, and pass him without claiming +his acquaintance. Perhaps, if he had had time to reflect, he would have +allowed them to do so, but the impulse of the moment forbids it. Why +should they wish to cut him? What has he done to deserve it? Ten years +ago, they were his very good friends, and he was the familiar comrade of +their children, the daily guest at their table. What has the unavoidable +lapse of those years done to make him less fit for their company at +twenty-nine than he was at nineteen? There must be some misconception, +which a moment will set right.</p> + +<p>"I am afraid that you do not remember me, Mrs. Le Marchant," he says, +lifting his hat.</p> + +<p>This is not quite true, as he is perfectly convinced that they are as +much aware of his identity as he is of theirs. But what formula has a +man to employ in such a case? They both look back at him with a sort of +irresolution. To his astonishment, in their eyes is a velleity of +flight, but apparently she—women's minds moving more quickly than +men's—is the first to realize that flight is out of the question.</p> + +<p>"I am sure that you have no intention of cutting me," Jim goes on, with +a smile, seeing that she is apparently struggling with a difficulty in +utterance; "at least, you must be very much changed from what you were +ten years ago if you have. My name is——"</p> + +<p>"I know—I know!" she interrupts, finding speech at last—speech low and +hurried. "I remember perfectly. You are Mr. Burgoyne."</p> + +<p>Her confusion—she used always to be such a placid, even-mannered +woman—is so patent, born of whatever unaccountable feeling it may be, +that he now heartily wishes he had let the poor woman pass unmolested. +But such repentance is too late. He has arrested her; she is standing on +the gravel path before him, and though he feels that her extraordinary +shyness—<i>mauvaise honte</i>, whatever it may be—has infected himself, he +must make some further remark to her. Nothing better occurs to him than +the obvious one:</p> + +<p>"It is a long time—it is ten years since we met."</p> + +<p>"Yes, ten years; it must be quite ten years," she assents, evidently +making a great effort to regain composure.</p> + +<p>She does not feign the slightest pleasure in the meeting, and Burgoyne +feels that the one thought that occupies her mind is how she can soonest +end it. But his roused curiosity, together with the difficulty of +parting without further observation after having forced his presence +upon them, combine to prevent her succeeding.</p> + +<p>"And how is the Moat?" he asks, reflecting that this, at least, is a +safe question; a brick and mortar house, at all events, cannot be dead. +"How is Devonshire?"</p> + +<p>Apparently it is not so harmless a question as he had imagined; at +least, Mrs. Le Marchant is obviously quite incapable of answering it. +Her husband, for the first time, comes to her rescue.</p> + +<p>"The Moat is let," he says, in a dry voice; "we have left Devonshire a +long while—nine, nine and a half years ago."</p> + +<p>The Moat let! Judging by the light of Burgoyne's recollections, it would +have seemed less surprising to him to hear that Windsor Castle had been +turned into a Joint Stock Company Hotel. It is probably, then, some +money trouble that has turned Mrs. Le Marchant's hair white—snow white, +as he now sees it to be. But no; he rejects the explanation as +insufficient. She is not the woman to have taken a diminished income so +much to heart.</p> + +<p>Good manners forbid him to ask, "Why is the Moat let?" so all that he +says is, "Nine and a half years ago? Why, that must have been very soon +after I left Devonshire."</p> + +<p>He addresses his remark involuntarily rather to the wife than the +husband, but she does not answer it. Her eyes are fixed upon the bubbles +sailing so fast upon the swollen river, which is distinguishable only by +its current from the sameness of the surrounding water. A lark—there is +always a lark in Mesopotamia—a tiny, strong-throated singer, that never +seems to have to stop to take breath, fills up the silence, shouting +somewhere out of sight among the black clouds, in and out of which the +uncertain sun is plunging. Whether of a moneyed nature or not, there is +evidently something very unpleasant connected with their leaving their +native county and their immemorial home, so he had better get away from +the subject as fast as possible.</p> + +<p>"Anyhow," he says, with a rather nervous smile, "I hope that the world +has been treating you kindly—that things have gone well with you since +those dear old days when you were so good to me."</p> + +<p>There is an instant's pause—perhaps he would not have noticed it had +not his suspicions been already roused—before the husband, again taking +upon him the task of replying, answers, with a sort of laboured +carelessness:</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, thanks; we do not complain. It has not been a very rosy time +for landlords lately, as you are aware."</p> + +<p>"And <i>you</i>?" cries the wife, striking in with a species of hurry in her +voice—a hurry due, as his instinct tells him, to the fact of her fear +of his entering into more detailed inquiries. "And <i>you</i>? We must not +forget you. Have you been well, flourishing, all this long time? Do you +still live with your——"</p> + +<p>She stops abruptly. It is apparent that she has entirely forgotten what +was the species of relation with whom he lived. There is a little tinge +of bitterness in his heart, though not in his tone, as he supplies the +missing word "aunt." After all, he had forgotten <i>her</i> name; why should +not she forget his aunt?</p> + +<p>"With my aunt? Well, I never exactly lived with her; I made, and make my +headquarters there when I am in England, which is not very often. I have +been a rolling stone; I have rolled pretty well round the world since we +parted."</p> + +<p>They do not care in the least where he has rolled, nor how much nor how +little moss he has collected in the process. They are only thinking how +they can best get rid of him. But the past is strong upon him; he cannot +let them slide out of his life again for another ten—twenty years +perhaps, without finding out from them something about his five merry +playmates. His inquiry must needs be a vague one. Who dares ask +specifically after this or that man, woman, or even child, when ten +years have rolled their tides between?</p> + +<p>"And you are all well?" he says, with a certain wistfulness lurking in +the indifferent <i>banal</i> phrase. "Dear me, what a jolly party we used to +be! I suppose that—that they are all out in the world now?"</p> + +<p>His eyes are fixed apprehensively upon the mother of those young +comrades, to whom he thus cautiously alludes. Perhaps, carefully as he +has worded his question, he may have touched some terrible raw. Her face +is turned aside, presenting only its profile to him, but she answers +almost at once:</p> + +<p>"Yes; we are all scattered now. Charlie is planting oranges in +Florida—he does not mind the heat; you know he always said no weather +could be too hot for him; and Tom has an ostrich farm in Australia; and +Rose has been married two years—she has a dear little baby; and Miriam +is married too; we have just come down from her wedding."</p> + +<p>"Miriam married!" repeats Burgoyne in a tone of wonder. "Miriam with a +husband instead of a white rat!"</p> + +<p>The mother laughs. It is the first time that he has heard her laugh, and +she used to laugh so often.</p> + +<p>"I think she likes the exchange."</p> + +<p>There is another little pause, again filled by the lark's crowding +notes. There are two words battering against the gate of Burgoyne's lips +for egress—two words that he dares not utter.</p> + +<p>"And Elizabeth?" She was the eldest. She would naturally have been +mentioned first; but neither first nor last is there any speech of her. +She must, then, be dead—dead long ago, too; for there is no trace of +mourning in her parents' dress. Elizabeth is dead—bright Elizabeth, the +beauty and the pet! Charles Lamb's tender lines come pensively back to +him—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"My sprightly neighbour gone before<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To that unknown and silent shore,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall we not meet as heretofore,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Some summer morning?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Is it only fancy that he sees in the eye of Elizabeth's mother a dread +lest he shall ask tidings of her, as she says, hastily, and with a +smile, "Well, I am afraid we must be going; it has been very pleasant +meeting you again, but I am afraid that the Warden will be expecting +us"?</p> + +<p>She adds to her parting hand-shake no wish for a repetition of that +meeting, and he watches them down the Willow Walk with a sort of sadness +in his heart.</p> + +<p>"Elizabeth is dead! Elizabeth is undoubtedly dead!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>"Do you know that Willy has been sent down again?"</p> + +<p>Six weeks have passed since Burgoyne's eye followed his quondam friends +down Mesopotamia, and he is not in Oxford now. He left it, indeed, +twenty-four hours after the rencounter described; left it with something +of a determination never to revisit it. This, too, in spite of the good +Brown's vociferously reiterated invitation to him to run down for +another Sunday, whenever he should feel inclined, and which he accepted +civilly, knowing that he should never feel inclined.</p> + +<p>At the present moment he is pacing up and down the still wintry, +north-windswept walks of a country-house garden in Shropshire, in the +company of a lady whom he has known as long as he can remember; a lady +who would have been a friend of circumstance, even if she had not been +one of choice, since her home has been in the immediate neighbourhood of +the only one he has ever had; a lady whose friendship he has tested by +letters on thin paper from New Guinea and Central Africa all about +himself; at whose feet he has laid on his return more heads, and skins, +and claws than she has well known what to do with; whose husband he +thought a very good fellow, and to whom he wrote a very nice letter on +that husband's death; lastly, concerning whose only child has been made +the communication that opens this chapter—"Do you know that Willy has +been sent down again?"</p> + +<p>"I did not know it; but I am very sorry now that I do know."</p> + +<p>"You need not be," returns she cheerfully; "he does not mind it in the +least; indeed, happily for him, most of his friends have been sent down +too."</p> + +<p>"What has he been doing this time? Putting the porter into the fountain? +or screwing up the Dean? or what other playful little pleasantry?"</p> + +<p>"You need not speak in that nasty sarcastic voice," says she, half +laughing and half vexed. "After all, you must know that young men will +be young men, or, at least, if you do not know it now, you must have +known it once."</p> + +<p>"If you take that tone to me," retorts Burgoyne, smiling, "I shall have +to souse your gardener in your fountain, to prove my juvenility; but +come, what has he done?"</p> + +<p>"Absolutely nothing, as far as I can make out," replies she, spreading +out her hands as if to emphasize the statement.</p> + +<p>"Do you mean to say that the authorities have sent him down <i>de gaieté +de cœur</i>, without any provocation at all?" asks Burgoyne, in a tone +out of which he is unable to keep a shade of incredulity.</p> + +<p>"I mean to say," replies she, nettled, "that he had a few men to supper, +and I suppose they were making a little noise; did you ever in your day +hear of an undergraduate supper where there was not noise? However, in +this case, from what he tells me, Willy was taking positively no part in +it."</p> + +<p>"He was sitting in a corner, with cotton-wool in his ears, reading +Aristotle," suggests Burgoyne teasingly.</p> + +<p>"And it seems," continued she, not deigning to notice the interruption, +"that the Proctor came in, and was very rude, and Willy was told to go +to the Dean next morning, and he either was a little late, or mistook +the hour, or some trifle of that sort; and when he did go he was told +that he was sent down. However"—with some triumph in her voice—"it did +not matter in the least—he did not mind; in fact, he was rather glad, +as he has long wanted to go to Italy in the spring."</p> + +<p>"To Italy? Then perhaps we shall meet; I too am going to Italy."</p> + +<p>"Are you?" she says. "Why should you go to Italy? There is nothing to +kill there, is there? Is not it at Naples that they go out in full +chasseur uniform to shoot tomtits?" Which speech is her revenge for his +sarcasms upon her son.</p> + +<p>But Burgoyne's face has taken on a rather careworn look; and her little +arrow misses its mark.</p> + +<p>"You see, Amelia is at Florence," he says explanatorily; "her father, +Mr. Wilson, had a clergyman's throat in the autumn, and was obliged to +give up duty, so they all went abroad. They have been abroad all the +winter; you know that I have not seen her since I came back from the +Rockies."</p> + +<p>They are now walking in a winding shrubbery path, whose laurels protect +them from the pinching wind. They have turned several corners, and +traversed half a quarter of a mile before either again breaks silence. +It is the lady who does so finally.</p> + +<p>"Jim, how long have you been engaged to Amelia?"</p> + +<p>There is a sigh mixed with his answer.</p> + +<p>"Eight years—eight years this next June; it was the second summer term +after I came up."</p> + +<p>"And as far as you can see, you are likely to be engaged for another +eight years?"</p> + +<p>"As far as I can see—yes; but then I cannot see far."</p> + +<p>Perhaps his companion is a fanciful woman; but she notices that this +time he does not sigh.</p> + +<p>"Poor Amelia!" she says, half under her breath.</p> + +<p>"Poor Amelia!" repeats he sharply; "why poor?—for being engaged to me? +You are not very complimentary, Mrs. Byng."</p> + +<p>She looks up friendlily at him. "For being engaged to you, or being only +engaged to you?—which? I leave you a choice of interpretation."</p> + +<p>But either Jim is too ruffled by the pity expressed in her tone towards +his betrothed, or her remarks have provoked in him a train of thought +which does not tend towards loquacity. The loud rooks, balancing +themselves on improbably small twigs above their heads, and, hoarsely +melodious, calling out their airy vernal news to each other, make for +some time the only sound that breaks the silence of the cold spring +afternoon. It is again Mrs. Byng who at last infringes it.</p> + +<p>"If you and Willy are both going to Italy, why should not you go +together?"</p> + +<p>Jim does not immediately answer; the project is sprung upon him with +such suddenness that he does not at once know whether it is agreeable to +him or the reverse.</p> + +<p>"You do not like the idea?" continues the mother, trying, not very +successfully, to keep out of her tone the surprise she feels at his not +having jumped at a plan so obviously to his own advantage.</p> + +<p>"I did not say so. I did not even think so."</p> + + +<p>"Willy is an ideal fellow-traveller," says she, "excepting in the matter +of punctuality; I warn you"—laughing—"that you would always have to +drag him out of bed."</p> + +<p>"But," suggests Jim slowly, "even supposing that I embraced your design +with the warmth which I see you think it deserves, how can you tell that +it would meet with his approbation? He has probably made up a party with +some of the other innocent victims of a corrupt University system."</p> + +<p>"No, he has not; the friend with whom he was to have gone has thrown him +over; at least, poor man, that is hardly the way to express it, for he +has broken his leg; but anyhow he is <i>hors de combat</i>. If you went with +Willy," she adds, after a pause, and with a rather wistful air, "I +should be sure of knowing if anything went wrong."</p> + +<p>"I am to dry-nurse him, in fact, only I stipulate that, if he brings you +home a Contadina daughter-in-law, or 'commits himself with a countess,' +like the commercial gentleman at Todgers's, you are not to hold me +responsible."</p> + +<p>And so it came to pass that a fortnight later, while April is still +young, Burgoyne, <i>en route</i> to his Amelia, is standing at a window of +the Hotel de Gênes at Genoa, noisiest of hotels, though, to be sure, +that is its only fault. He is looking out at the gay market that is held +in the piazza below—the gay market that is over and gone by nine +o'clock.</p> + +<p>It seems odd that so many women, so many umbrellas, so many baskets, so +many oranges and lemons—each lemon with a glossy green leaf still +adhering to its inch of stalk—so many fresh vegetables can be swept +away in so short a time. But they are; all the gay kerchiefs are fled, +and have been replaced by a row of fiacres with sad droop-headed horses, +a good hour before Byng appears—appears radiantly well washed and +apologetic.</p> + +<p>"How many morning chapels did you attend last term?" asks Burgoyne with +some dryness.</p> + +<p>"It is a vile habit," replies the other sweetly, sitting down at a +little table, and unfolding his breakfast napkin. "I do not mean going +to chapel, but being so late; however, I really am improving. I am a +quarter of an hour—twenty minutes earlier than I was yesterday, and, +thank God, we have no train to catch to-day."</p> + +<p>Burgoyne is rather inclined to echo the thanksgiving a little later in +the day, as they stroll with the pleasant vagueness with which one +strays about a little-known foreign town, not exactly knowing whither, +through the streets of the queenly city, with which neither of them has +much acquaintance; Byng's twenty-two years of school and college, of +cricket, and grouse, and stalking, having left not much margin for aught +else; and Burgoyne being in the case of some widely-wandered shots and +explorers, to whom the Nyanza Lake and the Australian Bush are more +familiar than Giotto's Campanile or the Lagoons. There is a +grayish-looking English sky, with now and then little sprays of rain, +and now and then flashes of warm sun.</p> + +<p>Neither of the young men knows much Italian, and such as they possess +they are ashamed to air before each other in asking their way, so they +wander wherever chance or fancy leads them. They look curiously into +churches, they walk down deep narrow streets, whose houses have for +three centuries been threatening to embrace each other across the strait +sky strip far, far above their heads. They glance at palace-fronts, and +wonder at the sculptured portals where fresco and fruit garland and fine +tracery speak of a time at more leisure for delicate work that has no +end but beauty, than this breathless one. Everywhere in the gardens they +see budding green, untrained roses making bowers, ripe oranges hanging +over the walls. They jostle against women, each made charming, even the +ugliest of them, by the black lace kerchief tied about her head.</p> + +<p>"Henry James says that an English crowd is the best-looking in the +world," says Byng, in a tone of strong dissent, following with his eyes +a little tripping figure, and with an expression of pronounced +approbation in those eyes, which gives Burgoyne a momentary twinge of +misgiving as to his chaperonship. "I should put it the other way up, and +say that they are the ugliest."</p> + +<p>"All crowds are ugly, and most individuals," replies Burgoyne, +misanthropically looking up from his guide-book.</p> + +<p>They are sauntering down the Via Garibaldi, street of palaces that +deserves an antiquer name than that of the somewhat shoddy and recent +hero who has god-fathered it. Noblest Via, down whose stately length +great towering bulks succeed each other in solid majesty on either hand; +bulks on whose high fronts, lofty-portaled, o'errun with fresco, +glorified by brush and chisel, strength and beauty take hands in +unending wedlock. Into the noblest of all, up the echoing stone stairs, +down which the feet of the masters have for ever ceased to tread, they +enter. As we all know, it has been given to the city of Genoa—lovely +queen-city meriting so great a gift—by the dying hand of its latest +possessor, the last of that high and beautiful race—if we may judge of +the dead by their pictures—who paced its floors, and went forth in +final funeral pomp through its worthy-to-be-imperial portals.</p> + +<p>Burgoyne and Byng are standing before the great Vandyke. The custode, +opening a shutter, and throwing wider a door, casts a brighter ray of +light for the staring Britons—several others have joined themselves to +our friends—to gape at it by. What does the stately gentleman on his +great white horse, whom Vandyke has made able to set at naught death's +effacement, think of them, as the custode slowly swings him forward on +his hinges, so that the day-beams may bring out more clearly still the +arresting charm of his serious face, his outstretched arm, and grave, +gallant bearing? Looking at him, whose heart among us is not besieged by +an ache of longing that that "young and princely" gentleman on the brave +white charger should ride down to us out of his frame, and bring back +his world with him? probably not a better world than ours, but surely, +surely a handsomer one.</p> + +<p>After awhile the other tourists drift away, but the two men still stand +and gaze. Into Burgoyne's mind has come a sense of disgust with the +present, a revolt against steam trams and the Cromwell Road—most +perfect symbol of that bald, unending, vulgar ugliness, which, in some +moods, must seem to everyone the dominant note of nineteenth-century +life. The light-hearted Byng, who always takes his colour from his +surroundings, is hushed into a silence that is almost reverent too.</p> + +<p>"What a difference there is between his Italian and his English +pictures," he says presently. "Do you remember the Marchesa Balbi, and +those divine Balbi children in the Grosvenor, last year? Oh, no! +by-the-bye, you were in America. The fog seemed to get into his brush +whenever he painted an Englishwoman, always excepting Henrietta Maria, +who was not an Englishwoman, and whom he was obviously rather in love +with."</p> + +<p>"Is that a piece of scandal of your own invention, or is it founded on +fact?" asks Burgoyne, rousing himself, and looking over his shoulder +towards the entrance to the next frescoed, mirrored, pictured room, +whence he hears the sound of approaching voices. In his eye is an idle +and mechanical curiosity, mixed with vexation that his short respite +from his fellow-countrymen is ended; in this case, it is +fellow-countrywomen, for the tones that are nearing are those of a +woman, a woman who is saying in a key of satisfaction, "Oh, here it is! +I thought I remembered that it was in this room."</p> + +<p>At the same moment the speaker, as well as the person addressed, came +into sight; and in an instant out of Burgoyne's eye has raced away the +lack-lustre curiosity, and has given way to an expression of something +beyond surprise, of something more nearly verging on consternation; and +yet, after all, there is nothing very astonishing in the fact that it is +Mrs. Le Marchant who is the woman in search of the Vandyke. There is +nothing more surprising in her being at Genoa than in his being there +himself. At that mart of nations it can never be matter for wonder to +meet anyone; but who is this to whom her observation is addressed? It is +not Mr. Le Marchant, it is not a man at all; it is a slight woman—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"White as a lily, and small as a wand"—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>like Lance's sister, dressed with that neat, tight, gray-tinted +simplicity, severe yet smart, which marks the well-bred Englishwoman on +her travels. Is it one of the younger ones, who has grown up so +startlingly like her? Miriam? Rose? or is it, can it be, the dead +Elizabeth?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>In a ripe civilization such as ours there are formulas provided to meet +the requirements of every exigency that may possibly arise; but amongst +them there is not one which teaches us how to greet a person come back +from the dead, because it is held impossible that such a contingency can +occur. Perhaps this is the reason why Jim Burgoyne, usually a docile and +obedient member of the society to which he belongs, now flies in the +face of all the precepts instilled into him by that society's code. At +the sight of Elizabeth Le Marchant entering the room, clad in a very +neat tailor gown, instead of the winding-sheet with which he had +credited her, he at first stands transfixed, staring at her with a +hardness of intensity which is allowed to us in the case of Titian's +"Bella," or Botticelli's "Spring," but has never been accounted +permissible in the case of a more living loveliness. Then, before he can +control, or even question the impulse that drives him, it has carried +him to her.</p> + +<p>"Elizabeth!" he says, in that sort of awed semi-whisper with which one +would salute a being plainly returned from the other side, fearing that +the fulness of a living voice might strike too strongly on his disused +ear—"is it really Elizabeth?"</p> + +<p>Had Burgoyne been quite sure, even now, of that fact; if he had had his +wits well about him, he would certainly not have addressed her by her +Christian name. But from the dead the small pomps and ceremonies of +earth fall off. We think of them by their naked names—must we not then +appeal to them by the same when they reappear before us?</p> + +<p>The girl—for she does not look much more—thus rudely and startlingly +bombarded, drops her Baedeker out of her slim-gloved hand, and with a +positive jump at the suddenness of the address, looks back +apprehensively at her interlocutor. In her eyes is, at first, only the +coldly frightened expression of one discourteously assailed by an +insolent stranger; but in a space of time as short as had served him to +note the same metamorphosis in the case of her parents, he sees the look +of half—three-quarter—whole recognition dawn in her eyes, +followed—alas! there can be no mistake about it—by the same aspiration +after flight. There is no reason why she should not recognise him again +at once. He has fallen a prey neither to hair nor fat—the two main +disguisers and disfigurers of humanity. His face is as smooth and his +figure as spare as when, ten years ago, he had given the pretty tomboy +of sixteen lessons in jumping the ha-ha. And as to her identity, no +shadow of doubt any longer lingers in his mind.</p> + +<p>The violence and shock of his attack have made her crimson, have matched +her cheeks with those long-withered damasks in the Moat garden, with +which they used to vie in bloomy vividness. But even yet he does not +treat her quite as if she were really and veritably living; he has not +yet got back his conventional manners.</p> + +<p>"I thought you were dead," he says, his voice not even yet raised to its +ordinary key, some vague awe still subduing it.</p> + +<p>It must be a trick of his excited imagination that makes it seem to him +as if she said under her breath, "So I am!"</p> + +<p>But before he has had time to do more than distrust the testimony of his +ears, Mrs. Le Marchant strikes in quickly—</p> + +<p>"We cannot help what Mr. Burgoyne thinks," says she, with a constrained +laugh; "but you are not dead, are you, Elizabeth? We are neither of us +dead; on the contrary, we are very much alive. Who can help being alive +in this heavenly place? And you? When did you come? What hotel are you +at? Have you been here long? Do you make a long stay?"</p> + +<p>She pours out her questions with such torrent-force and rapidity, as +gives to her auditor the conviction that it is her aim to have a +monopoly of them.</p> + +<p>After one look of unbounded astonishment at his companion's onslaught, +Byng has withdrawn to a discreet distance.</p> + +<p>"You never mentioned her when I met you in Oxford," says Burgoyne, +disregarding her trivial and conventional questions, and turning his +eyes away with difficulty from his old playfellow.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Le Marchant laughs again, still constrainedly.</p> + +<p>"Probably you never asked after her."</p> + +<p>"I was afraid," he says solemnly; "after ten years one is afraid; and as +you did not mention her—you know you mentioned all the others—I +thought you had lost her!"</p> + +<p>A sort of slight shiver passes over the woman's frame.</p> + +<p>"No, thank God! No!"</p> + +<p>During the foregoing little dialogue about herself, Elizabeth has stood +with her eyes on the ground; but at the end of it she lifts them to +smile lovingly at her mother. They are very pretty eyes still, but +surely they seem to have cried a good deal; and now that the hurrying +blood has left her cheek again, Burgoyne sees that she looks more nearly +her age than he had imagined at the first glance. He has not heard her +voice yet; she has not spoken, unless that first shaken whisper—so much +more likely to be the freak of his own heated fancy—could count for +speech. He must hear her tones. Do they keep an echo of the other world, +as he still imagines that he sees a shade from it lying lingeringly +across her face?</p> + +<p>"Do you ever climb apple-trees now?" he asks abruptly. She starts +slightly, and again, though with a weaker red wave, her rather thin +cheeks grow tinged.</p> + +<p>"Did I ever climb them?" she says, with a bewildered look, and speaking +in a somewhat tremulous voice. "Yes"—slowly, as if with an effort of +memory—"I believe I did."</p> + + +<p>"You have forgotten all about it?" cries Jim, in an accent of absurdly +disproportioned disappointment. "Have you forgotten the kangaroo too? +have you forgotten everything?"</p> + +<p>Perhaps she is putting her memory to the same strain as he had done his +in the case of her mother's name on the occasion of their Oxford +meeting. At all events, she leaves the question unanswered, and the +elder woman again hurries to her help against this persistent claimant +of reminiscences.</p> + +<p>"You must not expect us all to have such memories as you have," she says +with a touch of friendliness in her look.</p> + +<p>"I must own that I too had quite forgotten the kangaroo; and so I fear +had Robert, until you reminded us of it in Mesopotamia."</p> + +<p>"How is Mr. Le Marchant?" inquires Jim, thus reminded to put his tardy +query—"is he with you?"</p> + +<p>"No, he is not very fond of being abroad; it is not"—smiling—"'dear +abroad' to him, but I think that he will very likely come out to +Florence to fetch us."</p> + +<p>"You are going to Florence?" cries the young man eagerly. "So am I! oh, +hurrah! then we shall often meet."</p> + +<p>But the touch of friendliness, whose advent he had hailed so joyfully, +has vanished out of Mrs. Le Marchant's voice, or, at least, is overlaid +with a species of stiffness, as she answers distantly, "We do not intend +to go out at all in Florence—I mean into society."</p> + +<p>"But I am not society," replies he, chilled, yet resolute. "I +wish"—glancing rather wistfully from one to the other—"that I <i>could</i> +give you a little of my memory. If I could, you would see that, after +being so infinitely good to me at the Moat, you cannot expect me to meet +you as total strangers now."</p> + +<p>In the sense of ill-usage that fills his breast, the fact of how almost +entirely oblivious he had been of the persons before him, during the +greater part of the long interval that had parted them, has—such is +human nature—quite slipped his recollection. It is brought back to him +in some degree with a twinge by Mrs. Le Marchant saying in a relenting +tone, and with an accent of remorse, "And you have remembered us all +these years?"</p> + +<p>He cannot, upon reflection, conscientiously say that he has; but is yet +disingenuous enough to allow a speaking silence to imply acquiescence.</p> + +<p>"And you are on your way to Florence too?" continues she, mistaking the +cause of his dumbness; the tide of compunction evidently setting more +strongly towards him, in her womanly heart, at the thought of the entire +want of interest she has manifested in the case of one whose long +faithfulness to her and her family had deserved a better treatment.</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>His face clouds so perceptibly as he pronounces this monosyllable, that +his interlocutor inquires, with a growing kindness:</p> + +<p>"Not on any unpleasant errand, I hope?"</p> + +<p>He laughs the uneasy laugh of an Anglo-Saxon obliged to tell, or at all +events telling, some intimate detail about himself.</p> + +<p>"I am going to see my young woman—the girl I am engaged to."</p> + +<p>"Well, that is a pleasant errand, surely?" (smiling).</p> + +<p>"<i>C'est salon!</i>" replies Jim gloomily. "I have a piece of ill-news to +tell her;" then, with a half-shy effort to escape into generalities, +"which way do you think that ill-news read best—on paper or <i>vivâ +voce</i>?"</p> + +<p>She shivers a little.</p> + + +<p>"I do not know. I do not like them either way."</p> + +<p>Then, taking out her watch, with the evident determination to be +surprised at the lateness of the hour, she cries, "It is actually a +quarter to two! Are not you famished, Elizabeth? I am!"</p> + +<p>There is such apparent and imminent departure in her eye that Burgoyne +feels that there is no time to be lost.</p> + +<p>"Have you decided upon your hotel in Florence?" he asks precipitately.</p> + +<p>"We have decided against them all," is her answer. "We have taken a +little apartment—a poor little <i>entresol</i>; but it is such a poor little +one, that I should be ashamed to ask any of my friends to come and see +me there."</p> + +<p>She accompanies the last words, as if to take the sting out of them, +with as sweet and friendly a smile as any he remembers in the Devonshire +days. But the sting is not taken out, all the same; it lingers, pricking +and burning still, after both the tall, thin, black figure, and the +slim, little gray one have disappeared.</p> + +<p>The moment that this is the case, Byng rejoins his friend; a curiosity +and alert interest in his young eyes, which his companion feels no +desire to gratify. He is unable, however, to maintain the entire silence +he had intended upon the subject, since Byng, after waiting for what, to +his impatience, appears a more than decent interval, is constrained to +remark—</p> + +<p>"Did I hear you tell that lady, when first you spoke to her, that she +was dead?"</p> + +<p>"I thought she was."</p> + +<p>"Had you heard it?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Did you see it in the papers?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>A pause.</p> + +<p>"I wonder why you thought she was dead."</p> + +<p>The other makes a rather impatient movement.</p> + +<p>"I had no reason—none whatever. It was an idiotic inference."</p> + +<p>Byng draws a long breath of satisfaction.</p> + +<p>"Well, at all events, I am very glad that she is not."</p> + +<p>Jim turns upon him with something of the expression of face worn by Mrs. +Sarah Gamp on hearing Mrs. Prig express her belief that it was not by +Mrs. Harris that her services would be required. "Why should you be glad +of that, Betsy? She is unbeknown to you except by hearing. Why should +you be glad?"</p> + +<p>As Byng's case is a more aggravated one than Mrs. Prig's, seeing that +Elizabeth Le Marchant is 'unbeknown' to him even by hearing, so is the +warmth, or rather coldness, with which his friend receives his remark +not inferior to that of "Sairey."</p> + +<p>"I do not quite see how it affects you. Why are you glad?"</p> + +<p>"<i>Why am I glad?</i>" replies the younger man, with a lightening eye. "For +the same reason that I am glad that Vandyke painted that +picture"—pointing to it—"or that Shakespeare wrote <i>As You Like It</i>. +The world is the richer by them all three."</p> + +<p>But to this poetic and flattering analogy, Jim's only answer is a surly +"Humph!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2> + +<blockquote><p>"There are no more by-path meadows where you may innocently +linger, but the road lies long and straight and dusty to the +grave. You may think you had a conscience and believed in God; +but what is conscience to a wife?.... To marry is to +domesticate the Recording Angel. Once you are married, there is +nothing left for you—not even suicide—but to be good."</p></blockquote> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>There is no particular reason why Burgoyne should not impart to his +companion what he knows—after all it is not very much—about their two +countrywomen. Upon reflection he had told himself this, and conquered a +reluctance, that he cannot account for, to mentioning their name; and to +relating the story of those shadowy idyllic two months of his life, +which form all of it that has ever come into contact with theirs. So +that by the time—some thirty-six hours later—when they reach Florence, +the younger man is in possession of as much information about the +objects of their common interest as it is in the power of the elder one +to impart.</p> + +<p>To neither of them, meanwhile, is any second glimpse vouchsafed of those +objects, eagerly—though with different degrees of overtness in that +eagerness—as they both look out for them among the luggage-piles and +the tweed-clad English ladies at the station. It had been the intention +of Burgoyne that he and his friend should put up at the same hotel as +that inhabited by his betrothed and her family; hut, finding that it is +full, he orders rooms at the Minerva, and in the fallen dusk of a rather +chill spring night, finds himself traversing the short distance from the +railway to that hotel.</p> + +<p>As he and Byng sit over their coffee after dinner in the <i>salle à +manger</i>, almost its only tenants at that late hour, the younger man +remarks matter-of-factly, as if stating a proposition almost too obvious +to be worth uttering—</p> + +<p>"I suppose you are off to the Anglo-Américain now."</p> + +<p>"I think not," replies Jim slowly; "it is past ten, you see, and they +are early people." He adds a moment later, as if suspecting his own +excuse of insufficiency, "Mr. Wilson is rather an invalid, and there is +also an invalid or semi-invalid sister; I think that I had better not +disturb them to-night."</p> + +<p>Byng has never been engaged to be married, except in theory, and it is +certainly no business of his to blow his friend's flagging ardour into +flame, so he contents himself with an acquiescent observation to the +effect that the train must have been late. But at all events the next +morning finds Burgoyne paying his fiacre at the door of the +Anglo-Américain, with the confidence of a person who is certain of +finding those he seeks, a confidence justified by the result; for, +having followed a waiter across a courtyard, and heard him knock at a +door on the ground-floor, that door opens with an instantaneousness +which gives the idea of an ear having been pricked to catch the expected +rap, and the next moment, the intervening <i>garçon</i> having withdrawn, Jim +stands face to face with his Amelia. Her features are all alight with +pleasure, but her first words are not particularly amorous.</p> + +<p>"Would you mind coming into the dining-room? Sybilla is in the +drawing-room already this morning. She said she was afraid it was going +to be one of her bad days, so I thought" (rather regretfully) "that +possibly she would be a little later than usual in coming down; but, on +the contrary, she is much earlier."</p> + +<p>It is possible that an extremely ardent love may be independent of +surroundings; may burn with as fierce a flame, when its owner or victim +is seated on a hard horsehair chair beside a dining-room table, in a +little dull hotel back room, as when the senses are courted by +softly-cushioned lounges, penetrating flower-scents, and cunningly +arranged <i>bric-à-brac</i>; but perhaps Jim's passion is not of this intense +and Spartan quality. At all events a chill steals over him as Amelia +leads the way into that small and uncheerful chamber where the Wilson +family daily banquet. He is not so lost to all sense of what England and +Amelia expect of him as not to take her in his arms and kiss her very +kindly and warmly, before they sit down on two hard chairs side by side; +and even when they have done so, he still holds her hand, and kisses it +now and then. He has a great many things to say to her, but "out of the +abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh" is not invariably true. +Sometimes that very abundance clogs the utterance, and, after a ten +months' separation, the hinges of even lovers' tongues are apt at first +to be somewhat rusty.</p> + +<p>"And are you really glad to see me again?" asks the woman—she is +scarcely a girl, having the doubtful advantage of being her betrothed's +senior by two years. The horsehair chairs are obviously powerless to +take the edge off her bliss; and she can scarcely command her voice as +she asks the question.</p> + +<p>"I decline to answer all such futile inquiries," replies he, smiling not +unkindly; but there is no tremor in his voice. "Even if I did not +discourage them on principle, I should have no time to answer them +to-day; I have so much to say to you that I do not know where to begin."</p> + +<p>"After ten months that is not very surprising," rejoins she, with a +stifled sigh. There is no sentimental reproach in her words or tone; but +in both lurks a note of wistfulness which gives his conscience a prick.</p> + +<p>"Of course not! of course not!" he rejoins hastily; "but it is not +really ten months—no, surely——"</p> + +<p>"Ten months, one week, two days, four hours and a half!"</p> + +<p>Against such exactitude of memory what appeal has he? He attempts none, +and only thinks with a faint unjust irritation that she might have +spared him the odd hours.</p> + +<p>"And how are things going? How are you all getting on?" he asks, +precipitating himself upon a fresh subject, since he feels prevented by +circumstances from saying anything likely to bring him much distinction +upon the old one. "Your father?"</p> + +<p>"His throat is better"—with an accent of hesitating filial piety, as if +there were something else about him that was not better.</p> + +<p>"And Sybilla?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, poor Sybilla! she has her bad days now and then."</p> + +<p>"And, like the early Christians, she resolves to have all things in +common. I expect that her family have their bad days too," says Jim +dryly.</p> + +<p>"Well, we do sometimes," replies Amelia with reluctant admission; "but +she really does try to control herself, poor thing; she is hardly ever +unbearable now."</p> + +<p>"And Cecilia?"</p> + +<p>"She is rather in trouble just now; I fear there is no doubt that the +man she was engaged to has thrown her over. You never saw him? Oh no! Of +course, the affair came on after you left England."</p> + +<p>Burgoyne's eyebrows have gone up, and his face has assumed an expression +less of surprise than admiration at this piece of news.</p> + +<p>"How many does that make? Four? Well, courage! There is luck in odd +numbers; perhaps she will land the fifth."</p> + +<p>"She will tell you about it herself," says Amelia; "she tells everybody; +she likes talking about it—it is very odd, but she does. When you throw +me over"—rubbing his hand which she holds, with shy and deprecating +caressingness, against her own cheek—"I shall tell nobody; I shall keep +my misfortune very dark."</p> + +<p>"When I do!" repeats he with laughing emphasis; but to his own ear both +the emphasis and the laughter sound flat. This is perhaps the cause why +he, a second time, runs away from his subject; or, more probably, he is +really in haste to get to the new one. "Meanwhile," he says, his eyes +involuntarily dropping to the carpet, as if he had rather not see the +effect of his words upon her; "meanwhile, someone has thrown me over."</p> + +<p>"You?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, me; I did not write it to you, because I do not see much use in +putting down bad news in black and white, and even with this little +delay, I am afraid," with a dry smile, "that you will have plenty of +time to enjoy it."</p> + +<p>He pauses for an instant, and she does not hurry him with any teasing +questions; but waits, with meek patience, till he feels inclined to go +on.</p> + +<p>"My aunt is going to be married."</p> + +<p>If he has wished that his news shall produce the effect of a torpedo, he +has no cause to complain of his want of success. His placid Amelia +vaults to her feet.</p> + +<p>"Married!" she repeats with a gasp. "Why, she is quite, quite old!"</p> + +<p>"She is sixty-five!"</p> + +<p>The colour has flooded all Amelia's face; the blazing colour that means +not pleasure, but consternation. It is some moments before she can frame +her next query.</p> + +<p>"And is he?—do you?—has she chosen wisely, I mean?"</p> + +<p>Jim laughs again.</p> + +<p>"Can one choose wisely at sixty-five? Well, whether she has or no is a +matter of opinion; she has chosen the curate of the parish, who, by +reason of his extreme juvenility, is still in deacon's orders."</p> + +<p>Miss Wilson's limbs are shaking so that she cannot maintain her standing +attitude. She sinks down by the dining-table again in her hard chair. It +is a very hard chair on which to receive such ill news.</p> + +<p>"And cannot you hinder it, cannot you dissuade her?" she asks +falteringly.</p> + +<p>"I shall not try; poor old woman! After all, she has a right to pursue +her own happiness in her own way, only I wish that she had made up her +mind twenty years ago; though, to be sure, how could she?"—with another +smile—"since, at that time, her bridegroom was not much more than +born."</p> + +<p>A dead silence supervenes—a silence of shocked stupefaction on the one +side, of rather dismal brooding on the other. At length Amelia nerves +herself to put a question upon which it seems to her, not very +incorrectly, that her whole future hangs. She does it in such a low +voice that none but very sharp ears could have caught it. Jim's ears are +so; practised as they are in listening for the stealthy tread of wild +animals, and for the indescribable sounds of mountain solitudes at +night.</p> + +<p>"Will it—will it—make a great difference to you?"</p> + +<p>Burgoyne lifts his eyes, which have been idly bent on the floor, and +looks straight and full at her across the corner of the table.</p> + +<p>"It will make all the difference!" he answers slowly.</p> + +<p>Poor Amelia is holding her handkerchief in her hand. She lifts it to her +mouth and bites a corner of it to hide the quivering of her lips and +chin. She does not wish to add to his pain by any breakdown on her own +part. But Jim divines the quivering even under the morsel of cambric, +and looks away again.</p> + +<p>"Her money is almost entirely in her own power," he continues, in an +unemotional voice; "and when she announced her marriage to me, she also +announced her intention of settling the whole of it upon her—her"—he +pauses a second, as if resolved to keep out of his voice the accent of +satire and bitterness that pierces through its calm—"her husband."</p> + +<p>Amelia has dropped both shielding hand and handkerchief into her lap. +She has forgotten her effort to conceal the blankness of her dismay. +Unless she conceals the whole of her face, indeed, the attempt would be +in vain, since each feature speaks it equally.</p> + +<p>"Her whole fortune?" she repeats, almost inaudibly. "<i>All?</i>"</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"What, all my pretty chickens and their dam?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>says Jim, oppressed by her overwhelmed look into an artificial and +dreary levity, and in not particularly apt quotation. "My dear, do not +look so broken-hearted. I am not absolutely destitute; I need not become +a sandwich man. I have still got my £800 a year, my very own, which +neither man nor mouse, neither curate nor vicar, can take from me. I can +still go on rioting upon that; the question is"—his words coming more +slowly, and his tone growing graver—"have I any right to ask you to +riot on it too?"</p> + +<p>Her hand has gone in feverish haste out to his for answer, and her eyes, +into which the tears are welling, look with an intense dumb wistfulness +into his; but, for the moment, it remains dumb. There is something +painful to Burgoyne in that wistfulness, almost more painful than the +telling of that news which has produced it. He looks down upon the +tablecloth, and, with his disengaged hand, the one not imprisoned in his +betrothed's fond hold, draws patterns with a paper-knife accidentally +left there.</p> + +<p>"The one thing that I blame her for," he continues, not following up the +branch of the subject that his last speech had begun to open up, and +speaking with a composure which, to the stricken Amelia, appears to +evidence his attainment of the highest pinnacle of manly fortitude, "the +only thing I blame her for, is her having hindered my adopting any +profession. Poor old woman, it was not malice prepense, I know; she had +not seen her Jessamey then, probably had not even a prophetic instinct +of him, but as things turned out"—stifling a sigh—"it would have been +kinder to have put me in the way of earning my own living."</p> + +<p>Amelia's head has sunk down upon his hand—he feels her hot tears upon +it; but now that the theme has no longer reference to herself, she can +speak. She straightens herself, and there is a flash, such as he has +very seldom seen there, in her rather colourless orbs.</p> + +<p>"It was monstrous of her!" she cries, with the almost exaggerated +passion of a usually very self-controlled person. "After having always +told you that you were to be her heir!"</p> + +<p>"But <i>had</i> she told me so?" replies Jim, passing his hand with a +perplexed air over his own face. "That is what I have been trying to +recall for the last few days. I never remember the time when I did not +believe it, so I suppose that someone must have told me so; but I could +not swear that she herself had ever put it down in black and white. +However," tossing his head back with a gesture as of one who throws off +his shoulders a useless burden, "what does that matter now? I am not her +heir, I am nobody's heir; we must look facts in the face! Amelia, +dear"—in a tone of reluctant tender affection, as of one compelled, yet +most unwilling, to give a little child, or some other soft, helpless +creature, pain—"we must look facts in the face!" There is something in +his voice that makes Amelia's heart stand still; but she attempts no +interruption.</p> + +<p>"It is very hard for me, dear, after all these"—he pauses a second; he +is about to say "weary years' waiting," but his conscience arrests him; +to him they have not been weary, so, after a hardly-perceptible break, +he goes on—"after all these many years' waiting, to have come to this, +is not it?"</p> + +<p>He had not calculated on the effect which would be produced by his +melancholy words and his caressing tone. She buries her face on his +shoulder, sobbing uncontrollably.</p> + +<p>"They were not long!" she murmurs brokenly. "Nothing is, nothing can be, +long to me as long as I have you, or the hope of you!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>It is, perhaps, fortunate for Amelia that she cannot see the expression +of the face which looks out above her prostrate head into space, with a +blankness equal to what has been her own, a blankness streaked, as hers +was not, with remorse. He would give anything to be able to answer her +in her own key, to tell her that, as long as he can keep her, the going +or coming of any lesser good hurts him as little as the brushing past +his cheek of a summer moth or windblown feather. But when he tries to +frame a sentence of this kind, his tongue cleaves to the roof of his +mouth. He can only hold her to him in an affectionate clasp, whose +dumbness he hopes that she attributes to silencing emotion. She herself +indulges in no very prolonged manifestation of her passion. In a few +moments she is again sitting up beside him with wiped eyes, none the +handsomer, poor soul, for having cried, and listening with a deep +attention to an exposition of her lover's position and prospects, which +he is at no pains to tinge with a factitious rose colour.</p> + +<p>"Have you realized," he says, "that I shall never be better off than I +am now? never! <i>never!</i> For though of course I shall try to get work, +one knows how successful that quest generally is in the case of a man +with no special aptitudes, no technical training, and who starts in the +race handicapped by being ten years too late!"</p> + +<p>But the dismalness of this panorama raises no answering gloom in the +young woman's face. She nods her head gently.</p> + +<p>"I realize it."</p> + +<p>"And this is what I have brought you to, after all these years' +waiting," he continues, in a tone of profound regret. "All I can offer +you at the end of them is a not particularly genteel poverty, not even a +cottage with a double coach-house!"—laughing grimly.</p> + +<p>"I do not want a double coach-house, nor even a single one!" replies +Amelia stoutly, and laughing too, a little, through returning tears. "Do +not you know that I had rather drive a costermonger's barrow with you +than go in a coach and six without you!"</p> + +<p>This is the highest flight of imagination of which Jim has ever known +his matter-of-fact Amelia guilty, and he can pay her his thanks for it +only in compunctious kisses. Perhaps it is they, perhaps it is the +thought which dictates her next hesitating speech, that bring a light +into Amelia's tear-reddened eyes.</p> + +<p>"If you will never be better off——" She stops.</p> + +<p>"Yes, dear, go on; 'if I shall never be better off'—I certainly never +shall; I feel sure that you will be able to put my earnings for the next +ten years into your eye, and see none the worse for them!"</p> + +<p>"If—you—will—never—be—better—off——" she repeats again, more +slowly, and breaking off at the same place.</p> + +<p>"Well, dear?"</p> + +<p>"If you will never be better off"—this time she finishes her sentence; +but it is rendered almost inaudible by the fact of her flushed face and +quivering lips being pressed against his breast—"why should we wait any +longer?"</p> + +<p><i>Why should we wait any longer?</i> To most persons, granted the usual +condition of feeling of a betrothed couple, this would seem a very +natural and legitimate deduction from the premises; but, strange to say, +it comes upon Burgoyne with the shock of a surprise. He has been +thinking vaguely of his change of fortune as a cause for unlimited +delay, perhaps for the rupture of his engagement, never as a reason for +its immediate fulfilment.</p> + +<p>He gives a sort of breathless gasp, which is happily too low for Amelia +with her still hidden face to hear. To be married at once! To sit down +for all time to Amelia and £800 a year! To forego for ever the thrilling +wandering life; the nights under the northern stars, the stealthy +tracking of shy forest creatures; the scarce coarse delicious food, the +cold, the fatigue, the hourly peril, that, since its probable loss is +ever in sight, make life so sweetly worth having—all, in short, that +goes to make up so many an Englishman's ideal of felicity; that has +certainly hitherto gone to make up Jim's. To renounce it all! There is +no doubt that the bitterness of this thought comes first; but presently, +supplanting it, chasing it away, there follows another, a +self-reproachful light flashing over his past eight years, showing him +his own selfishness colossal and complete for the first time. In a +paroxysm of remorse, he has lifted Amelia's face, and, framing it with +his hands, looks searchingly into it.</p> + + +<p>"I believe," he says in a shaken voice, "that you would have married me +eight years ago, on my pittance, if I had asked you!"</p> + +<p>No "Yes" was ever written in larger print than that which he read in her +patient pale eyes. Even at this instant there darts across him a wish +that they were not quite so pale, but he detests himself for it.</p> + +<p>"And I never suspected it!" he cries compunctiously. "I give you my word +of honour, I never suspected it! I thought you looked upon my poverty in +as prohibitory a light as I did myself."</p> + +<p>"I do not call it such great poverty," replies Amelia, her practical +mind resuming its habitual sway over her emotions. "Of course, it is an +income that would require a little management; but if we cut our coat +according to our cloth, and did not want to move about too much, we +might live either in a not very fashionable part of London, or in some +cheap district in the country very comfortably."</p> + +<p>Despite his remorse, a cold shiver runs down Burgoyne's spine at the +picture that rises, conjured up with too much distinctness by her words, +before his mind's eyes; the picture of a snug Bayswater villa, with a +picturesque parlour-maid, or the alternative cottage in some dreary +Wiltshire or Dorsetshire village, with a shrubbery of three aucuba +bushes, and a kitchen-garden of half an acre. It may be that, her frame +being in such close proximity to his, she feels the influence of his +shiver, and that it suggests her next sentence, which is in a less +sanguine key.</p> + +<p>"But it would not be fair; it would be asking you to give up too much."</p> + +<p>The meek abnegation of her rather worn voice brings his remorse +uppermost again on the revolving wheel of his feelings.</p> + +<p>"Is not it my turn to give up something?" he asks tenderly; "and +besides, it is time for me to settle! I am—I am tired of wandering!"</p> + +<p>As this atrocious lie passes his lips, he catches his breath. Tired of +the Sierras! Tired of the bivouacs among the dazzling snow! Tired of the +august silence of the ever-lasting hills! Heaven forgive him for saying +so! Perhaps there is no great air of veracity in his assertion, for she +looks at him distrustfully; so distrustfully that he reshapes his +phrase: "At least, if I am not, I ought to be!"</p> + +<p>But still she gazes at him with a wistful and doubting intentness.</p> + +<p>"If I could only believe that that was true!"</p> + +<p>"It is true," replies he, evading her look; "at least, true enough for +all working purposes; we all know that life is a series of compromises, +a balancing of gain and loss. I shall lose something, I do not deny +that, but I gain more—I gain <i>you</i>!"</p> + +<p>"That is such a mighty gain, is it not?" she says with a melancholy +smile, as that intuition of the truth which sometimes comes to unloved +or tepidly loved women flashes upon her.</p> + +<p>"A matter of taste—a mere matter of taste!" rejoins he hurriedly; aware +of the unreal ring in his own words, and trying, with all his might, to +feel as well as speak light-heartedly.</p> + +<p>She shakes her head in a way which tells him how poorly he has +succeeded. In a desperate if not very well-judged attempt to convince +her of his sincerity, his next speech is uttered.</p> + +<p>"Why should not we be married at once? to-morrow? the day after +to-morrow? at the Consulate—of course there <i>is</i> a Consulate—or the +English church; I suppose there are half a dozen English churches. Why +not? We have nothing to wait for, and we are both of age!"</p> + +<p>He has had no unkindly intention in the last words, but the moment that +these are out of his mouth, a glance at Amelia's unblooming face and +unyouthful figure tell him that they were not happily chosen. At the +first instant that the suggestion of an immediate marriage reaches the +hearer's brain, it sends a dart of joy over her features. To be married +at once! To put an end for ever to the interminable waiting, to enter at +last—at last upon the possession of the so long deferred Canaan. But in +a second, that first bright flash is chased away, and gives place to a +look of almost humiliation.</p> + +<p>"You must be making fun of me, to suggest such a thing!" she says in a +wounded voice; "you know how wildly impossible it would be that I should +leave them all—my father—Sybilla—without any preparation."</p> + +<p>"Without any preparation!" replies Jim, raising his eyebrows. "Have not +you been preparing them for the last eight years?"</p> + +<p>He feels a vague unjust irritation with her for opposing his +proposition, though deep down in his heart he knows that he would have +felt a much greater annoyance had she eagerly closed with it. As she +does not answer a question, which the moment that it is uttered he feels +to have been rather brutal, he goes on, against his will, in the same +sarcastic key:</p> + +<p>"I am afraid that you will have to leave them all some day; I am afraid +that our Bayswater mansion—by-the-bye, I am sure it will not be a +mansion, for I am sure it will not have a back-door—will not be likely +to contain all. Your father—Sybilla—Sybilla and her physic bottles +take up a good deal of room, do not they?"</p> + +<p>It is fortunate for Amelia that she is too preoccupied by the thought of +her own next speech to take in the full acerbity of the last remark.</p> + +<p>"If you would consent to wait till we get home—father does not mean to +stay in Italy beyond the end of next month—we might be married in June; +that" (with a pink flush of happiness) "would not be so long to wait."</p> + +<p>In a second a sum of the simplest description executes itself in +Burgoyne's head. It is now the second week of April; they are to be +married in June, he has then eight weeks left. It shocks himself to find +that this is the way in which he puts it. All the overt action that he +permits himself, however, is to say with a shrug:</p> + +<p>"As you will, then, as you will!" adding, since he feels that there is +something discourteous even to unchivalry in so bald an acquiescence in +his prospective bliss, "Of course, dear, the sooner I get you the better +for me!"</p> + +<p>No lover could have been overheard giving utterance to a more proper or +suitable sentiment; so that it is lucky that this is just the moment +that Cecilia chooses for entering.</p> + +<p>"Do not be afraid," she says, with a laugh. "I will not stay a minute, +but I just wanted to say 'How do you do?' How well you are looking! and +how young!"—with an involuntary glance of comparison from him to her +sister; a glance of which they are both rather painfully conscious. +"Ah!" (sighing) "with all your Rocky Mountain experiences, it is evident +that you have been having an easier time than we have!"</p> + +<p>"Are you alluding to Sybilla?" asks Jim gravely. "I have no doubt, from +what I know of her powers in that line, that she has been extremely +trying."</p> + +<p>"Yes, partly," replies the girl doubtfully; "but I have had troubles of +my own too. I dare say that Amelia has told you, or probably" (with a +second and heavier sigh) "you have been more pleasantly employed."</p> + +<p>"Amelia did hint at some disaster," replies Jim, struggling to conceal +the rather grim smile which is curving his mouth, a feat the more +difficult since he has no moustache to aid him; "but I have been waiting +to hear all the details from yourself."</p> + +<p>"I know that you are apt to think I fancy things," says Cecilia, sitting +down on a third hard chair, "but there could be no fancy in this case; I +am sure I was as much engaged as any girl ever was. I had chosen the +drawing-room paper and bought the dining-room grate!"</p> + +<p>"That is further than we ever got, is not it, Amelia?" says Jim, +breaking, at the relation of this prosaic fact, into the laugh he has +been with difficulty swallowing; "but, Cis, if I were you, I should keep +the grate; one does not know how soon its services may be required +again!"</p> + +<p>"It is all very well for you to joke," returns Cecilia, with an offended +air; "it may be play to you, but it is——"</p> + +<p>"Not death, not quite death to you!" interrupts Burgoyne, glancing with +an expressive smile at her buxom outline. "I think you will live to +fight another day, will not you? But I really am extremely sorry; tell +me all about it."</p> + +<p>"He was perfectly right when we left England," says Cecilia, mollified +at once, and apparently relieved by the invitation to unbosom herself of +her woes; "nobody could have been more so; he came to see us off at +Folkestone, and the tears were in his eyes; they were really, it was not +my imagination, was it, Amelia? And at first he wrote all right, and +said all the usual things; but then his letters gradually grew fewer and +fewer, and after I had written and telegraphed a great many times—I do +not know how many times I did not telegraph to ask whether he was ill, +and you know how expensive foreign telegrams are—he sent me a few +lines, oh, such cruel lines, were not they, Amelia? to say that, on +reflection, he feared that the feeling he had for me was not such as to +justify his entering on so sacred an engagement as marriage with me; but +he ought to have thought of that before, ought not he?"</p> + +<p>"Undoubtedly!"</p> + +<p>"I will never engage myself to a clergyman again," says Cecilia +pensively.</p> + +<p>Burgoyne's thoughts have strayed at the mention of the cloth of his +sister-in-law elect's truant admirer, to that member of the same +profession who has lately robbed him of his heritage, and he replies +with a good deal of feeling:</p> + +<p>"They do play one dirty turns now and then, do not they? Yes, Cis, stick +to laymen for the future!"</p> + +<p>Cecilia receives this counsel with a melancholy sigh, fixing her large +eyes on the carpet, but presently resumes the conversation in a livelier +key.</p> + +<p>"Let us talk about something pleasanter," she says. "Had you a good +journey? Do you like your travelling companion? Why did not you bring +him with you? Is he nice?"</p> + +<p>"At all events, he is not a clergyman," replies Jim, with a rather +malicious smile; "but no, my dear, do not let your thoughts turn in that +direction! You must look at him as poor women look at diamonds!"</p> + +<p>"I am sure I do not know what you mean!" replies Cecilia, reddening. "I +have not the slightest wish to look at him! I am not in spirits to +'look,' as you call it, at anyone!"</p> + +<p>A moment later, she adds, with a suspicion of malice in her tone:</p> + +<p>"We are certainly an unlucky family in our loves! I, heartlessly thrown +over, and Amelia engaged for eight years!"</p> + +<p>Burgoyne smiles. "Amelia is not going to be engaged any longer," he +says, putting his arm round his betrothed. "Amelia is going to be +married at once!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>It would seem natural that, after so long a separation, Burgoyne should +dine and spend the evening with his betrothed; but such is not the case. +For this, however, he is not to blame; he is quite prepared to stay with +her until she turns him out. Had he not better school himself to +domestic habits, since he is so soon to assume them for life? But in +consideration for Sybilla he is dismissed undined. It is not that she +ever shares the family dinner at their table <i>à part</i> in the <i>salle à +manger</i>, but the thought of their entertaining a guest with a +conviviality far greater in her imagination than would be the case in +reality, while she herself lies lonely on her couch of suffering, preys +upon her spirits so much that her family have to abandon the idea. So, +towards sunset, Jim is dismissed. He has no opportunity for any parting +endearments to his lady-love, as the whole family are in the room, and +it is Cecilia, not Amelia, who volunteers to walk across the hotel +courtyard with him, for the advantage of a last word. What that last +word is he is not slow to learn.</p> + +<p>"You will take us some excursions, will not you?" she says, with a +persuasive air, putting her arm through his. "Father is so +unenterprising, we have really seen scarcely anything; but you will take +us some excursions now, will not you?"</p> + +<p>"Are you sure that your spirits are equal to them?" inquires Burgoyne +unkindly.</p> + +<p>"I do not know about that, I am sure," replies she, growing pink at his +tone; "but one must make an exertion sometime, and I think a little +distraction would do me good, and so I am sure it would to poor Amelia!"</p> + +<p>"Poor Amelia will shortly have the distraction of being married," +rejoins the young man, who feels as if he could not repeat the statement +of this fact too often to himself and others.</p> + +<p>"And I think it would be only civil," continues Cecilia persistently, +"in fact, I do not see how you could avoid it, if you invited your +friend to join us."</p> + +<p>But Jim escapes without having committed himself to this promise, and +wanders about the town in the lovely, lowering light; finds himself on +the Lung Arno, strolling along with the leisurely loiterers, among whom, +for every two soft Tuscan voices, there is a loud metallic Anglo-Saxon +one. He watches the carriages rolling back from their drive on the +Cascine; the river falling over the weir; the river yellow as Tiber +yesterday, and to day shot with blue and green and silver, as it tumbles +with a pleasant noise. The houses on either side of the Arno, the domes +and roofs, are all clothed in a strange serenity of yellow light; a +golden air so transparent and line and crystal clear, so free from the +soft blur of mist—lovely too—through which we see objects in our wet +green home, that Jim feels as if he could stretch out his hand and touch +the hill that backs gold towers and bridges, and see whether it really +is made out of one whole amethyst, as it looks. The beauty of the world +has always been very much to Burgoyne, though hitherto it has been +chiefly in the austerity of her high and desert places that he has bowed +the knee before the Universal Mother. This little gold evening city, +sunset clad in the colours of the New Jerusalem, lifting her heavenly +campanile to as heavenly a sky, is to him a new and wonderful thing. Her +loveliness sinks into his soul, and with it a companion sadness as deep. +From henceforth the sight of earth's fair shows will be, for the most +part, forbidden him. He has always loved to look and adore in silence +and alone; henceforth he will never have the right to be alone; +henceforth he will never have the right to go anywhere without his wife. +Strange and terrible word to which he tries in vain to accustom his +mental ears; and, thanks to the narrowness of their means, neither of +them will be able to stir from the strait precincts of their pinched +home.</p> + +<p>He comes back to his hotel, through the Piazza of the Duomo. All the +infinite richness of cupola and arch, high up, are still wrapped in the +fiery rose cloak of sunset, while below the body of the great church, +with all its marbles and traceries and carved wonders, is clad in the +sobriety of twilight.</p> + +<p>On reaching the Minerva, he finds that Byng has not yet returned, or +rather that he has been in and gone out again. He waits dinner +half-an-hour for him, and then dines without him; dines in solitude, +since it is not till his cup of coffee is before him, and his cigarette +between his lips, that his young friend appears. It is evidently no +unpleasant errand that has detained him, for he arrives beaming, and too +excited even to perceive the <i>menu</i> which a waiter offers him.</p> + +<p>"They have arrived!" he cries. Oddly enough it never occurs to Burgoyne +to inquire who "they" may be; it seems as much a matter-of-course to him +as to the handsome pink and white boy before him, that the pronoun must +relate to Elizabeth Le Marchant and her mother.</p> + +<p>His only answer, however, is an "Oh!" whose tone is rather more eagerly +interested than he could have wished.</p> + +<p>"I thought that they could not stay more than another day in Genoa," +continues Byng, at length becoming aware of the <i>menu</i> at his elbow; but +only to wave it impatiently away. "So I thought I would just run down to +the station to meet the evening train, the one we came by last night; +however, it must have been more punctual than yesterday, for before I +reached the station, I met them; I mean they passed me in a fiacre. I +only caught a glimpse of her face, but I saw her hand; it was lying on +the carriage door like a snow-flake."</p> + +<p>"Like my grandmother!" cries Burgoyne in a rage, for which he cannot +quite account to himself, at this ingenious and novel simile.</p> + +<p>Byng laughs; the laugh of a thoroughly sweet-natured person, who, in +addition, has some special cause for good-humour.</p> + +<p>"I do not know what colour your grandmother was; but she must have been +very unlike most people's if she was like a snow-flake."</p> + +<p>Jim's cross mouth unbends into a reluctant smile. It is not the first +time that he has discovered how useless, and also impossible, it is to +be out of humour with Byng.</p> + +<p>"I had a good mind to tell my fiacre man to follow them," continued +Byng, in an excited voice; "but, in the first place, I did not know how +to say it—really, Jim, we must get up a little of the lingo—and, in +the second place, I thought it would perhaps be rather too much in the +private detective line."</p> + +<p>"I think it would have been extremely ungentlemanlike!" rejoins Jim +severely.</p> + +<p>Byng reddens; but still without losing his temper.</p> + +<p>"That is coming it rather strong, is not it? but anyhow, I did not do +it." And then, by tacit agreement, they both drop the subject.</p> + +<p>During the next three or four days it is not named between them, nor +indeed do they see much of each other. Burgoyne spends the greater part +of his days with Amelia. Whatever cause for the accusation he may have +given during the previous eight years, nobody can say that he neglects +her now. He passes long hours at her side, on the same hard chair that +had supported him on their first interview, in the little dismal +dining-room; going into calculations of house-rent and taxes, drawing up +lists of necessary furniture. He even makes a bid for Cecilia's +drawing-room grate; but that young lady, whose forecasting mind can look +beyond present grief to future sunshine, refuses to part with it. The +lovers are not always, however, studying Maple's and Oetzmann's lists. +Sometimes Jim varies the diversion by taking his future wife to +picture-galleries and churches, to the Uffizi, the Accademia, San +Lorenzo. It is doubtful whether Amelia enjoys these excursions as much +as she does the selection of bedsteads and saucepans, her pleasure being +in some degree marred by a feverish anxiety to say what she thinks her +lover expects of her as they stand before each immortal canvas. In her +heart she thinks the great statues in the Medici Chapel frightful, a +heresy in which she is kept in countenance by no less a light than +George Eliot, who in one of her letters dares to say of them, "they +remained to us as affected and exaggerated in the original, as in copies +and casts." To Amelia many of the frescoes appear lamentably washed out, +nor are her efforts to hide these sentiments attended with any +conspicuous success, since nothing is more hopeless than for one utterly +destitute of a feeling for works of art to feign it, without having the +imposture at once detected.</p> + +<p>Burgoyne's mind during these expeditions is a battle-ground for pity and +rage; pity at the pathos of his poor love's endeavours; rage at their +glaring failure. Cecilia sometimes accompanies the lovers, but this does +not make matters much better. Cecilia devotes but a very cursory notice +to the pictures; her attention being almost wholly centred on the +visitors, and on finding resemblances for them among the inhabitants of +her own village at home, for the accuracy of which she appeals at every +moment to her sister. Every day she asks Burgoyne to fulfil his +promise—a promise which he as punctually assures her that he never +made—to introduce his friend to her. He has a strangely strong +reluctance to comply with this simple request, which yet, he knows, will +have to be complied with some day. When Amelia is his wife, Byng will +have to know Cecilia, for she will probably spend a great deal of her +time with them—make their house a second home, in fact.</p> + +<p>And meanwhile Jim is keenly, and for some reason sorely, conscious of +the fact that, during the hours in which he is stooping his weary head +over catalogues of fenders and fire-irons, carving-knives and +fish-slices, blankets and ticking, Byng is searching Florence through +her length and breadth for their two countrywomen. It is not indeed +necessary to credit his friend with any special quest to account for his +wanderings through the "adorable little city," as Henry James most truly +calls it, since he is a young man of a wide and alert curiosity, with a +large appetite for pleasure both intellectual and the reverse. Jim, +whose acquaintance with him has chiefly been with his rowdy +undergraduate side, bear-fighting, and proctor-defying, is astonished at +his almost tremulous appreciation of the Ghirlandajos, the Lorenzo di +Credis, the Giottos, that in a hundred chapels, from a hundred walls, +shine down in their mixed glory of naïve piety and blinding colour upon +him.</p> + +<p>One day the elder man is sitting in his bedroom with a despatch-box and +a sheet of paper before him. He is embarked upon a dreary calculation as +to what his guns will fetch. He has made up his mind to sell them. Of +what further use can they be to him? He will not be allowed to shoot at +the Bayswater omnibuses, which will be the only game henceforth within +his reach. While he is thus employed upon an occupation akin to, and +about as cheerful as, that of Rawdon Crawley before Waterloo, Byng +enters.</p> + +<p>"You look as if you had a headache, old chap," he says, sitting down +upon his friend's bed.</p> + +<p>"If you had been going through as many kitchen-ranges as I have this +morning, perhaps you would have a headache," replies Jim gravely. "You +know that I am going to be married as soon as I get home."</p> + +<p>Byng nods; and Burgoyne, while inwardly blessing the tact that spares +him any congratulations, takes himself to task for having made the +announcement so lugubriously as to render felicitation obviously +inapplicable.</p> + +<p>"When are you going to introduce me to Miss Wilson?" asks Byng +presently. "If you shirk it much longer, I shall think that you are +ashamed of me."</p> + +<p>Jim glances affectionately, yet not quite comfortably, at his young +friend, and the thought dashes across his mind that, in his last remark, +the latter has put the saddle on the wrong horse.</p> + +<p>"You have so large an acquaintance in Florence already," he says, with +some stiffness, "that I did not know that you would care to add to it."</p> + +<p>"One cannot have too much of a good thing," replies the other joyously. +"You know I love my fellow-creatures; and in this case," he adds +civilly, "I do care very much."</p> + +<p>Burgoyne's eyes are bent on the paper before him, which contains the +melancholy enumeration of his firearms—"A 500 double-barrelled express, +by Henry, of Edinburgh; a 450 single-barrelled ditto, by same maker," +etc., etc.—as he says slowly:</p> + +<p>"I shall be very happy."</p> + +<p>His acceptance of the proposition can hardly be called eager; but of +this Byng appears unawares.</p> + +<p>"When shall it be, then? To-day—this afternoon?"</p> + +<p>"No-o-o; not to-day, I think. It has been arranged that we are to go to +San Miniato—Amelia, her sister, and I."</p> + +<p>"Three of you?" cries Byng, raising his eyebrows. "Then why not four? +Why may not I come too?"</p> + +<p>There being, in point of fact, no reason why he should not, and +Cecilia's morning prayer being still ringing in her future +brother-in-law's ears, he gives a dull and lagging assent; so that at +about three o'clock the two men present themselves at the door of the +Wilsons' apartment at the Anglo-Américain Hotel. That Sybilla is not +expecting visitors is evident by the fact that, at the moment of their +entrance, she is taking her own temperature—a very favourite relaxation +of hers—with a clinical thermometer. She removes the instrument from +her mouth without indecent haste, and holds out a languid white hand to +Byng.</p> + +<p>"So you are going off on a long afternoon's pleasuring?" she says, with +a pathetic smile. "I am so glad that neither of my sisters is going to +stay at home with me. We invalids must guard against growing selfish, +though I think that is perhaps more the danger with <i>malades +imaginaires</i>; we real ones have learnt our lesson of suffering better, I +hope."</p> + +<p>"You do not look so very ill," replies Byng, in his sympathetic voice, +letting his eyes rest caressingly on the prostrate figure, which has yet +no smallest sign of emaciation about it.</p> + +<p>"Ah, that is because of my colour," replies Sybilla, with an animation +slightly tinged with resentment. "You, too, fall into that common error. +My London doctor tells me that there is no such unerring indication of +radical delicacy of constitution as a fixed pink colour like mine; the +more feverish I am, the deeper it grows. It is very hard"—smiling again +sadly—"for one gets no pity!"</p> + +<p>"Where is Cecilia?" cries Jim brusquely, and fidgeting in his chair. +"Why is not she ready?"</p> + +<p>As he speaks, the young lady in question enters—so obviously arrayed +for conquest, in so patently new a hat, and such immaculate pale gloves, +that across Burgoyne's mind there flashes, in vexed mirth, the +recollection of the immortal caution addressed by Major O'Dowd to his +friend and comrade, "Moind your oi, Dob, my boy!" Would he not do well +to repeat it to his friend?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>They are off now, there being nothing further to retard them, leaving +Sybilla <i>tête-à-tête</i> with her thermometer. They are off, sociably +packed in one fiacre—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Four precious souls, and all agog<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To dash thro' thick and thin."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Not, indeed, that there is much dash about the Florentine +cab-horses—saddest among God's many sad creatures—with not a sound leg +among them, with staring coats and starting ribs, and poor broken knees; +and with their sadness emphasized by the feathers stuck in their tired +heads, as if to mock their wretchedness by a sort of melancholy +smartness! Sad as they are, it must be owned that they are the only sad +things in the cheerful Florentine streets, where no one seems over-busy, +where, out of the deep-eaved, green-shuttered houses, people lean, +talking to acquaintances on the shadowed pavement below. All the narrow +thorough-fares are full of bustling life; but there is no haggard +squalor apparently, no dreadful gin-palace gaiety. It does not follow +here that a man must be drunk because he sings. And down the strait, +colourful streets one looks—down a vista of houses diversely tall, each +with its cream-yellow face and its green shutters, varied here and there +by the towering bulk of some giant-blocked mountain-palace, through +whose grim, barred windows a woman peeps, or a little dog shows his +pointed nose—looks to where, in dwindling perspective, the view is +closed by a narrow picture of lucent purple hill, Fiesole or +Bellosguardo—names to which the tongue cleaves lovingly. Through the +gay streets, over bridge and blue Arno, our travellers go; their driver +cracking a prodigious whip, and with a tiny red dog, absurdly shaven, +and with nothing but a small woolly head and tail left of the original +design, seated gravely beside him. Away they go, pleasuring; but +pleasure and pleasuring are not always identical.</p> + +<p>Burgoyne sits opposite Amelia; and as for Cecilia, it is to be supposed +that her heartache is for the moment dulled, since the same carriage-rug +covers her knees and those of Byng. Burgoyne does not look at Amelia; +nor, though his eyes are fixed upon the passing objects, does he at +first see aught of them. His vision is turned inwards, and to his own +soul he is mechanically repeating in dismal recitative, "A +double-barrelled, central fire, breech-loading gun, by Lancaster; made +strong enough at the breech to shoot a spherical bullet."</p> + +<p>As for Amelia, her features are not of a build to express any emotion +with much brilliancy; but over them lies a deep and brooding content. +Amelia has not had much undiluted happiness in her life, but she is +exceedingly happy to-day. She is even strangely free from the carking +fear which usually assails her, of praising mistakenly, of being +enthusiastic in the wrong places, and passing over the right ones +unnoticed. If she keep to a vague generality of handsome adjectives, she +will surely do well enough, and, on this high holiday that her heart is +holding, he cannot be cross to her.</p> + +<p>As to Byng, he is emphatically of the school of divinity taught by Tommy +Moore, nor was he ever known, when lacking "the lips that he loved," to +fail to make love to "the lips that are near." His taste is too good for +him to have chosen Cecilia as a companion; but, since fate has allotted +her to him for the afternoon, he finds no difficulty in making the best +of her. Nor, to do her justice, is she destitute of charms of a certain +kind, though her face has the inevitable air of commonness incident upon +a very short nose and a very long upper lip. But she has a good deal of +bloom, and of crisp, showy-coloured hair, and a very considerable +eye-power. Byng's attachment to the fair sex being of far too stout a +quality to be blunted by such trifles as an inch too much or too little +of nose or lip, he also, like Amelia, is thoroughly prepared to enjoy +himself.</p> + +<p>Up the turning Via Galileo they climb, to the Basilica at the +top—stock-drive of all tourists—hackneyed as only Yankeedom and +Cockneydom, rushing hand in hand through all earth's sacredness, can +hackney. But even hackneying is powerless to take off the freshness to +the eye that sees it for the first time, of that view when he beholds +the Lily City lying close at his feet, so close that it seems he could +throw a stone into her Arno.</p> + +<p>They have left their fiacre, and, as naturally happens in a <i>partie +carrée</i>—more especially when one couple are betrothed lovers—have +broken into pairs. Burgoyne leans pensively on the terrace parapet, and +his sombre eyes rest on the band of sister hills, joining hands in +perpetual watch round valley and town; hills over which, in this late +spring, there is more a promise than a performance of that green and +many-coloured wealth of verdure and blossom that one associates with +Firenze's fair name. But it is a promise that is plainly on the verge of +a bounteous fulfilment. Then his look drops slowly to the city herself. +In what a little space comparatively does the Florence that is immortal +lie! The Duomo, the lily Campanile "made up of dew and sunshine," the +Baptistery, Santa Croce, the Palazzo Vecchio; he could compass them in a +ten minutes' walk. And around this small nucleus of the undying dead and +their work, what a nation of gleaming villas of the polyglot living—a +nation of every tongue, and people, and language! All over the hills is +the sheen of white walls, the verdure of tended gardens; they stretch +away almost to where the Apennines raise their cold white fronts against +the sky.</p> + +<p>He rouses himself to remember that Amelia is beside him, and that he +ought to say something to her. So he makes a rather <i>banal</i> observation +upon the smallness of the <i>enceinte</i> that encloses so much loveliness.</p> + +<p>"Yes, is not it tiny?" replies she, with the eager pleasure of having a +remark made to her which she cannot go wrong in answering. "Think of +London! Why, the whole thing is not as big as South Kensington or +Bayswater!"</p> + +<p>He shudders. Must the accursed suburb pursue him even here?</p> + +<p>"Let us go into the church," he says, in a tone that a little dulls his +companion's buoyancy.</p> + +<p>She follows him crestfallenly, asking herself whether she has answered +amiss here also. She does not trust herself to any comment upon the +interior.</p> + +<p>Byng and Cecilia are standing before the high altar, from over which a +mosaic Madonna stiffly beams upon them; and as the other couple approach +them, Burgoyne hears the words "drawing-room grate" issue from his +future sister-in-law's lips.</p> + +<p>"Bravo, Cis!" he says in a dry aside; "you are getting on nicely! I did +not think that you would have reached the drawing-room grate till +to-morrow."</p> + +<p>To avoid intruding further on her delicate confidences, and also to +escape from two Americans, who are nasally twanging Hare and Horner at +each other, varied by trips into Baedeker, he passes into a side chapel +made famous by one of the loveliest tombs that ever feigned to simulate +in marble death's ugliness. The Yankee voices are high and shrill, but +they had need to be higher and shriller still before they could break +the slumber of him whose resting-place Jim has invaded in his flight +from Cecilia and New York. Was ever rest so beautiful as this of the +young sleeper? A priest he was, nay cardinal, and youthful and lovely +and chaste! and now in how divine a slumber is he lapt! But how should +that four hundred years' slumber not be divine, watched by such a gentle +Mary-mother as is watching his; smiling as if to tell him that he does +well to sleep, that sleep is better than waking, that death is better +than life! There is a sunken look about his fair eyelids, as if he had +gone through suffering to his rest; and his reposeful hands are thin; +but below him, as he lies in his spotless marble tranquillity, upon his +sarcophagus, the rose garlands wave in lovely frieze, and the riotous +horses rear and plunge in fulness of life.</p> + +<p>Burgoyne has not perceived that Amelia did not follow him. She has, in +point of fact, remained in the body of the church, immersed in her +guide-book, steadily working through the marble screen and pulpit, and +still five good minutes off the side chapel, in which her lover stands +in so deeply brown a study, that he is not aware of the intrusion upon +his solitude of two women, until he is roused with a leap by the voice +of one of them addressing—not him, of whose presence she is obviously +as unaware as was he of hers, until this moment—but her companion.</p> + +<p>"Oh, mother! am I not a fool, at my age, too? but I cannot help it, it +makes me cry so!"</p> + +<p>Burgoyne does not need the evidence of his eyes. His ears and his +startled heart have enough assured him whose are the tears called forth +by that indeed most touching effigy at which he himself has been so +pensively staring.</p> + +<p>The mother's answer is inaudible; and then again comes the voice of +Elizabeth Le Marchant, tearful and vibrating.</p> + +<p>"You know I have seen so few beautiful things in my life, I shall get +used to them presently; it is only sheer happiness that makes me——"</p> + +<p>She stops abruptly, having evidently discovered for herself, or been +made aware by her mother of his vicinity; and even if she had not done +so, he feels that he must lose no time in announcing himself.</p> + +<p>"Florence is a place that does make one often choky," he says, eagerly +taking the hand which she hesitatingly, and with some confusion, offers +him.</p> + +<p>It is not quite true; Florence has never made him feel choky; and, if he +is experiencing that sensation now, it is certainly not the dead +cardinal of Portugal who is giving it to him.</p> + +<p>"I am a fool, a perfect fool!" replies Elizabeth, hastily and +shamefacedly wiping away her tears.</p> + +<p>To give her time to recover herself, and also because he has not yet +greeted the girl's mother, Jim turns to her.</p> + +<p>"Did not I tell you that we should meet here?"</p> + +<p>There is such undisguised joy and triumph in his tone, that perhaps Mrs. +Le Marchant has not the heart to dash his elation; at all events, he is +conscious in her tone of a less resolute determination to keep him at +arm's-length, than on their two last meetings.</p> + +<p>"I do not think that I contradicted you," she answers, smiling.</p> + +<p>He may steal another look at Elizabeth now. She is not crying any +longer. Indeed, despite the real moisture on her cheeks, she strikes him +as looking happier than at their last meeting; and though the interval +between now and then is too short for any such alteration to have taken +place in reality, yet he cannot help imagining that the hollows in those +very cheeks are less deep than when they stood together before the great +Vandyke in the Brignoli Sala Palace.</p> + +<p>"And the <i>entresol</i>? is it all your fancy painted it?" he asks quickly, +feeling a sort of panic fear, that if he stops putting questions for one +minute they will slip out of his grasp again, as they did in the Genoese +Palace.</p> + +<p>Elizabeth's face breaks into a soft bright smile. She has a dimple in +one cheek and not in the other. She must have had it ten years ago; how +comes he to have forgotten so sweet and strange a peculiarity?</p> + +<p>"It is delightful—perfectly delightful!"</p> + +<p>"Large enough to receive your friends in, after all?"</p> + +<p>But the moment that the words are out of his mouth, he perceives that he +has made a false step, and is somehow treading dangerous ground. +Elizabeth's smile goes out, like a light blown into nothingness by a +sudden wind.</p> + +<p>"We have not many friends," she murmurs; "we—we are not going out at +all."</p> + +<p>He hastens to change his cue.</p> + +<p>"Byng and I are at the Minerva," he says, beginning to talk very fast; +"I wonder if, by any chance, you are in our neighbourhood; have I +forgotten, or did you never tell me where the <i>entresol</i> lies? Where is +it, by-the-bye?"</p> + +<p>Ensnared by the wily and brazen suddenness of this demand, Miss Le +Marchant has evidently no evasion ready, and, after an almost +imperceptible pause of hesitation, answers:</p> + +<p>"We are at 12 bis, Piazza d'Azeglio."</p> + +<p>She is looking doubtfully and half uneasily in his face, as she gives +this answer, but he has scarcely time for a flash of self-congratulation +at having obtained the information, which he had never realized the +eagerness of his desire for until this moment, before he becomes aware +that his interlocutor's eyes are no longer meeting his, but have +wandered to some object over his shoulder. What that object is he is not +long left in doubt. Whether it is a genuine accident, or one of those +spurious ones, of which those who profit by them are the artificers, Jim +does not know; and, as he is at the time, and will be when he thinks of +the circumstance to the end of his life, too angry to question Byng on +the subject, it is pretty certain that he never <i>will</i> know; but so it +is that at this moment the voice of his <i>protégé</i> breaks upon his ear:</p> + +<p>"You are not going to give us the slip like this, old chap—oh! I beg +your pardon!"</p> + +<p>But begging pardon ever so sweetly does not alter the fact that he has +rushed, like a bull in a china shop, into the middle of the dialogue. +All four look at each other for a second; then, since there is no help +for it, Jim presents his disciple, and the next moment the latter has +slid into talk with Elizabeth, and she is responding with an ease and +freedom from embarrassment such as had never marked her sparse and +hardly won utterances to the elder man.</p> + +<p>Byng has the advantage of him, as he somewhat bitterly thinks. Byng has +no connection with "old times;" those poor old times which she and her +mother have so unaccountably taken <i>en grippe</i>. He seems suddenly +relegated, as by some natural affinity, to the mother. On their two last +meetings the eagerness to converse has been all on his side; yet now he +has nothing to say to her. It is she who addresses him.</p> + +<p>"I hope that you found your young lady flourishing," she says civilly.</p> + +<p>He gives a slight inward start, though—as he is thankful to feel—his +body is quiet. "His young lady!" Yes, of course he has a young lady! Has +there been any danger during the last five minutes of his forgetting +that fact? and has Mrs. Le Marchant done him an unnecessary service in +recalling it?</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, thanks, she is all right!"</p> + +<p>"Is she still in Florence?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, she is here; by-the-bye"—looking round with a sudden sense that +he ought to have missed her—"what has become of her? Oh, here she is!"</p> + +<p>For even while the words are on his lips, Amelia and Cecilia come into +sight. Amelia with a shut Baedeker, and the serene look of an easy +conscience and a thoroughly performed duty on her amiable face; Cecilia +with a something of search and disquiet in her large rolling eye, which +would have made him laugh at another time.</p> + +<p>A sudden instinct, with which his will has nothing to do, makes him +flash a look back at Mrs. Le Marchant, as if to gauge the effect +produced upon her by his betrothed; and, following her glance, he finds +that it is resting on Cecilia. She thinks that he is engaged to Cecilia. +The mistake is intolerable to him, and yet a second's reflection tells +him that it is a natural one. In a second he sees his Amelia as she +presents herself to a strange eye. Miss Wilson is only thirty-one, but +upon her has already come that set solid look of middle age, which +overtakes some women before they are well over the borders of youth, and +which other women manage to stave off till they are within near hail of +forty. Yes; the mistake is quite a natural one. Most people would +suppose that the showy Cecilia, still fairly youthful, and with so many +obvious and well-produced "points," must be his choice; and yet, as I +have said, the idea that anyone should credit him with her ownership is +intolerable to him.</p> + +<p>"Here she is!" he cries precipitately. "The one to the right side, the +other is her sister; may I—may I present them to you?"</p> + +<p>Perhaps it is his irritated fancy that dictates the idea, but it seems +to him as if he detected a sort of surprise in Mrs. Le Marchant's face, +when he effects the introduction he has proposed, and to which she +accedes courteously, after a pause of hesitation about as long as had +followed his inquiry of Elizabeth as to their address.</p> + +<p>Five minutes later they have all sauntered out again on the terrace, and +Burgoyne is again leaning on the wall; but this time he has no fear of +hearing of Bayswater, for it is Elizabeth who is beside him. Since last +he looked at it half an hour ago, a sort of glorification has passed +over the divine view. Down where the river twists through the plain +country, there is a light, dainty mist, but the mountains have put on +their fullest glory. They are not green, or brown, or purple, or blue; +but clad in that ineffable raiment woven by the sun, that defies our +weak vocabulary to provide it with a name. A little snow-chain lies on +the sun-warmed neck of Morello, and along the tops of the further +Apennines, right against the acute blue of the heavens, lies a line of +snow, that looks like a fleece-soft cloud resting from its journeyings +on their crests; but it is no cloud, nor is there any speck upon the +gigantic complete arch that over-vaults town and valley and radiant +mountains. In the folds of these last, the shadows slumber; but over all +the city is the great gold glory of spring. The one thing in Florence +that frowns among so many smiles is the scowling Pitti, and that, from +here, is invisible. Nearer to him, against the azure, stand the solemn +flame-shaped cypresses arow, and beside them—as unlike as life to +death—a band of quivering poplars, a sort of transparent gold-green in +their young spring livery. The air is so clear that one can go nigh to +counting the marbles on the Duomo walls. In a more transparent amber +light, fuller of joy and gaiety, cannot the saved be dancing around, as +in Fra Angelico's divine picture? cannot they be walking in the New +Jerusalem of St. John's great dream? Only in the New Jerusalem there are +no galled and trembling-kneed fiacre horses.</p> + +<p>Elizabeth is sitting on the wall, her light figure—is it possible that +it has been in the world only four years less than Amelia's solid +one?—half-supported by one small gray hand outspread on the stone; her +little fine features all tremulous with emotion, and half a tear +gathered again in each sweet eye. As Jim looks at her, a sort of cold +covetous gripe pinches his heart.</p> + +<p>"What a woman with whom to look at all earth's loveliness—with whom to +converse without speech!"</p> + +<p>Even as he so thinks, she turns her head towards him, and, drawing in +her breath with a long low sigh, says:</p> + +<p>"Oh, how glad I am I did not die before to-day!"</p> + +<p>Her eyes are turned towards him, and yet, as once before, he realizes +that it is not to him that either her look or her thoughts are directed. +Both are aimed at an object over his shoulder, and, as before, that +object is Byng. Byng, too, has been gazing at the view. There are tears +in Byng's eyes also. Stevenson says that some women like a man who +cries. Byng cries easily and genuinely, and enjoys it; and, as he is a +remarkably fine young man, there is something piquant in the contrast +between his wet blue orbs and his shoulders.</p> + +<p>As Burgoyne rolls home that afternoon in his fiacre, as before, placed +opposite Amelia, his mental vision is no longer fixed upon a +"double-barrelled, central fire, breech-loading gun;" it is fixed with a +teasing tenacity upon the figure of a smallish woman, perennially +looking, through brilliant tears, over his shoulder at somebody else.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>"Was it 12, or 12 bis, Piazza d'Azeglio?"</p> + +<p>There are no tears in Byng's eyes as he asks this question next +morning—asks it of his friend, as the latter sits in the Fumoir, with +an English paper in his hands, and a good cigar between his clean-shaven +lips. It has struck him several times lately that he will have to give +up good cigars, and take to a churchwarden pipe and shag instead. But, +so far, the churchwarden and the shag remain in the future.</p> + +<p>"12, or 12 bis, Piazza d'Azeglio?" inquires Byng.</p> + +<p>"Was <i>what</i> 12 or 12 bis?" replies his friend, with a somewhat obviously +intentional obtuseness; but Byng is far too thoroughly healthy and happy +a young animal this morning to take offence easily.</p> + +<p>"I mean Miss Le Marchant's address," he answers, explaining as amiably +as if he had not been perfectly aware that it was only "cussedness" that +had dictated the query.</p> + +<p>There is a slight pause. Burgoyne would like to answer that he does not +remember—would like still more to answer that he does not see what +business it can be of Byng's; but, since he is not destitute of +common-sense, a second's reflection shows him that he has no good reason +for either the lie or the incivility, so he replies, pretty calmly, with +his eyes still on his leading article:</p> + +<p>"I believe Miss Le Marchant said 12 bis."</p> + +<p>Having obtained the information he wanted, and finding his companion not +conversationally disposed, Byng is moving away again, when he is +arrested by Jim's voice, adding to the intelligence he has just given +the monosyllable:</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>"Why what?" asks Byng, returning readily, and laughingly mimicking the +intentional obtuseness so lately practised on himself by the other.</p> + +<p>"Why did you ask?"</p> + +<p>"I am thinking of paying my respects there this afternoon, and I did not +want to ring at the wrong bell."</p> + +<p>A short silence. Jim's head is partly hidden by his <i>Galignani</i>.</p> + +<p>"Did Miss or Mrs. Le Marchant ask you to call?"</p> + +<p>Byng laughs.</p> + +<p>"Both of them are as innocent of it as the babe unborn!"</p> + + +<p>"You asked yourself then?" (in a snubbing voice).</p> + +<p>Byng nods.</p> + +<p>"And she said yes?"</p> + +<p>The plural pronoun has dropped out of sight, but neither of them +perceives it. The younger man shakes his sleek head. Jim lays down his +paper with an air of decision.</p> + +<p>"If she did not say 'Yes'—if she said 'No,'" he begins, with an accent +of severity, "I fail to understand——"</p> + +<p>"She did not say 'No,'" interrupts Byng, still half laughing, and yet +reddening as well. "She began to say it; but I suppose that I looked so +broken-hearted—I am sure I felt it—that she stopped."</p> + +<p>As Jim makes no rejoinder, he continues by-and-by:</p> + +<p>"After all, she can but send me away. One is always being sent away" +(Jim wishes he could think this truer than he does); "but now and again +one is not sent, and those are the times that pay for the others! I'll +risk it."</p> + +<p>There is a hopeful ring in his voice as he ends, and again a pause +comes, broken a third time by the younger man.</p> + +<p>"Come now, Jim"—looking with a straight and disarming good humour into +his friend's overcast countenance—"speak up! Do you know of any cause +or impediment why I should not?"</p> + +<p>Thus handsomely and fairly appealed to, Burgoyne, who is by nature a +just man, begins to put his conscience through her paces as to the real +source of his dislike to the idea of his companion's taking advantage of +that introduction which he himself has been the means—however +unwillingly—of procuring for him. It is true that Byng's mother had +adjured him, with tears in her eyes, to preserve her boy from +undesirable acquaintances; but can he, Burgoyne, honestly say that he +looks upon Elizabeth Le Marchant as an undesirable acquaintance for +anyone? The result of his investigations is the discovery of how +infinitesimal a share in his motives regard for his young friend's +welfare has had. The discovery is no sooner made than he acts upon it.</p> + +<p>"My dear boy," he says—and to his credit says it heartily—"I see no +earthly reason why you should not go; you could not make nicer friends."</p> + +<p>"Then why will not you come too?" asks Byng, with boyish generosity.</p> + +<p>The other shakes his head. "They had much rather I stayed away; they +have taken me <i>en grippe</i>."</p> + +<p>"Pooh! Nonsense! You fancy it."</p> + +<p>"I think not"—speaking slowly and thoughtfully—"I am not a fanciful +person, nor apt to imagine that my acquaintances bother their heads +about me one way or another; but when people try their best, in the +first instance, to avoid recognising you at all, and on every subsequent +occasion endeavour to disappear as soon as you come in sight, it is not +a very forced assumption that they are not exactly greedy for your +society."</p> + +<p>This reasoning is so close that Byng is for the moment silenced; and it +is the other who shortly resumes:</p> + +<p>"I think it is because I remind them of the past; they have evidently +some unpleasant association of ideas with that past. I wonder what it +is."</p> + +<p>The latter clause is addressed more to himself than to Byng.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps some of them have died, or come to grief, and they are afraid +of your asking after them," suggests the younger man.</p> + +<p>"On the contrary—they are all—one more flourishing than another."</p> + +<p>"Well, I would give them one more trial, anyhow; I am sure they would +come round. Give them time, and I am sure they would come round!" cries +Byng sanguinely; adding, "What could have been pleasanter than Mrs. Le +Marchant's manner when you presented her to Miss Wilson?"</p> + +<p>The mention of Miss Wilson recalls to Jim the extremely unpleasant +moment of that presentation, thus brought back to him—the moment when +Amelia had looked so middle-aged, and Cecilia so flashy; recalls to him +also the conviction that has been growing upon him since yesterday, of +the more than wisdom, the absolute imperative duty on his part, of +avoiding a repetition of that comparison which had forced itself upon +his notice in the church of San Miniato.</p> + +<p>"You had better come," persists Byng still, like a magnanimous child, +holding out half his cake to his friend; whether, like the same child, +with a semi-hope that it may be refused, or whether, on the other hand, +it may have crossed his mind that, where there are two visitees, the +chances of a <i>tête-à-tête</i> are improved by there being also two +visitors.</p> + +<p>"My dear boy," returns Jim, this time with a testiness handsomely +streaked with irony, "you are really too obliging; but, even if I wished +it—which I do not—or even if <i>they</i> wished it—which they do <i>not</i>—it +is in this case quite impossible, as I am engaged to go shopping with +Amelia."</p> + +<p>Probably the blow is not a knockdown one to Byng; at all events, he +bears the rebuff with his habitual healthy good temper, and goes off to +put on a smarter tie. Burgoyne, thinking no such improvement in his +toilette necessary, strolls away to the Anglo-Américain. It is true that +he has covenanted to escort Amelia to the shop for Cantagalli ware, +though there is no particular reason why, had he so wished it, the +purchase of the dinner-service that is to grace their Bayswater symposia +might not have been deferred for twenty-four hours; and indeed, as +things turn out, it has to be so deferred.</p> + +<p>As he opens the door of the Wilson sitting-room his future father-in-law +brushes past him, with evident signs of discomposure all over his +clerical figure and spectacled face; and, on entering, he finds equal, +if not superior, marks of upset equanimity on the countenances of the +three women that are the room's occupants. Over the wood fire—Sybilla +alternately roasts and freezes her family, and this is one of her +roasting days—Cecilia is stooping, in evident search for some object +that has been committed, or tried to be committed, to the flames. The +other two are looking on with an air of vexed interest. Sybilla is the +first to address him.</p> + +<p>"You have appeared at a not very happy moment," she says, with a sigh; +"we have been having a family breeze; it has sent my temperature up +nicely! It is 100, 100, Point 2."</p> + +<p>The mention of Sybilla's temperature is always enough to put Jim in a +rage. It is therefore in no very feeling tone that he returns:</p> + +<p>"If it were 1,000, Point 99, I should not be surprised, in this +atmosphere! Good Heavens, Cis, are not you hot enough already?"</p> + +<p>The young lady thus apostrophised rises, with some precipitation, and +with a very heated complexion, from her knees, holding in her hand, +however, the object of her quest—a rather charred small parcel, done up +in white paper, and with a fragment of white ribbon still adhering here +and there to it.</p> + +<p>"Father behaves so childishly," she says, with irritated undutifulness.</p> + +<p>"You must own that it was enough to provoke him," strikes in Amelia's +mild voice.</p> + +<p>"What was enough to provoke him? How has he shown his childishness? For +Heaven's sake, some of you explain!" cries Jim impatiently, looking from +one to the other.</p> + +<p>But with this request none of the three appears in any hurry to comply. +There is a distinct pause before Cecilia, seeing neither of her seniors +shows any signs of relieving her of the burden of explanation, takes +that burden upon herself.</p> + +<p>"The fact is," she says, setting her little rescued packet on the table +beside her, and beginning to fan herself, "that Mr. Dashwood, the man to +whom I was engaged, has chosen to marry. I am sure"—with a shrug—"no +one has the least desire to deny his perfect right to do so; and this +morning there arrived by post a bit of his wedding-cake! I suppose he +meant it civilly; but father chose to take it as an insult to himself, +and though it was addressed to me, he threw it into the fire. I am very +fond of wedding-cake; so, as soon as father's back was turned, I fished +it out again!"</p> + +<p>Jim laughs, with more vigour perhaps than heartfelt amusement.</p> + +<p>"Bravo, Cis! You are a real philosopher! We might all learn a lesson +from you."</p> + +<p>"What have you done with your nice friend?" asked Sybilla languidly. +"Amelia, dear, this <i>couvre-pied</i> is slipping off me again. What a +sympathetic voice he has! I am sure he has been a great deal with sick +people."</p> + +<p>"I left him putting on his best tie to go out calling. No, calm +yourself, Cecilia, not on you; it is not your turn to-day."</p> + +<p>"Whose turn is it then?" asks the girl, with an interest not at all +blunted by the mortifying incident of the cake, which, indeed, she has +begun to nibble with apparent relish.</p> + +<p>Jim hesitates a second—a second during which it strikes him with a +shock that he already finds a difficulty in pronouncing Elizabeth Le +Marchant's name. He manages to evade the necessity even now by a +circumlocution.</p> + +<p>"I believe it is the Piazza d'Azeglio upon which that luminary is to +shine."</p> + +<p>"Is he going to see that lovely creature to whom you introduced me +yesterday?" cries Amelia, with good-natured enthusiasm. "I heard her +telling him that she lived in the Piazza d'Azeglio. Oh, Jim, how pretty +she is! One ought to pay for being allowed to look at her."</p> + +<p>Many women, whose plainness is incontestable, are able to be just to +their better favoured sisters; but Amelia is more than just—she is +lavishly generous.</p> + +<p>Burgoyne rewards her with an affectionate look—a look such as would +make her swear that, beside Miss Le Marchant, as beside Dumain's fair +love,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Juno but an Ethiop were!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>"She looks as if she had had a history; that always improves a woman's +appearance," says Cecilia pensively, holding a fragment of the fateful +cake suspended in air, and regarding it with a melancholy eye. "Has +she?"</p> + +<p>"I never asked her."</p> + +<p>"Why did not you go too?" inquires Amelia, judiciously striking in, as +is her habit, as often as she perceives that her younger sister is +beginning to get too obviously upon her own <i>fiancé's</i> nerves; a +catastrophe which something in the tone of his last remark tells +her—though she does not quite understand why it should—is imminent. +"They are old friends of yours, are not they? They may be hurt if they +find that a perfect stranger like Mr. Byng is in a greater hurry to +visit them than you are."</p> + +<p>Before Burgoyne's mental vision rises a picture of Elizabeth's heavenly +eye wandering indifferently over the dear old friend's shoulder to find +its home in that of the perfect stranger. But he says kindly, and even +playfully:</p> + +<p>"Why did not I go too? Because I was under the impression that I was +engaged to go with another lovely being to choose crockery, was I not? +Am I not?"</p> + +<p>Amelia's answer is conveyed by a series of nods and winks executed +behind her sisters' backs, which he presently understands to imply that +she desires a private interview. It is not immediately that he grasps +what she is driving at, since dumb-show is often puzzling to the person +at whom it is aimed, though clear as day to the dumb-shower. As soon, +however, as he masters what her wish is, he hastens to comply with it; +and five minutes later finds them <i>tête-à-tête</i> in the hideous little +dining-room which had been the scene of their reunion, and of many +after-meetings.</p> + +<p>"I could not say so, of course, before <i>her</i>," remarks Miss Wilson, as +soon as they are out of earshot, "or she might have insisted upon my +going. She is very unselfish sometimes; but the fact is, I do not think +I ought to leave Sybilla again to-day. You see, she was alone the whole +of yesterday afternoon; and when we came back we found her in a very low +way. She had been reading her book of prescriptions—you know the book; +all the prescriptions which she has had for the last ten years bound up +together—and we rather dread her bringing it out, as she always fancies +that she is going to have the disease prescribed for."</p> + +<p>"Humph!"</p> + +<p>"And, after all, happiness ought not to make one selfish, ought it?" +says Amelia, with a gentle sigh of abnegation, as she ruffles her +pale-haired head against his coat-sleeve. "I have so much of you +now—oh, so much!—not to speak of——"</p> + +<p>"Cecilia, of course, is incapacitated by grief?" interrupts Jim +brusquely. "She will be going up and down upon the mountains like +another unfortunate fair one. But your father? He will be at home, will +he not?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, he will be at home," replies Amelia, slowly and doubtfully, as if +not finding a very satisfactory solution in this suggested arrangement; +"but, as you know, it never answers to leave father and Sybilla alone +together for long. You see, he does not believe that there is anything +the matter with her; he thinks that she is as well as you or I" (a gush +of warm feeling towards his father-in-law rushes over Jim's heart); "and +though he tries to prevent himself from showing it to her, yet I am +afraid, poor dear, that he is not very successful."</p> + +<p>Jim laughs.</p> + +<p>"And to-day," continues Amelia, "he is naturally a good deal upset about +Cecilia and that wedding-cake; it <i>was</i> very impertinent to send it—was +not it?—though she does not seem to see it. I hope"—with a wistful +smile, and a repetition of the fond friction of her head against his +sleeve—"that when <i>you</i> throw <i>me</i> over——"</p> + +<p>This is a hypothesis, suggested with perhaps unwise frequency by poor +Miss Wilson, which never fails to exasperate Jim.</p> + +<p>"If we are going to talk nonsense," he breaks in brusquely, and with no +attempt to return or reward her caressing gesture, "I may as well go."</p> + +<p>"Go to the Piazza d'Azeglio," says she coaxingly, her spirits raised by +the harshness of tone of his interruption of her speech, and half +persuading herself that it owes its birth to the supposition being too +painful to be faced by him.</p> + +<p>He looks at her strangely for a moment, then—"Why do you wish me to go +to the Piazza d'Azeglio?" he asks, in a tone that is no longer overtly +cross, only constrained and odd. "Why are you driving me there?"</p> + +<p>"Because I think you would like it," she answers; "because"—taking his +hand and passing her lips, which he feels to be trembling a little, very +gently over the back of it—"because all through your life I want you to +have exactly what you like, always."</p> + +<p>He draws his hand away; not unkindly, but as if shocked at the humility +of her action.</p> + +<p>"That is so likely," he says mournfully.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X.</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>There is no particular mirth in Burgoyne's mind as he mounts the stone +stairs of the house which announces itself as 12 bis, in the commonplace +new square of the Piazza d'Azeglio. But yet it is evident that, if he +wishes to be in tune with the mood of the family to whom he is going to +pay his respects, he must be not only mirthful, but musical. As the door +of the <i>entresol</i>, to which he is directed by the porter, opens in +answer to his ring, bursts of laughter, among which he can plainly +detect the voice of Byng, assail his ear, mingled with music, or rather +noise of a sort, but what sort his ear, without fuller evidence than is +yet before it, is unable to decide. The person who has admitted him is +an elderly Englishwoman, whose features at once strike him as +familiar—so familiar that it needs scarcely one reaching back of +memory's hand to capture the fact of her having filled the office of +nurse at the Moat, at the period when the nursery there had been the +scene of those frantic romps in which he himself had taken a prominent +part, and in which Elizabeth had been to him by turns so able a second, +or so vigorous an adversary. He would like to claim acquaintance with +her, and, perhaps, if she had made any difficulty as to admitting him, +might have screwed up his courage to do so; but as she lets him in +without delay or hesitation, he follows her in silence along the passage +of a by no means imposing little <i>entresol</i>—they are not so well off as +they used to be, is his passing thought—is ushered into a small +sitting-room, and, entering behind his own name, which has been +completely drowned by the din issuing from within, has time, before the +consciousness of his own appearance has disturbed it, to take in the +details of a group which his entry naturally breaks up. Set slantwise +across one angle of the room is an open cottage-piano, and beside it +stands Elizabeth, her elbow resting on the top, and all her pensive face +convulsed with helpless laughter. Upon the music-stool is seated a large +collie dog, supported from behind in an upright position by Byng. Before +him is a score of music, from which he is obviously supposed to be +playing, as indeed he is doing in a sense—that is to say, he is +bringing down first one large paw and then another heavily on the keys, +accompanying each crash with a short howl to express the agony inflicted +upon his nerves by his own performance. The scene is so entirely +different a one from what he had expected: the immoderately laughing +Elizabeth has so much more kinship with the sweet hoyden of the Moat +than with the pale woman with a history of his two last meetings, that +for a second or two Burgoyne stands in the doorway as if stunned. It is +not till Mrs. Le Marchant, coming out of an inner room, advances to +greet him, that he recovers himself.</p> + +<p>"How do you do?" she says, smiling, and with less constraint than he has +of late learnt to expect. "Are you fond of music?" (putting, as she +speaks, her hands up to her ears). "I hope so! Did you ever hear such a +shocking noise?"</p> + +<p>"I do not know which I admire most, the vocal or the instrumental part +of the performance," replies he, laughing; but even as he speaks both +cease.</p> + +<p>Elizabeth lifts her elbow from the piano, and Byng removes his hands +from under the dog's arms, who at once, joyful and released, jumps down, +upsetting his music-stool with the impetus of his descent, and yet +immediately, with all a dog's real good-heartedness, begins to swing a +handsome tail, to show that he bears no real malice for the odious +practical joke that has been played upon him. The clamorous fall of dog +and music-stool reveals an object which had been hidden behind both, in +the shape of a little boy, in whose behalf, as it darts across Jim's +mind, the eccentric concert, for which he has come in, must have been +got up.</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>do</i> go on!" cries the child shrilly. "Oh, <i>do</i> make him do it +again! Oh, why do you stop?"</p> + +<p>And indeed through the whole of the ensuing conversation this cry recurs +at short intervals with the iteration of a guinea-hen. But none of the +three performers seems disposed to comply with this request. Two of them +sit down decorously on chairs, and the third throws himself upon the +floor panting, showing a fine red tongue, and dragging himself +luxuriously along on his stomach to show his relief at his <i>corvée</i> +being ended. The child has followed Elizabeth, and now stands beside +her, tiresomely pulling at her white hands.</p> + +<p>"Bertie has come to spend the day with us," she says, looking +explanatorily up at Jim, but speaking with a formality very different, +as he feels, from the exuberant ease and mirth that had marked her +intercourse with Byng.</p> + +<p>Jim had already had a flash of speculation about the child, as to +whether he might be a late-come little brother, arrived on the scene at +a period subsequent to his own connection with the family; since plainly +the span of his small life did not stretch to a decade.</p> + +<p>"Bertie is a new friend," he says kindly. "I do not know Bertie."</p> + +<p>"His mother, Mrs. Roche, is a cousin of ours; she has a villa on +Bellosguardo. Perhaps you know her?"</p> + +<p>"I am going to a party at her house on Wednesday," cries Jim, in a tone +of eager pleasure at the discovery of this fresh link, and of the vista +of probable meetings which it opens up. "I shall meet you there?"</p> + +<p>Elizabeth turns her head slightly aside and shakes it as slightly.</p> + +<p>"No?"</p> + +<p>"We are not going out."</p> + +<p>The formula implies mourning, and yet the clothes both of Elizabeth and +her mother are unmistakably coloured ones, and give no indication of an +even moderately recent loss. But it is so clear that Miss Le Marchant +means to add no explanation that he has to change the subject.</p> + +<p>"Though Bertie is not an old friend," he says, smiling, "yet I have come +across one here to-day—she opened the door to me; I should have liked +to shake hands with her, only she looked so haughty—she never used to +look haughty at the Moat."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean nurse?" she asks.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I knew her in an instant; she is not in the least changed, less +even"—hesitating a little, as if doubtful whether the stiffness of +their new relations warranted a personality—"less even than you."</p> + +<p>She snatches a hasty look at him, a look upon which he sees, to his +surprise, imprinted a character of almost fear.</p> + +<p>"You must be laughing at me," she says, in a voice in which he detects +an undoubted tremor; "I am very much changed."</p> + +<p>There is such obvious apprehension in her whole manner, that his one +thought—after a first flash of astonishment—is to reassure her.</p> + +<p>"Of course I was only speaking of externals," he says quickly; "ten +years could hardly be expected to leave any of us quite where we were as +to our inner selves;" then, seeing her still look flurried, and becoming +himself nervous, he adds, rather stupidly, the hackneyed Swinburnian +couplet—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'Time turns the old days to derision,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Our loves into corpses or wives!'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>though I never could see that that was quite a necessary alternative!"</p> + +<p>Ere the words are out of his mouth she has risen with precipitation, and +begun hurriedly to re-arrange the branches of lilac in a scaldino on the +table near her. She is apparently so awkward about it that one odorous +white bough falls out on the floor. Before Jim can stoop to pick it up, +Byng has rushed to the rescue. In eagerly thanking him, in receiving it +back from him, and accepting his services in replacing it among its +perfumed brothers, the girl, perhaps involuntarily, turns her back upon +her former interlocutor, who sits for a moment staring rather blankly at +her, and wondering what sting there could have lurked in his apparently +harmless words to drive her away so abruptly. Whatever may have driven +her away, there is certainly no doubt as to her being gone. Nor as Jim +sees her moving about the room, followed by Byng, and showing him her +treasures—the little wild red and yellow tulips she plucked in the +field this morning; the chicken-skin box she bought at Ciampolini's +yesterday, and mixing all that she shows with her delicate light +laughter—can he buoy himself up with any reasonable hope of her ever, +with her own good will, returning. He must be looking more blank than he +is conscious of, for Mrs. Le Marchant's voice sounds quite apologetic in +his ears, when, having been, like himself, deserted by her companion, +she takes a seat near him.</p> + +<p>"Elizabeth is so proud of her bargains," she says, glancing with a +lenient smile towards her daughter; "she must show them to everybody."</p> + +<p>"She never offered to show them to me," replies Jim, rather morosely; +then, becoming aware of the almost puerile jealousy evidenced by his +last remark, he adds:</p> + +<p>"I am afraid I said something that annoyed Miss Le Marchant; I cannot +think what it could have been. I told her how wonderfully little changed +I thought her in the last ten years; but it could not have been that, +could it?"</p> + +<p>The mother's eye is still following her child, and, if it were not an +absurd assumption, Burgoyne could have fancied that there was a sudden +moisture in it.</p> + +<p>"She is very sensitive," Mrs. Le Marchant answers slowly; "perhaps it +would be safer not to say anything about herself to her."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps it would be safer," rejoins Jim, with some ill-humour, "if you +were to draw up a list of subjects for me to avoid; I have no wish to +play the part of bull in a china shop; and yet I seem to be always doing +it; imprimis" (striking the forefinger of his left hand with the right), +"imprimis the Moat."</p> + +<p>He pauses, as if expecting a disclaimer, but none such comes—"The past +generally" (moving on to the second finger and again halting; but with +no more result than before). "Yourselves" (reaching the third finger). +Still that silence, which, if it mean anything, must mean assent. He +looks impatiently in her face, to seek the response which her lips +refuse him.</p> + +<p>"On your own showing," she says gently, though in a rather troubled +voice, "you have the whole field of the present and the future left you; +are not they wide enough for you?"</p> + +<p>His brows draw together into a painful frown.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps I have as little cause to be fond of them as you have of the +past."</p> + +<p>It is a random shot, a bow drawn at a venture; but it could not have hit +more true apparently had it been levelled with the nicest aim.</p> + +<p>As her daughter had done before her, Mrs. Le Marchant rises hastily, and +leaves him—leaves him to reflect ironically upon how wisely Amelia had +acted in insisting upon his visiting these "dear old friends," upon whom +the effect of his conversation is so obviously exhilarating.</p> + +<p>"I wish I had not come; I wish it was time to go home!"</p> + +<p>The small fractious voice that wails the two preceding sentences seems +to be Jim's own mouthpiece. It is, in point of fact, the voice of +Bertie, who, tired of uttering his unregarded request for the repetition +of the concert which had filled him with such delight, has of late been +trying the effect of his unassisted powers to bring about the desired +consummation, by putting his arms as far as he can round the dog's body, +and endeavouring to lug him towards the music-stool. The collie has been +enduring this treatment for five minutes—enduring it with an expression +of magnanimous patience, which seems to say, that, though it is +undoubtedly an unpleasant experience, yet, as it is inflicted upon him +by one of his own family, he must of course put up with it, when +Elizabeth goes to the rescue. Elizabeth goes alone, since Byng is held +in converse by her mother at the other side of the room. Verbal +persuasions having entirely failed, she tries to loosen the child's +arms; but his grasp, though puny, is obstinate, and the only perceptible +result of her endeavours is the utterance by her young friend of the two +polite aspirations above recorded.</p> + +<p>"He does not want to sing any more to-day," Jim hears her saying in her +gentle voice; "you really are hurting him; he is too polite to say so; +but you are squeezing him so tight that you really <i>are</i> hurting him. +Why now" (with a little accent of pain), "you are hurting <i>me</i>."</p> + +<p>Jim has been looking with a lack-lustre eye out of the open window at +the young plane trees exchanging their frowsy buds for infant leaves; at +the one Judas tree pranking in its purple blossoms in the Piazza; but at +that low complaint he makes one step across the room, and, whipping off +Master Bertie alike from long-enduring dog and plaintive woman, stoops +over the latter as she sits upon the floor, passing one hand over the +other, upon which the child's angry fingers, transferred from his first +victim, have left rosy prints of pain.</p> + +<p>"I wish I had not come; I wish it was time to go home!" whimpers the +little boy.</p> + +<p>"Since he is so anxious to go home, I will take him, if you like," says +Jim in a stiff voice; "I must be going myself."</p> + +<p>She looks up at him from her lowly posture, a charming, half-apologetic, +wholly peace-making smile fleeting across her small face, while she +still chafes her hand—that little pinched hand which makes him feel so +ridiculously tender.</p> + +<p>"Are you, too, sorry that you came?" she asks.</p> + +<p>The question takes him by surprise. He is not prepared for so friendly +and almost intimate a sequel to her short, shy answers, and her abrupt +quitting of him. He hesitates how to answer it; and as he hesitates, she +rises and stands beside him. It is not easy for a grown person to rise +gracefully from a seat on the floor. Jim catches himself thinking with +what a roll and a flounder Cecilia would have executed the same +manœuvre; but Elizabeth, supple and light, rises as smoothly as an +exhalation from a summer meadow.</p> + +<p>"If I was rude to you just now," she says, rather tremulously; "if I am +ever rude to you in the future, I hope you will understand—I hope you +will put it down to the fact that I—I—am very ignorant of—that I know +very little of the world."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>The two men are gone; so is the child; so is the dog; and Elizabeth is +shutting up the piano and removing the score.</p> + +<p>"What a noise we made!" she says, smiling at the recollection.</p> + +<p>"If you make such a shocking noise again, the signora and the other +lodgers will infallibly interfere."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Le Marchant has followed her daughter, and now throws one arm about +her slight neck, with a gesture of passionate affection.</p> + +<p>"If you knew," she says, in a voice of deep and happy agitation, "what +it was to me to hear you laugh as you did to-day!"</p> + +<p>"I have a good many arrears in that way to make up, have not I, mammy? +And so have you too," answers the younger woman, laying her sleek head +down caressingly on her mother's shoulder; then, in a changed and +restless voice: "Oh, if we could stop that man talking about the Moat! +Why does he go on hammering about it?"</p> + +<p>"Why indeed?" replies Mrs. Le Marchant with a shrug. "Men are so +thick-skinned; but it is rather touching, his having remembered us all +these years, is not it? For my part, I had almost entirely forgotten his +existence—had not you?"</p> + +<p>"Absolutely!" replies Elizabeth, with emphasis; "and if he will only let +me, I am more than willing to forget it over again. Oh, mammy" (turning +her face round, and burying it on her mother's breast), "why can't we +forget everything? begin everything afresh from now—this delightful +<i>now</i>?"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>A reconciliation is seldom effected without some price being paid for +it. Jim's with Elizabeth, if it can be called such, is bought at the +cost of a small sacrifice of principle on his part. No later than this +morning he had laid it down as a Median rule that he should avoid +opportunities of finding himself in Miss Le Marchant's company; and yet, +not only has he spent the major part of the afternoon in her society, +but, as he walks away from her door, he finds that he has engaged +himself to help Byng, on no distant day, in doing the honours of the +Certosa Monastery to her and her mother. On reflection, he cannot quite +explain to himself how the arrangement has come about. The proposal +certainly did not originate with him, and still less with the two ladies +so strangely shy of all society. The three have somehow been swept into +it by Byng, who, either with the noblest altruism, or because he feels +justly confident that he has no cause for jealousy of his friend (Jim's +cynical reflection is that the latter is the much more probable reason), +has insisted on drawing him into the project.</p> + +<p>Jim Burgoyne is not a man whom, as a rule, it is easy either to wile or +cudgel into any course that does not recommend itself to his own +judgment or taste—a fact of which he himself is perfectly aware, and +which makes him remorsefully acknowledge that there must indeed have +been a traitor in the citadel of his own heart before he could have so +weakly yielded at the first push to what his reason sincerely +disapproves. But yet it is not true that remorse is the leading feature +of his thoughts, as he walks silently beside his friend down the Via di +Servi. It ought to be, perhaps; but it is not. The picture that holds +the foreground of his memory is that of Elizabeth sitting on the floor, +and sending him peace-offerings from her pathetic eyes and across her +sensitive lips. It was very sweet of her to think it necessary to make +him amends at all for her trifling incivility, and nothing could be +sweeter than the manner of it. How gladly would he buy some little +rudeness from her every day at such a price! But yet, as he thinks it +over, the manner of it, the ground on which she rested her excuse, is +surely a strange one. That she should attribute her light lapse from +courtesy to want of knowledge of the world comes strangely from the +mouth of a woman of six-and-twenty. If it be true—and there was a naïve +veracity in lip and eye as she spoke—how is it to be accounted for? Has +her mind, has her experience of life, remained absolutely stationary +during the last ten years? Her tell-tale face, over which some pensive +story is so plainly written, forbids the inference. It is no business of +his, of course. Amelia, thank Heaven! has no story; but, oh! if someone +would tell him what that history is! And yet, three days later, he +voluntarily puts away from himself the opportunity of hearing it.</p> + +<p>During those three days he sees no more of her. He does not again seek +her out, and accident does not throw her in his way. He buys his +Cantagalli dinner-service in company with Amelia; chooses the +soup-tureen out of which he is to ladle mutton broth for the inhabitants +of Westbourne Grove; he tastes of the wedding-cake that has cost Cecilia +so dear, and he avoids Byng. On the third day he can no longer avoid +him, since he is to occupy, as on the San Miniato occasion, the fourth +seat in the fiacre which conveys himself and the Misses Wilson to the +garden-party at the villa in Bellosguardo inhabited by Mrs. Roche, the +mother of the amiable Bertie. The Wilsons' acquaintances in Florence are +few, and, as far as Burgoyne has at present had the opportunity of +judging, evil. It is, therefore, with a proportionate elation that +Cecilia dresses for a party at which she will meet the bulk, or at least +the cream, of the English society. It is to Byng's good nature that she +and her sister owe the introduction to a hostess whose acquaintance is +already too large to make her eager for any causeless addition to it; +but whose hand has been forced by Byng, in the mistaken idea that he is +doing a service to his friend Jim.</p> + +<p>They are late in setting off, as Amelia is delayed by the necessity of +soothing Sybilla, who has been reduced to bitter tears by a +<i>tête-à-tête</i> with her father, in which that well-intentioned but +incautious gentleman has been betrayed into suggesting to her that she +may possibly be suffering from biliousness. The administering of +bromide, to calm her nerves under such a shock; the reiterated +assurances that every member of the family except its head realizes the +monstrosity of the suggestion, take up so much time that Amelia herself +has to reduce to a minimum the moments allotted to her own toilette. She +has cried a little with Sybilla, for company partly, and partly out of +weariness of spirit. That and hurry have swollen her eyelids, and +painted her cheeks with a hard, tired red, so that it is an even more +homespun figure and a homelier face than usual, that seat themselves +opposite Burgoyne, when at length they get under weigh.</p> + +<p>He, Burgoyne, has been impatient of the delay, impatient to set off and +to arrive; yet he would be puzzled to say why. He knows, on no less +authority than her own word, that he shall not meet Elizabeth; and yet +the mere feeling that the mistress of the house to which he is going is +of the same blood as she; that he shall see the rude, spoilt child, +whose ill-tempered pinch made her utter that low cry of pain, suffice to +give a tartness to his tone, as he inquires the cause of her lagging, of +the panting, flushed, apologetic Amelia. Byng and Cecilia have been +sitting waiting for some time in the <i>salon</i>, from which Sybilla has +removed her prostrate figure and tear-stained face; but they have been +entertaining each other so well—she in paying him a series of marked +attentions, and he in civilly and pleasantly accepting them—that the +half-hour has not seemed long to either. But the party, in motion at +last, has passed the Roman Gate, and is climbing up and up between the +high walls, each step giving it a greater vantage ground over the Flower +City, before Burgoyne recovers his equanimity.</p> + +<p>The spring comes on apace. In the gardens above their heads laurestinus +bushes, with all their flowers out (as they are never seen in England, +where always the east wind nips half the little round buds before they +can expand into blossom), stand in white and green; rosemary trees, +covered with gray bloom, hang down; and against the azure of the high +heaven purple irides stand up arow. It is one of those days on which one +can with bodily eyes see the Great Mother at her quickening work; can +see her flushing the apple-boughs, unfolding the fig-leaves, and driving +the lusty green blood through the sappy vines. And in the slow creeping +of the fiacre up the twisting white road, each turn lays the divine +Tuscan city before them in some new aspect of arresting loveliness.</p> + +<p>At Florence, one is like Balaam with the Israelites. One is taken to see +her from one point after another, each point seeming fairer than the +last; but the likeness ends there, for no wish to curse the sweet town +could ever arise in even the morosest heart. The hills have put on their +summer look of dreamy warmth and distance. Before they have reached the +hilltop the boon Italian air has kissed most of the creases out of Jim's +temper, and the brick-red from Amelia's cheek-bones. He looks +remorsefully from the triumphant beauty around, into the poor, fond face +opposite to him—looks at her with a sort of compassion for being so +unlovely, mixed with a compunctious admiration and tenderness for her +gentle qualities. He may touch her hand without fear of observation, so +wholly is Byng enveloped in the mantle of Cecilia's voluble tenderness.</p> + +<p>"Have you forgiven me?" he asks, smiling; "I will make any apologies, +eat any dirt, say anything, short of allowing that Sybilla is not +bilious."</p> + +<p>They have reached the villa, and turned out of the dusty highway into a +great cool courtyard, that has a Moorish look, with its high arches, +over which the Banksia roses tumble in cascades of yellow and white. It +seems wrong that the voices which come from the tea-tables under the +Loggia should be chattering English or Yankee, instead of cooing that +"sweet bastard Latin" that better suits place and day.</p> + +<p>The hostess shakes hands absently with Burgoyne, offers his fair charges +iced coffee, and then, having discharged her conscience towards them, +draws Byng away for an intimate chat. From her hands he passes into +those of several other willing matrons and maids, and it seems likely +that the party who brought him will see him no more. Amelia, unused to, +and unexpectant of attention, is perfectly content to sit silent, +sipping her cold coffee; but Cecilia is champing her bit in a way which +frightens her future brother-in-law so much that he cowardly takes the +opportunity of her looking in another direction to lure his docile +<i>fiancée</i> on to the broad terrace, whence all the young green glory of +the Arno's plain, and the empurpled slopes and dreamful breast of +Morello, are to be seen by the looker's beauty-drunk eye. Upon this +terrace many people are walking and sitting in twos and threes, and in +one of the little groups Amelia presently discovers a female +acquaintance, who at once fastens upon her, and happening to be +afflicted with a relative visited by a disorder of something the same +nature as Sybilla's, subjects her to a searching and exhaustive +catechism as to the nature of her sister's symptoms. Sybilla's symptoms, +whether at first or second hand, have invariably the property of driving +Jim into desert places; and, in the present instance, seeing no +likelihood of an end to the relation of them, he turns impatiently away, +and, without much thought of where he is going, follows a steep downward +path that ends in a descent of old stone steps, between whose crevices +green plants and little hawkweed blow-balls flourish undisturbed, to a +large square well, framed by a low broad parapet, with flower-beds set +around it, and the whole closed in by rugged stone walls. No one +apparently has had the same impulse as he, for, at first, he has the +cool solitude to himself. He sits down on the parapet of the still well, +and drops in pebbles to see how deep the water is; and anon lifts his +idle look to the empty niches in the crumbling wall—niches where once +wood-god, or water-nymph, or rural Pan stood in stone, now empty and +forsaken. Out of the wall two ilexes grow, and lift themselves against +the sapphire arch, which yet is no sapphire, nor of any name that +belongs to cold stone; a blue by which all other blues are but feeble +colourless ghosts of that divinest tint.</p> + +<p>He is roused from the vague reverie into which the cool silence and the +brooding beauty around have lulled him, by the sound of approaching +voices. He is not to have his well any longer to himself. He looks up +with that scarcely latent hostility in his eye with which one regards +the sudden intruder into a railway carriage, when—counting on keeping +it to one's self for a long night journey—one has diffused limbs and +parcels over its whole area. The owners of the voices, having descended, +as he had done, the age-worn steps, come into sight. They are both men, +and one of them he recognises at once as a Mr. Greenock, a well-known +stock figure in Florentine society, a mature bachelor diner-out, a not +ill-natured retailer of news, collector of <i>bons-mots</i>, and harmless +appendage of pretty women. Of the other, at whom he scarcely glances, +all he grasps is the fact that he is dressed in clerical attire, and +that the first words audible of his speech, as he comes within hearing, +is the name of an English county—Devonshire. The answer comes in a tone +of keen interest:</p> + +<p>"Ah, I thought there must be a screw loose!"</p> + +<p>As the new arrivals become aware of the presence of a third person, they +pause in their talk; but presently, Mr. Greenock having recognised Jim +and greeted him with a friendly nod and a trivial remark upon the +splendour of the day, they resume their interrupted theme, standing +together a few yards distant from him on the walk—resume it in a rather +lower but still perfectly audible key.</p> + +<p>"I thought there must be some reason for their shutting themselves up so +resolutely," continues Mr. Greenock in the gratified tone of one who has +at length solved a long-puzzling riddle. "I thought that there must be a +screw loose, in fact; but are you quite sure of it?"</p> + +<p>The other gives a sigh and a shrug.</p> + +<p>"Unfortunately there can be no doubt on that head; the whole lamentable +occurrence took place under my own eyes; the Moat is in my parish."</p> + +<p>"Devonshire!" "A screw loose!" "The Moat!" Burgoyne is still sitting on +the well-brim; but he no longer sees the lapis vault above, nor the +placid dark water below. A sort of horrible mist is swimming before his +eyes; it is of Elizabeth Le Marchant that they are speaking. Through +that mist he snatches a scared look at the speaker; at him whom but two +minutes ago he had glanced at with such a cursory carelessness. Does he +recognise him? Alas! yes. Though changed by the acquisition of a bald +head and a grizzled beard, he sees him at once to be the man who, at the +time of his own acquaintance with the Le Marchant family, had filled the +office of vicar of their parish; under whom he had sat on several drowsy +summer Sunday mornings, trembling at the boys' perilous antics in the +great curtained pew, and laughing inwardly at Elizabeth's +mirth-struggling efforts to control them.</p> + +<p>"And you say that they never held up their heads again afterwards?" +pursues Mr. Greenock in a tone of good-natured compassion, that is yet +largely tinged with gratified curiosity.</p> + +<p>"They left the neighbourhood at once," returns the clergyman. "Dear me, +how time flies! it must be ten years ago now, and I never saw them again +until I met the unhappy girl and her mother yesterday, driving in the +Via Tornabuoni; but"—lowering his voice a little more—"you will +understand that this is strictly <i>entre nous</i>; that it must not go any +further."</p> + +<p>"What do you think I am made of?" cries Mr. Greenock in a burst of +generous indignation; "but"—stepping a pace or two nearer to his +interlocutor—"I am not quite sure that I have got the details of the +story right; would you mind just running it over to me again?"</p> + +<p>Jim has been sitting in such a stunned stillness that it is perhaps no +wonder that they have forgotten his neighbourhood. At all events, the +clergyman is evidently about to comply with his companion's request and +recapitulate the tale. If Jim preserves his motionless attitude but five +minutes longer, he will be put into possession of that story whose +existence he has already heavily conjectured, and the imagining of which +has made him often, within the last week or two, turn with nausea from +his food, and toss restlessly upon his bed. Without any trouble on his +part, without any possible blame attaching to him, he will learn the +poor soul's secret. Never! If the devil wish to tempt him with a +prospect of success, it must be with a less unhandsome bait. Almost +before the two startled scandalmongers have recalled the fact of his +existence by the abrupt noise of his departure, he is half-way back to +the terrace, that mist still before his eyes, and a singing in his ears.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2> + +<blockquote><p>"A merry going out bringeth often a mournful return home; and a +joyful evening makes many times a sad morning."</p></blockquote> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>The return drive, as it is quicker, being all downhill, so is it a more +silent one than that to the villa had been. Byng, indeed, is as gaily +willing to be fondled by Cecilia as he was on his way up; but there is a +mixture of maidenly reserve and sub-tender reproach in her manner which +makes their relations somewhat strained. The afternoon's pleasuring has +had a jading effect upon Amelia's spirits, as, after having been sucked +dry on the subject of Sybilla's maladies, and afterwards at once shaken +off, by her female acquaintance, she has not been fortunate enough to +meet with anyone else to exchange talk with, and has sat in disconsolate +yet patient loneliness on a stone bench, afraid to stir from the spot +where he had left her, lest she might miss her lover, of whom, however, +she has unaccountably seen nothing, until when the Angelus is ringing, +and the shadows spreading, he has come to give her curt notice, with +half-averted face, that the fiacre is at the door. In point of fact, he +has been too conscious of the disorder of his features to dare to expose +them sooner than he can help to her fond scrutiny. He would give +anything to be able to sit beside, instead of opposite to her during +their drive home, as a profile is a much less tell-tale and more +governable thing than a full face; and he is painfully conscious that as +often as she imagines she can do it without being detected by him, she +is stealing looks of inquiring anxiety at him. He tries to put her off +the scent by spasmodic comments upon the entertainment that they have +just quitted; and she does her best to keep up the ball of conversation, +since she sees that it is his wish. But in vain. Each forced remark +falls still-born, leading to nothing. It is Cecilia who at last succeeds +in giving a fillip to the languid talk.</p> + +<p>"I did not know that Mrs. Roche was a cousin of your beauty, Miss Le +Marchant," she says suddenly, growing tired of her pensive attitude, and +addressing herself to Jim.</p> + +<p>He starts guiltily. "Did not you?"</p> + +<p>He must look odd; for even Cecilia's large and preoccupied cow eyes rest +upon him with an expression of surprise.</p> + +<p>"I wonder why she was not there to-day."</p> + +<p>It is not exactly a question, yet her great shallow orbs do not seem to +be going to leave his face until he makes some response. He forces +himself to do so.</p> + +<p>"I understood Miss Le Marchant to say that they are not going out just +now."</p> + +<p>"And why are not they, pray?" inquires Cecilia, in an injured voice, as +if the retirement from the world of the two ladies in question were a +personal injury to herself; "they are not in mourning, all their gowns +are coloured ones, and they do not look as if they had bad +health—perhaps, however" (after a moment's thoughtful attempt to find a +solution)—"perhaps, however, they may have something—one never +knows—people have such unexpected diseases nowadays—hysteria, perhaps, +or fits."</p> + +<p>At this ingenious suggestion Jim is conscious of a writhing motion +passing over the stalwart form of Byng beside him. In his own brain, if +there is room for anything but the desire to evade Amelia's eyes, is a +dim sense of relief at a suggestion so grotesquely wide of the mark as +that made by the younger Miss Wilson. In perfect innocence of the effect +produced upon her companions by her bright hypothesis, Cecilia goes on +to remind her sister of the parallel case of a very handsome girl whom +they had once reckoned among their acquaintance, and who was +periodically being found by her family with her head under the fender. +But Amelia rises but faintly to the reminiscence, and the remainder of +the drive is accomplished in a general silence.</p> + +<p>The next day is the one which had been fixed upon for the expedition to +Certosa. It was only with a very large admixture of wormwood in his +prospective pleasure that Jim had ever looked forward to this party, but +now he anticipates it with absolute dread. How can he face Elizabeth and +her mother, with that ominous phrase of the "screw loose" still ringing +in his ears? He feels a traitor towards them, in that he has, however +unwillingly, overheard it. To add to his mental uneasiness is the fact +of his having as yet not broken to Amelia his intentions with regard to +the disposal of his afternoon. Amelia's eyes have for years had the +habit of covertly watching him to read his wishes almost before they +rose; but in their gaze yesterday he had, unless misled by his guilty +conscience, detected a new quality, a quality of alarm and +enlightenment. He will get over the communication of his piece of news +as early in the day as may be; so, having finished breakfast before Byng +has put in his, as usual, tardy appearance, he takes his hasty way to +the Anglo-Américain. He finds the family there in a more placid frame of +mind than that which they had presented on one or two of his recent +visits. Sybilla is expecting her doctor, on which occasions she always +likes to have a more lacy coverlet than usual thrown over her languid +feet; a greater efflorescence of pink ribbons about her thin throat, and +a disposition of pots of lilies about her wan head. Amelia, active and +long-suffering as usual, is moving about in patient execution of her +vain and tiresome whimsies. Cecilia sits tranquilly in the window, +knitting an elaborate pair of men's woollen gloves, not indeed—to do +her justice—for anyone in particular, but with a wise forethought for +the accidents and possibilities of life. Since, on this occasion, his +sweetheart shows no inclination to draw him away into the dining-room +for a <i>tête-à-tête</i>, Jim has to take the bull by the horns, and rush +into his subject in a more public manner than he had intended. But the +one desire to get it over outbalances all minor considerations.</p> + +<p>"Amelia," he begins suddenly, and even to himself his voice sounds +discourteous and abrupt, "shall you want me this afternoon?"</p> + +<p>The moment that the words are out of his mouth it strikes him that the +form into which he has thrown his question is more than necessarily +untender. She stops in the patting of Sybilla's smart pillows, and +perhaps there is something a little abrupt too in her monosyllabic +"Why?"</p> + +<p>"Because," standing before the fireplace, with his back to the three +women, and throwing the words over his shoulder, "because, if you do +not, Byng and I were thinking of going to Certosa."</p> + +<p>There is a pause. He hears that Cecilia's needles have stopped clicking; +her work has dropped into her lap. In another moment she will have +proposed to come too. "With the Le Marchants," he goes on, shooting out +the fateful words like bullets; "a <i>partie carrée</i>."</p> + +<p>Still silence behind him. He cannot go on staring for ever at the +billets of wood of the unlit fire. He has to turn round and face his +companions. The only one of them whose pleasure or displeasure in his +announcement he at all heeds—Amelia—is stooping over Sybilla, +rearranging in a high, picturesque tier behind the invalid's long back, +three cushions, and her face is almost entirely hidden from him by her +attitude.</p> + +<p>"Of course if it is in the least inconvenient, if you have made any +other plans for me—if, in fact, you want me," he continues in a tone +that is at once apologetic and dogged.</p> + +<p>"But I do not," cries she, answering at last, and with a distinct laugh +in her voice, a laugh into whose quality he is not anxious too curiously +to inquire. "You must not be so conceited as to think that I always want +you! In point of fact, you could not have hit upon a day that suited me +better. I am really rather 'throng' to-day, as they say in Yorkshire. I +have quite a hundred things to do, and father wants me to help him to +correct the proofs of his sermon, the sermon he preached at Mr. Moffat's +church on the Holy Innocents' Day. He has been asked to publish it—is +not that flattering? Poor father, I believe he will end by being a +popular preacher—in fact" (laughing again), "the whole family is going +up in the world!"</p> + +<p>There is such a forced mirth in her tone that Jim feels much more +guiltily uncomfortable than if she had treated him to hysterics or +sulks. Nor does his satisfaction with himself increase, when, upon his +rising to depart, she runs out of the room after him, to say to him, +while her homely face twitches against her will, how much she hopes that +he will enjoy himself; how perfectly happy she shall be without him; and +how eagerly she shall look forward to hearing all about it from him +to-morrow. "It will be almost better than going to Certosa herself," she +ends.</p> + +<p>But against the unnatural altitude of this last flight of abnegation +nature revolts, and, becoming conscious of a break in her voice, she +hastily retreats and gets back into the <i>salon</i>, in time to see Cecilia +shaking her elaborate head, and to hear her remarking with slow +emphasis, "Mark my words! There is something odd about those people, and +it is not hysteria!"</p> + +<p>With spirits sensibly worsened by his interview, Burgoyne returns to the +Minerva, and, mounting to Byng's bedroom, finds that young gentleman +stretched upon his bed, gloom in his usually jocund eye, and an open +letter lying on the floor beside him. But Jim is far too preoccupied to +notice anybody's gloom but his own.</p> + +<p>"I came to ask at what hour we are to set off this afternoon?" he says +with a sort of flat moroseness in his tone.</p> + +<p>"<i>We</i>, indeed!" rejoins the other with a groan, and rolling over with a +sort of petulance on the bed, dishevelling the neatly-smoothed pillow by +burrowing his ruffled head in it—"we!"</p> + +<p>There is such a heart-rent woe in the accent with which the last +monosyllable is pronounced that for a moment Burgoyne has no other idea +but that his young friend, too, has become aware of the "screw loose," +has heard, perhaps in detail, that story from before whose ominous +opening he himself had fled. The thought sends his heart into his +throat, so as to render him incapable of asking an explanation of the +other's affliction.</p> + +<p>"We!" repeats Byng for the third time, and very indistinctly, as he is +now lying entirely on his face.</p> + +<p>"Why do you go on saying '<i>we</i>' in that idiotic way?" asks Jim at last, +recovering his voice—recovering it only to employ it in imitating the +younger man's accents, in a manner which displays more exasperation than +natural talent for mimicry. It is not a politely-worded inquiry, but it +has the desired result of acting as a tonic on him at whom it is aimed, +making him not only roll over once again, but actually sit up.</p> + +<p>"Why do I say <i>we</i>?" repeats he, his young eyes looking lamentably out +from under the fall of his tumbled hair—"because it is not <i>we</i>! it is +<i>you</i>! You lucky dog, you will have her all to yourself!"</p> + +<p>Jim heaves an inaudible sigh of relief. Whatever may be the cause of his +companion's enigmatical conduct, it is evidently not what he had feared. +There is, however, no evidence of relief or any other mild quality in +his next remark.</p> + +<p>"If you would talk less like an ass, I should have a better chance of +knowing what you are driving at!"</p> + +<p>The query seems only to renew and deepen the other's tribulation. He +falls back into his former attitude.</p> + +<p>"You will hold the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand!" he groans. "No, +do not go" (with a sudden and startling change of tone, springing off +the bed, as he becomes aware that his friend is making for the door, +unable to bear those rhapsodies, whose full distastefulness to their +hearer the utterer little conjectures). "I'll tell you! I'll explain. +Why are you in such a deuce of a hurry? I cannot go to Certosa because I +have just heard from my mother that she is to arrive to-day. She will be +here in another hour."</p> + +<p>Jim's fingers are already on the door handle, but this piece of news +arrests him.</p> + +<p>"Your mother? I did not know that she was coming abroad."</p> + +<p>"No more did I!"</p> + +<p>"It must have been a very sudden thought!"</p> + +<p>"Very!"</p> + +<p>"What a delightful surprise for you!"</p> + +<p>"Delightful!" There is so ludicrous a discrepancy between the adjective +and the accent with which it is rendered that Jim bursts into a bitter +laugh.</p> + +<p>"She would be flattered if she could see your elation at the prospect of +meeting her!"</p> + +<p>Byng's blood rushes up under his clear smooth skin at his friend's jeer, +but he answers, with some dignity:</p> + +<p>"I do not think you have any right to imply that I am not always glad to +see my mother; I do not deny that, if it had been equally convenient to +her, I had rather she should have come twenty-four hours later."</p> + +<p>Jim feels ashamed of himself, though, being an Anglo-Saxon, he has far +too much false shame to confess it directly, and what he means for an +<i>amende</i>, when it comes, is of an oblique nature.</p> + +<p>"I think far the best plan will be to put off the excursion altogether; +I am sure that I am not particularly keen about it."</p> + +<p>The indignant red has rapidly died out of Byng's face; his placability +being only to be surpassed by his slowness to take offence.</p> + +<p>"Is it possible?" he asks in a tone of stupefaction; then, with a sudden +tardy recollection of the rosy fetters in which his friend is held by +another lady, he adds—"But, of course, you are not—I was forgetting!"</p> + +<p>Jim winces.</p> + +<p>"As it is your party, you had better send up a note at once to the +Piazza d'Azeglio."</p> + +<p>"No, do not let us both throw them over!" cries Byng eagerly. "Heaven +knows it was hard enough to persuade them to accept in the first +instance. If you go we shall at all events keep our communications open; +and you—you will say something to her for me?"</p> + +<p>"What kind of something?" inquires the older man carpingly. "Am I to +tell her only what a fine fellow you are in general, or anything more +circumstantial?"</p> + +<p>"Tell her——" begins Byng in a rapt voice; but apparently the sight of +his companion, who has somewhat ostentatiously pulled out a note-book +and pencil, and assumed the patient air of one about to write to +dictation, dries the stream of his young eloquence; "tell +her—<i>nothing</i>."</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'Nothing speaks our grief like to speak nothing!'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>replies Jim, leaving the room with this quotation on his lips, rather +hastily, for fear lest the other should change his mind.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>It is five o'clock, the hour fixed for the expedition to Certosa, and in +the <i>entresol</i> of 12 bis, Piazza d'Azeglio, Mrs. and Miss Le Marchant +are sitting—hatted, gloved, and <i>en-tout-cas-ed</i>—in expectation of the +arrival of their double escort. Elizabeth's afternoon has, so far, not +been a lazy one, as her little cousin Bertie and his dog have again been +good enough to pay her a lengthy visit, and the former has insisted upon +a repetition of the musical performance of the other day, though with +truncated rites. Without the powerful aid of Byng, Elizabeth has found +it a task considerably beyond her strength to hold a large collie, +poised on his hind-legs, on a music-stool. He has jumped down +repeatedly, and now lies on his back—an attitude in which experience +has taught him he is less attackable than in any other—sawing the air +with his fore-paws, and lifting his lip in a deprecating grin.</p> + +<p>"Where is Mr. Byng?" cries Bertie fretfully, baulked in his efforts to +make his wily victim resume the perpendicular. "I want Mr. Byng! Why +does not Mr. Byng come?"</p> + +<p>"Perhaps if you went to the window," suggests Mrs. Le Marchant, in that +patiently coaxing voice in which we are wont to address a tiresome child +on a visit, instead of the buffet which we should bestow upon it were it +resident—"perhaps if you went to the window and looked out, you would +see him coming round the corner of the Piazza."</p> + +<p>The suggestion is at once accepted, and the child, balancing his fidgety +body on a chair, and craning his neck over the window-ledge, is shouting +shrill pieces of information as to the passers-by to his friends within +the room. Presently he shrieks out in triumph:</p> + +<p>"I see him! He is just coming into sight! He is walking so fast! No!"—a +moment later, with a changed and disgusted note, as a nearer view +corrects the first impression—"it is not he at all! It is only the +other one!"</p> + +<p>"<i>Only the other one!</i>" It is quite impossible that the sound of the +child's voice can reach down to the open portal of No. 12 bis, at which +Jim has now arrived, and it is also certain that neither of the ladies +whom he has come to visit is likely to word her surprise at his having +arrived alone with the frank brutality which is confined to the +utterances of infancy; and yet Jim, as he presents himself, announced by +Annunziata, the hard-featured possessor of a lovely name, is quite as +conscious, as if he had overheard the boy's slighting remark, of being +"only the other one!"</p> + +<p>Before he can begin his apologies, the eager little boy has run up to +him.</p> + +<p>"Where is Mr. Byng? I want Mr. Byng! Why has not he come? Elizabeth +wants Mr. Byng!"</p> + +<p>At this last clause Burgoyne is conscious of a dark, hot flush rising to +his face, and, partly to hide it, partly to avoid seeing what the effect +of his communication may be upon her for whom it is meant, he stoops +over the child, addressing his answer to him:</p> + +<p>"Mr. Byng is very sorry, very sorry indeed, but he cannot come."</p> + +<p>"Cannot come! Why cannot he come?"</p> + +<p>"Because he has gone to meet his mammy," replies Jim, trying to speak in +a light and playful voice; "she is to arrive unexpectedly in Florence +to-day; no good boy would leave his mammy when she had come all the way +from England to see him, would he?"</p> + +<p>But to this fustian and copy-book generality the young gentleman +addressed is too angry to reply.</p> + +<p>"It is a great disappointment to Byng; he bid me tell you what a great +disappointment it is to him!" says Jim, turning to the two ladies, and +looking apologetically from one to the other.</p> + +<p>Elizabeth's head is averted; but on her mother's features he sees, or +fancies he sees, slight evidences of a feeling not unlike relief.</p> + +<p>"It is not of the least consequence," she says cheerfully; "we can go +any other day just as well."</p> + +<p>Burgoyne's heart sinks. In these last sentences he too surely traces +signs of the evasive and would-be-retrograde nature which has all along +characterized Mrs. Le Marchant's relations with him. It has seemed to +him that he has been looking forward to the expedition with sensations +of almost unmixed dread, and yet, now that he seems to be going to be +delivered from it, what he experiences certainly does not come under the +head of elation.</p> + +<p>"You wish to give up the excursion?" he asks, in a tone which he +honestly tries to make as neutral and colourless as he can.</p> + +<p>"Well, I thought so—we thought so, did not we, Elizabeth?"</p> + +<p>The person thus addressed lifts her head, and all over her features he, +eagerly scanning them, sees written a warm acquiescence in her motherly +decision, an acquiescence which, as her eyes meet his—his, in which his +disappointment is written a good deal more plainly than he is +aware—changes slowly and sweetly into indecision.</p> + +<p>"I do not know," she answers, her gentle look clouded a little, and yet +kindly interrogating his; "if Mr. Burgoyne is willing to burden himself +with us; and Bertie must play at being a grown-up gentleman, and help to +take care of us! Bertie, will you play at being a grown-up gentleman?"</p> + +<p>To this proposition Bertie assents warmly, and begins thrasonically to +recount to inattentive ears the high and singular deeds with which he +will celebrate his arrival at maturity. But, as Mrs. Le Marchant puts a +strenuous veto upon his adoption as escort, and as his nurse appears at +the same juncture to fetch him, he and his dog are presently removed; +and the other three set off without him.</p> + +<p>Burgoyne has chartered a fiacre, with a horse as little lame as is ever +to be found in Florence, and in this vehicle they are presently rolling +along. None of them are in very exuberant spirits. Burgoyne is as well +aware as if her sensitive lips had put the fact into words, that for +Elizabeth the pleasure of the outing has evaporated with the absence of +Byng, and that it is only the soft-hearted shrinking of a sweet nature +from inflicting mortification on a fellow-creature that has set her +opposite to him in her white gown. He has never seen her dressed in +white before, and says to himself that it was for Byng's sake that she +has made herself so summer-fine. But even if it be so, it is not Byng +who is profiting by it. It is for him, not Byng, that the large Italian +light is glorifying its thin fabric. Lily-pure, snow-clean she looks, +sitting under her sunshade; and he sits over against her in a stupid +silence. It seems to him as if his only safety were in silence, as if, +did he speak at all, he must put into brutal words the brutal questions +that are dinging in his head, that seem knocking for utterance against +the gate of his set teeth.</p> + +<p>"What is the 'screw loose'? How is she an 'unfortunate girl'? Why have +they 'never held up their heads since'? Since what?" He looks, in a +fierce perplexity, from one to the other of those delicately poised +heads, held aloft with such modest dignity. Surely it is beyond the +bounds of possibility that any heavily hideous shame or leaden disgrace +can ever have weighed upon them! Probably the intensity of his thought +has given an intensity to his look, of which he is unaware; for he +presently finds the soft veiled voice of Elizabeth—Elizabeth who has +hitherto been as mute as himself—addressing him:</p> + +<p>"How very grave you look! I wonder what you are thinking of?"</p> + +<p>The question, striking in so strangely pat, brings him back with a +start. For a second an almost overpowering temptation assails him to +tell her what is the object of his thought, to answer her with that +whole and naked truth which we can so seldom employ in our intercourse +with our fellow-men. But one glance at her innocent face, which has a +vague trouble in it, chases the lunatic impulse, though he dallies with +the temptation to the extent of saying:</p> + +<p>"Would you really like to know? Do you really wish me to tell you?"</p> + +<p>He looks at her penetratingly as he puts the question. Before either his +eyes or his manner she shrinks.</p> + +<p>"Oh, no—no!" she cries with tremulous haste, "of course not! I was only +joking. What business have I with your thoughts? I never wish to know +people's thoughts; if their looks and words are kind, that is all that +concerns me!"</p> + +<p>He relapses into silence; but her words, and still more the agitated +manner in which they are pronounced, make a vague yet definite addition +to the disquiet of his soul.</p> + +<p>By setting off at so judiciously late an hour as five o'clock, they have +avoided the greater part of the flood of tourists which daily sets +towards Certosa, and which they meet, tightly packed in crowded +vehicles, sweeping Florence-wards in a choking cloud of white dust; so +that on reaching the Certosa Monastery, sitting so grandly on its +hilltop, they have the satisfaction of finding that it is temporarily +all their own—all their own but for the few white-frocked figures and +tonsured heads which an economico-democratic Government has left to hint +what in its palmy days was the state of that which is now only a +Government museum.</p> + +<p>A burly monk receives them. He does not look at all a prey to the +pensive sorrow one would expect at the desecration of his holy things +and the dispersion of his fraternity. Probably, in his slow peasant mind +there is room for nothing but self-congratulation at his being one of +the few—only fifteen in all—left to end their days in the old home. He +leads them stolidly through chapels and refectory—the now too roomy +refectory, where the poor remnant of Carthusians dine together only on +Sundays—through meagrely furnished cells, in one of which he +matter-of-factly lets down the front flap of a cupboard to show what +forms his daily dining-table except on the happy Sunday, to which he +must look forward so warmly.</p> + +<p>"Must not he love Sunday!" cries Elizabeth, with sparkling eyes. "Do not +you long to know what they have for dinner on Sundays? Do you think he +would mind telling us?"</p> + +<p>Elizabeth's spirits are going up like quicksilver. It is evident, +despite the delicate melancholy of her face, that she is naturally of an +extremely joyous and enjoying nature, and gifted with a freshness of +sensation which belongs ordinarily rather to the green age at which Jim +first remembers her, than to the mature one which he knows for a +certainty that she has now reached. She is filled with such a lively and +surprised delight at all the little details of arrangement of the +monastic life that he is at last impelled to say to her, something +wonderingly:</p> + +<p>"But you must have seen hundreds of monasteries before?"</p> + +<p>"Not one."</p> + +<p>"But there are, or were, such swarms of them all over Italy."</p> + +<p>"I dare say. I was never in Italy before."</p> + +<p>"Not really?"</p> + +<p>She lifts up her hand, and waves it at him with an air of hasty +deprecation of further question, growing suddenly grave.</p> + +<p>"Don't ask me whether I have been here or there, or whether I have done +this or that. I have never been anywhere or done anything."</p> + +<p>Her desire for a cessation of all inquiries as to her doings is +obviously so earnest that Jim of course complies with it. Once or twice +before he has been struck by her strange want of acquaintance with facts +and phenomena, which would have come as a matter of course within the +range of observation of every woman of her age and station. Against his +will, a horrid recollection flashes upon him of a novel he had once +read, in which the hero exhibits a singular ignorance of any events or +incidents that had occurred within the ten years preceding the opening +of the story—an ignorance which towards the end of the third volume was +accounted for by its transpiring that he has spent the intervening +period in a convict prison! He drives the grotesque and monstrous idea +with scourges out of his mind; but it recurs, and recurs to be displaced +by another hardly less painful, if in some degree more probable. Can it +be possible that the crushing blow which has fallen upon the Le Marchant +family, and upon Elizabeth in particular, whitening the mother's hair, +and giving that tear-washed look to the daughter's sweet eyes—can it be +possible that that heavy stroke was insanity? Can Elizabeth have been +out of her mind? Can she have spent in confinement any of that past, +from all allusion to which she shies away with a sensitiveness more +shrinking than that of</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The tender horns of cockled snails"?<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He is so much absorbed in his tormenting speculations about her that for +the moment he forgets her bodily presence; and it is only her voice, her +soft sane voice, that brings him back to a consciousness of it. They +have been led into a <i>salon</i>, in which, as their guide tells them, the +confraternity used to receive any "personage" that came to visit them. +Alas, no personage ever visits the poor frocked remnant now! It is a +charming lightsome room, that gives one no monastic idea, with pretty +airy fancies of flower-wreaths and arabesques, and dainty dancing +figures painted on wall and ceiling and doors. One of these latter is +half open, and through it comes an exquisite sudden view of the hills, +with their sharp-cut shadows and their sunlit slopes; of shining +Florence at their feet, of the laugh of young verdure, and the wedded +gloom and glory of cypress and poplar filling the foreground. Upon +Elizabeth's small face, turned suddenly towards him, seems reflected +some of the ineffable radiance of the Tuscan light.</p> + +<p>"When next I dream of heaven," she says, in her tender, vibrating voice, +"it will be like this. Do you ever dream of heaven? I often do, and I +always wake crying because it is not true; but"—with a joyful change of +key—"I will not cry any more without better cause. Since I came here I +have found earth beautiful and delightful enough for me!"</p> + +<p>He looks back at her, hardly hearing her words, but chiding himself +fiercely for the disloyal thought which he has entertained, however +unwillingly; the thought that the foul fiend of madness could ever, even +temporarily, have defiled the temple of those eyes whence reason and +feeling, so sweetly wedded, are shining out upon him, unworthy as he is +of their rays.</p> + +<p>"Since you came here?" he repeats in a sort of dreamy interrogation; +"only since you came here?"</p> + +<p>"You must not take me up so sharply!" she cries in a voice of playful +remonstrance, in which there is a lilt of young gaiety. "I warn you that +I will not be taken up so sharply! I did not say, '<i>only</i> since I came +here!' I said, 'Since I came here!'"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV.</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Presently they pass into the still, cloistered garden, in whose unmown +grass-squares gray-blue flowers are blowing, beside whose walks pale +pink peonies are flushing, and round whose well the grave rosemary +bushes are set. Through the whole place is an atmosphere of deep peace, +of silence, leisure, dignity. It is virtually a <i>tête-à-tête</i>, as their +tonsured guide, seeing their evident harmlessness, has left them to +their own devices; and Mrs. Le Marchant has sat down to rest upon a +camp-stool which Elizabeth has been carrying ever since they left the +carriage. It has fidgeted Jim to see her burdened with it; for let a man +be ever so little in love with a woman, his tendency always is to think +her as brittle as spun glass, to believe that any weight, however light, +will bruise her arm—any pebble, however tiny, wound her tender foot. He +has offered to relieve her of it, but she has refused—playfully at +first—telling him she is sure that he will lose it; and afterwards, +when he insists, more gravely, though with gentle gratitude, saying that +it would never do for her to get into the habit of being waited upon, +and that she always carries mammy's things. It is perhaps absurd that a +woman of six-and-twenty should speak of her mother as "mammy," yet the +homely and childish abbreviation seems to him to come "most fair and +featously" from her lips.</p> + +<p>They stay a long time in the sun-kissed garden, considering that there +is after all not very much to see there. But Elizabeth's light steps, +that to-day seem set to some innocent dancing-tune, are loath to leave +it; she must smell the great new peonies, monthly-rose-coloured, faintly +perfumed; she must steal a sprig of rosemary "to put into her coffin +when she dies," at which he catches his breath, shuddering; she must +peep into the well. He insists on her holding his hand for safety as she +leans over to do so; her little fingers grip his tight as she cranes her +neck and bends her lissom body. But what a small handful they are, +compared to those other fingers—those kind, useful, but undoubtedly +solid fingers—which he has held perfunctorily through many a +matter-of-fact hour. By-and-by they stray away together out of the +bounteous air of the hilltop into a semi-underground church, to see the +fifteenth and sixteenth century monuments, which look as fresh as if +their marble had left its home in Carrara but yesterday. They stand +looking down at those three kin who lie side by side before the high +altar, each with head dropped a little sideways on the shoulder, as if +overcome by sudden sleep. They step on into the side chapel, where that +yet nobler mitred figure, fashioned by Donatello's hand, stretches his +prone length above his border of fruit and flowers, among which lies a +carved skull, through whose empty eye-holes—strange and grisly fancy +contrasting with so much beauty—a mocking ribbon runs. Elizabeth is +perfectly silent the whole time, but no flood of talk could make Jim +half so conscious of her presence, palpitating with sympathy and +feeling, could give half the confidence he enjoys that she will +introduce no allusion to either Kensal Green or Woking, as it is but too +probable that the excellent companion of most of his Florentine rambles +would have done.</p> + +<p>Elizabeth has been perfectly silent, yet at last she speaks. It is in +the Chapter House, where, as most of us have done, they have suddenly +come upon another tomb, the tomb of one lying full-length on the +pavement before the altar, with no separating edge of marble or +wrought-iron railing to keep him from the foot of the passer-by. He lies +there, portrayed with such an extraordinary vividness of life about his +prostrate figure and his severe, powerful face, that one feels inclined +to speak low, lest he should lift his white lids and look rebuke at us. +In the lines about his mouth there is a hint of sardonic mirth. Is +he—hearing our foolish chatter—touched with a grave contemptuous +amusement at it? Or is he keeping in his sleep the memory of some four +hundred years old jest? Elizabeth has involuntarily crept close to +Burgoyne's side, with the gesture of a frightened child.</p> + +<p>"Are you sure that he did not stir?" she asks tremulously under her +breath. Her next thought is that her mother must see him too, this +wonderful living dead man, and they presently set forth to return to the +garden to fetch her. But apparently she has grown tired of waiting for +them, for, as they enter the cloistered <i>enceinte</i>, they see her +advancing to meet them.</p> + +<p>"I would not be left alone with him at night for the wealth of the +Indies," Elizabeth is saying, with a half-nervous laugh. "Oh, mammy, you +would never have forgiven me if I had let you go without seeing him! +Why, what is this?"—with a sudden change of key—"what has happened?" +For as they draw near to Mrs. Le Marchant they see that her walk is a +staggering one, and that the usually healthy, clear pallor of her face +is exchanged for a livid whiteness. "What is it, darling?" cries +Elizabeth in an accent of terror. "Oh, Jim, she is going to faint!" In +the agitation of the moment she has unconsciously returned to the +familiar address which she used always to employ towards him in their +boy-and-girl days. "Put your arm round her on that side, I can hold her +up on this. Let us get her back to the camp-stool."</p> + +<p>A camp-stool is neither an easy nor a luxurious seat upon which to +deposit a half-swooning woman, but the joint exertions of her daughter +and of Burgoyne presently succeed in replacing her on her rickety +resting-place; their arms interlace each other behind her back, and +their anxious eyes look interrogation at one another above her head, +half dropped on Elizabeth's slight shoulder.</p> + +<p>"Does she often faint? Is she apt to do it?" asks Jim, in a whisper.</p> + +<p>"Never—never!" replies the girl in a heart-rent voice, raining kisses +on her mother's white face. "Oh, darling, darling, what has happened to +you?"</p> + +<p>Perhaps it is through the vivifying rain of those warm kisses, but a +little colour is certainly beginning to steal back into the elder +woman's cheek, and she draws a long breath.</p> + +<p>"Oh, if she could have a glass of water!" cries Elizabeth, greedily +verifying these slight signs of returning consciousness. "Get her a +glass of water! Oh, please get her a glass of water—quick! quick!"</p> + +<p>Burgoyne complies, though it is not without reluctant misgivings that he +withdraws the efficacious support of his own solid arm, and leaves +Elizabeth's poor little limb to bear the whole weight of her mother's +inert body.</p> + +<p>Their guide has, as before mentioned, disappeared; and Jim has not the +slightest idea in which direction to seek him. It is five good minutes +before he discovers him, standing near the door of the monastery, in +conversation with a visitor who is apparently just in the act of +departure. The stranger is in clerical dress; and, as he turns to nod +farewell to the monk, Jim recognises in his features those of the +Devonshire clergyman, whom he had last seen, and so unwillingly heard, +by the well-brim of the Bellosguardo villa. In a second a light has +flashed into his mind. Mrs. Le Marchant, too, has seen that +stranger—has seen him for the first time for ten years, since it is +evident that the recognition of mother and daughter in the Via +Tornabuoni, to which the Moat's late rector had referred, could not have +been reciprocal. It is to the fact of her having been brought suddenly +and unpreparedly face to face with that mysterious past, which seems to +be always blocking his own path to her friendship, that is to be +attributed the poor woman's collapse. A rush of puzzled compassion flows +over him as he realizes the fact, and his one impatient wish is to +return with all the speed he may to the forlorn couple he has left, to +reassure them as to the removal (even though it may only be a temporary +one) out of their path of the object of their unexplained terror. Will +the mother have imparted to her child the cause of her fainting, or will +she have tried to keep it from her?</p> + +<p>The first glimpse he gets when, having at length procured the desired +glass of water, he comes into sight of them, answers the question for +him. Mrs. Le Marchant is evidently partially recovered. She is sitting +up, no longer supported by her daughter's arm, and that daughter is +lying on her knees, with her head buried in her mother's lap. As he +nears them, he sees the elder woman hurriedly pressing her daughter's +arm to warn her of his approach, and Elizabeth obediently lifts her +face. But such a face! He can scarcely believe it is the same that laid +itself—hardly less bloomily fair than they—against the faint peony +buds half an hour ago; a face out of which the innocent glad shining has +been blown by some gust of brutal wind—scared, blanched, miserable.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, I am better, much better—quite well, in fact," says Mrs. Le +Marchant, pushing away the offered glass, and speaking with a ghastly +shadow of her former even cheerfulness. "Give it to Elizabeth, she needs +it more than I do! You see, I gave her a terrible fright!"</p> + +<p>He silently holds out the water to Elizabeth, and she, without +attempting to take the tumbler into her own trembling hand, drinks. He +looks with impotent pity from the bent blonde head to the prematurely +snow-white one. How can he word his reassurance to them without +appearing to thrust himself with officious insolence into their +confidence? It seems to himself that he solves the problem very +clumsily.</p> + +<p>"I am afraid you must have thought me but slow," he says, feeling that +he is dragging in the piece of information he is anxious to give them +with an awkward head-and-shoulder-ness: "but at first I couldn't find +our monk, and when I did, he was engaged—he was talking to a visitor—a +clergyman."</p> + +<p>He pauses, conscious that at the last word a tremulous shiver has passed +over the kneeling figure.</p> + +<p>"Yes, a clergyman," he goes on with nervous haste, hurrying to put them +out of their pain; "an elderly, gray-haired, English clergyman, who was +just in the act of going away; indeed, before I left, he had gone. I saw +him drive off!"</p> + +<p>Ere he has finished his sentence, he is seized by the apprehension that +there must appear to his listeners something suspicious in the laboured +details into which he is entering; presupposing, as they do, that he is +aware of there being for them an interest attaching to the fact of the +stranger's departure. And indeed, as he speaks, he is conscious that +Mrs. Le Marchant's frightened eyes, which have been taking surreptitious +trips round the peaceful garden, now come home with a no less alarmed +look to his face.</p> + +<p>"Was he—was he—an acquaintance of yours?" she asks, with an attempt at +a laugh—"this clergyman, I think you said he was—that you noticed him +so particularly?"</p> + +<p>"An acquaintance?" repeats Jim doubtfully; "what is an acquaintance? a +man whom one knew very little, and disliked a good deal, ten years ago; +and who passes one by without a gleam of recognition now—is that an +acquaintance?"</p> + +<p>Elizabeth's hat has fallen on the ground, and hitherto she has seemed +unconscious of the evening sunbeams smiting her uncovered head; now she +stoops and picks it up.</p> + +<p>"And you did not make yourself known to him then?" continues Mrs. Le +Marchant, still with that painful effort at lightness of tone. "You let +him drive off without telling him who you were? or asking him where he +was staying? or how long his visit to Florence is to last? or—or +anything?"</p> + +<p>Jim's eyes are fixed on her as she speaks with a compassionate +steadiness, under which hers quail waveringly. Is it possible that she +can imagine that she is deceiving him by this miserable pretence of +indifference?</p> + +<p>"I have no doubt that I shall be able to find out if you wish to know," +he answers gravely; "for I think he must be as much an acquaintance of +yours as of mine, since it was only at the Moat that I ever met him."</p> + +<p>He had thought that Mrs. Le Marchant was already as colourless as a +woman could be; but as he speaks, he sees her face take on a new degree +of pallor. She struggles unsteadily to her feet.</p> + +<p>"It is—it is getting late!" she says indistinctly; "we—ought—to +be—going home!"</p> + +<p>Even as she speaks she makes an uncertain step forward, but it is so +uncertain that he catches her by the arm.</p> + +<p>"You are not fit to move yet," he says with kind imperativeness; "rest +five minutes longer; it is not late, really—the sun is quite high +still."</p> + +<p>Convinced, either by the young man's eloquence, or, as is more likely, +by the shaking of her own limbs, Mrs. Le Marchant sits down again. +Elizabeth has risen to her feet, and now stands beside her mother. She +has said nothing, but he can see her trembling from head to heel. He +hears her voice now addressing him, but in so subdued a key that her +words are almost lost in the low blowing of the faint south wind that is +fondling the blades of the unshorn grass.</p> + +<p>"Did you say that he was gone? Are you sure of it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes, quite sure! I saw him go."</p> + +<p>"Did you—did you happen to hear where he was staying?"</p> + +<p>"No, but"—with the greatest eagerness—"I can easily find out; nothing +can be simpler."</p> + +<p>Elizabeth is standing quite close to him, so close that he can see her +poor little heart leaping under the thin white gown, whose simple finery +had piqued him earlier in the day. She has apparently, in her new +terror, forgotten that there is any cause for concealing from him the +occasion of it. She turns instinctively to him, as a hurt child to the +nearest bystander. It seems to him the most natural thing in the world +that she should. They are both recalled to themselves by her mother's +voice.</p> + +<p>"You must think that we have lost our wits," she says with a sickly +smile; "but even if we have, I do not know what right we have to impose +upon a—a comparative stranger like you, the task of helping us to +gratify our—our idle curiosity."</p> + +<p>"But I am not a comparative stranger!" cries Jim vehemently; by this +time—he does not know how—he is holding a hand of each of the +trembling women in his. "I am not a stranger at all! I am a friend! Why +will not you treat me as one? Why will not you let me help you?"</p> + +<p>He glances with pitying, affectionate eagerness from one to other of the +woebegone faces on either side of him. The tears have come in sudden +flood to the elder woman, and are pouring over her white cheeks, +stopping the passage of her voice; but Elizabeth's fair eyes are +drearily dry, and speech comes clear and hopeless from her.</p> + +<p>"You are very good to us!" she says, giving the hand that holds hers a +little pressure, which he feels to be as cold as it is grateful; "at +least, I see that you want to be very good to us if we would let you; +but as to helping us"—with a slight despairing shrug—"no one can do +that; no one but God, and sometimes"—drawing a long, half-sobbing +breath—"I think that it would pass even His power."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV.</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>There are few things more difficult than when one's mind is full of the +interests, cares, and sorrows of one set of friends, to have to empty it +suddenly of them, and refill it as suddenly with the entirely different, +and perhaps discrepant interests, cares, and sorrows of an altogether +alien set.</p> + +<p>Seldom in the course of their old and tried friendship has Jim Burgoyne +felt less disposed for the company and conversation of his valued ally, +Mrs. Byng, than when he knocks at the door of her sitting-room on the +morning following the excursion to Certosa. He cannot talk to her about +the Le Marchants, seeing that she has never even heard of their +existence; and if out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh, +his talk upon any other topic must be scant and jejune indeed. The only +cheerful side which his prospective visit turns to him is, that if he +were not with Mrs. Byng, he would be with Amelia; and that the +friendlily indifferent eyes of the former will, at all events, be less +likely than the hungrily loving ones of the latter to detect that he has +not slept a wink, and that he has not the remotest idea what he is +talking about. If he were to follow his inclination, he would be +bestowing his company this morning upon neither friend nor sweetheart, +but would be ransacking Florence for the piece of information he had +yesterday promised those two woebegone women to procure for them. Even +into the very midst of his heartfelt sore compassion for them, there +pierces a shamed unwilling flash of elation at the thought of what a +stride to intimacy his being entrusted with this commission implies, of +what an opening to indefinitely numerous future visits it affords. His +determination to conduct the search is at present a good deal more +clearly defined than the method in which that search is to be effected. +He can consult <i>Galignani</i> as to the names and whereabouts of new +arrivals; but they could do that much for themselves. He could examine +the visitors' books of the different hotels; but Florence, though a +little city, is rich in hostelries, and this course would take time. He +could consult Mr. Greenock, the head and fount of all Florentine gossip, +and who, since he had seen him in conversation with the object of his +inquiries, would probably be able to satisfy them; but his acquaintance +with the good-natured newsmonger is not sufficiently intimate for him to +be able to pay him a morning visit with any air of probability of having +been impelled thereto by a desire for his company; and, moreover, he +shrinks with a morbid fear from any action which may lead, however +obliquely, to his being himself apprised of the terrible secret +which—it is no longer mere matter of conjecture—lies couched somewhere +in those two poor creatures' past.</p> + +<p>And meanwhile he knocks at Mrs. Byng's door, and is quickly bidden enter +by a cheerful English voice, the welcoming alacrity of whose tones +shames his own want of pleasure in the meeting. But he is too +unfortunately honest to express a joy he does not experience, and only +says, with a slight accent of reproach as he takes her ready hand, +heartily held out:</p> + +<p>"You should not spring these surprises upon us."</p> + +<p>She laughs a little guiltily.</p> + +<p>"It—it was a sudden thought; you see I—I had never seen Perugia."</p> + +<p>He laughs too. "Poor Perugia! I think it would have blushed unseen for a +good many more years if you had not begun to doubt the efficiency of my +chaperonage. Confess! you have come to look after the precious baby-boy, +have not you?"</p> + +<p>His tone is, as he himself feels, not quite a pleasant one; but the +mother is scarcely more prone to take offence than the son; and she +answers with an amiably hasty disclaimer:</p> + +<p>"It was not that I felt the least want of confidence in you—you must +not think that; but—but I had one of my presentiments! you know that I +am always a little superstitious; and three nights running an owl came +and hooted quite close under my window!"</p> + +<p>"As long as I have known your wood, it has had owls; and as long as I +have known them, they have hooted."</p> + +<p>"In the wood, yes, of course, and I like to hear them; but this one was +close under my window."</p> + +<p>Jim's only answer is to lift his hands and shoulders in protest against +his friend's weak-mindedness.</p> + +<p>"I had quite made up my mind that something had happened," continues +she, not much abashed by his scorn; "and it was the greatest relief when +I first caught sight of him at the station yesterday, looking just as +usual, a little thinner perhaps—does not he strike you as a little +thin? Has he been weighed lately? He gives me the idea of having lost a +pound or two since I last saw him. Is there a weighing-machine in the +hotel?"</p> + +<p>"It will be very easy to ascertain."</p> + +<p>"And how is Amelia?"—her cheerful eyes resting in friendly and +half-inquisitive interest on his sombre face.</p> + +<p>"Amelia is very well, thank you."</p> + +<p>"Amelia Wilson still?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"For how long?"—laughing—"another ten years, I suppose?"</p> + +<p>"For three months, I believe; we are to be married as soon as they +return to England."</p> + +<p>"You do not say so?"—with an accent of lively and delighted +incredulity—"hurrah! poor Amelia! '<i>Tout vient à point à qui sait +attendre</i>;' and she has <i>su attendre</i> with a vengeance, has not she?"</p> + +<p>"She is not going to <i>attendre</i> any more," replies Jim dryly.</p> + +<p>"Then I shall have to give you a present, I suppose!" cries Mrs. Byng, +still with that delighted accent. "Something useful, I have no doubt. I +feel sure that Amelia would like something useful; why should not we +choose it to-day? Florence is an ideal place for buying presents; do you +think that Amelia would spare you to me for a whole morning?"</p> + +<p>Jim hesitates. It is not that he has any doubt as to Amelia's cheerful +renunciation of any portion of his time that he may see fit to abstract +from her; but the occupation suggested—that of squiring Mrs. Byng—is +not that to which he had purposed devoting his forenoon. She sees his +unreadiness to answer, and attributes it to a wrong cause.</p> + +<p>"Amelia will not?" cries she in a tone of surprise and disappointment. +"Well, I could not have believed it of her! Not even if you told her +that it is on purpose to buy her a present?"</p> + +<p>Jim breaks into an unavoidable smile. "How frightfully quickly your mind +moves! It leaps like a kangaroo! I never said that she would not resign +the precious boon of my society; on the contrary, I am sure that nothing +would give her greater pleasure, but—but—what will Willy say to my +monopolizing you?"</p> + +<p>At the excessive disingenuousness of this speech his conscience gives +him a severe prick, recalling to his mind the attitude of prostrate +affliction—stretched face downwards on his bed—in which his young +friend had received the news of his parent's prospective approach. A +light cloud passes over that parent's sunny face.</p> + +<p>"Willy has an engagement this morning," she answers more slowly, and +with less radiance than has hitherto marked her utterances; "nothing +could be sweeter and dearer than he was, and he is going to take me +somewhere this afternoon—to Fiesole or Petraia, or somewhere else +delightful; but this morning he has an engagement. He did not tell me +what it was, and I did not like to tease him with questions. You"—with +a rather wistful glance of interrogation at her companion—"do not +happen to know what it is?"</p> + +<p>Jim shakes his head, while a rather deeper shade than habitually lies +upon it settles on his careworn forehead. It is perfectly true that he +knows nothing of young Byng's engagement, but yet he has a shrewd +suspicion to what quarter of the town that engagement will lead him.</p> + +<p>"So that I rather counted upon you," continues Mrs. Byng, turning with a +somewhat crestfallen air to the window.</p> + +<p>"And you did not count in vain," replies Burgoyne, with a sort of forced +gallantry. It has flashed upon him that he will have to consent under +penalty of giving a detailed account of the reasons for his inability, +and that therefore he had better make a virtue of necessity, and do it +with a good grace. After all, the deferring for a couple of hours of his +researches cannot be of any great consequence to the persons in whose +behalf those researches are set on foot. To a suspicious ear there might +be something dubious in the sudden and galvanized alacrity of his +assent; but not a shadow of doubt crosses Mrs. Byng's mind as to her old +and tried ally being as pleased to avail himself of an opportunity for +enjoying her society as he has always showed himself during the twenty +years and more of their acquaintance.</p> + +<p>Protected by this happy misconception, she sets off, all smiles, though +at the outset of the expedition she finds that she has to modify her +project; and that Burgoyne shows himself restive as to <i>bric-à-brac</i> +shops, and declines peremptorily to be any party to buying himself a +wedding present. He puts his objection upon the semi-jocose ground that +he shall be unable to avoid overhearing the price of her intended gift, +and that his modesty could not stand the strain of helping her to haggle +over it. Perhaps, however, deep in his heart is an unconscious feeling +that to receive nuptial offerings gives an almost greater body and +certainty to his on-striding fate than even the buying of +dinner-services and saucepans. So they go to the Accademia delle Belli +Arti instead, it having occurred to Jim that in a picture-gallery there +will be less opportunity for conversation, less opening for interested +inquiries on his companion's part as to Amelia and the minutiæ of his +future life with her, than there would be in the green walks of the +Cascine, or on the slopes of Fiesole.</p> + +<p>To Mrs. Byng, who is of almost as enjoying a nature as her son, and +whose spirits have been raised to a pitch even higher than their usual +one, by the disproof of her presentiments, it is all one where she goes, +so that she is taken somewhere, to see something. They stare up at the +big young David, and stand before Fra Angelico's ineffably happy +Paradiso, which yet brings the tears to the looker's eyes, perhaps out +of sheer envy of the little blissful saints dancing and frolicking so +gaily, or pacing so softly in the assured joy of the heavenly country. +They look at Botticelli's "Spring," fantastic wanton, with her +wildly-flowered gown, and her lapful of roses. The room in which she and +her joyous mates stand, with their odd smiles, is one of the smaller of +the gallery. It is rather a narrow one, and has an open window, giving +upon a little court, where, in a neglected garden-close, wallflowers are +growing, and sending in their familiar perfume. The sweet Francia saints +in the picture hung on the wall directly opposite, and the rapt Madonna, +must surely smell them. If they do not, it must be because a young +couple, he and she, who are leaning out in their eagerness to enjoy it, +have intercepted all the homely fragrance. Jim's eyes are still on the +"Spring," and he is thinking half absently how little kinship she has +with the goitred green women, whom his nineteenth-century disciples +present to the confiding British public as representatives of Sandro +Botticelli's manner, when his attention is diverted by hearing the voice +of Mrs. Byng at his elbow addressing him in an excited tone:</p> + +<p>"Why, there's Willy! Do not you see? There! leaning out of that window, +and who—who is the lady whom he has with him?"</p> + +<p>Jim looks quickly in the direction indicated, and at once recognises a +slender gray figure which to-day has not assumed its white holiday gown. +Elizabeth, whom he had been pitifully picturing lying heart-struck on a +sofa in the seclusion of her own little <i>entresol</i>, probably with +lowered blinds and tear-smarting eyes, is leaning on the window-ledge +with her back to the pictures—she whom he had always credited with so +delicate a sensibility for Art, with her back to the pictures, as if the +live picture which Byng's eager face presents to her pleases her better. +A sense of indignation at having been tricked out of his compassion—who +had ever seemed to need it less than the suave little figure about whose +blonde head a Tuscan sunbeam, stolen through the easement, is amorously +playing?—makes him forget to answer the question addressed to him, +until it is repeated in a still more urgent key.</p> + +<p>"Who <i>is</i> she? Who <i>can</i> she be? Have not you an idea? He has not seen +us! Had not we better creep quietly away? Most likely he would rather +not meet me; I could not bear to make him look foolish!"</p> + +<p>The suggestion that there can be anything calculated to put Willy to the +blush in being discovered in conversation with Miss Le Marchant has the +effect of giving Burgoyne rapidly back his power of speech.</p> + +<p>"What nonsense!" he cries almost rudely; "I wish you would not let your +imagination run away with you so, and of course I know who she is; she +is an—an acquaintance of mine. I—I presented Willy to her; she is Miss +Le Marchant."</p> + +<p>"Miss Le Who?" repeats the mother eagerly, catching the name +imperfectly, as we usually do a name that is unfamiliar to us, proving +how much of imagination and memory must go to eke out all our +hearing—"an acquaintance of yours, is she? Oh, then, of course" +(drawing a long breath of relief), "she is all right."</p> + +<p>"All right!" echoes Jim, with an unconscious snappishness of tone, +greater than he would have employed in defence of the reputation of any +other lady of his acquaintance, probably because, ever since the day +when he stood an unwilling eaves-dropper by that well on Bellosguardo, a +hideous low voice has been whispering to his own sick heart that perhaps +she is not "all right!" "All right! of course she is all right."</p> + +<p>"But she is lovely!" cries Mrs. Byng, not paying much heed to the testy +emphasis of her companion's asseveration, and continuing to stare at the +unwitting girl; "what a dear little face! but," the alarm returning +again into her voice, "is it possible that she is here alone with him? +If so, of course she is American. Oh! do not say that she is American."</p> + +<p>"Of course she is not," answers Burgoyne, half laughing at the plaintive +intensity of this last appeal; "of course she is all that there is of +most English, and there is her mother, as large as life, within a yard +and a half of her; there, do not you see? looking at the Ghirlandajo."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Byng removes her eyes from the daughter, and fixes them with a +scarcely less degree of interest upon the then indicated parent.</p> + +<p>"So that is the mother, is it? a very nice-looking woman, and what +beautiful white hair! Mrs. Le——what did you say their name was? Ah! +Willy has seen us, poor boy!"—laughing—"how guilty he looks! here he +comes!"</p> + +<p>And in point of fact the young man, having given a very indubitable +start and said something hurried to his companion, is seen advancing +quasi-carelessly to meet the two persons, the object of whose +observation he has for some minutes so unconsciously been.</p> + +<p>"Is not this a coincidence?" cries Mrs. Byng, with a rather +nervously-playful accent; "it <i>is</i> a coincidence, though it may not look +like one! But do not be afraid; we know our places, we are not going to +offer to join you!"</p> + +<p>"What should I be afraid of?" replies the young man, the colour—always +as ready as a school miss's to put him to shame—mantling in his +handsome smooth cheeks. "I am like the Spanish hidalgo, who never knew +what fear was till he snuffed a candle with his fingers. So you and Jim +are having a happy day among the pictures. Do not you like 'Spring'? I +love her, though I am sure she was a real baggage!"</p> + +<p>But this ingenious attempt to divert the current of his parents' ideas +into another channel is scarcely so successful as it deserves.</p> + +<p>"Will not you introduce me to her?" she asks eagerly, and not heeding, +evidently not even hearing, the empty question contained in the last +half of his speech; "does she know that I am your mother? Will not you +introduce me to her?"</p> + +<p>It seems a simple and natural request enough, and yet the young man +perceptibly hesitates. He even tries to turn it off by a clumsy and +entirely pointless jest.</p> + +<p>"Introduce you to her? to whom? to 'Spring'? I am really afraid that my +acquaintance with her scarcely justifies such a liberty!"</p> + +<p>A look of surprise and of natural annoyance clouds the cheerful +eagerness of Mrs. Byng's face.</p> + +<p>"Is that a joke, dear?" she asks, with a rather vexed smile; "it is not +a very good one, is it? Well, Jim, I must apply to you then; <i>you</i> can +have no objection to presenting me to your friends?"</p> + +<p>"Of course not, of course not," replies he, with a stammering +unreadiness, which contrasts somewhat ludicrously with the acquiescence +conveyed by his words, "I shall be delighted, only——"</p> + +<p>"Only what? Ah, here they come! they save us the trouble of going after +them."</p> + +<p>As she speaks, indeed, Mrs. Le Marchant and Elizabeth are seen nearing +the little group; but it is soon apparent that this movement on their +part is by no means owing to any wish or even willingness to make Mrs. +Byng's acquaintance. It is indeed solely due to there being no egress +from the room at that end of it where they have been standing, so that, +if they wish to leave it, they must necessarily retrace their steps and +pass the three persons who are so busily discussing them. They do this +so quickly and with so resolute an air of not wishing to be delayed in +their exit, bestowing a couple of such smileless and formal bows upon +the two men, that it would have needed a much more determined +obstruction than either of those gentlemen is prepared to offer to +arrest their progress. In a moment they are through the doorway and out +of sight. Mrs. Byng looks after them, with her mouth open.</p> + +<p>"They—they—are obliged to go home, they—they are in a great hurry!" +says the younger man, observing the displeased astonishment expressed by +his mother's countenance, and with a lame effort at explanation.</p> + +<p>"So they seemed when first we caught sight of them," retorts she dryly.</p> + +<p>"They—they are not going out at all at present, they—they do not wish +to make any fresh acquaintance: oh, by-the-bye, I forgot something I had +to say to—I will be back in a moment!"</p> + +<p>So saying, he shoots off in pursuit of the retreated figures, and Mrs. +Byng and her escort are again left <i>tête-à-tête</i>.</p> + +<p>"Are you quite sure that she is all right?" asks the lady, looking at +Jim with a penetrating glance that he does not enjoy; "because, if so, +why was she so determined not to know me?"</p> + +<p>"How can I tell?" answers he testily. "Perhaps—who knows?"—laughing +unmirthfully—"perhaps she was not sure that <i>you</i> were all right!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI.</h2> + +<blockquote><p>"Tous les hommes se haïssent naturellement. Je mets en fait que +s'ils savaient exactement ce qu'ils disent, les uns des autres, +il n'y aurait pas quatre amis dans le monde."</p></blockquote> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Although Mrs. Byng always speaks of Miss Wilson as "Amelia," and is +acquainted with every detail of that young lady's uneventful +history—thanks to a long series of direct and interested questions, +addressed through a considerable number of years, to her friend Jim, as +to his betrothed—she has no personal acquaintance with the latter. She +is so determined, however, to repair this omission, now that so highly +favourable an opportunity is presented as their common stay in the same +small city, that Jim is powerless to hinder her from arranging a joint +expedition of the two parties—herself and her son on the one side, and +Jim with his future wife and sister-in-law on the other, to Careggi, on +the afternoon of the same day as he had witnessed her abortive attempt +to add Elizabeth Le Marchant and her mother to the list of her +acquaintances.</p> + +<p>Amelia, is, for a wonder, free from home claims, Sybilla being more than +usually bright, a kind friend having lately provided her with a number +of the <i>Lancet</i>, containing a detailed account of an operation, which it +seems not over-sanguine to expect she may herself be able to undergo. We +all have our Blue Roses, and to "undergo operation," as she technically +phrases it, is Sybilla Wilson's Blue Rose. Cecilia is likewise +disengaged. The latter circumstance is matter for not unmixed rejoicing +to Jim, Cecilia's future connection with himself being too close for him +to relish the thought of her somewhat pronounced wooing of Byng being +exposed in all its <i>naïveté</i> to the clear if good-humoured eyes of +Byng's mother. But in this he wrongs Cecilia. The garden-party at the +villa on Bellosguardo had proved to her that the fruit is hung too high +for her fingers to reach, and that philosophy, which had enabled her +genuinely to relish the wedding-cake of the man who had jilted her, now +teaches her to lay to heart the sarcastic advice offered her by Jim, to +look at the young man as poor women look at diamonds. Beyond one or two +trifling gallantries, for which no one can judge her harshly, she leaves +him alone, even though out of good-nature, and from inveterate force of +habit, he gives her several openings to make love to him.</p> + +<p>The day is one of even Italy's best, an air as soft as feathers, and +full of April odours—a bright gay sun. The vines are rushing into leaf; +they that ten days ago looked such hopeless sticks; little juicy leaves +uncurling and spreading on each, and the mulberry trees, round which +they twine, are rushing out too, at the triumphant call of the spring.</p> + +<p>The party being of the unmanageable number five, has to be divided +between two fiacres, whereof Mrs. Byng, in pursuance of her +determination to know Amelia, insists upon occupying the first in +<i>tête-à-tête</i> with Miss Wilson, while Cecilia and the two men fill the +other. The latter makes but a silent load. Byng is, for him, out of +spirits, and finding that Cecilia has virtually abandoned her suit, is +glad to lapse into his own reflections. His example is followed by Jim, +whose temper is ruffled by being again obliged to defer the quest he is +still feverishly anxious to pursue, despite the shock of the morning's +meeting at the Accademia.</p> + +<p>They reach the villa, and leave their vehicles, glad to think that two +of the perennially tired Florentine cab-horses will have a pause of +rest, and, having shaken off a tiresome would-be <i>laquais de place</i>, +desirous to embitter for them the sweet day and place, they stray at +will through the garden among the clipped laurels, the cypresses, the +gorgeous red rhododendrons, while beds of mignonette send forth such a +steady wave of poignant sweetness as makes the sense ache with ecstasy +of pleasure; and over the conservatory hangs a wistaria so old, so +magnificent, with such a Niagara of giant flower bunches, as takes an +English breath away. They go over the villa itself, pass through the +room, and by the bed where Lorenzo, with the grotesque grim face, +Lorenzo the Magnificent, gave his last sigh. It would make Death even +more difficult to face than he is already, if one thought one should +have to meet him under such a catafalque.</p> + +<p>As they issue out again from the house's shadow into the sun-drenched +garden, Mrs. Byng joins Burgoyne, who is walking a little apart.</p> + +<p>"I like Amelia," she says confidentially, "such a nice <i>pillowy</i> sort of +woman; not too clever, and oh, Jim, poor soul, how fond she is of you!"</p> + +<p>It must always be pleasant to hear that the one absolutely good thing +which this life has to offer is lavishly heaped upon us by the person +with whom we are to pass that life; and perhaps pleasure is the emotion +evidenced by the silent writhe with which Jim receives this piece of +information.</p> + +<p>"Not, of course, that she told me so in so many words," continues his +friend, perceiving that her speech is received in a silence that may +mean disapproval of any intrusion into the sanctuary of his affections; +"but one can see with half an eye: poor Amelia, she beamed all over when +I said one or two little civil things about you! She worships the very +ground you tread on!"</p> + +<p>He writhes again. "I hope that that is one of your figures of speech," +he answers constrainedly.</p> + +<p>The not unnatural result of the tone in which he utters this sentence, +no less than the words themselves, is to quench the fire of Mrs. Byng's +benevolent eulogies; and, as she cannot at once hit upon another topic, +and is by no means sure that her countenance does not betray the rather +snubbed dismay produced by the reception of her amenities, she is not +sorry when Jim presently leaves her. Being, however, of a very sanguine +disposition, and seeing him a little later sitting peacefully on a +garden-seat beside his <i>fiancée</i>, she hopes that her words, though not +very handsomely received at the time, may bear fruit later for Amelia's +benefit. "And he always was very undemonstrative," she adds to herself +consolatorily. "Nobody would have guessed that he was delighted to see +me this morning; and yet, of course, he was."</p> + +<p>The sun is growing visibly lower, and the Ave Maria comes ringing +solemnly from the city. The seat to which Jim has somewhat remorsefully +led his lady-love is a stone bench, shaded by a honeysuckle bower, close +to a fountain. The fountain is not playing now; but round about it first +a marten wheels, dipping in the water the end of her fleet wings; then a +little bat prematurely flits, for it is still broad daylight. Broad +indeed and bounteous is the daylight of Italy. Around them is the lush +unmown grass; full of homely field-flowers, buttercups, catch-flies, +daisies, ragged robins, while from some bush near by a nightingale is +pouring out all the infinite variety of her ravishing song. She says so +many different things that one never can feel sure that one has heard +all that she has to say. Jim leans back listening, with his hands behind +his head, steeped in a half-voluptuous sadness. He is oppressed by the +thought of Amelia's great love. Is the nightingale's splendid eloquence +really the voice of the poor dumb passion beside him, lent to Amelia to +plead her cause? The high-flown poetry of the idea fills his heart with +an imaginative yearning kindness towards her. He is in the act of +turning to face her, with a more lover-like speech on his lips than has +hovered there for years, when Amelia herself anticipates him.</p> + +<p>"And to think that it is only April!" she says, with an air of prosaic +astonishment. "Last April we had four inches of snow on the front drive. +It was when Cecilia had the mumps."</p> + +<p>"When Cecilia had the mumps?" repeats Burgoyne in a rather dazed voice. +"I did not know that Cecilia had ever had the mumps."</p> + +<p>This is the form into which are frozen the love-words that the +nightingale and the perfume of the Tuscan flowers and the Ave Maria had +so nearly brought to his tongue. Had Amelia known what an unwonted burst +of tenderness her unlucky reminiscence had choked, she would have +regretted it probably with a good deal deeper bitterness than would many +a woman with a happier gift of utterance. But she is blessedly ignorant +of what Cecilia's mumps have robbed her, and presently again strikes +athwart the nightingale's song with the placid remark:</p> + +<p>"I like your friend very much; I think that she is a very nice woman."</p> + +<p>This time Burgoyne has no difficulty in responding immediately. Miss +Wilson's first speech had so effectually chased his dreams that he can +now reply with commonplace kindliness:</p> + +<p>"She has just been button-holing me to make the same confidence about +you."</p> + +<p>"And she is so fond of you," continues Amelia.</p> + +<p>He laughs.</p> + +<p>"She has just confided to me that so are you;" then, with a hurried +change of tone, in dread lest the last speech shall call out some +expression of the mute pent passion always lurking in her patient eyes, +he adds lightly, "I seem to be very generally beloved!"</p> + +<p>What effect the flat fatuity, as it seems to Jim himself, of this last +observation has upon Amelia, does not appear, since she receives it in +silence; and again the Ave Maria and the bird divide between them the +province of sound.</p> + +<p>As the great sun droops, the honeysuckle above their heads seems to give +out more generously its strong clean sweetness. The rest of the party +have drifted away out of sight and hearing; but by-and-by their voices +are again heard and their returning forms seen. As they draw near, it +appears that their original number of three has been augmented by the +addition of two men; and a still nearer approach reveals who the two men +are. Mrs. Byng leads the way, talking animatedly to Mr. Greenock, who is +evidently an old acquaintance. Byng trails after them by himself, and +the rear is brought up by Cecilia and a portly clerically-dressed +figure, whom Jim at once recognises as the Devonshire clergyman, his +failure in obtaining information about whom has embittered and fidgeted +his whole day. Here then is the opportunity he has sought brought to his +very hand. And yet his first feeling, as he sees the complacent priestly +face, and the deliberate black legs pacing beside Cecilia, is one of +dismay. There is nothing unlikely in the supposition that he may have +been presented to her at the garden-party at the Bellosguardo villa; and +yet he now realizes with a shock of surprise that they are acquainted, +and, if acquainted, then at liberty to converse upon whatever subject +may best recommend itself to them. He is absolutely powerless to put any +check upon their talk, and yet at this very moment he may be narrating +to her that story which his own loyalty had forbidden him to overhear. +The first couple has passed, so absorbed in eager question and answer +that they do not even see Burgoyne and his betrothed. Mrs. Byng left +London only three days ago, and Mr. Greenock might return thither at any +moment that he chooses; and yet they are talking of it with a wistful +fondness that might have beseemed Dante questioning some chance wayfarer +to Ravenna as to the prosperity of his Florence. The second pair's +voices are lower pitched, and their topics therefore less easy to +ascertain; yet by Cecilia's gratified and even hopeful air they are +evidently agreeable ones. But though agreeable, there is no evidence of +their being, by their riveting ear and eye, of the nature he dreads. +They also are so absorbed in each other as to have no attention to spare +for the quiet silent persons sitting on the stone bench.</p> + +<p>Amelia looks after them with a benevolent smile. Her sense of humour is +neither keen nor quick, but there is a touch of very mild sarcasm in her +voice, as she says, watching her sister's retreating figure:</p> + +<p>"Cecilia has found a new friend, a clergyman again; do you know what his +name is?"</p> + +<p>"I believe it is Burton or Bruton, or something of the sort," replies +Jim reluctantly, feeling as if even in admitting knowledge of the +stranger's surname he were letting out a dangerous secret. "I should +have thought that she had had enough of the Church," he adds with a very +much more pronounced accent of satire than Miss Wilson's. "She has not +taken my advice of sticking to the laity. Shall we—shall we follow +them?"</p> + +<p>This last suggestion is the result of a vague, uneasy feeling that, by +keeping within earshot, he may exercise some check upon their +conversation.</p> + +<p>"Why should we?" replies Amelia, for once in her life running counter to +a proposition of her lover's, and turning her meek eyes affectionately +upon him; "we are so well here, are not we? and"—laughing—"we should +spoil sport."</p> + +<p>As Jim can allege no adequate reason for pursuing Cecilia and her latest +spoil, he has unwillingly to acquiesce, and to content himself with +following them with his eyes, to gain what reassurance he can from the +expression of their backs. But the peaceful if melancholy restfulness +that had marked the first part of his abode on the stone seat is gone, +past recall. He moves his feet fidgetily on the gravel; he gets up, and +throws pebbles into the fountain; he snubs an officious little Italian +boy who brings Amelia a small handful of flowers plucked out of the +emerald grass.</p> + +<p>Amelia does not share her lover's uneasiness, as indeed why should she? +She puts the expected tip into the young Tuscan's dirty brown hand, and +leans her head enjoyingly on the back of the stone seat.</p> + +<p>"I think I like to come to these sort of places with you even better +than to picture-galleries," she says with an intonation of extreme +content.</p> + +<p>"Do you, dear?" replies he absently, with his uneasy eyes still +searching the spot at which Cecilia and her escort had disappeared. "Of +course you are quite right: 'God made the country, and man made the——' +Ah!"</p> + +<p>The substitution of this ejaculation for the noun which usually +concludes the proverb is due to the fact of the couple he is interested +in having come back into sight, retracing their steps, and again +approaching. It is clear as they come near that the desire to explore +the villa grounds has given way, in this case, to the absorption of +conversation. With a pang of dread, Jim's sharpened faculties realize, +before they are within earshot, that they have exchanged the light and +<i>banal</i> civilities which had at first employed them for talk of a much +more intimate and interesting character. Cecilia is generally but an +indifferent listener, greatly preferring to take the lion's share in any +dialogue; but now she is all silent attention, only putting in, now and +again, a short eager question, while her companion is obviously +narrating—narrating gravely, and yet with a marked relish. Narrating +what? Jim tells himself angrily that there are more stories than one in +the world; that there is no reason why, because Cecilia's clerical +friend is relating to her something, it must necessarily be that +particular something which he dreads so inexpressibly; but he strains +his ears as they pass to catch a sentence which may relieve or confirm +his apprehensions. He has not to strain them long. It is Cecilia who is +speaking, and in her eagerness she has raised her voice.</p> + +<p>"You may depend upon me; I assure you I am as safe as a church; if I had +chosen I might have made a great deal of mischief in my day, but I never +did. I always said that she had a history. I do not pretend to be a +physiognomist, but I said so the first time I saw her. I knew that they +came from Devonshire. I assure you I am as safe as a church!"</p> + +<p>It is clear that the clergyman's hesitation, already perhaps more coy +than real, is unable to withstand the earnestness of Cecilia's +asseverations of her own trustworthiness. He has already opened his +mouth to respond when an unexpected interruption arrests the stream of +his eloquence. Jim has sprung from his bench, and thrust himself +unceremoniously between the two interlocutors.</p> + +<p>"Come and see the wistaria," he says, brusquely addressing the girl; +"you were not with us when we were looking at it, were you? You were +maintaining the other day that wistaria has no scent; come and smell +it!"</p> + +<p>It is in vain that Cecilia protests that she has already seen quite as +much of the wistaria as she wishes; that she had never denied the +potency of its perfume; that her legs are giving way beneath her from +fatigue. Jim marches her relentlessly away, nor does he again quit her +side until he sees her safely seated in the fiacre which is to carry her +home. It is indeed his portion to have a <i>tête-à-tête</i> drive back to +Florence with her, Byng having absently stepped into the vehicle which +bears the other ladies. He draws a long breath as they jog slowly away +from the villa, leaving the clergyman taking off his tall hat, with a +baffled and offended air of farewell. He is conscious that Cecilia is +swelling beside him with feelings no less wounded, even for some moments +before she speaks.</p> + +<p>"You rather cut your own throat," she says, in an affronted voice, "when +you interrupted me and Mr. Burton so rudely; he was on the point of +telling me something very interesting about your dear friends the Le +Marchants; he knows all about them; he has known Elizabeth ever since +she was a child."</p> + +<p>Even across Jim's alarm and anxiety there comes a flash of indignation +and distaste at the familiar employment of the name that even to himself +he only pronounces on his heart's knees.</p> + +<p>"Who is Elizabeth? Do you mean Miss Le Marchant?"</p> + +<p>"Mr. Burton talked of her as 'Elizabeth,'" replies Cecilia, with a still +more offended accent at the rebuke implied in his words; "one naturally +would of a person whom one had known in short frocks."</p> + +<p>"And he—he told you something very interesting about her?"</p> + +<p>"No, he did not," returns Cecilia snappishly, "he had not the chance; he +was just beginning when you rushed in like a bull in a china shop, and +now"—in a key of excessive vexation—"I shall probably never have +another chance of hearing, as he leaves Florence to-morrow."</p> + +<p>Jim's heart gives a bound. "Leaves Florence to-morrow, does he?" he +repeats eagerly.</p> + +<p>"I do not know why you should seem so delighted to hear it," rejoins +Cecilia, looking at him from under her smart hat with a mixture of +surprise and resentment. "I do not see anything particularly +exhilarating in losing an agreeable acquaintance almost as soon as one +has made it!"</p> + +<p>"Perhaps—perhaps it was a false alarm," says Jim, set, to some extent, +on his guard by her evident astonishment at the keenness of his interest +in the subject; "perhaps"—beginning to laugh—"he only said it to +frighten you; why do you think that he is leaving Florence to-morrow?"</p> + +<p>"Because he told me so," answers she impatiently; "he is at the Grande +Bretagne, and he was complaining of not being comfortable there, and I +was advising him to move to another hotel, and he said, 'Oh no, it was +not worth while, as he was leaving Florence to-morrow.'"</p> + +<p>Jim draws a long breath, and leans back in his corner of the fiacre. He +has gained the information he sought. It has come to his hand at the +very time he was chafing most at his inability to go in quest of it.</p> + +<p>"So your interruption was the more provoking," continues Cecilia, her +indignation puffing out and ruffling its feathers at the recollection of +her wrongs, "as it was our last chance of meeting; however, you cut your +own throat, as he evidently knew something very interesting about your +dear friends; something which he does not generally tell people, and +which he would not have told me only that he saw at once I was no blab."</p> + +<p>Jim shivers. He had only just been in time then—only just in time to +stop the mouth of this blatant backbiter in priest's raiment. His +companion looks at him curiously.</p> + +<p>"Are you cold," she asks, "or did a goose walk over your grave? Why did +you shiver?"</p> + +<p>He pulls himself together. "I was shivering," he says, compelling +himself to assume the rallying tone in which he is apt to address the +girl beside him, "at the thought of the peril I had saved you from. My +poor Cis, have not you and I suffered enough already at the hands of the +Church?"</p> + +<p>She reddens. "Though I do not pretend to any great sensitiveness on the +subject, I think you have worn that old joke nearly off its legs."</p> + +<p>But during the rest of the drive she utters no further lament over her +lost clergyman.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII.</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>It is past seven o'clock by the time that the party breaks up at the +door of the Anglo-Américain, and the dusk is gaining even upon the red +west that, in the upper sky, is insensibly melted into that strange +faint green that speaks, in so plain a language, of past and future fine +weather.</p> + +<p>"Are you coming to look in upon us to-night?" asks Amelia, with a rather +wistful diffidence, as her lover holds out his hand in farewell to her.</p> + +<p>He hesitates. In his own mind he had planned another disposition of his +evening hours to that suggested by her.</p> + +<p>"What do you advise?" he asks. "Shall you spend the evening in the usual +way?"</p> + +<p>"I suppose so," she answers. "I suppose we shall read aloud; you know +father likes to make our evenings as like our home ones as possible, and +Sybilla——"</p> + +<p>"Then it is no use my coming," interrupts he hastily. "I should have no +good of you;" then, seeing her face fall at his alacrity in seizing a +pretence for escape, he adds, "but, of course, if you wish it, dear—if +it would give you any satisfaction——"</p> + +<p>"But it would not," cries she precipitately, anxious as usual to be, if +possible, beforehand with his lightest wish; "when you are by, I always +lose my place"—laughing tremulously—"and father scolds me! No, you had +far better not come. I must not be greedy"—in a lower key. "I had quite +half an hour, nearly three-quarters, of you this afternoon."</p> + +<p>Without trusting herself to any further speech, she disappears, and he, +with a sigh that is only half of relief, turns away from the hotel door, +and, after a moment's hesitation, a moment's glance at the suave +darkening sky, and another at his watch, begins to walk briskly—not in +the direction of the Minerva. It is really not late, not much beyond +canonical calling hours, and he is almost sure that they dine at eight. +His face is set in the direction of the Piazza d'Azeglio, as he +addresses these reassuring remarks to himself. This is no case of +self-indulgence, or even of friendly civility. It is a question of +common humanity. Why should he leave them to endure their suspense for a +whole night longer than they need, merely to save himself the trouble of +a walk beneath the darkly splendid sky-arch, through the cheerful +streets, still full of leisurely foot-passengers, of the sound of +cracking whips and rolling carriages?</p> + +<p>He reaches No. 12 bis, and finds the porter's wife sitting at the door +of her <i>loge</i>, and smiling at him with all her white teeth, as if she +knew that he had come on some pleasant errand. He climbs the naked stone +stairs, and rings the bell. It is answered by Annunziata, who, smiling +too, as if she were saying something very agreeable, conveys to him that +the signora and the signorina are out.</p> + +<p>The intelligence baffles him, as he had not at all expected it. Probably +his disconcertment is written not illegibly on his features, as +Annunziata begins at once to inform him that the signore are gone to +drive in the Cascine, and that she expects them back every moment. It is +a good while before he quite masters her glib explanation, his Italian +being still at that stage when, if the careful phrase-book question does +not receive exactly the phrase-book answer, the questioner is at fault. +But the smiling invitation of the amiable ugly face, and the hospitably +open door—so different a reception from what the old bull-dog of an +English nurse would have accorded him—need no interpreter. After a +moment's hesitation he enters. He will wait for them.</p> + +<p>It is not until he has been left alone for a quarter of an hour in the +little <i>salon</i> that he has time to ask himself nervously whether the +amount of his acquaintance with them, or the importance of the tidings +he brings, justifies his thus thrusting himself upon their evening +privacy. The table—since they have obviously but one sitting-room—is +spread for their simple supper—a coarse white cloth, a wicker-covered +bottle of rough Chian wine, and a copper pot full of delicately odorous +Freesias. He wanders restlessly about the room, looking at the +photographs.</p> + +<p>Tom—can it be Tom?—with a moustache, Charles with a beard and a +bowie-knife, Rose dandling her baby, Miriam hanging over her new +husband—all his little playfellows! How far the wave of time has rolled +them away from him! He strolls to the window whence, at sunset, the +green shutters have been thrown back, and stares out at the Piazza +garden, where the twilight is taking all the colour out of the Judas +flowers, thence to the piano upon which Schubert's "Trockne Blumen" +stands open. Absently he repeats aloud the song's joyous words:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Der Lenz wird kommen, der Winter ist aus!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Is her "Winter aus"? Judging by the look in her eyes, it has been a long +and cruel one. If he wishes to put the question to her, she comes in +just in time to answer it—enters laggingly, as one tired, blinking a +little from the sudden crude lamplight after the soft feather-handed +dusk. She is evidently unprepared to find anyone in the room, and gives +a frightened jump when she sees a man's figure approaching her. Even +when she recognises him the scared look lingers. It is clear that in her +sad experience surprises have been always synonymous with bad news. The +white apprehension written on her small face makes him so cordially +repent of his intrusion, that his explanation of his presence is at +first perfectly unintelligible.</p> + +<p>"I hope you will excuse my taking such a liberty. I know that I had no +business to come in when I was told you were out," he says incoherently, +"but—I thought—I hoped—I had an idea—that you might be glad to +hear——"</p> + +<p>He stops, puzzled how to word his piece of intelligence, whether or not +to name the person whose presence, whose very existence had yesterday +seemed to inspire with such terror the woman before him. She has sunk +down upon a chair, holding her hat, which she had taken off on entering +the room, nervously clutched in her hands, the little waves of her hair, +straightened out by the night wind, invading her forehead more than +their wont and giving her an unfamiliar look.</p> + +<p>"To hear what?" asks Mrs. Le Marchant, who, following her daughter more +leisurely, has come in just in time to catch the last few words of +Burgoyne's speech dissevered from their context. He begins that speech +again, still more stammeringly than before.</p> + +<p>"I thought you might be glad to hear that the—the inquiries you asked +me—I mean that I promised to make—that the person relating to whom +I—I made inquiries, leaves Florence to-morrow."</p> + +<p>He hears a long sighing breath that may mean relief that may mean only +distress at the introduction of the subject, from the chair beside him, +while the elder woman says in a low abrupt voice:</p> + +<p>"To-morrow? Are you sure? How do you know?"</p> + +<p>"He said so himself to-day."</p> + +<p>"Have you met him? Have you been talking to him?"</p> + +<p>It seems to Jim as if there were a sharp apprehension mixed with the +abruptness of her tone, as she puts the two last questions. He makes a +gesture of eager denial.</p> + +<p>"Heaven forbid! I have taken great care to avoid recalling myself to his +memory. I have no desire to renew my acquaintance with him. I—I—hate +the sight of him!"</p> + +<p>To an uninterested bystander there would have been something ludicrous +in the boyish virulence of the expression of hatred coming from so +composed and mature a man's mouth as Jim's. But neither of the two +persons who now hear it is in a position of mind to see anything +ridiculous in it.</p> + +<p>"Then how do you know that it is true?"</p> + +<p>"He told an—an acquaintance of mine; he was complaining of the +discomfort of his hotel, and, on her recommending him to change it, he +answered that it was not worth while, as he was leaving Florence +to-morrow."</p> + +<p>Again from the chair beside him comes that long low sigh. This time +there can be no question as to its quality. It is as of a spirit lifting +itself from under a leaden load. For a few moments no other sound breaks +the stillness. Then Mrs. Le Marchant speaks again in a constrained +voice:</p> + +<p>"We are extremely obliged to you for having taken so much trouble for +us, and it must seem very strange to you that we should be so anxious to +hear that this—this person has left Florence; but in so small a place +one is sure to be always coming into collision with those whom one would +rather avoid, and there are reasons which—which make it very—painful +to us to meet him."</p> + +<p>So saying, she tums away precipitately, and leaves the room hastily, by +another door from that by which they both entered, and which evidently +communicates with an adjoining bedroom. Elizabeth remains lying back in +her chair, looking as white as the tablecloth. She is always white, but +usually it is a creamy white, like meadow-sweet. Out of her eyes, +however, has gone the distressed look of fear, and in them is dawning +instead a little friendly smile.</p> + +<p>"You must have thought us rather impostors when you saw us at the +Accademia this morning, after leaving us apparently so shattered +overnight," she says, with a somewhat deprecating air.</p> + +<p>"I was very glad to find you so perfectly recovered," he replies, but he +does not say it naturally. When a person, habitually truthful, slides +into a speech not completely true, he does it in a bungling journeyman +fashion; nor is Burgoyne any exception to this rule.</p> + +<p>"I think we are a little like india-rubber balls, mammy and I," +continues Elizabeth; "we have great recovering powers; if we had not" +(stopped for a second by a small patient sigh) "I suppose that we should +not be alive now."</p> + +<p>He does not interrupt her. She must be a much less finely-strung +instrument than he takes her for if she does not divine the sympathy of +his silence, and sympathy so much in the dark as to what it sympathizes +with as his, must needs walk gropingly, if it would escape gins and +pitfalls.</p> + +<p>"But we should not have gone out sight-seeing this morning—we were not +at all in a junketing mood—if it had not been for Mr. Byng; he came in +and took us both by storm. It is difficult," her face dimpling and +brightening with a much more confirmed smile than the tiny hovering one +which is all that Jim has been able to call forth—"it is difficult to +resist a person who brings so much sunshine with him—do not you find it +so? He is so very sunshiny, your Mr. Byng. We like sunshine; we—we have +not had a great deal of it."</p> + +<p>It is on the very edge of his lip to tell her that when he had known her +she had had and been nothing but sunshine. But he recollects in time her +prohibition as to the past, and restrains himself.</p> + +<p>"When you look so kind and interested," she cries impulsively, sitting +up in her chair, with a transparent little hand on each arm of it, "I +feel a fraud."</p> + +<p>She stops.</p> + +<p>"I look interested because I feel interested," returns he doggedly; +"fraud or not—but" (in a distressed voice) "do not, even in joke, call +yourself ugly names—fraud or not, you cannot hinder me."</p> + +<p>"Do not be interested in me," says she, in her plaintive cooing voice; +"we are very bad people to get interested in, we are not repaying people +to be interested in. I think—that perhaps" (slowly and dreamily) "under +other circumstances we might have been pleasant enough. Mammy has +naturally excellent spirits, and so have I; it does not take much to +make us happy, and even now I often feel like poor little Prince +Arthur—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">"'By my Christendom,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So I were out of prison and kept sheep,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I should be as merry as the day is long.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But then," sighing profoundly, "the moment that we begin to feel a +little cheerful, something comes and knocks us down again."</p> + +<p>There is such a blank hopelessness in the tone with which she pronounces +the last words, and, in his almost total ignorance of the origin of her +despair, it is so impossible to put his compassion into fit words, that +he can think of nothing better than to pull his chair two inches nearer +her, to assure her by this dumb protest of how little inclined he is to +accept her warning.</p> + +<p>"Are you sure that he is really gone—going, I mean," she asks, in an +excited low voice, "going to-morrow morning, as you say? Oh, I wish it +were to-morrow morning! But perhaps when to-morrow morning comes, he +will have changed his mind. Was he quite, quite sure about it?"</p> + +<p>"He said he was going to-morrow morning," replies Jim, repeating +Cecilia's quotation from her new friend's conversation with +conscientious exactness; "that it was not worth while to change his +hotel, as he was leaving Florence to-morrow morning."</p> + +<p>"He will not go," she says, shaking her head with restless dejection; +"nobody but would be loth to leave this heavenly place"—glancing out +affectionately through the open window, even at the commonplace and now +almost night-shaded Piazza garden—"we shall find that he is not gone +after all."</p> + +<p>"Nothing will be easier to ascertain than that fact," says Burgoyne, +eagerly catching at so easy an opportunity for help and service; "now +that I know which is his hotel, I can inquire there to-morrow morning, +and bring you word at once."</p> + +<p>"Could you, would you?" cries she, life and light springing back into +her dejected eyes at his proposal; "but no," with an accent of remorse, +"why should you? Why should we keep you running upon our errands? What +right have we to take up your time?"</p> + +<p>"<i>My time</i>," repeats he ironically. "I am like the German Prince +mentioned by Heine, who spent his leisure hours—hours of which he had +twenty-four every day—in——"</p> + +<p>"But if we do not rob you," interrupts Elizabeth, looking at him in some +surprise, "we rob Miss—Miss Wilson. What will she say to us?"</p> + +<p>"She will be only too glad," replies he stiffly, a douche of cold water +thrown on his foolish heart by the little hesitation which had preceded +her pronunciation of Amelia's name, showing that her interest in him had +not had keenness enough even to induce her to master his betrothed's +appellation.</p> + +<p>"Will she?" rejoins Elizabeth, quite ignorant of having given offence, +and with her eyes fixed rather wistfully upon his. "How good of her! and +how unlike most very happy people! Happy people are generally rather +exacting; but she looks good. She has a dear face!"</p> + +<p>He is silent. To hear the one woman's innocent and unconscious encomiums +of the other fills him with an emotion that ties his never ready tongue. +She mistakes the cause of his muteness.</p> + +<p>"I am afraid I have vexed you," she says, sweetly and humbly. "I had no +business to praise her to you; it was like praising a person to himself; +but do not be angry with me—I did not mean to be impertinent!"</p> + +<p>One small fragile hand is hanging over the arm of her hard lodging-house +arm-chair, and before he has an idea of what his own intentions are, it +is lying, without any asking of its consent, in his.</p> + +<p>"I will not—I will not let you say such things," he says, trembling. +"She <i>is</i> good: she <i>has</i> a dear face: and I love to hear you say so! +May I—may I bring her to see you?"</p> + +<p>As he makes this request, he feels the little fingers that are lying in +his palm give a nervous start; and at once, quietly but determinedly, +the captive hand is withdrawn. It and its fellow fly up to her face, and +together quite cover it from his view. Though, as I have said, they are +small, yet, it being small too to match them, they conceal it entirely.</p> + +<p>"You will not say no?" he cries anxiously. "I am sure you will not say +no. I shall feel very much snubbed if you do."</p> + +<p>Still no answer. Still that shielded face, and the ominous silence +behind it. He rises, a dark red spreading over his features.</p> + +<p>"I must apologize for having made the suggestion. I can only beg you to +forget that it was ever made. Good-bye!"</p> + +<p>He has nearly reached the door, when he hears the <i>frou-frou</i> of her +gown, and turning, sees that her unsteady feet have carried her after +him, and that her face is changing from crimson to white and back again +with startling rapidity.</p> + +<p>"I thought you would have understood," she says faintly. "I thought that +you were the one person who would not have misunderstood."</p> + +<p>His conscience pricks him, but he is never very quick to be able to own +himself in the wrong, and before he can bring himself to frame any +sentence that smacks of apology and regret, she resumes, with a little +more composure and in a conventional voice:</p> + +<p>"You know—we told you—even at Genoa—that—that we are not going out, +that we do not wish to make any new acquaintances!"</p> + +<p>"I know," replies he, with some indignation, "that that is the hollow +formal bulletin you issue to the world in general, but I thought—I +hoped——"</p> + +<p>"Do not bring her to see me," she interrupts, abandoning her effort for +composure, and speaking in a broken voice, while her eyes swim in tears. +"She—she might be sorry—she—she might not like it—afterwards!"</p> + +<p>He looks back at her with an almost terrified air. Is the answer to her +sad riddle coming to him thus? Has he had the brutality to force her +into giving it?</p> + +<p>"You have been so kind in not asking me any questions, you have even +given up alluding to old times since you saw that it hurt me; but you +must see—of course you do—that—that there is something—in me—not +like other people; something that—that prevents—my—having any +friends! I have not a friend in the world" (with a low sob) "except my +mother—except mammy! Do you think" (breaking into a watery smile) "that +it is very silly of me, at my age, to call her 'mammy' still?"</p> + +<p>"I think," he says, "that I am one of the greatest brutes out, and that +I should be thankful if someone would kick me downstairs."</p> + +<p>And with this robust expression of self-depreciation, he takes his hat +and departs.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Ihr Blumen alle, Heraus! Heraus!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<p>It was to German flowers that the above hest was addressed. If they obey +it, with how much more alacrity do the Italian ones comply with its glad +command. It is a week later, and now no one can say that "the spring +comes slowly up this way." Vines, figs, and mulberries, all are +emulously racing out, and the corn has added two emerald inches to its +juicy blades. The young plane-trees in the Piazza d'Azeglio, so skimpily +robed when first Jim had rung the <i>entresol</i> bell of No. 12, are +exchanging their "unhandsome thrift" for an apparel of plenteous green, +and a wonderful Paulownia is beginning to hold up her clusters of +gloccinia bells.</p> + +<p>Jim has watched the daily progress of the plane-leaves from the low +window of No. 12's <i>entresol</i>. The daily progress? Is it possible that +he has been there every day during the past week? He asks himself this, +with a species of shock; and it is with a sense of relief that he finds +that one whole day has intervened, during which he had not heard the +sound of the electric bell thrilling through the apartment under the +touch of his own fingers. What can have taken him there, every day but +one? He runs over, in his mind, with a misgiving as to their +insufficiency, the reasons of his visit. For the first he had had an +excellent excuse. Surely it would have been barbarous not to have +imparted to the anxiously-watching pair the good news that the object of +their mysterious terror had really and authentically gone! On the second +day it seemed quite worth while to take the walk, in order to tell them +that he had accidentally learned the clergyman's destination to be +Venice, and his intention to return <i>viâ</i> Milan and the St. Gothard. On +the third day, being as near to them as San Annunziata, it had seemed +unfriendly not to inquire after Mrs. Le Marchant's neuralgia. On the +fourth——He is pulled up short in his reminiscences. Why had he gone on +the fourth day? He can give no answer to the question, and slides off +from it to another. Which was the fourth day? Was it—yes, it was the +one on which the wind blew as coldly east as it might have done across +Salisbury Plain's naked expanse, and he had found Elizabeth sitting on a +milking-stool shivering over a poor little fire of green wood, and +blowing it with a pair of bellows. He had helped her to blow, and +between them they had blown the fire entirely away, as often happens in +the case of unskilled handlers of bellows, and Elizabeth had laughed +till she cried.</p> + +<p>And meanwhile, how many times has he been within the portals of the +Anglo-Américain? With all his arithmetic he cannot make it more than +twice. This neglect of his betrothed, however, is not of quite so +monstrous a cast as at the first blush it may appear. It is she herself +who, true to her life-long principle of shielding him from all +disagreeable experiences, has forbidden him her door. He can aid her +neither to bandage her father's swollen foot in the severe gout-fit +under which he is groaning, nor to allay Sybilla's mysterious +sufferings, which always display a marked increase in acuteness whenever +any other member of the family shows a disposition to set up claims as +an invalid. Cecilia, indeed, is ready enough to give her help in nursing +her father, but she has on former occasions shown such an unhappy +aptitude for tumbling over his swathed and extended leg, and upsetting +his physic all over him, that she is received with such objurgations as +his cloth will permit, so often as she shows her short nose within his +sick-room. Only twice in a whole week. Can Amelia have wished to be +taken quite so literally when she had bidden him stay away? There is +only one answer possible to this question, and he shows his +consciousness of it by at once raising himself out of the chair in which +he is sunk, and turning his steps hastily towards her.</p> + +<p>It is morning. The east wind is clean gone, and the streets are full of +the scent of the innumerable lilies of the valley, of which everybody's +hands are full. He stops a minute and buys a great sheaf for a +miraculously small sum, from one of the unnumbered sellers. It shall +make his peace for him, if indeed it needs making, which it has never +done yet. He almost smiles at the absurdity of the suggestion. He finds +Cecilia alone in the sitting-room, Cecilia sitting by the window reading +the <i>Queen</i>. Upon her large pink face there is a puzzled expression, +which is perhaps to be accounted for by the fact that the portion of the +journal which she is perusing is that entitled "Etiquette," and under it +are the answers to last week's questions, upon nice points of social +law, which, if you do not happen to have read the questions, have +undoubtedly an enigmatical air, as in the following instances: "Your +husband takes the Baronet's daughter, and you follow with the +Prince."—"We do not understand your question—babies never dine out," +etc.</p> + +<p>Upon Jim's entrance Cecilia lays down her paper, and at once offers to +go in search of her sister, with whom she shortly returns. He had been +quite right. There is no peace to make. Amelia greets him with her usual +patient and perfectly unrancorous smile, but his second glance at her +tells him that she is looking old and fagged. It is only in very early +youth that vigils and worries and self-denials do not write their names +upon the skin.</p> + + +<p>"How—how pale you are!" he says. If he had given utterance to the word +that hovered on his lips, he would have cried, "how yellow!"</p> + +<p>"It would be very odd if she did not," says Cecilia with a shrug, +looking up from her "Etiquette," to which she has returned; "she has sat +up three nights with father, and last evening Sybilla bid us all +good-bye. You know she never can bear anybody else to be ill, and when +father has the gout she bids us all good-bye—and Amelia is always taken +in and sheds torrents of tears—do not you, Amelia?"</p> + +<p>Amelia has subsided rather wearily into a chair. "She really thinks that +she is dying," says she apologetically—"and who knows? some day perhaps +it may come true."</p> + +<p>"Not it," rejoins her sister, with an exasperated sniff "she will see us +all out—will not she, Jim?"</p> + +<p>"I have not the remotest doubt of it," replies he heartily; and then his +conscience-struck eyes revert to his betrothed's wan face, all the +plainer for its wanness. "No sleep, no fresh air," in an injured tone, +checking off the items on his fingers.</p> + +<p>"But I have had fresh air," smiling at him with pale affection; "one day +Mrs. Byng took me out for a drive. Mrs. Byng has been very kind to me."</p> + +<p>She does not lay the faintest invidious accent on the name, as if +contrasting it with another whose owner had been so far less kind; it is +his own guilty heart that supplies the emphasis. His only resource is an +anger which—so curiously perverse is human nature—is not even feigned.</p> + +<p>"You can go out driving with Mrs. Byng then, though you could not spare +time to come out with me," he says in a surly voice.</p> + +<p>She does not defend herself but her lower lip trembles.</p> + +<p>"Come out with me now," he cries, remorse giving a harshness even to the +tone of the sincerely-meant invitation. "You look like a geranium in a +cellar; it is a divine day, a day to make the old feel young, and the +young immortal; come out and stay out with me all day. I will take you +wherever you like. I will——"</p> + +<p>The genuine eagerness of his proposal has tinged her sickly-coloured +cheek with a healthier hue for the moment, but she shakes her head.</p> + +<p>"I could not leave father this morning; he will not take his medicine +from anyone else, and he likes me to sit with him while he eats his +arrowroot."</p> + +<p>The only sign of approval of this instance of filial piety given by Jim +is that he rises and begins to stamp irritably about the room.</p> + +<p>"He is really not at all exacting," continues Amelia in anxious +deprecation; "he was quite pleased just now when I told him that Mrs. +Byng was going to take me to a party at the Villa Schiavone this +afternoon. He said——"</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Byng! Mrs. Byng again!"</p> + +<p>This is not what Mr. Wilson said, but is the expression of the unjust +wrath which Burgoyne, feeling it much pleasanter to be angry with +someone else than himself is artificially and not unsuccessfully +fostering. Again Amelia's lip quivers.</p> + +<p>"I thought," she says gently, "if—if you have no other engagement this +afternoon; if—if you are free——"</p> + +<p>Nothing can be milder than the form which this suggestion takes, and yet +there is something in its shape that provokes him.</p> + +<p>"Free!" he interrupts tartly, "of course I am free! Have I a gouty +father and a hysteric sister? Why should not I be free?"</p> + +<p>"I am very glad to hear it," rejoins she—the light that his first +proposal to take her out had brought into her face growing brighter and +more established—"because in that case there is nothing to prevent your +meeting us at the villa, and——"</p> + +<p>"And seeing you and Mrs. Byng walking about with your arms round each +other's necks, like a couple of schoolgirls," cries he, with a sort of +spurious grumpiness.</p> + +<p>"I can't think why you should object to Amelia walking about with her +arm round <i>Mrs.</i> Byng's neck," says Cecilia, whose attention to her +"Etiquette" is apparently not so absorbing but that she has some to +spare for the conversation going on in her neighbourhood.</p> + +<p>They all laugh a little; and harmony being restored, and Jim graciously +vouchsafing to forgive Amelia for having ignored her for a sennight, she +returns to her patient, and he to his hotel, where he is at once, +contrary to his wish, pounced upon by Byng.</p> + +<p>For some reason, which he would be puzzled to explain to himself, he has +for the last week rather avoided his friend's company—a task rendered +easier by the disposition manifested by the young man's mother to +monopolize him, a disposition to which Burgoyne has felt no inclination +to run counter. It is without enthusiasm that he receives Byng's +expressions of pleasure in their accidental meeting.</p> + +<p>"I have been searching for you, high and low."</p> + +<p>"Have you?"</p> + +<p>"Where have you been?"</p> + +<p>"I have been to the Anglo-Américain"—with a flash of inward +self-congratulation at this query having been put to-day, instead of +yesterday, or the day before. The other looks disappointed.</p> + +<p>"To the Anglo-Américain? I thought—I hoped; have you—seen <i>them</i> +lately?"</p> + +<p>Burgoyne has ceased to feign lack of understanding to whom the personal +pronoun refers, and he answers with as much carelessness as at a +moment's notice he can put on: "Why, yes, I have, once or twice."</p> + +<p>"Do they—do not they think it strange of me not to have been near them +all this time?"</p> + +<p>"They may do"—dryly.</p> + +<p>"They did not say so?"</p> + +<p>"They did not; perhaps"—sarcastically—"the subject was too acutely +painful for them to allude to."</p> + +<p>Frequently as he has exposed himself to them, his Mentor's sneers never +fail to send the crimson racing into Byng's face, and it finds its way +there now. It does not, however, prevent his proceeding, after a +confused moment or two, with his anxious catechism.</p> + +<p>"She—she has not referred to the subject?"</p> + +<p>"What subject?"</p> + +<p>"To—to me?"</p> + +<p>"She has never mentioned your name. Stay"—his veracity winning a +reluctant victory over his ill-nature—"one day she said that you were +sunshiny, and that she liked sunshine."</p> + +<p>As he speaks he looks down at his boots, too unaffectedly annoyed at the +justification of Elizabeth's epithet which its retailing has worked on +Byng's countenance to be able to contemplate him with any decent +patience. But there is enough evidence in the boy's voice of the effect +wrought upon him by Miss Le Marchant's adjective to make his comrade +repent very heartily of having repeated it.</p> + +<p>"I should have been over," says Byng in a low eager way, "every day, +every hour, as often as they would have received me, only that I could +not leave my mother; and she—she has taken them <i>en grippe</i>!"</p> + +<p>"<i>En grippe?</i> Your mother?" repeats Jim, too honestly and disagreeably +startled by this piece of news to be able any longer to maintain his +ironical manner; "why?"</p> + +<p>The other shrugs his shoulders dispiritedly.</p> + +<p>"I have not an idea; it cannot be because they did not seem to wish to +be introduced to her at the Accademia the other day; she is quite +incapable of such pettiness, and she admired <span class="smcap">HER</span> so tremendously at +first, did not she? You heard her; but since then she has taken it into +her head that there is something—I cannot bear even to say it"—dashing +his hat and gloves vehemently upon the table—"something <i>louche</i>, as +she calls it, about her. Mother thinks that she—she—she"—sinking his +voice to an indistinct half-whisper—"has—has gone off the rails some +time or other. Can you conceive?"—raising his tone again to one of the +acutest pain and indignation—"that anyone—any human being could look +in her face and harbour such a notion for a single instant?"</p> + +<p>He stares with eyes ablaze with wrathful pity at his friend's face, +expecting an answering outbreak to his own; but none such comes. +Burgoyne only says, in a not much more assured key than that which the +young man had employed:</p> + +<p>"How—how can such an idea have got into your mother's head?"</p> + +<p>"I do not know, but it is there; and what I wanted you, what I have been +searching everywhere for you for, is to ask you to—to set her right, at +once, without any delay. It is unbearable that she should go on thinking +such things, and nothing could be easier for you, who know them so well, +who know all about them!"</p> + +<p>Burgoyne is at first too much stupefied by this appeal, and by the +impossibility of answering it in a satisfactory manner, to make any +response at all; but at length:</p> + +<p>"Know all about them?" he says, in a voice whose surface impatience +hides a much profounder feeling. "Who dares ever say that he knows all +about any other living soul? How many times must I tell you that, until +we met at Genoa, I had not set eyes on Miss Le Marchant for ten good +years?"</p> + +<p>At the tone of this speech, so widely different from the eager +acceptance of the suggested task which he had expected, Byng's face +takes on a crestfallen, almost frightened look.</p> + +<p>"But when you knew them," he says, "in Devonshire, they—they were all +right then, were not they? they were well thought of?—there was nothing +against them?"</p> + +<p>"Good Heavens—no!" replies Jim heartily, thankful that the appeal is +now so worded as to enable him to give a warm testimony in favour of his +poor friends. "There was not a family in all the neighbourhood that +stood so high. Everybody loved them; everybody had a good word for +them."</p> + +<p>Byng's countenance clears a little.</p> + +<p>"And there is no reason—you have no reason for supposing anything +different now?"</p> + +<p>Jim stirs uneasily in his chair. Can he truthfully give the same +convinced affirmative to this question as to the last? It is a second or +two before he answers it at all.</p> + +<p>"The facts of life are enough for me; I do not trouble myself with its +suppositions."</p> + +<p>He gets up and walks towards the door as he speaks, resolved to bring to +an end this to him intolerable catechism.</p> + +<p>"But you must have an opinion—you must think," cries the other's voice, +persistently pursuing him. He turns at bay, with the door-handle in his +hand, his eyes lightening.</p> + +<p>"I asked her permission to bring Amelia to see her," he says, in a low +moved voice; "if I had thought as ill of her as your mother does, do you +think I should have done that?"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX.</h2> + +<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">Camille.</span>—"Que me conseilleriez-vous de faire le jour où je +verrais que vous ne m'aimez plus?"</p></blockquote> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>There is no greater fiction than that for time to go quickly implies +that it must needs go pleasantly. Jim has seldom spent a more +disagreeable period than the hours which follow his conversation with +Byng, and which he passes in his own bedroom, with his elbows on the +window-ledge, looking blankly out at the Piazza, and at the great +"Bride" of Arnolpho's planning, the church of Santa Maria Novella. And +yet, when the city clocks, which have chimed unnoticed by him several +times, at length convey to his inattentive ear what the hour is, he +starts up, shocked and confused at its lateness. He had meant to have +reached the Villa Schiavone in time to receive Amelia, and now she must +have long preceded him, and be attributing his tardiness to some fresh +neglect and indifference. In five minutes he has rearranged his dress, +and jumped into a fiacre. Through the Porta Romana, and up between the +straight row of still and inky cypresses, up and up to where the villa +door, promising so little and performing so much, opens as so many do, +straight upon the road.</p> + +<p>The day has changed its ravishing blue gaiety for a pensive cloudy +gloom, and the guests at the villa are walking about without any +sunshades. They are numerous, though few indeed in comparison of the +Banksia roses on the laden wall, over which, too, a great wistaria—put +in, as the host with a just pride relates, only last year—is hanging +and flinging its lilac abundance. And seen above its clusters, and above +the wall, what a view from this raised terrace! Jim is really in a hurry +to find Amelia, and yet he cannot choose but stop to look at it—from +Galileo's tower on the right, to where, far down the plain of the Arno, +Carrara loses itself in mist. It is all dark at first, sullen, +purple-gray, without variation or stir—city, Duomo, Arno, Fiesole, and +all her chain of sister-hills—one universal frown over every slope and +jag, over street and spire, over Campanile with its marbles, and Santa +Croce with its dead. But now, as it draws on towards sun-setting, in the +western sky there comes a beginning of light, a faint pale tint at +first, but quickly broadening across the firmament, while the whole huge +cloud canopy is drawn aside like a curtain, and, as a great bright eye +from under bent brows, the lowering sun sends arrows of radiance over +plain, and river, and city. All of a sudden there is a vertical rain of +dazzling white rays on the plain, and the olive shadows, merged all the +afternoon in the universal gray, fall long and soft upon the blinding +green of the young corn. He has forgotten Amelia. Oh, that that other, +that creature herself made out of sun-rays and sweet rain-drops, were +beside him, her pulses beating, as they so surely would, to his tune, +her whole tender being quivering with delicate joy at this heavenly +spectacle.</p> + +<p>Someone touches him on the shoulder, and he starts violently. Has the +intensity of his invocation called her spirit out of her light body, and +is she indeed beside him?</p> + +<p>"What a bad conscience you must have! Did you think that I was a +bailiff?" cries Mrs. Byng, laughing.</p> + +<p>"Where is Amelia?" he asks, rather curtly, the memory of Byng's +communication about his mother being too fresh in his mind to make it +possible for him to answer her in her own rallying key. "What have you +done with Amelia?"</p> + +<p>"What a 'Stand-and-deliver' tone!" says she, laughing still, but looking +not unnaturally surprised. "Well, where is she?" glancing round. "She +was here five minutes ago with Willy. Poor Amelia!" lowering her voice +to a more confidential key. "I am so glad you have come at last; she is +patience personified. I must congratulate you upon the excellent +training into which you have got her, but I think that she was beginning +to look a little anxious."</p> + +<p>"And <i>I</i> think that you have been giving the reins to your imagination, +as usual," replies he, walking off in a huff.</p> + +<p>There is another delightful garden at the back of the villa, and there, +having failed to find her in the first, he now with growing irritation +at her for not being more immediately conspicuous, seeks Amelia. It is a +sheltered leisurely paradise, where white rose-trees, with millions of +bursting buds, are careering over the walls in leafy luxuriance, where +double wallflowers—bloody warriors, one should call them, if one could +connect any warlike idea with this Eden of scented peace—stocks in +fragrant row are flowering as we Britons never see them flower in our +chary isle, save in the plates of a Gardeners' Chronicle. But among them +he finds no trace of his homely English blossom. He finds, indeed, him +who had been named as her late companion, Byng; but it is not with +Amelia, but with one of the pretty young daughters of the house that he +is pacing the straight walk in lively dialogue. Jim accosts him +formally:</p> + +<p>"I understood that Miss Wilson was with you? Do you happen to know where +she is?"</p> + +<p>Byng stops short in his leisurely pacing.</p> + +<p>"Why, where is she?" he says, looking round, as his mother had done, but +with a more guilty air. "She was here five minutes ago. Where can she +have disappeared to?"</p> + +<p>It is but too obvious that in greeting and being greeted by their +numerous acquaintances, both poor Amelia's chaperon and that chaperon's +son have completely forgotten her existence. Always nervously afraid of +being burdensome, Jim feels convinced from what he knows of her +character that she is going about in unobtrusive forlornness, the +extreme smallness of her Florentine acquaintances making it unlikely +that she has found anyone to supply the place of the friends who have +become so entirely oblivious of her. The conviction, pricking his +conscience as he hastens contritely away from the vainly-repentant Byng, +lends speed and keenness to his search. But thorough and earnest as it +is, it is for some time quite unsuccessful. She makes one of no group, +she loiters under no Banksia rose-bower, she is no gazer from the +terrace at gold-misted valley or aureoled town, she is to be found +neither in hidden nook, nor evident path. She is not beneath the loggia, +she is nowhere out-of-doors. She must then, in her loneliness, have +taken refuge in the house. He finds himself in a long, noble room, with +a frescoed ceiling, a room full of signs of recent habitation and recent +tea, but which has apparently been deserted for the sunset splendours on +the terrace. He can see no single occupant. He walks slowly down it to +assure himself of the fact of its entire emptiness.</p> + +<p>By a singular and unaccountable freak of the builders, the windows are +set so high in the wall that each has had to have a little raised daïs +erected before it to enable the inmates to look comfortably out. Upon +each small platform stands a chair or two, and low over them the +curtains sweep. As he passes one recess, he notices that the drapery is +stirring a little, and examining more closely, sees the tail of a +well-known gown—of that gown which has met with his nearest approach to +approval among Amelia's rather scanty stock—peeping from beneath the +stiff rich folds of the old Italian brocade. It is the work of a second +to sweep the latter aside, and discover his poor <i>fiancée</i> all alone, +and crouching desolately in a low arm-chair. There is something so +unlike her in the attitude, something so different from her usual +uncomplaining, unpretending fortitude, something so disproportioned to +the cause—his own careless but not criminal delay, as he supposes—in +the despair evidenced by her whole pose, that he feels at once terrified +and angry. In a second he, too, has stepped up on to the little platform +beside her.</p> + +<p>"Amelia!" he cries. "Amelia! What are you doing up here? With whom are +you playing hide-and-seek?"</p> + +<p>Her words and her smiles are apt to be prompt enough, Heaven knows, to +spring out, answering his least hint; but now she neither speaks nor +moves a muscle of her face. She scarcely starts at all at his sudden +apparition and address, and no light comes across her features—those +features which, now that he looks at them more closely, he sees to be +set in a much more pinched pallor than even three watching nights and a +week of airless worry can account for.</p> + +<p>"Are you ill?"</p> + +<p>"No; I am not ill."</p> + +<p>The sting of irritation which, mixed with genuine alarm, had besieged +Jim's mind on his first realizing her crouched and unnatural attitude, +now entirely supersedes any other feeling. Is the accidental delay of +half an hour, an hour, say even an hour and a half, enough to justify +such a parade of anguish as this?</p> + +<p>"Is it possible," he inquires, in a tone of cold displeasure, "that I am +to attribute this—this state of things—to my being accidentally late? +It was a mere accident: it is not like you to make a scene. I do not +recognise you; I am very sorry that I was late, and that I have made you +angry."</p> + +<p>The chill reproach of his words seems to rouse her to a state more akin +to her natural one, to the humble and unexacting one which is habitual +to her.</p> + +<p>"Angry!" she repeats: "angry with you for being late? Oh, you are quite +mistaken! In all these years how often have I been angry with you?"</p> + +<p>There is such a meek upbraiding in her tone that his ill-humour gives +way to a vague apprehension.</p> + +<p>"Then what is it?" he cries brusquely; "what is it all about? I think I +have a right to ask you that; since I saw you last something must have +happened to you to produce this extraordinary change."</p> + +<p>She heaves a long dragging sigh.</p> + +<p>"Something has happened to me; yes, something has happened!"</p> + +<p>"But what—what kind of a something? I have a right to know—I insist +upon knowing; tell me!"</p> + +<p>He has grasped both her hands, whose unnatural coldness he feels even +through her rather ill-fitting gloves. So strange and mean a thing is +human nature that even at this moment it flashes across him, with a +sense of annoyance, what bad gloves Amelia always wears. However, he is +not troubled with them long, for she takes them and her cold hands +quietly back.</p> + +<p>"I will tell you, there is no question of insisting. I should have told +you anyhow; but not <i>here</i>"—glancing nervously round the dropped +curtains—"not now!"</p> + +<p>"Why not here? Why not now?"</p> + +<p>Her face quivers.</p> + +<p>"I could not," she says piteously. "I do not quite know how I shall get +through telling it; it must be somewhere—somewhere where it will not +matter if I do break down!"</p> + +<p>He stares at her in an unfeigned bewilderment, again slightly streaked +with wrath.</p> + +<p>"Have you gone mad, Amelia? or are you taking a leaf out of Sybilla's +book? If you do not clear up this extraordinary mystification at once, I +shall be compelled to believe either the one or the other."</p> + +<p>Again her face contracts with pain.</p> + +<p>"Oh, if it were only a mystification!" she says, with a low cry. "I +cannot tell you here; it is physically impossible to me. But do not be +afraid"—with an accent of bitterness, which he is quite at a loss to +account for—"you shall not have long to wait; I will tell you, without +fail, to-morrow; to-morrow morning, if you like. Come as early as you +please, I shall be ready to tell you; and now would you mind leaving me? +I want to have a few moments to myself before I see anybody—before I +see Mrs. Byng; will you please leave me?"</p> + +<p>It is so apparent that she is in deadly earnest, and resolute to have +her request complied with, that he can do nothing but step dizzily down +off the little daïs, feeling as if the world were turning round with +him.</p> + +<p>A quarter of an hour later he sees her leaving the party with Mrs. Byng, +looking as simple, as collected, and not very perceptibly paler than +usual.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX.</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>There is always something in the nature of a mountain in a night that is +interposed between us and either any promised pleasure or any threatened +pain. In the case of pleasure, we are naturally in a hurry to scale it, +in order to see how full of sunshine and flowers is the happy valley on +the other side; and in the case of pain, we are all scarcely less eager +to ascertain how deep is the abyss, how choking the swamp, how angry the +waves that wait us beyond the dusty hill.</p> + +<p>Burgoyne has no expectation of finding anything agreeable on the further +slope of his mountain, and yet the time seems long to him, till he has +climbed its crest, and slidden down its other side. Early and splendid +as is the new light that takes possession of him and his shutterless +bedroom, he upbraids it as a laggard; and the hours that pace by till +the one appointed for the explanation of yesterday's mystery seem to him +to hobble on crutches. What can Amelia have to say to him that needs +such a pomp of preparation? What can have turned Amelia into a Tragedy +Queen? What miracle can have made her take the imperative mood? For it +was the imperative mood unquestionably which, contrary to all precedent, +she had made use of when she had commanded him, most gently it is true, +since, being by her nature gentle, she can do nothing ungently, to leave +her. He absolutely laughs at the topsy-turviness of the idea. What can +she have to say that requires so carefully selected a spot to say it +in?—a spot where "it does not matter if she does break down." What, in +Heaven's name, can she be going to say that inspires her with such a +cold-blooded intention beforehand of breaking down?</p> + +<p>Jim's state of mind is something that of the Baron's in "On ne badine +pas avec l'amour," on hearing that his daughter's governess had been +turning somersaults in a field of luzerne. "Non, en vérité, non, mon +ami, je n'y comprends absolûment rien. Tout cela me paraît une conduite +désordonnée, il est vrai, mais sans motif comme sans excuse." If she +were any other woman, he should ascribe her behaviour to some tiresome +but passing tantrum, evoked by his delay in appearing? But in the past +eight years how many hundred times has he kept her waiting? and has she +ever failed to meet him with the same meek good-humour that has not had +even a tinge of reproachful forgiveness in it. As she herself had said, +"In all these years how often have I been angry with you?" He has been +angry with her times out of mind, angry with her on a thousand unjust +and unkind counts; angry with her for her slowness, her bad complexion, +her want of a sense of humour; for a hundred things that she cannot +help, that she would have altered—oh, how gladly!—if she could! But +how often has she been angry with him? In vain he searches his memory, +hoping to overtake some instance of ill-humour, or even pettishness, +that may make the balance between them hang a little more equal. But in +vain. She has never been angry with him. And even now neither her face +nor her manner—whatever else of strange and unparalleled they may have +conveyed—have conveyed the idea of anger.</p> + +<p>But if not anger, what then can be the cause that has produced a change +so startling in one so little given to impulsive action or +eccentricities of emotion? Can she have heard anything about him? +anything to his discredit? He searches his conscience, but whether it be +that that organ is not a particularly sensitive one, or that it really +has no damaging facts to give up, it is silent, or almost so. He has +perhaps been rather slack in his attendance upon her of late, but at her +own bidding. At his visits to the Le Marchants' no one could take +exception, dictated as they so obviously have been by philanthropy, and +his conversations with Elizabeth—how few and scant! his heart heaves a +rebellious sigh at their paucity—might be proclaimed without excision +at the market cross. Our thoughts are our own, and are, moreover, so +safely padlocked in our minds that he does not think it worth while to +inquire whether, if his future wife could have looked in and seen the +restive fancies capering, saddleless and bridleless, there, she might +have been justified in assuming a crouching attitude and a sorrowfully +commanding manner.</p> + +<p>He is as far as ever from solving the problem, when—for once in his +life before his time at the rendezvous—he presents himself at the +familiar door. It is opened to him by Amelia herself. She has often done +it before, seeming to know by instinct his ring from that of any other +person, but to-day the familiar action disconcerts him. He had expected +to be received with a formality and pomp of woe such as yesterday had +seemed to threaten; and here is Amelia looking exactly like her ordinary +self, except that she is perhaps rather more carefully dressed than +usual; but that may be due to the fact of her having, for the first +time, assumed the fresh calico gown, which the high summer of the +Italian April morning seems to justify. Whether it be due to the calico +gown or not, there is an indisputable air of gala about her, and she is +smiling. A revulsion of feeling comes over the man, to whom her tragic +semi-swooning airs had given a wakeful night. It was a tantrum after +all, then; a storm in a teacup. And now her common sense has come to the +rescue, and she has seen the folly of quarrelling with her bread and +butter. These reflections naturally do not translate themselves into +responsive smiles on his face, but she does not seem to notice his dour +looks.</p> + +<p>"I have a proposal to make to you," she says, still smiling. "Father is +so well this morning, quite easy, and he has been wheeled into the +sitting-room to see Sybilla. She has been very good about him this time, +and quite believes that he has been really bad."</p> + +<p>"How good of her!" comments Jim grimly; "it would be so easy and so +amusing to play at having a swollen toe, would not it?"</p> + +<p>"And so," continues Miss Wilson, wisely ignoring his fleer at her +sister, "I am perfectly free, and I want you to take me somewhere, some +little drive or expedition; you see," with a conciliatory glance at her +own modest finery, "I counted upon your saying 'yes'; I dressed so as +not to keep you waiting."</p> + +<p>Every word of this sentence confirms Burgoyne in the idea implanted by +her first address. This is her <i>amende</i>, and she is quite right to make +it. But she would have been more right still if her conduct had not +rendered it necessary.</p> + +<p>Amelia is not the type of woman who through life will gain much by +pouts. Perhaps, by-and-by, very kindly and delicately, he may obliquely +hint this to her. But all that he says aloud is the rather stiff +acquiescence conveyed in the words:</p> + +<p>"By all means. I am quite at your service."</p> + +<p>"And now where shall we go?" continues Amelia, shutting the door behind +her and beginning to cross the hotel courtyard at his side; "that is the +next thing—not to any gallery or church, I think, if you do not mind; I +say such stupid things about Art, and the more I try, the stupider they +are; let us go somewhere into the country—I can understand the country. +I am not afraid of saying stupid things about it."</p> + +<p>Into Burgoyne's mind comes the odious thought that he would not put it +past his betrothed to say stupid things even about the Tuscan landscape, +but he only awaits her decision in a respectful silence while helping +her into a fiacre.</p> + +<p>"It would be a sin to be under any roof to-day but this one," she says, +looking up to the immeasurable azure bridge above her head; "would you +mind—could you spare time to go to Fiesole?"</p> + +<p>His only answer is to repeat the word Fiesole to the driver, who, with +the inevitable tiny poodle-shaven dog beside him, is awaiting the order +as to his destination. It is but a little way to Fiesole, as we all +know, but yet, as the slow hired vehicle crawls up the steep ascent, +with the driver walking alongside, or even lagging behind, there would +be time and opportunity to say a good deal. But Amelia says next to +nothing. Perhaps the heat makes her sleepy, for it is so hot, so hot +between the garden walls, where the rose hedges are beginning to show a +pale flush of plenteous pink among their multitude of green buds. Young, +indeed, just born as the roses are, the highway dust has already +powdered them with its ash-toned white. He does not know it at the time, +but those dust-filmed rosebuds have found a home in his memory from +which no after-sights, however numerous, will dislodge them. They have +reached the village, and left their carriage, and begun, silently still, +to ascend the steep lane up which the feet of most of Europe and America +have in turn climbed to see the famous view that rewards the little +effort. Past the cottages, whose inmates, tranquilly sitting in their +doorways, or leaning idly against their door-posts, have probably seen +all that is illustrious, notorious, history-making of the day, pass +pantingly. Is there a prime minister, a princess, a poet, a prima donna, +of the time, that has not toiled up the steep path to the welcome rest +of the bench on the high plateau, on the hillside? Jim and Amelia are +certainly not likely to figure in the annals of their time, but the +peasants look at them with as much or as little interest as if they +were. An immortal, unless his immortality is printed on his back in +letters as large as those that announce Colman's mustard to the world, +has, to the vulgar, very much the air of one of themselves.</p> + +<p>Our friends have reached the haven of the stone seat, and, thanks to the +earliness of the hour, have it all to themselves, save for a trio of +sunburnt women of the people, with handkerchiefs tied over their tanned +heads, who tease them to buy straw hand-screens. And when they have +bought a couple, and made it kindly but distinctly evident that no +amount of worrying will induce them to buy any more, even these leave +them in peace and descend the hill again, in search of newer victims. +They are alone under the sky's warm azure. Beneath their eyes spreads +one of those nobly lovely spectacles that Italy and spring, hand in +hand, alone can offer. To some, indeed, it may seem that the prospect +from the Bellosguardo side of the valley is even more beautiful, since +Fiesole, sitting so high as she does, dwarfs the opposite hills, and +makes the looker lose their wavy line. They seem flat in comparison, the +plain appears wider, the beloved city more distant, and does not show +the same exquisite distinctness of separate tower and spire and palace. +But yet such comparison is mere carping. Who can wish for a sight more +divinely suave and fair than this from the bench above Fiesole? Not a +breath of smoke dares to hang about the glorious old town, dimming its +lustre, and between them and it what a spread of manifold colour, of +more "mingled hue" than the rainbow's "purfled scarf doth show!" The +moon-tinted olives, twilight and ghostly, even in the dazzling radiance +of this superb morning hour, with the blinding green of the young corn +about their gray feet, the cypress taper-flames, the gay white houses, +terrace gardened, and, above all, the vast smile of the Tuscan heaven.</p> + +<p>At first Amelia's muteness seems natural and grateful to Jim, as the +outcome of the awe and hush that exceeding beauty breathes on the human +heart, but by-and-by, as it is prolonged beyond the limits that seem to +him fit or agreeable, it begins to get on his nerves. After having so +genuinely and wantonly alarmed him, has she brought him here, without +any expressions of regret or remorse, simply to steep herself in a +silent luxury of selfish enjoyment? After brooding resentfully on this +idea for a considerable time, he translates it into speech.</p> + +<p>"I thought that you had something to say to me?"</p> + +<p>It seems as if her soul had gone out into the sun and April-painted +champaign country, and that it is only with an effort and a sigh that +she fetches it home again:</p> + +<p>"So I have."</p> + +<p>"And how much longer am I to wait for it?"</p> + +<p>There is no indication of any capacity for patience in his tone.</p> + +<p>She brings her look back from the shining morning city, and fixes it +wistfully upon him.</p> + +<p>"Are you in such a hurry to hear?"</p> + +<p>The pathetic streak in her voice, instead of conciliating, chafes him. +What is the sense of this paraphernalia of preliminaries? Why not come +to the point at once? if indeed there is a point—a fact of which he +begins to entertain grave doubts.</p> + +<p>"I do not know what you call hurry," he replies drily; "I have been +awaiting this mystic utterance for sixteen or seventeen hours."</p> + +<p>Her sallow cheek takes on a pinky tinge of mortification at his accent.</p> + +<p>"You are quite right," she answers quickly; "I have no business to keep +you waiting. I meant to tell you as soon as we got here; I asked you to +bring me here on purpose, only——"</p> + +<p>"You told me that you must make the communication at some place where it +would not matter if you did break down," says he, rather harshly helping +her memory; "you must allow that that was not an encouraging exordium. +Do you look upon this"—glancing ironically round—"as a particularly +suitable place for breaking down?"</p> + +<p>Again that pain-evidencing wave of colour flows into her face. There is +such an unloving mockery in his displeased voice.</p> + +<p>"I shall not break down," she replies, forcing herself to speak with +quiet composure; "you need not be afraid that I shall. I know that +yesterday I was foolish enough to say the very words you quote, but I +was not quite myself then; I did not quite know what I was saying; I had +only just heard it."</p> + +<p>"<i>It?</i> What IT? Is this a new riddle? For Heaven's sake let us hear the +answer to the first before we embark on any fresh one!"</p> + +<p>"It is no riddle," replies she, her low patient tones contrasting with +his exasperated ones, "nothing could be plainer; it was only that I +happened to overhear something rather—rather painful—something that +was not intended for me."</p> + +<p>His angry cheek blanches as his thought flies arrow-quick to the one +subject of his perennial apprehension. Someone has been poisoning her +ear with cowardly libels, or yet more dreadful truths about Elizabeth Le +Marchant. For a moment or two his tongue cleaves to the roof of his +mouth, then he says in a tone which he uselessly tries to make one of +calm contempt alone:</p> + +<p>"If you had lived longer in Florence, you would know how much importance +to attach to its tittle-tattle and <i>cancans</i>."</p> + +<p>She shakes her head with a sorrowful obstinacy.</p> + +<p>"This was no tittle-tattle—no <i>cancan</i>."</p> + +<p>Her answer seems but to confirm him in this first horrible suspicion.</p> + +<p>"It is astonishing," he says, in a strangled voice, "how ready even the +best women are to believe evil; what—what evidence have you of the +truth of—of these precious stories?"</p> + +<p>"What evidence?" she repeats, fastening her sad eyes upon him—"the +evidence of my own heart. I realize now that I have known it all along."</p> + +<p>Read by the light of his fears, this response is so enigmatic that it +dawns upon him with a flash of inexpressible solace that perhaps he may +be on the wrong track after all. His ideas are precipitated into such a +state of confusion by this blessed possibility that he can only echo in +a stupefied tone:</p> + +<p>"Have known what all along?"</p> + +<p>She has turned round on the stone bench upon which they have hitherto +been sitting side by side, and, as he in the eagerness of his listening +has done the same thing, they are now opposite to one another, and he +feels as well as sees her hungry eyes devouring his face.</p> + +<p>"That you are sick of me," she answers, in a heart-wrung whisper, "sick +to death of me—that was what she said."</p> + +<p>It is impossible to deny that Burgoyne's first impulse is one of relief. +He has been mistaken, then. Elizabeth's secret is in the same state of +precarious safety as her enemy's departure from Florence had left it in. +His second impulse—our second impulses are mostly our best ones, +equally free from the headlongness of our first, and the cold worldly +wisdom of our third—is one of genuine indignation, concern, and +amazement.</p> + +<p>"What who said?"</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Byng."</p> + +<p>His stupefaction deepens.</p> + +<p>"<i>Mrs. Byng</i>—Mrs. Byng told you that I was sick of you? Sick to death +of you?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no," she cries, even her emotion giving way to her eagerness to +correct this misapprehension, "she did not tell <i>me</i> so! How could you +imagine such a thing? She is far, far too kind-hearted; she would not +hurt a fly intentionally, and would be exceedingly pained if she thought +I had overheard her."</p> + +<p>He shrugs his shoulders despairingly.</p> + +<p>"<i>Je m'y perds!</i> She told you, and she did not tell you; you heard, and +you did not hear."</p> + +<p>"I am telling it very stupidly, I know," she says apologetically, "very +confusedly; and of course I can't expect you to understand by instinct +how it was." She sighs profoundly, and then goes on quickly, and no +longer looking at him. "You know she took me to the party, but when we +reached the villa, I found that she knew so many people, and I so few, +that I should only be a burden to her if I kept continually by her side, +and as I was rather tired—you know that I had not been in bed for two +or three nights—I thought I would go into the house and rest, so as to +be quite fresh by the time you came. I fancied it was not unlikely you +might be a little late."</p> + +<p>His conscience, at the unintentional reproach of this patient +supposition, reminds him of its existence by a sharp prick. How many +times has her poor vanity suffered the bruise of being long first at the +rendezvous?</p> + +<p>"I discovered that chair by the window under the curtain, the one where +you found me."</p> + +<p>"Well?"</p> + +<p>"It was so quiet there, as everybody was in the garden, that I suppose I +fell asleep; at least I remember nothing more until suddenly I heard +Mrs. Byng's voice saying——"</p> + +<p>"Saying what?"</p> + +<p>"Her son was with her—he had brought her in to have some tea; it was to +him that she was speaking; she was asking him about me, where I was? +where he had left me? whether he had seen me lately? And then she said, +'Poor Amelia, Jim really does neglect her shamefully; and yet one cannot +help being sorry for him, too; it was such child-stealing in the first +instance, and he is evidently dead-sick of her! It is so astonishing +that she does not see it!'"</p> + +<p>There is something almost terrible in the calm distinctness with which +Amelia repeats the sentences that had laid the card-house of her +happiness in the dust. Certainly she keeps her promise to him to the +letter; she gives no lightest sign of breaking down. There is not a tear +in her eye, not a quiver in her voice. After a moment's pause, she +continues:</p> + +<p>"And then he, Mr. Byng, answered, 'Poor soul, it—it <i>is</i> odd! She must +have the hide of a hippopotamus.'"</p> + +<p>Amelia has finished her narrative, repeating the young man's galling +comment, with the same composure as his mother's humiliatingly +compassionate ones; and for a space her sole auditor is absolutely +incapable of making any criticism upon it. He is forbidden, if he had +wished it, to offer her even the mute amends of a dumb endearment, by +the reappearance on the scene of a couple of the sun-scorched peasant +torments with their straw hand-screens. It is not likely that those so +lately bought should have worn out already; but yet they renew their +importunities with such a determined obstinacy, as if they knew this to +be the case; and it is not until they are lightened of two more, that +they consent once again to retire, leaving the warm bright plateau to +the lovers—if indeed they can be called such.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI.</h2> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"True, be it said, whatever man it said,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That love with gall and honey doth abound;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But if the one be with the other way'd,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For every dram of honey therein found<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A pound of gall doth over it redound."<br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + + +<p>"She was perfectly right," says Amelia, still speaking quite quietly; +"it is astonishing that I should not have seen it; and it <i>was</i> +child-stealing; you were barely twenty-one, and I—I was not very young +for a woman even then—I was twenty-three. I ought to have known +better."</p> + +<p>For once in his life Burgoyne is absolutely bereft of speech. It is +always a difficult matter to rebut a charge of being dead sick of a +woman without conveying an insult in the very denial; and when there +lies a horrid substratum of truth under the exaggeration of the +accusation, the difficulty becomes an impossibility.</p> + +<p>"However, it might have been much worse," continues Miss Wilson; "just +think if I had overheard it only after I had married you, when I knew +that there was nothing but death that could rid you of me. I thank God I +have heard it in time."</p> + +<p>His throat is still too dry for him to speak; but he stretches out his +arm to encircle her in a mute protest at that thanksgiving over her own +shipwreck; but, for the first time in her life, she eludes his caress.</p> + +<p>"Child-stealing," she repeats, under her breath; "and yet"—with a +touching impulse of apology and deprecation—"you seemed old for your +age; you seemed so much in earnest; I think you really were;"—a wistful +pause—"and afterwards, though of course I could not help seeing that I +was not to you what you were to me, yet I thought—I hoped that if I +waited—if I was patient—if no one else—no one more worthy of you came +between us"—another and still wistfuller delay in her halting +speech—"you might grow a little fond of me, out of long habit; I never +expected you to be more than a little fond of me!"</p> + +<p>He has entirely hidden his face in his two hands, so that she is without +that index to guide her as to the effect produced by her words, and he +continues completely silent. Whether, even after her rude awakening, she +still, deep in her heart, cherishes some pale hope of a denial, an +explaining away of the reported utterances, who shall say? It is with a +half-choked sigh that she goes on:</p> + +<p>"But you could not; I am not so unjust as not to know that you tried +your best. Poor fellow! it must have been uphill work for you"—with a +first touch of bitterness—"<i>labouring</i> to love me, for eight years; is +it any wonder that you failed? and I was so thick-skinned I did not see +it—the '<i>hide of a hippopotamus</i>' indeed! There could not be a juster +comparison; and now all I can do is to beg your pardon for having spoilt +eight of your best years—<i>your best years</i>"—with slow iteration; "but +come"—more lightly—"you have some very good ones left too; you are +still quite young; for a man you are quite young; the harm I have done +you is not irreparable; I think"—with an accent of reproach—"you might +ease my mind by telling me that the harm I have done you is not +irreparable!"</p> + +<p>Thus appealed to, it is impossible for him any longer to maintain his +attitude of disguise and concealment. His hands must needs be withdrawn +from before his face; and, as he turns that face towards her, she +perceives with astonishment, almost consternation, that there is an +undoubted tear in each of his hard gray eyes.</p> + +<p>"And what about the harm I have done to you?" he asks under his breath, +as if having no confidence in his voice; "what about the eight best +years of <i>your</i> life?"</p> + +<p>A look of affection, so high and tender and selfless, as to seem to +remove her love out of the category of the mortal and the transitory, +dawns and grows in her wan face.</p> + +<p>"Do not fret about them," she answers soothingly, "they were—they +always will have been—the eight best years of my life. They were full +of good and pleasant things. Do not forget—I would not for worlds have +you forget—I shall never forget myself—that they all came to me +through you!"</p> + +<p>At her words, most innocent as they are of any intention of producing +such an effect, a hot flush of shame rises to his very forehead, as his +memory presents to him the successive eras into which these eight good +years had divided themselves: six months of headlong boyish passion; six +months of cooling fever; and seven years of careless, intermittent, +matter-of-course, half-tenderness.</p> + +<p>"Through <i>me</i>?" he repeats, with an accent of the deepest +self-abasement; "you do not mean to be ironical, dear; you were never +such a thing in your life; you could not be if you tried; but if you +knew what a <i>sweep</i> you make me feel when you say the sort of thing you +have just said!—and so it is all to come to an end, is it? Good as +these eight years have been, you have had enough of them? You do not +want any more like them?"</p> + +<p>She says neither yes nor no. He remains unanswered, unless the faint +smile in her weary eyes and about her drooped mouth can count for a +reply.</p> + +<p>"And all because you have heard some fool say that I was tired of you?"</p> + +<p>The tight smile spreads a little wider, and invades her pale cheeks.</p> + +<p>"Worse than tired! <i>sick! sick to death!</i>"</p> + +<p>She is looking straight before her, at the landscape simmering in the +climbing sun, the divine landscape new and young as it was before duomo +and bell-tower sprang and towered heavenwards. Why should her gaze dwell +any more upon him? She has renounced him, her eyes must fain renounce +him too. As he hears her words, as he watches her patient profile, the +sole suffering thing in the universal morning joy, a great revulsion of +feeling, a great compassion mixed with as large a remorse pours in +torrent over his heart. These emotions are so strong that they make him +deceive even himself as to their nature. It seems to him as if scales +had suddenly fallen from his eyes, showing him how profoundly he prizes +the now departing good, telling him that life can neither ask nor give +anything better than the undemanding, selfless, boundless love about to +withdraw its shelter from him. His arm steals round her waist, and not +once does it flash across his mind—as, to his shame be it spoken, it +has often flashed before—what a long way it has to steal!</p> + +<p>"Am I sick of you, Amelia?"</p> + +<p>She makes no effort to release herself. It does him no harm that she +should once more rest within his clasp. But she still looks straight +before her at lucent Firenze and her olives, and says three times, +accompanying each repetition of the word with a sorrowful little +head-shake:</p> + +<p>"Yes! <i>yes!</i> YES!"</p> + +<p>He will compel her to look at him, his own Amelia. Have not all her +tender looks been his for eight long years? He puts out his disengaged +hand, and with it determinately turns her poor quivering face round so +as to meet his gaze.</p> + +<p>"Am I sick of you, Amelia?"</p> + +<p>In the emotion of the moment, it appears to him as if there were +something almost ludicrously improbable and lying about that accusation, +in which, when first brought against him, his guilty soul had admitted +more than a grain of truth. Her faded eyes turn to his, like flowers to +their sun; the veracity of his voice and of his eager gray orbs—still +softened from their habitual severity by the tears that had so lately +wet them—making such a hope, as, five minutes ago, she had thought +never again to cherish, leap into splendid life in her sick heart.</p> + +<p>"Is it possible?" she murmurs, almost inaudibly, "do you mean—that you +are <i>not</i>?"</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>They go down the hill, past the cottages, and the incurious peasants, +hand in hand, her soul running over with a deep joy; and his occupied by +an unfamiliar calm, that is yet backed by an ache of remorse, and +by—what else? That "else" he himself neither could nor would define. He +spends the whole of that day with Amelia, both lunching and dining with +her and her family; a course which calls forth expressions of unaffected +surprise, not at all tinctured with malice—unless it be in the case of +Sybilla, who has never been partial to him—from each of them.</p> + +<p>"We have been thinking that Jim was going to jilt you, Amelia!" Cecilia +has said with graceful badinage; nor, strange to say, has she been at +all offended when Jim has retorted, with equal grace and much superior +ill-nature, that on such a subject no one could speak with more +authority than she.</p> + +<p>The large white stars are making the nightly sky almost as gorgeous as +the day's departed majesty had done, ere Jim finds himself back at his +hotel. His intention of quietly retreating to his own room is traversed +by Byng, who, having evidently been on the watch for him, springs up the +stairs, three steps at a time, after him.</p> + +<p>"Where have you been all day?" he inquires impatiently.</p> + +<p>"At the Anglo-Américain. I wonder you are not tired of always asking the +same question and receiving the same answer to it."</p> + +<p>"I am not so sure that I should always receive the same answer," replies +the other, with a forced laugh—"but stop a bit!"—seeing a decided +quickening of speed in his friend's upward movements—"my mother is +asking for you; she has been asking for you all the afternoon; she wants +to speak to you before she goes."</p> + +<p>"<i>Goes?</i>"</p> + +<p>"Yes, she is off at seven o'clock to-morrow morning—back to England: +she had a telegram to-day to say that her old aunt, the one who brought +her up, has had a second stroke. No!"—seeing Jim begin to arrange his +features in that decorous shape of grave sympathy which we naturally +assume on such occasions—"it is no case of great grief; the poor old +woman has been quite silly ever since her last attack; but mother thinks +that she ought to be there, at—at the end; to look after things, and so +forth."</p> + +<p>There is an alertness, a something that expresses the reverse of regret +in the tone employed by Mrs. Byng's son in this detailed account of the +causes of her imminent departure, which, even if his thoughts had not +already sprung in that direction, would have set Burgoyne thinking as to +the mode in which the young man before him is likely to employ the +liberty that his parent's absence will restore to him.</p> + +<p>"I offered to go with her," says Byng, perhaps discerning a portion at +least of his companion's disapprobation.</p> + +<p>"And she refused?"</p> + +<p>Byng looks down, and begins to kick the banisters—they are still on the +stairs—idly with one foot.</p> + +<p>"Mother is so unselfish that it is always difficult to make out what she +really wishes; but—but I do not quite see of what use I should be to +her if I did go."</p> + +<p>There is a moment's pause; then Burgoyne speaks, in a dry, hortatory +elder brother's voice:</p> + +<p>"If you take my advice you will go home."</p> + +<p>The disinterested counsel of wise elder brothers is not always taken in +the spirit it merits; and there is no trace of docile and unquestioning +acquiescence in Byng's monosyllabic—</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>"Because, if you stay here, I think you will most likely get into +mischief."</p> + +<p>The young man's usually good-humoured eyes give out a blue spark that +looks rather like fight.</p> + +<p>"The same kind of mischief that you have been getting into during the +past week?" he inquires slowly.</p> + +<p>The acquaintance with his movements evidenced by this last sentence, no +less than the light they throw upon his own motives, stagger Jim, to the +extent of making him accept the sneer in total silence. Is not it a +richly deserved one? But the sweet-natured Byng is already repenting it; +and there is something conciliatory and almost entreating in the spirit +of his last remark:</p> + +<p>"I do not know what has happened to my mother," he says, lowering his +voice; "there is no one less of a <i>mauvaise langue</i> than she, as you +know; but in the case of——"—he breaks off and begins his sentence +afresh; "she has been warning me against <i>them</i> again; I can't find that +she has any reason to go upon; but she has taken a violent prejudice +against <i>her</i>. She says that it is one of her instincts; and you—you +have done nothing towards setting her right?"</p> + +<p>Perhaps it may be that his young friend's reported metaphor of the +"hippopotamus hide" has not served to render him any dearer to Jim; but +there is certainly no great suavity in his reply:</p> + +<p>"Why should I?—it is no concern of mine."</p> + +<p>"No concern of yours to stand by and see an angel's white robe +besmirched by the foul mire of slander?" cries Byng indignantly, and +lapsing into that high-flown mood which never fails to make his more +work-a-day companion "see blood."</p> + +<p>"When I come across such a disagreeable sight it will be time enough to +decide whether I will interfere or not. At present I have not met with +anything of the kind," returns he, resolutely putting an end to the +dialogue by knocking at Mrs. Byng's portal, within which he is at once +admitted.</p> + +<p>The door of the bedroom communicating with the <i>salon</i> is open, and +through it he sees the lady he has come to visit standing surrounded by +gaping dress-baskets, strewn raiment, and scattered papers; all the +uncomfortable litter that speaks of an imminent departure. She joins him +at once, and, shutting the door behind her, sits down with a fagged air.</p> + +<p>"I hear," he begins—"Willy tells me—I am very sorry to hear——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, there is no great cause for sorrow," rejoins she quickly, as if +anxious to disclaim a grief which might be supposed to check or limit +her conversation—"poor dear old auntie!—the people who love her best +could not wish to keep her in the state she has been in for the last +year; oh, dear!"—sighing—"how very dismal the dregs of life are! do +not you hope, Jim, that we shall die before we come to be 'happy +releases'?"</p> + +<p>"I do indeed," replies he gravely; "I expect to be sick—dead-sick of +life long before I reach that stage of it."</p> + +<p>He looks at her resentfully as she speaks, but she has so entirely +forgotten her own application of the accented adjectives to his feelings +for Amelia, that she replies only by a rather puzzled but perfectly +innocent glance.</p> + +<p>"I never was so unwilling to leave any place in my life," she goes on +presently, pursuing her own train of thought; "I do not know how to +describe it—a sort of presentiment."</p> + +<p>He smiles.</p> + +<p>"And yet I do not think that there are any owls in the Piazza to hoot +under your windows!"</p> + +<p>"Perhaps not," rejoins she, with some warmth; "but what is still more +unlucky than that happened to me last night; they passed the wine the +wrong way round the table at the MacIvors. I was on thorns!"</p> + +<p>"And you think that the wine going the wrong way round the table gave +your aunt a stroke?" inquires Jim, with an irritating air of asking for +information.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Byng reddens slightly.</p> + +<p>"I think nothing of the kind; I draw no inference; I only state a fact; +it <i>is</i> a very unlucky thing to send the wine round the wrong way: if +you had not spent your life among grizzly bears and cannibals you would +have known it too!"</p> + +<p>"There are no cannibals in the Rocky Mountains," corrects Jim quietly; +and then they both laugh, and recommence their talk on a more friendly +footing.</p> + +<p>"I am not at all happy about Willy."</p> + +<p>"No?"</p> + +<p>"It is not his health so much—his colour is good, and his appetite not +bad."</p> + +<p>"Except the Fat Boy in 'Pickwick,' I never heard of anyone who had a +better."</p> + +<p>"But he is not himself; there is something odd about him!"</p> + +<p>"Indeed!"</p> + +<p>"Have not you noticed it yourself?—do not you think that there is +something odd about him? Does not he strike you as odd?"</p> + +<p>"<i>Odd?</i>" repeats Burgoyne slowly, reflecting in how extremely +commonplace a light both the virtues and vices of his fellow-traveller +have always presented themselves to him; "it would never have occurred +to me that Willy was <i>odd</i>; I cannot"—smiling—"encourage you in the +idea that you have added one to the number of the world's eccentrics."</p> + +<p>She sighs rather impatiently at his apparently intentional +misunderstanding of her drift.</p> + +<p>"'Children are avenues to misfortune,' as somebody said, and I think +that, whoever he was, he was right. 'If Jacob take a wife of the +daughters of Heth, such as are those in the land, what good shall my +life do to me?'"</p> + +<p>"Why should you credit Jacob with any such intention?"</p> + +<p>"I do not half like leaving him here by himself."</p> + +<p>"<i>By himself?</i> You count me as no one then?"</p> + +<p>"Oh yes, I do—I count you as a great deal; that is why I was so anxious +to speak to you before I went; of course I do not expect you to take +upon yourself the whole responsibility of him, but you might keep an eye +upon him."</p> + +<p>He shrugs his shoulders.</p> + +<p>"As I have to keep the other eye upon myself, I am afraid that the +effort would but make me squint."</p> + +<p>"It is his own generosity that I am afraid of—his self-sacrificing +impulses; I am always in terror of his marrying someone out of pure +good-nature, just to oblige her, just because she looked as if she +wished it."</p> + +<p>"Stevenson thinks that it does not much matter whom we marry, whether +'noisy scullions,' or 'acidulous vestals.'"</p> + +<p>"I do not care what Stevenson thinks: ever since Willy was in Eton +jackets, I have had a nightmare of his bringing me home as +daughter-in-law some poor little governess with her nose through her +veil, and her fingers through her gloves!"</p> + +<p>Burgoyne smiles involuntarily as a vision of Elizabeth's daintily-clad +hands flashes before his mental eye.</p> + +<p>"I think you overrate his magnanimity; I never saw him at all tender to +anyone whose gloves were not beyond suspicion."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Byng laughs constrainedly.</p> + +<p>"Well, if she has not holes in her gloves, she may have holes in her +reputation, which is worse."</p> + +<p>Jim draws in his breath hard. The tug of war is coming, as the preceding +leading remark, lugged in by the head and shoulders, sufficiently +evidences. At all events he will do nothing to make its approach easier +or quicker. He awaits it in silence.</p> + +<p>"These Le Marchants—as they are friends of yours—I suppose that I +ought not to say anything against them?"</p> + +<p>"I am sure that you are too well-bred to do anything of the kind," +replies he precipitately, with a determined effort to stop her mouth +with a compliment, which she is equally determined not to deserve.</p> + +<p>"I do not think I am; I am only well-bred now and then, when it suits +me; I am not going to be well-bred to-night."</p> + +<p>"I am sorry to hear it."</p> + +<p>"Whether they are friends of yours or not, I do not like them."</p> + +<p>"I do not think that that matters much, either to you or to them."</p> + +<p>"I have an instinct that they are adventuresses."</p> + +<p>"I know for a certainty "—with growing warmth—"that they are nothing +of the kind."</p> + +<p>"Then why do not they go out anywhere?"</p> + +<p>"Because they do not choose."</p> + +<p>"Because no one asks them, more likely! Why were they so determined not +to be introduced to me?"</p> + +<p>"How can I tell? Perhaps"—with a wrathful laugh—"they did not like +your looks!"</p> + +<p>She echoes his false mirth with no inferior exasperation.</p> + +<p>"Who is ill-bred now?"</p> + +<p>Her tone calls him back to a sense of the ungentleman-likeness and +puerility of his conduct.</p> + +<p>"I!"—he replies contritely—"undoubtedly I! but——"</p> + +<p>"Do not apologize," interrupts she, recovering her equanimity with that +ease which she has transmitted to her son; "I like you for standing up +for them if they <i>are</i> your friends; and I hope that you will do the +same good office for me when someone sticks pins into me behind my back; +but come now, let us be rational; surely we may talk quietly about them +without insulting each other, may not we?"</p> + +<p>"I do not know; we can try."</p> + +<p>"I suppose"—a little ironically—"that you are not so sensitive about +them but that you can bear me to ask a few perfectly harmless +questions?"</p> + +<p>He writhes. "Of course! of course! what are they to me?—they are +nothing to me!"</p> + +<p>A look of incredulity, which she perhaps does not take any very great +pains to conceal, spreads over her face.</p> + +<p>"Then you really will be doing me a great service if you tell me just +exactly all you know about them, good and bad."</p> + +<p>"All I know about them," replies Jim in a rapid parrot-voice, as if he +were rattling over some disagreeable lesson—"is that they were +extremely kind to me ten years ago; that they had a beautiful place in +Devonshire, and were universally loved and respected: I hear that they +have let their place; so no doubt they are not so much loved and +respected as they were; and now you know as much about the matter as I +do!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII.</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Welcome ever smiles; and Farewell goes out sighing."<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<p>This last clause is not always true. For example, there is very little +sighing in the farewells made to Mrs. Byng by the two young men who see +her off at the Florence Railway Station. And Mrs. Byng herself has been +too much occupied in manœuvring to get a few last private words with +each of her escort to have much time for sighing either.</p> + +<p>She would have been wounded if her old friend Jim had not come to see +the last of her, and she would have been broken-hearted if her son had +not paid her this final attention; and yet each necessarily destroys the +<i>tête-à-tête</i> she is burning to have with the other. It is indelicate to +implore your adored child not to go to the devil in the presence of an +intimate friend, and it would give a not unnatural umbrage to that child +if you urged the guardian friend to check his downward tendency while he +himself is standing by. Nor do her two companions at all aid her in her +strategy; rather, they show a tendency to unite in baffling her, hanging +together round her like a bodyguard, and effectually hindering the last +words which she is pining to administer. Only once for a very few +minutes does she succeed in outwitting them, when she despatches Willy +to the bookstall to buy papers for her—an errand from which he returns +with an exasperating celerity. The instant that his back is turned, Mrs. +Byng addresses her companion in an eager voice of hurry and prayer:</p> + +<p>"You will keep an eye upon him?"</p> + +<p>Silence.</p> + +<p>"You will keep an eye upon him—promise?"</p> + +<p>"I do not know what 'keeping an eye upon him' means in your vocabulary; +often you and I do not use the same dictionary; until I know, I will not +promise."</p> + +<p>"You will look after him; <i>do</i>, Jim!"</p> + +<p>"My dear madam"—with irritation—"let me go and buy your papers; and +meanwhile urge <i>him</i> to look after <i>me</i>; I assure you that it is quite +as necessary."</p> + +<p>"Fiddlesticks, with your unimaginative, unemotional nature——"</p> + +<p>"H'm!"</p> + +<p>"Your head will always take care of your heart."</p> + +<p>"Will it?"</p> + +<p>"While he—promise me at least that, if you see him rushing to his ruin, +you will telegraph to me?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly, if you wish it; I will telegraph, 'Willy rushing Ruin.' At +five-and-twenty centimes a word, it will cost you sevenpence halfpenny; +not dear at the price, is it?"</p> + +<p>The mother reddens.</p> + +<p>"You have become a very <i>mauvais plaisant</i> of late, Jim; oh dear me! +here he is back again, tiresome boy!"</p> + +<p>It is with feelings tied into a knot of complications, which he scarcely +seeks to unravel, that Burgoyne walks away from the station, and from +the good-natured staunch woman, whose last few moments in fair Firenze +he has done his best to embitter. He is glad that she is gone, and he is +sorry that she is gone. He is remorseful at his gladness, and he is +ashamed of his sorrow, knowing and acknowledging that it results from no +regret for her companionship, which he had been wont to prize; but to +the consciousness that she had stood like an angel with a drawn sword +between her son and the Piazza d'Azeglio. Both angel and drawn sword are +steaming away now, covered by a handsome travelling cloak down to the +heels in a <i>coupé toilette</i>, and the road to the Piazza lies naked and +undefended, open to the light feet that are so buoyantly treading the +flags beside him.</p> + +<p>The step of youth is always light, but there is something aggressively +springy in Byng's this morning; and though he does not <i>say</i> anything +offensively cheerful, there is a ring in his voice that makes his kind +friend long to hit him. He, the kind friend, is thankful when their ways +part, without his having done him any bodily violence.</p> + +<p>"You are late to-day," says Cecilia, as he enters the <i>salon</i>, giving +him a nod of indifferent friendliness, while Sybilla crossly asks him to +shut the door more quietly, and Amelia lays her hand lingeringly in his, +with a silent smile of rapture; "we began to think you had had a +relapse. I was just telling Amelia that the pace had been too good to +last—ha, ha!"</p> + +<p>Burgoyne has always found it difficult to laugh at Cecilia's jokes, and +his now perfect intimacy with her relieves him from the necessity of +even feigning to do so.</p> + +<p>"I have been seeing Mrs. Byng off," he replies, with that slight shade +of awkwardness in his tone which has accompanied his every mention of +the mother or son since his explanation with his betrothed.</p> + +<p>"You let her go without getting that wedding present out of her, after +all?" cries Cecilia, who is in a rather tryingly playful mood.</p> + +<p>"Gone, is she?" says Sybilla, with a somewhat ostentatious sigh of +resentful relief; "well, I, for one, shall not cry. I am afraid that she +was not very <i>simpatica</i> to me; she was so dreadfully robust. Perhaps, +now that she is no longer here to monopolise him, we shall be allowed to +see something more of that nice boy."</p> + +<p>No one answers. Not one of her three listeners is at the moment disposed +to chant or even echo praises of the "nice boy." Sybilla perversely +pursues the subject.</p> + +<p>"I dare say that he has a delicacy about coming without a special +invitation," she says, "where there is an invalid; but you might tell +him that on my good days no one is more pleased to see their friends +than I; it does not even send my temperature up; you might tell him that +on my good days Dr. Coldstream says it does not even send my temperature +up!"</p> + +<p>Again no one answers.</p> + +<p>"You do not seem to be listening to what I am saying," cries Sybilla +fractiously; "will you please tell him, Jim?"</p> + +<p>Jim lifts his heavy eyes from the ugly carpet on which they have been +resting, and looks distastefully back at her.</p> + +<p>"I do not think that I will, Sybilla," he replies slowly; "I do not +think he cares a straw whether your temperature goes up or down. I think +that he does not come here because—because he has found metal more +attractive elsewhere."</p> + +<p>He makes this statement for no other reason than because it is so +intensely unpleasant to him, because he realizes that he must have to +face the fact it embodies, and to present it not only to himself, but to +others. And each day that passes proves to him more and more +conclusively that it <i>is</i> a fact. He asks Byng no question as to the +disposition of his day. He sees but little of him, having, indeed, +changed the hours of his own breakfast and dinner in order to avoid +having his appetite spoilt by the sight of so much unnecessary radiance +opposite him; but he knocks up against him, flower-laden, at the Strozzi +steps; he notes the splendour of his ties and waistcoats; he grows to +know the <i>Elizabeth-look</i> on his face, when he comes singing home at +evening, as one knows the look of the western clouds that the sun's red +lips have only just ceased to kiss, though no sun is any longer in +sight; and yet he does not interfere. He has received from the young +man's mother a hasty letter, pencilled in the train, not an hour after +she had quitted him; another more leisurely, yet as anxious, from Turin; +a third from Paris, and lastly a telegram from Charing Cross. All bear +the same purport.</p> + +<p>"Write; keep an eye upon him!" "Write; keep an eye upon him! Write!"</p> + +<p>And yet, though a full week has passed, though he sees the son of his +old ally drifting, faster than ever autumn leaf drifted on a flush +October river, to the whirlpool she had dreaded for him, yet he sends +her never a word. He writes her long letters, it is true, covers +telegram-forms with pregnant messages, but they all find their ultimate +home in the wood fire. When the moment comes, he finds it impossible to +send them, since, upon searching his heart for the motives that have +dictated them, he finds those motives to be no fidelity to an ancient +friendship, no care for the boy's welfare, but, simply and nakedly, the +satisfaction of his own spite, the easing of his own bitter jealousy.</p> + +<p>So the Florentine post goes out daily, bearing no tale of Byng's +backslidings to his native land, and Jim, brushing past him, answering +him curtly, never going nearer to the Piazza d'Azeglio than the +Innocenti—a good long street off—devotes himself to the frantic +prosecution of a suit long since won, to the conquest of a heart for +eight weary years hopelessly, irrecoverably, pitiably his. His presence +at the Anglo-Américain is so incessant, and his monopolizing of Amelia +so unreasonable, that Sybilla—for the first time in her life really a +little neglected—alternately runs up her pulse to 170 and drops it to +40.</p> + +<p>"And then you wonder that I am anxious to be married," says Cecilia, +accompanying her future brother-in-law to the door, on the day on which +the latter phenomenon has occurred, and wiping the angry tears from her +plump cheeks. "I make no secret of it, I <i>am</i> madly anxious, I would +marry anyone, I am desperate. Just think what my life will be when +Amelia is gone; and though of course I shall be a great deal with +her—she has promised that I shall be almost always with her" (Jim +winces)—"yet of course it can't be the same thing as having a home of +your own."</p> + +<p>"We will do our best for you," replies he, with a rather rueful smile +and a sense of degradation; "but you know, my dear Cis, anybody can lead +a horse to the water, but it is not so easy to make him drink."</p> + +<p>"That is quite true," replies Cecilia, one of whose most salient merits +is an extreme unreadiness to be affronted, wiping her eyes as she +speaks, "and I have no luck; such promising things turn up, and then +come to nothing. Now, that clergyman the other day, whom we met at the +Villa Careggi—such a pleasant gentlemanlike man—he was on the look-out +for a wife, he told me so himself, and I know so much about the working +of a parish, and next day he was off, Heaven knows where!"</p> + +<p>Jim gives a slight shudder.</p> + +<p>"I do not think you had any great loss in him," he says hastily; then, +seeing her surprised air, "I mean, you know, that it is always said that +a man is a better judge of another man than a woman is, and I did not +like his looks; give us time, and we will do better for you than that."</p> + +<p>Cecilia can no longer accuse her future relation of any slackness in the +matter of expeditions. There is something of fever in the way in which +he arrives each morning, armed with some new plan for the day, giving no +one any peace until his project is carried out. It seems as if he must +crowd into the last fortnight of Amelia's stay in Florence all the +sight-seeing, all the junkets, all the enjoyment which ought to have +been temperately spread over the eight years of their engagement.</p> + +<p>One day—all nearer excursions being exhausted—they drive to Monte +Senario, that sweet and silent spot, happily too far from Florence for +the swarm of tourists to invade, where earth-weary men have set up a +rest scarcely less dumb than the grave in a lonely monastery of the +Order of La Trappe. Through the Porta San Gallo, along the Bologna Road +they go. It is a soft summer morning, with not much sun. Up, past the +villas and gardens, where the Banksia roses and wistarias are rioting +over wall, and berceau and pergola, climbing even the tall trees. Round +the very head of one young poplar two rose-trees—a yellow and a white +one—are flinging their arms; flowered so lavishly that hardly a pin's +point could be put between the blossoms. Up and up, a white wall on +either hand. The dust lies a foot thick on the road; thick too on the +monthly roses, just breaking into full pink flush; thick on themselves +as the endless mulecarts come jingling down the hill with bells and red +tassels, and a general air of what would be jollity were not that +feeling so given the lie to by the poor jaded, suffering beasts. Up and +up, till they leave stone walls and villas and oliveyards behind them, +and are away among the mountains. At a very humble little house that has +no air of an inn they leave the carriage, and climb up a rocky road, and +through a perfumed pine-wood, to where the Trappist Monastery stands, in +its perfect silence and isolation, on its hilltop, looking over its +fir-woods at the ranges of the Apennines, lying one behind the other in +the stillness of the summer-day; looking to distant Florence, misty and +indistinct in her Arno plain; looking to Fiesole, dwarfed to a +molehill's dimensions.</p> + +<p>"I am told that one of the brothers is an Englishman; I did not hear his +name, but he is certainly English," says Cecilia, as they mount the +shallow, grass-grown steps to the monastery door. "If I send up word +that I am a fellow-countrywoman, perhaps he will come out and speak to +me; I am sure that it would be a very nice change for him, poor fellow!"</p> + +<p>And it is the measure of the amount of Cecilia's acquaintance with the +rules of the Order, that it is only half in jest that she makes the +suggestion. But she does not repeat it to the lay-brother who stands, +civil yet prohibitory, at the top of the flight, and who, in answer to +Burgoyne's halting questions as to where they may go, politely answers +that they may go anywhere—anywhere, <i>bien entendu</i>, outside. So they +wander aimlessly away. They push open a rickety gate, and passing an old +dog, barking angry remonstrances at them from the retirement of a +barrel, step along a grassy path that leads they know not whither. Two +more young lay-brothers meet them, with their hands full of +leopard's-bane flowers, which they have been gathering, probably to deck +their altar with.</p> + +<p>Amelia has passed her hand through Jim's arm—since his late increased +kindness to her she has been led to many more little freedoms with him +than she had hitherto permitted herself—and though she is very careful +not to lean heavily or troublesomely upon him, yet the slight contact of +her fingers keeps him reminded that she is there. Perhaps it is as well, +since to-day he is conscious of such a strange tendency to forget +everything, past, present, and to come. Has one of the monks' numb hands +been laid upon his heart to lull it into so frozen a quiet? To-day he +feels as if it were absolutely impossible to him to experience either +pleasure or pain; as if to hold Elizabeth in his own arms, or see her in +Byng's, would be to him equally indifferent. His apathy in this latter +respect is to be put to the test sooner than he expects. Not indeed that +Elizabeth is lying in Byng's arms—it would be a gross misrepresentation +to say so, she being, on the contrary, most decorously poised on a +camp-stool—least romantic of human resting places—when they come +suddenly upon her and him in the course of their prowl round the +inhospitable walls. She is sitting on her camp-stool, and he is lying on +his face in the grass, just not touching her slim feet.</p> + +<p>The advancing party perceive the couple advanced upon before the latter +are aware of their nearness; long enough for the former to realize how +very much <i>de trop</i> they will be, yet not long enough to enable them to +escape unnoticed. Jim becomes aware of the very second at which Amelia +recognises the unconscious pair, by an involuntary pinch of her fingers +upon his arm, which a moment later she hastily drops. His own first +feeling on catching sight of them—no, not his <i>very</i> first—his very +first is as if someone had run a darning-needle into his heart—but +almost his first is to shout out to them in loud warning:</p> + +<p>"Be on your guard! we are close to you!"</p> + +<p>He will never forgive either himself or them if they ignorantly indulge +in any endearment under his very eyes. But they do not. There are no +interlacing arms to disentwine, nothing to make them spring apart, when +at length they look up and take in the fact—an unwelcome fact it must +needs be—of their invasion.</p> + +<p>On hearing approaching footsteps, Byng rolls over on his back in the +grass; on perceiving that most of the footsteps are those of ladies, he +springs to his feet. Elizabeth remains sitting on her camp-stool.</p> + +<p>"What a coincidence!" cries Cecilia, breaking into a laugh.</p> + +<p>They are all grateful to her for the remark, though it is rather a silly +one, as there is no particular coincidence in the case. Burgoyne is +irritatedly conscious that Amelia is covertly observing him, and before +he can check himself he has thrown over his shoulder at her one of those +snubbing glances from which, for the last ten days, he has painstakenly +and remorsefully refrained. It is not a happy moment to look at poor +Amelia, as she has not yet cooled down from the heat of her climb +through the fir-wood—a heat that translates itself into patchy flushes +all over her face, not sparing even her forehead. Elizabeth is flushed +too. She has not met Miss Wilson since she had declined Burgoyne's offer +of bringing his betrothed to see her, and in her deprecating eyes there +is a guilty and tremulous recollection of this fact. But below the guilt +and the deprecation and the tremor, what else is there in Elizabeth's +eyes? What of splendid and startling, and that comes but once in a +lifetime? Rather than be obliged to give a name to that vague radiance, +Jim turns his look back upon his own too glowing dear one.</p> + +<p>"Did you come here all alone? You two all alone? What fun!" asks +Cecilia, with an air of delighted curiosity.</p> + +<p>Again her companions inwardly thank her. It is the question that +both—though with different degrees of eagerness—have been thirsting to +ask.</p> + +<p>"Alone?—oh no!" replies Elizabeth, with that uneasy, frightened look +that Burgoyne has always noticed on her face when she has been brought +into unwilling relation with strangers. "My mother is here—she came +with us; why, where is she?"—looking round with a startled air—"she +was here a moment ago."</p> + +<p>A grim smile curves Jim's mouth. It is evident that the unhappy Mrs. Le +Marchant, worn out with her <i>rôle</i> of duenna, has slipped away without +being missed by either of her companions. Would they have even +discovered her absence but for Cecilia's query?</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Le Marchant was here a moment ago," echoes Byng, addressing the +company generally; "but"—dodging his friend's eyes—"she said she was a +little stiff from sitting so long; she must be quite close by."</p> + +<p>"I will go and look for her," says Elizabeth, confused, and rising from +her rickety seat as she speaks; but Amelia, who is nearest to her, puts +out a friendly hand in prohibition.</p> + +<p>"Oh, do not stir!" she cries, smiling kindly and admiringly. "You look +so comfortable. Let <i>me</i> go and search for Mrs. Le Marchant; +I—I—should be afraid to sit down, I am so hot. I should like to find +her; Cecilia will help me, and Mr. Byng will show us the way."</p> + +<p>It is not always that generous actions meet their meed of gratitude from +those for whose sake they are performed; and, though Burgoyne recognises +the magnanimity of his <i>fiancée's</i> line of conduct, thankfulness to her +for it is not the feeling uppermost in his mind when, a few moments +later, he finds himself standing in uneasy <i>tête-à-tête</i> over the seated +Elizabeth.</p> + +<p>"Will not you sit down?" she asks presently, adding, with a low, timid +laugh, "I do not know why I should invite you, as if"—glancing round at +the sun-steeped panorama—"this were my drawing-room."</p> + +<p>He complies, taking care to occupy a quite different six feet of herbage +from that which still bears the imprint of Byng's lengthy limbs. The +grass grows cool and fresh, full of buttercups and tall blue bugle; out +of them the gray monastery wall rises, in its utter lifeless silence, +with its small barred windows. Was ever any building, within which is +human life, so unutterably still? As he leans his elbow among the +king-cups, Jim says to himself that the lovers had chosen their place +well and wisely—that the consciousness of the austere, denied lives +going on so close behind them, in their entire joylessness, must have +given an added point, a keener edge to the poignancy of their own +enjoyment of the sweet summer day outside.</p> + +<p>"You have not been to see us for a long time," says Elizabeth presently, +in a small and diffident voice, after having waited until the +probability of his speaking first has become a mere possibility, and +even that a faint one.</p> + +<p>He replies baldly, "No."</p> + +<p>His look is fixed on a knoll, whence the monks must have gathered their +leopard's bane. They cannot have gathered much, so bounteously do the +gay yellow flowers still wave on the hillock. Nearer stands a colony of +purple orchises, and from them the eye travels away to the silent +fir-wood, to the range of misty hills and the distant plain, touched now +and again by a vague hint of sunshine, that makes one for the moment +feel sure that one has detected Duomo or Campanile. How many hill ranges +there are! One can count six or seven, like the ridges in a gigantic +ploughed field, one behind another—all solemnly beautiful on this +windless day of grave and ungaudy sweetness. Has the young man been +reckoning the ranks of the Apennines, that it is so long before he adds +a low-voiced, mocking question to his monosyllable?</p> + +<p>"Have you missed me very much?"</p> + +<p>The woman addressed seems in no hurry to answer. She has drawn her +narrow brown brows together, as if in the effort to hit truth in her +nicest shade in her answer. Then she speaks with a sort of soft +self-remonstrance:</p> + +<p>"Oh, surely! I <i>must</i> have missed you—you were so extraordinarily, so +unaccountably kind to us!"</p> + +<p>There is not one of us who would not rather be loved for what we <i>are</i> +than for what we <i>do</i>; so it is perhaps no wonder if the young woman's +reply strikes with an unreasonable chill upon the asker's heart.</p> + +<p>"You must have been very little used to kindness all your life," he +says, with some brusqueness, "to be so disproportionately grateful for +my trumpery civilities."</p> + +<p>She hesitates a moment, then:</p> + +<p>"You are right," she replies; "I have not received any great kindness in +my life—justice, well, yes, I suppose so—but no, not very much mercy."</p> + +<p>Her candid and composed admission of a need for mercy whets yet farther +that pained curiosity which has always been one of the strongest +elements in his uncomfortable interest in her. But the very sharpness of +that interest makes him shy away awkwardly from the subject of her past.</p> + +<p>"I always think," he says, "that there is something fatuous in a man's +apologizing to a lady for not having been to see her, as if the loss +were hers, and not his."</p> + +<p>"Is there? All the same, I am sorry that you did not come."</p> + +<p>This simple and unsophisticated implication of a liking for him would +have warmed again the uneasy heart that her former speech had chilled +had not he, under the superficial though genuine regret of her face, +seen, still shining with steady lustre, that radiance which has as +little been called forth by, as it can be dimmed by him or anything +relating to him. And so he passes by in silence the expression of that +sorrow which he bitterly knows to be so supportable.</p> + +<p>The still spirit of the day seems to have touched the very birds. They +sing a few low notes in veiled, chastened voices from the fir-wood, and +again are silent. The clock tells the hours in quarters to the doomed +lives inside the monastery, self-doomed to suffering and penance and +incarceration, even with the winning blue of the Tuscan sky above their +tonsured heads, with the forget-me-nots pressing their feet, and the +nightingales singing endless love-songs to them from the little dark +forest nigh at hand.</p> + +<p>"I suppose," says Elizabeth presently, in a reflective tone, "that the +fact is, when people are in your position—I mean on the brink of a +great deep happiness—they forget all lesser things?"</p> + +<p>He snatches a hasty glance of suspicion at her. Is this her revenge for +his neglect of her? But nothing can look more innocent or less ironical +than her small profile, bent towards the gigantic forget-me-nots and the +pulmonaria, azure as gentians.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps."</p> + +<p>"The big fish"—her little face breaking into one of her lovely smiles, +which, by a turn of her head from side to full, she offers in its +completeness to his gaze—"swallows up all the little gudgeons! Poor +little gudgeons."</p> + +<p>"Poor little gudgeons!" he echoes stupidly, and then begins to laugh at +his own wool-gathering.</p> + +<p>"And now I suppose you will be going directly—going home?" pursues she, +looking at him and his laughter with a soft surprise.</p> + +<p>"I hope so; and—and—you too?"</p> + +<p>She gives a start, and the sky-coloured nosegay in her hand drops into +her lap.</p> + +<p>"We—we? Why should <i>we</i> go home? We have nothing pleasant to go to, +and"—looking round with a passionate relish at mountain, and suffused +far plain, and sappy spring grass—"we are so well—so infinitely well +here!" Then, pulling herself together, and speaking in a more composed +key, "But yes, of course we, too, shall go by-and-by; this cannot last +for ever—nothing lasts for ever. That is the one thought that has kept +me alive all these years; but now——"</p> + +<p>She breaks off.</p> + +<p>"But now?"</p> + +<p>Even as he watches her, putting this echoed interrogation, he sees the +radiance breaking through the cloud his question had gathered, as a very +strong sun breaks through a very translucent exhalation.</p> + +<p>"But now?" she repeats vaguely, and smiling to herself, forgetful of his +very presence beside her—"But now? Did I say 'But now?' Ah, here they +are back again!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII.</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>"I am going to turn the tables on you," says Amelia next morning to her +lover, after the usual endearments, which of late he has been +conscientiously anxious not to scant or slur, have passed between them, +very fairly executed by him, and adoringly accepted and returned by her; +"you are always arranging treats for me; now I have planned one for +you!"</p> + +<p>She looks so beaming with benevolent joy as she makes this statement, +that Jim stoops and drops an extra kiss—not in the bond—upon her +lifted face. "Indeed, dear!" he answers kindly, "I do not quite know +what I have done to deserve it; but I hope it is a nice one."</p> + +<p>"It is very nice—delightful."</p> + +<p>"Delightful, eh?" echoes he, raising his brows, while a transient wonder +crosses his mind as to what project she or anyone else could suggest to +him that, at this juncture of his affairs, could merit that epithet; +"well, am I to guess what it is? or are you going to tell me?"</p> + +<p>Amelia's face still wears that smile of complacent confidence in having +something pleasant to communicate which has puzzled her companion.</p> + +<p>"We have never been at Vallombrosa, have we?" asks she.</p> + +<p>"Never."</p> + +<p>"Well, we are going there to-morrow."</p> + +<p>"Are we? is that your treat?" inquires he, wondering what of peculiarly +and distinctively festal for him this expedition may be supposed to have +above all their former ones.</p> + +<p>"And we are not going alone."</p> + +<p>"There is nothing very exceptional in that; Cecilia is mostly good +enough to lend us her company."</p> + +<p>"I am not thinking of Cecilia; I have persuaded"—the benevolent smile +broadening across her cheeks—"I have persuaded some friends of yours to +join us."</p> + +<p>It does not for an instant cross his mind either to doubt or to affect +uncertainty as to who the friends of whom she speaks may be; but the +suggestion is so profoundly unwelcome to him, that not even the +certainty of mortifying the unselfish creature before him can hinder him +from showing it. Her countenance falls.</p> + +<p>"You are not glad?" she asks crestfallenly, "you are not pleased?"</p> + +<p>It is impossible for him to say that he is, and all that is left to him +is to put his vexation into words that may be as little as possible +fraught with disappointment to his poor hearer's ear.</p> + + +<p>"I—I—had rather have had you to myself."</p> + +<p>"Would you really?" she asks, in the almost awed tones of one who, from +being quite destitute, has had the Koh-i-Noor put into his hand, and +whose fingers are afraid to close over the mighty jewel; "would you +really? then I am sorry I asked them; but"—with intense +wistfulness—"if you only knew how I long to give you a little pleasure, +a little enjoyment—you who have given me so infinitely much."</p> + +<p>If Miss Wilson were ever addicted to the figure of speech called irony, +she might be supposed to be employing it now; but one glance at her +simple face would show that it expressed nothing but adoring gratitude. +Her one good fortnight has spread its radiant veil backwards over her +eight barren years.</p> + +<p>He takes her hand, and passes the fingers across his lips, murmuring +indistinctly and guiltily behind them:</p> + +<p>"Do I really make you happy?"</p> + +<p>"Do you?"—echoes she, while the transfiguring tears well into her +glorified pale eyes—"I should not have thought it possible that so much +joy could have been packed into any fortnight as I have had crammed into +mine!"</p> + +<p>They have to set off to Vallombrosa at seven o'clock in the morning, an +hour at which few of us are at our cleverest, handsomest, or our best +tempered; nor is the party of six, either in its proportion of women to +men—four to two—or in its component parts, a very well adjusted one. +They are too numerous to be contained in one carriage, and are therefore +divided into two separate bands—three and three. Whether by some +manœuvre of the well-meaning Amelia, or by some scarcely fortunate +accident, Burgoyne finds himself seated opposite to his betrothed and to +Elizabeth; while Byng follows in the second vehicle as <i>vis-à-vis</i> to +Cecilia and Mrs. Le Marchant. There is a general feeling of wrongness +about the whole arrangement—a sense of mental discomfort equivalent to +that physical one of having put on your clothes inside out, or buttoned +your buttons into unanswering buttonholes.</p> + + +<p>Mrs. Le Marchant's face, as Burgoyne catches sight of it now and then, +as some turn in the road reveals the inmates of the closely-following +second carriage to his view, wears that uneasy and disquieted look which +always disfigures it when there is any question of her being brought +into personal relation with strangers. And Elizabeth, of whom he has +naturally a much nearer and more continuous view, is plainly +ill-at-ease. Miss Wilson has not thought it necessary to mention to her +lover how strong had been the opposition to her plan on the part of the +objects of it; nor, that it was only because her proposal was made <i>vivâ +voce</i>, and therefore unescapable, that it had been reluctantly accepted +at last. At first Burgoyne had attributed Elizabeth's evident +ill-at-easeness to her separation from Byng; but he presently discovers +that it is what she possesses, and not what she lacks, that is the chief +source of her <i>malaise</i>. During the latter part of his own personal +intercourse with her she had been, when in his company, sometimes sad, +sometimes wildly merry; but always entirely natural. Strange as it may +seem, it is obviously the presence of Amelia that puts constraint upon +her. Before the spirit of that most unterrifying of God's creatures, +Elizabeth's "stands rebuked." Once or twice he sees her inborn +gaiety—that gaiety whose existence he has so often noted as it +struggles up from under the mysterious weight of sorrow laid upon +it—spurt into life, only to be instantly killed by the reassumption of +that nervous formal manner which not all Amelia's gentle efforts can +break through.</p> + +<p>A very grave trio they drive along through the grave day. For it is, +alas! a grave day—overcast, now turning to rain, now growing fair again +awhile. Not a grain of Italy's summer curse, her choking white dust, +assails their nostrils. It must have rained all night. Through the +suburbs by the river, crossing and recrossing that ugly iron interloper +the railway; by the river flowing at the foot of the fair green hills, +so green, so green on this day of ripe accomplished spring. The whole +country is one giant green garland, of young wheat below and endless +vine necklaces above—necklaces of new juicy, just-born, yet vigorous +vine-leaves. The very river runs green with the reflection of the +endless verdure on its banks. The road is level as far as Pontassieve, +the town through which they roll, and then it begins to mount—mounts +between garden-like hills, dressed in vine leaves and iris-flowers, and +the dull fire of red clover; while the stream twists in flowing +companionship at the valley bottom, until they turn abruptly away from +it, up into a steep and narrow valley, almost a gorge, and climb up and +up one side of it, turning and winding continually to break the +steepness of the ascent. However broken, it is steep still. But who +would wish to pass at more than a foot's pace through this great sheet +of lilac irises wrapping the mountain side, past this bean-field that +greets the nostrils with its homely familiar perfume, along this wealthy +bit of hedge, framed wholly of honeysuckle in flower? At sight of the +latter Elizabeth gives a little cry.</p> + +<p>"Oh, what honeysuckle! I must have some! I must get out! Tell him to +stop!"</p> + +<p>In a moment her commands are obeyed; in another moment Byng has sprung +out of the second carriage and is standing beside her. The door of +Byng's vehicle is stiff apparently, and a sardonic smile breaks over the +elder man's face as he hears the noise of the resounding kicks +administered to it by the younger one's impatient foot. But he need not +have been in such a hurry—no one interferes with his office of rifling +the hedge of its creamy and coral bugles.</p> + +<p>Burgoyne gets out of the carriage; but it is only to walk to the other +one and assume Byng's vacated seat.</p> + +<p>"Are you going to change places?" Amelia has asked rather chapfallenly +as he leaves her; and he has given her hand a hasty pressure, and +answered affectionately—</p> + +<p>"It will not be for long, dear; but you know"—with an expressive +glance, and what he rather too sanguinely hopes looks like a smile in +the direction of the flower-gatherers—"fair play is a jewel!"</p> + +<p>If his departure from the one vehicle is deplored, it is not welcomed at +the other. Cecilia asks the same question as her sister had put, though +the intonation is different.</p> + +<p>"Are you going to change places?"—adding—"do not you think we did very +well as we were?"</p> + +<p>But probably he is too much occupied in wrestling with the stiff door to +hear her, for he makes no answer beyond getting in. The only reward that +he receives for his piece of self-sacrifice is a rapturous look of +gratitude from Byng, when he perceives the changed position of his +affairs, and that recompense Jim had far rather have been without.</p> + +<p>They are off again. Being now second in the little procession, Burgoyne +has but meagre and difficult views of the first; but now and again, when +the road describes an acuter angle than usual, he can by turning his +whole body, under pretext of admiring the view, snatch a glimpse of all +three occupants leaning their heads sociably together, evidently in +bright light talk. After all, he had deceived himself. It is he and not +Amelia who had made her shy. Even when he cannot see her, there come to +his ears little wafts of laughter, in which her voice is mixed. He +catches himself trying to recall whether she had laughed even once +during the period of his being her companion. There is not much mirth in +his own carriage. What a kill-joy he has grown! Cecilia, though her +heart is as pure as the babe unborn of any serious designs on Byng, of +which indeed she has long seen the fruitlessness, yet thinks a sulky +brother-in-law-elect but a poor exchange for a handsome young +acquaintance, whom neither his good manners nor the amount of his +intimacy allow to sit opposite to her in grumpy silence. Mrs. Le +Marchant is obviously as ill at ease as was her daughter when in his +fellowship, though in this case a little observation shows him that he +counts for nothing in her discomfort of mind, but that she is watching +the other half of the party with an anxiety as keen, if almost as +covert, as his own. She is too well-bred indeed not to endeavour to keep +up a decent show of conversation, but as neither of her companions makes +any effort to second her, an ever-deepening silence falls upon them as +they advance, nor, as the day grows older, is the weather calculated to +exhilarate their spirits.</p> + +<p>The sky's frown becomes more and more pronounced the higher they mount. +Through a village nobly seated on its hilltop, but, like most Italian +townlets, squalid enough on a nearer view—up and up—up and up—till +they reach what were once groves of stately chestnuts, but where the +hungry Tuscan axe has left nothing but twigs and saplings, but never a +spreading tree; then on into the fir-woods, which are woods indeed, +though even here the hatchet's cruel tooth has begun to bite. No sooner +is their dark umbrage reached than the mist, that has been hanging with +threatening lowness above the travellers' heads, comes down close, +blinding, clinging like wet flannel, and as thick.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps it will lift," Jim says, with a sort of dismal unlikely +hopefulness as he strains his eyes, trying to look down the straight +solemn fir aisles, with their files upon files of tall stems, that seem +to be seen only as if through a thick gauze. Neither of his companions +has the spirit necessary to echo the supposition. The road winds +endlessly, steeper and steeper up through the mist. The tired horses +step wearily, and the unfortunate pleasure-seekers are beginning to +think that the muffled monotony of firs, of winding road, of painfully +labouring horses, will never end, when the vetturino turns round with a +smile on his fog-wet face, and says, "Vallombrosa!"</p> + +<p>Under other circumstances, the announcement might have been cheering, +might have excited a poetic curiosity; but as it is, the hood of the +vehicle—necessarily raised some miles back—is so far poked forward +that nothing is to be seen but a pour of rain—the rain has begun to +descend in torrents—a glass-door in a house-wall opening to admit them, +and a waiter holding up a green umbrella to protect their descent. +Neither he nor the landlord, nor yet the chambermaid, show any signs of +mirth or wonder at their arrival among the clouds on such a day. They +are used to mad Inglese. And amongst the mad Inglese themselves there is +certainly no temptation to mad merriment. On such an occasion there is +nothing to do but eat, so they lunch dismally in a long, bare +dining-room, with a carpetless floor, a table laid for a grossly +improbable number of guests, and a feeling of searching cold. Having +spun out their scanty meal to the utmost limits of possibility, and +washed it down with the weakest red wine that ever lived in a wicker +bottle, they pass into a funereal <i>salon</i>, to which the waiter invites +them. Someone makes the cheering announcement that they have as yet been +here only half an hour, and that the horses must have two full hours to +bait before there can be any question of beginning the return journey. +And then they amble about the room, looking at the dreadful lithographs +of Italy's plain King and fair Queen on the walls; at the venerable +journals and gaudy English storybook, so dull as to have been forgotten +by its owner, on the table. Their spirits are not heightened by a +pervading sense as of being in a cellar, minus the wine. The equipment +of this pleasant apartment is completed by a half-dead nosegay of what +must once have been charming mountain blossoms. The sight decides them. +They must go out. Perhaps even through this opaque cloud they may dimly +see the mountain flowers growing, the mountain brooks dashing, which +John Milton has told them that—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">"the Etrurian shades,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">High over-arch'd imbower."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>They all catch at the suggestion, when made by Byng, and presently sally +forth to see as much of Vallombrosa as a fog that would not have +disgraced the Strand, as a close blanket of almost <i>confluent</i> rain, and +as umbrellas held well down over their cold noses, will let them; Mrs. +Le Marchant alone declines to be one of the party, and is left sitting, +swaddled in all the superfluous wraps, on a horsehair chair in the +<i>salon</i>, to stare at the wall and at King Humbert's ugly face, until +such time as her companions see fit to release her. It is no wonder that +Burgoyne overhears her eagerly whispering to Elizabeth a request that +she will not stay too long away. And Elizabeth, whose spirits have gone +up like a rocket at the prospect of a taste of the fresh air, and who +knows what else, lays her little face, crowned with a deer-stalking cap, +against her mother's, and promises, and skips away.</p> + +<p>At first they all five keep together, wet but sociable. They ask their +way to the Paradiso—the name sounds ironical—and set off climbing up +through the fir-wood in the direction indicated; along a path which in +fair weather must be heavenly with piny odours, but which is now only a +miry alternative of dripping stones and muddy puddles. Through the mist +they see indeed fair flowers gleaming, yellow anemones, unfamiliar and +lovely, but they are too drenched to pluck. The sound of falling water +guides them to where the clear brook—clear even to-day—falls in little +cascades down the hill's face between the pines. How delicious to sit on +its flat stones some hot summer's noon, with your hands coolly straying +among its grasses, or dabbling in its bright water; but to-day they can +but look at it sadly from the low bridge, saying sighingly, "If!"</p> + +<p>They reach the goal, some cross, and all floundering, the ladies with +draggled skirts and cold, dank ankles. The Paradiso is a little house, a +<i>dépendance</i> apparently of the hotel below—apparently also tenantless +and empty. It is built on the bare rock, looking sheer down on—what? on +a blanket of fog. What does, what can, that maddening blanket conceal? +Oh, if they could but tear it in pieces, rend it asunder, hack it with +knives, by any means abolish its unsightly veil from over the lovely +face they will now, with all their climbing, all their early rising, +never see! But will not they? Even as they look, despairingly straining +their eyes, in the vain effort to pierce that obscure and baffling veil, +there is a movement in it, a stirring of the inert mass of vapour; a +wind has risen, and is blowing coldly on their brows, and in a moment, +as it seems, the maddening wet curtain is swept away and up, as by some +God-hand, the hand of some spirit that has heard their lament and has +pitied them and said, "They have come from afar; it is their only +chance; let us show it to them." The curtain has rolled up and up, the +sombre fir-wood starts out, and the emerald meadows, the lowest and +nearest range of hills, then the next, and then the next, and then the +furthest and highest of all. There they stand revealed, even the city, +Florence, far away. They can make out her Duomo, small and dim with +distance, yet certainly there; in the sudden effulgence all the valley +alight and radiant. Range behind range stand the hills; belated vapour +wreaths floating, thin as lawn, up their flanks; wonderful dreamy +patches of radiance on the far slopes; marvellous amethysts starring +their breasts. Mystery and beauty, colour and space, sky and lovely +land, where, five minutes ago, there was nothing but choking fog. +Burgoyne stands as in a trance, vaguely conscious—trance-wise too—that +Elizabeth is near him; all his soul passed into his eyes; stands—how +long? He hardly knows. Before that fair sight time seems dead; but even +as he yet looks, smiling as one smiles at anything surpassingly lovely, +the cloud-wreaths float downwards again, wreaths at first, then great +volumes, then one universal sheet of vapour, impenetrably dense as +before. Vanished are the Apennine slopes, sun-kissed and dreamy; +vanished the distant Arno plain; vanished even the near pines. He can +scarce see his hand before him. And yet he can see Elizabeth's face +transfigured and quivering, lifted to his—yes, to <i>his</i>—though Byng is +on her other side; her eyes full of tender tears of ravishment, while +her low voice says sighingly:</p> + +<p>"It is gone; but we have seen it! Nothing can ever take that from us! +nothing! nothing!"</p> + +<p>And although the next moment she is reabsorbed into the fog and Byng, +though for the rest of the deplorable walk he scarce catches sight again +of the little brown head and the soaked deer-stalking cap, yet it makes +a gentle warmth about his chilled heart to think that, in her moments of +highest emotion, it is her impulse to turn to him.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV.</h2> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Oh, gentle Proteus, Love's a mighty lord,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And hath so humbled me that I confess<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There is no grief to his correction<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor to his service no such joy on earth.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Now no discourse except it be of Love;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Now can I break my fast, dine, sup and sleep<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Upon the very naked name of Love."<br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Not once again, so long as they remain at Vallombrosa, does the envious +cloud-blanket lift; and, after slopping about for some time longer, in +the vain hope that it will, Burgoyne and his two female relatives-elect +return to the inn, all fallen very silent. The other two members of the +party have disappeared into the fog. At the door of the hotel they find +Mrs. Le Marchant, who has broken from her cerements, and is looking +anxiously out. As she catches sight of them the look of tension on her +face lessens.</p> + +<p>"Oh, here you are!" says she. "I am so glad; and the others—no doubt +the others are close behind."</p> + +<p>"We know nothing about the others," replies Cecilia, with some +ill-humour, taking upon her the office of spokeswoman, which neither of +her companions seems in any hurry to assume; "the others took French +leave of us an hour ago. Oh dear, how wet I am! What a horrible +excursion! How I detest Vallombrosa!"</p> + +<p>Amelia is to the full as wet as her sister; nothing can well be more +lamentable than the appearance of either; and upon Amelia's face there +is, in addition to a handsome share of splashes of rain, a look of +mortification and crestfallenness; but she now puts in her word, with +her usual patience and thoughtful good-temper.</p> + +<p>"I do not think you need be in the least anxious about them," she says, +observing the immediate relapse into what seems an exaggerated concern +following instantly upon Cecilia's remark on Mrs. Le Marchant's +features; "they were with us not long ago. We were certainly all +together not so long ago; they were with us at the Paradiso—they were +certainly with us at the Paradiso?" turning with an interrogative air to +Burgoyne.</p> + +<p>"Yes, they were certainly with us at the Paradiso," he assents, not +thinking it necessary to add why he is so very certain as to this fact.</p> + +<p>"They must have so much inducement to loiter this charming weather," +cries Cecilia, with an exasperated laugh. "Oh, how wet I am! I do not +expect that we shall any of us forget Vallombrosa in a hurry! I shall go +and ask the chambermaid to lend me some dry shoes and stockings."</p> + +<p>With these words she walks towards the staircase and climbs it, leaving +a muddy imprint on each step to mark her progress as she mounts.</p> + +<p>Amelia does not at once follow her example. She remains standing where +she was, her arms hanging listlessly by her sides, and the expression of +crestfallenness deepened on her fagged face. Her lover is touched by her +look, and, going up to her, lays his hand kindly and solicitously on her +shoulder.</p> + +<p>"Umbrellas are not what they were in my days," he says, trying to smile. +"You are quite as wet as Cis, though you do not proclaim your sufferings +nearly so loudly. Had not you better go and see whether the chambermaid +owns two pairs of dry stockings?"</p> + +<p>She lifts her eyes with wistful gratitude to his. "This is my treat," +she says slowly; "my first treat to you; oh, poor Jim!"</p> + +<p>There is a depth of compassion in her tone as disproportioned to the +apparent cause as had been Mrs. Le Marchant's anxiety for her daughter's +return, and beneath it he winces.</p> + +<p>"Why do you pity me?" he inquires half indignantly.</p> + +<p>"Am I—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'A milksop; one that never in his life<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Felt so much cold as over shoes in snow?'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>What do I care for a little rain?" Adding cheerfully, "You shall give me +a second treat, dear; we will come here again by ourselves when the sun +shines."</p> + +<p>"By ourselves—when the sun shines!" echoes she, as if repeating a +lesson; and then she goes off docilely, in obedience to his suggestion, +in search of dry raiment.</p> + +<p>He rejoins Mrs. Le Marchant, whose unaccountable fears have led her +beyond the house's shelter out into the rain, where she stands looking +down that river of mud which represents the road by which she hopes to +see the truants reappear.</p> + +<p>"I think you are unnecessarily alarmed," he says, in a reassuring and +remonstrating tone. "What harm could have happened to them?"</p> + +<p>She does not answer, her eyes, into which the rain is beating under her +umbrella brim, still fixed upon the empty road.</p> + +<p>"Is she—is she apt to take cold?" he asks, his own tone catching the +infection of her vague and nameless disquiet.</p> + +<p>"Yes—no—not particularly, I think. Oh, it is not that!"—her composure +breaking down into an unaffected outburst of distress. "It is not that! +Do not you understand? Oh, how unwilling I was to come here to-day! It +is—do not you see? Oh, I should not mind in the least if it had been +you that were with her!"</p> + +<p>"If it had been I that was with her?" repeats Jim slowly, not at the +first instant comprehending, nor even at the second quite taking in the +full, though unintentional, uncomplimentariness of this speech; which, +however, before his companion again takes up her parable, has tinglingly +reached—what? His heart, or only his vanity? They lie very close +together.</p> + +<p>"Why did not he go home with his mother?" pursues Mrs. Le Marchant, +still in that voice of intense vexation. "It would have been so much +more natural that he should, and I am sure that she wished it."</p> + +<p>"You are making me feel extremely uncomfortable," says Burgoyne gravely; +"when I remember that it was I who introduced him to you."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I am not blaming you!" replies she, with an obvious effort to +resume her usual courteous manner. "Please do not think that I am +blaming you. How could you help it?"</p> + +<p>"I thought you liked him."</p> + +<p>"Oh, so I do—so we both do!" cries the poor woman agitatedly. "That is +the worst of it! If I did not like him, I should not mind; at least, I +should not mind half so much."</p> + +<p>"I am very sorry," he begins; but she interrupts him.</p> + +<p>"Do not be sorry," she says remorsefully; "you have nothing to say to +it. I do not know, I am sure"—looking gratefully at him through the +rain—"why I am always regaling you with my worries; but you are so +dependable—we both feel that you are so dependable."</p> + +<p>"Am I?" says he, with a melancholy air that does not argue much +gratification at the compliment. "Do not be too sure of that."</p> + +<p>But she does not heed his disclaimer.</p> + +<p>"We have been so happy here," she goes on; "I do not mean +<i>here</i>"—looking round with an involuntary smile at the envelope of wet +vapour that encases them both—"but at Florence; so peacefully, +blessedly happy, she and I—you do not know"—with an appealing touch of +pathos—"what a dear little companion she is!—so happy that I naturally +do not want our memory of the place to be spoilt by any painful +<i>contretemps</i>. You can understand that, cannot you?"</p> + +<p>It is senseless of him; but yet, little as he can comprehend why it +should be so, the idea of Byng's love being described as a "painful +<i>contretemps</i>" presents itself not disagreeably to his mind. For +whatever mysterious reason, it is apparent that even Byng's own mother +cannot be much more adverse to his suit than is the lady before him.</p> + +<p>"I can perfectly enter into your feelings," he answers, with sympathetic +gravity; "but do not you know that 'a watched pot never boils'? As long +as you are looking for them, they will never appear; but the moment that +your back is turned they will probably come round the corner at once."</p> + +<p>"I think it is the truest proverb in the world," she says, with an +impatient sigh; but she allows him to guide her and her umbrella back to +the inn.</p> + +<p>Burgoyne's prediction is not verified; probably he had no very great +faith in it himself. Mrs. Le Marchant's back has, for the best part of +an hour, been turned upon the mountain road, and the stragglers have not +yet rejoined the main body. There has been plenty of time for Cecilia to +be thoroughly dried, warmed, comforted, and restored to good humour; for +the <i>vetturino</i> to send in and ask whether he shall not put the horses +to; for Amelia to exhaust all her little repertory of soothing +hypotheses; for Mrs. Le Marchant to stray in restless misery from +<i>salon</i> to <i>salle-à-manger</i> and back again, and for Burgoyne to pull +gloomily at a large cigar in the hall by himself before at length the +voices of the truants are heard.</p> + +<p>Burgoyne being, as I have said, in the hall, and therefore nearest the +door of entrance, has the earliest sight of them. His first glance tells +him that the blow apprehended by Mrs. Le Marchant has fallen. Of +Elizabeth, indeed, he scarcely catches a glimpse, as she passes him +precipitately, hurrying to meet her mother, who, at the sound of her +voice, has come running into the outer room. But Byng! Byng has not +experienced so many very strong emotions in his short life as to have +had much practice in veiling them from the eyes of others when they +come, and the gauze now drawn over his intolerable radiance is of the +thinnest description. Again that earnest desire to hit him <i>hard</i> +assails the elder friend.</p> + +<p>"Why, you are back before us!" cries the young man.</p> + +<p>"Yes, we are back before you," replies Burgoyne; and if the penalty had +been death, he could not at that moment have added one syllable to the +acrid assent.</p> + +<p>"Are we late?" asks Elizabeth tremulously; "I am afraid we are late—I +am afraid we have kept you waiting! Oh, I am so sorry!"</p> + +<p>She looks with an engaging timidity of apology from one to other of the +sulky countenances around her; and Burgoyne stealing a look at her, +their eyes meet. He is startled by the singularity of expression in +hers. Whatever it denotes, it certainly is not the stupid simplicity of +rapture to be read, in print as big as a poster's, in Byng's. And yet, +among the many ingredients that go to make up that shy fevered beam, +rapture is undoubtedly one.</p> + +<p>"Did you lose yourselves? Did you go further into the wood?" asks +Cecilia, with a curiosity that is, considering the provocation given, +not unjustifiable.</p> + +<p>They both reply vaguely that they had lost themselves, that they had +gone deeper into the wood. It is obvious to the meanest intelligence +that neither of them has the slightest idea where they have been.</p> + +<p>"I may as well tell the driver to put the horses in," says Burgoyne, in +a matter-of-fact voice, glad of an excuse to absent himself.</p> + +<p>When he comes back, he finds the Le Marchants standing together in the +window, talking in a low voice, and Byng hovering near them. It is +evident to Jim that the elder woman has no wish for converse with the +young man; but in his present condition of dizzy exhilaration, he is +quite unaware of that fact. He approaches her indeed (as the unobserved +watcher notes) with a dreadful air of filial piety, and addresses her in +a tone of apology it is true, but with a twang of intimacy that had +never appeared in his voice before.</p> + +<p>"You must not blame her; indeed you must not! it was entirely my fault. +I am awfully sorry that you were alarmed, but indeed there was no cause. +What did you think had happened? Did you think"—with an excited laugh +of triumph and a bright blush—"that I had run off with her?"</p> + +<p>The speech is in extremely bad taste, since, whatever may be the posture +of affairs between himself and Elizabeth, it is morally impossible that +her mother can yet be enlightened as to it; the familiarity of it is +therefore premature and the jocosity ill-placed. No one can be more +disposed to judge it severely than its unintended auditor; but even he +is startled by the effect it produces.</p> + +<p>Without making the smallest attempt at an answer, Mrs. Le Marchant +instantly turns her shoulder upon the young man—a snub of which Jim +would have thought so gentle-mannered a person quite incapable, and +walks away from him with so determined an air that not even a person in +the seventh heaven of drunkenness can mistake her meaning. Nor does +Elizabeth's conduct offer him any indemnification. She follows her +mother a little more slowly; and, as she passes Jim, he sees that she is +shaking violently, and that her face is as white as chalk. A sort of +generous indignation against the mother for spoiling the poor little +soul's first moments of bliss mixes curiously in his mind with a less +noble satisfaction at the reflection that there are undoubtedly breakers +ahead of Byng.</p> + +<p>"How—how are we to divide?" cries Cecilia, as they all stand at the +door while the two carriages drive up.</p> + +<p>No one answers. The arrangement seems planned by no one in particular, +and yet, as he drives down the hill, Burgoyne finds himself sitting +opposite the two Misses Wilson. He is thankful that the raised hood and +unfurled umbrellas of the second equipage prevent his having any ocular +evidence of the ecstasy that that wet leather and that dripping silk +veil. But even this consolation is not long left him. As they leave the +fir-wood, they come out of the clouds too, into clear, lower air. Hoods +are pushed back and umbrellas shut. The horses, in good heart, with +homeward-turned heads, pricked with emulation by another carriage ahead +of them, trot cheerfully down the road—the road with all its bent-elbow +turnings—down, down, into the valley beneath. But the clouds that have +rolled away off the evening sky seem to have settled down with double +density upon the spirit of Burgoyne and his companions. Even the +fountain of Cecilia's chatter is dried. Once she says suddenly <i>à propos +de bottes</i>:</p> + +<p>"She must be years older than he!" To which Amelia quickly rejoins—</p> + +<p>"But she does not look it."</p> + +<p>It is almost the only remark she makes during the long drive, and +Burgoyne is thankful to her for her silence. Conscious of and grateful +for her magnanimity as he is, there is yet something that jars upon him +in her intuition of his thoughts, and in her eager championship of that +other woman. He looks out blankly at the flowers, wetly smiling from +field and bank, at the endless garden of embracing vines and embraced +mulberries, joining their young leafage; at the stealing river and the +verdurous hill-sides. In vain for him Italy's spring laughter broadens +across the eternal youth of her face.</p> + +<p>On reaching Florence and the Anglo-Américain, he would fain enter and +spend the evening with his betrothed. He has a feverish horror of being +left alone with his own thoughts, but she gently forbids him.</p> + +<p>"It would not be fair upon father and Sybilla," she says. "I am afraid +they have not been getting on very well <i>téte-à-téte</i> together all this +wet day, and I should not be much good to you in any case. I feel +stupid. You will say"—smiling—"that there is nothing very new in that; +but I am quite beyond even my usual mark to-night. Good-night, dear; I +humbly beg your pardon for having caused you to spend such a wretched +day. I will never give you another treat—never, <i>never!</i> it was my +first and last attempt."</p> + +<p>She turns from him dejectedly, and he is himself too dejected to attempt +any reassuring falsities. She would not have believed him if he had told +her that it had not been a wretched day to him, and the publicity of +their place of parting forbids him to administer even the silent +consolation of a kiss. And yet he feels a sort of remorse at having said +nothing, as the door closes upon her depressed back. Backs can look +quite as depressed as faces. The lateness of their start home has thrown +their return late. Burgoyne reflects that he may as well dine at once, +and then trudge through his solitary evening as best he may. Heaven +knows at what hour Byng may return. Shall he await his coming, and so +get over the announcement of his bliss to-night, or put the dark hours +between himself and it?</p> + +<p>He decides in favour of getting it over to-night, up to whatever small +hour he may be obliged to attend his friend's arrival. But he has not to +wait nearly so long as he expects. He has not to wait at all, hardly. +Before he has left his own room, while he is still making such toilette +for his own company as self-respect requires, the person whom he had not +thought to behold for another four or five hours enters—enters with +head held high, with joy-tinged, smooth cheeks, and with a superb lamp +of love and triumph lit in each young eye. A passing movement of +involuntary admiration traverses the other's heart as he looks at him. +This is how the human animal ought to—was originally intended to—look! +How very far the average specimen has departed from the type! There is +not much trace of admiration, however, in the tone which he employs for +his one brief word of interrogation:</p> + +<p>"Already?"</p> + +<p>"I was sent away," replies Byng, in a voice whose intoxication pierces +even through the first four small words; "they sent me away—they would +not let me go further than the house-door. I say 'they,' but of course +<i>she</i> had no hand in it—<i>she</i>, not <i>she</i>. <i>She</i> would not have sent me +away, God bless her! it was her mother, of course—how could she have +had the heart?"</p> + +<p>Burgoyne would no doubt have made some answer in time; though the "she," +the implication of Elizabeth's willingness for an indefinite amount of +her lover's company, the "God bless her," gave him a sense of choking.</p> + +<p>"But I do not blame Mrs. Le Marchant," pursues Byng, in a rapt, +half-absent key. "Who would not wish to monopolize her? Who would not +grudge the earth leave to kiss her sweet foot?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">"'All I can is nothing<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To her whose worth makes other worthies nothing.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She is alone!'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>"That at least is not your fault," replies Burgoyne dryly; "you have +done your best to avert that catastrophe."</p> + +<p>But to speak to the young man now is of as much avail as to address +questions or remonstrances to one walking in his sleep.</p> + +<p>"If she had allowed me, I would have lain on her threshold all night; I +would have been the first thing that her heavenly eye lit on; I would—"</p> + +<p>But Burgoyne's phial of patience is for the present emptied to the +dregs.</p> + +<p>"You would have made a very great fool of yourself, I have not the least +doubt. Why try to persuade a person of what he is already fully +convinced? But as Miss Le Marchant happily did not wish for you as a +doormat, perhaps it is hardly worth while telling me what you would have +done if she had."</p> + +<p>The sarcastic words, ill-natured and unsympathetic as they sound in +their own speaker's ears, yet avail to bring the young dreamer but a +very few steps lower down his ladder of bliss.</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon," he says sweet-temperedly; "I suppose I am a hideous +bore to-night; I suppose one must always be a bore to other people when +one is tremendously happy."</p> + +<p>"It is not your being tremendously happy that I quarrel with," growls +Burgoyne, struggling to conquer, or at least tone down, the intense +irritability of nerves that his friend's flights provoke. "You are +perfectly right to be that if you can manage to compass it; but what I +should be glad to arrive at is your particular ground for it in the +present case."</p> + +<p>The question, sobering in its tendency, has yet for sole effect the +setting Byng off again with spread pinions into the empyrean.</p> + +<p>"What particular ground I have?" he repeats, in a dreamy tone of +ecstasy. "You ask what particular ground I have? Had ever anyone cause +to be so royally happy as I?"</p> + +<p>He pauses a moment or two, steeped in a rapture of oblivious reverie, +then goes on, still as one only half waked from a beatific vision:</p> + +<p>"I had a prognostic that to-day would be the culminating day—something +told me that to-day would be the day; and when you gave me up your seat +in her carriage—how could you be so magnificently generous? How can I +ever adequately show you my gratitude?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes; never mind that."</p> + +<p>"Then, later on, in the wood"—his voice sinking, as that of one who +approaches a Holy of Holies—"when that blessed mist wrapped her round, +wrapped her lovely body round, so that I was able to withdraw her from +you, so that you did not perceive that she was gone—were not you really +aware of it? Did not it seem to you as if the light had gone out of the +day? When we stood under those dripping trees, as much alone as if—"</p> + +<p>"I do not think that there is any need to go into those details," +interrupts Burgoyne, in a hard voice; "I imagine that in these cases +history repeats itself with very trifling variations; what I should be +glad if you would tell me is, whether I am to understand that you have +to-day asked Miss Le Marchant to marry you?"</p> + +<p>Byng brings his eyes, which have been lifted in a sort of trance to the +ceiling, down to the prosaic level of his Mentor's severe and +tight-lipped face.</p> + +<p>"When you put it in that way," he says, in an awed half-whisper, "it +does seem an inconceivable audacity on my part that I, who but a few +days ago was crawling at her feet, should dare to-day to reach up to the +heaven of her love."</p> + +<p>Burgoyne had known perfectly well that it was coming; but yet how much +worse is it than he had expected!</p> + +<p>"Then you <i>did</i> ask her to marry you?"</p> + +<p>But Byng has apparently fled back on the wings of fantasy into the wet +woods of Vallombrosa, for he makes no verbal answer.</p> + +<p>"She said yes?" asks Burgoyne, raising his voice, as if he were +addressing someone deaf. "Am I to understand that she said yes?"</p> + +<p>At the sound of that hard naked query the dreamer comes out of his +enchanted forest again.</p> + +<p>"I do not know what she said; I do not think she said anything," he +answers, murmuring the words laggingly; while, as he goes on, the fire +of his madness spires high in his flashing eyes. "We have got beyond +speech, she and I! We have reached that region where hearts and +intelligences meet without the need of those vulgar go-betweens—words."</p> + +<p>There is a moment's pause, broken only by the commonplace sound of an +electric bell rung by some inmate of the hotel.</p> + +<p>"And has Mrs. Le Marchant reached that region too?" inquires Jim +presently, with an irony he cannot restrain. "Does she, too, understand +without words, or have you been obliged, in her case, to employ those +vulgar go-betweens?"</p> + +<p>"She <i>must</i> understand—she <i>does</i>—undoubtedly she does!" cries Byng, +whose drunkenness shares with the more ordinary kind the peculiarity of +believing whatever he wishes to be not only probable but inevitable. +"Who could see us together and be in uncertainty for a moment? And her +mother has some of her fine instincts, her delicate intuitions; not, of +course, to the miraculous extent that <i>she</i> possesses them. In <i>her</i> +they amount to genius!"</p> + +<p>"No doubt, no doubt; but did you trust entirely to Mrs. Le Marchant's +instincts, or did you broach the subject to her at all? You must have +had time, plenty of time, during that long drive home."</p> + +<p>"Well, no," answers Byng slowly, and with a slight diminution of +radiance. "I meant to have approached it; I tried to do so once or +twice; but I thought, I fancied—probably it was only fancy—that she +wished to avoid it."</p> + +<p>"To avoid it?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, not in any offensive, obvious way; it was probably only in my +imagination that she shirked it at all—and I did not make any great +efforts. It was all so perfect"—the intoxication getting the upper hand +again—"driving along in that balmy flood of evening radiance—did you +see how even the tardy sun came out for us?—with that divine face +opposite to me! Such a little face!"—his voice breaking into a tremor. +"Is not it inconceivable, Jim, how so much beauty can be packed into so +tiny a compass?"</p> + +<p>Burgoyne has all the time had his brushes in his hand, the brushes with +which he has been preparing himself for his solitary dinner. He bangs +them down now on the table. How can he put a period to the ravings of +this maniac? And yet not so maniac either. What gives the sharpest point +to his present suffering is the consciousness that he would have made +quite as good a maniac himself if he had had the chance. This +consciousness instils a few drops of angry patience into his voice, as, +disregarding the other's high-flown question, he puts one that is not at +all high-flown himself.</p> + +<p>"Then you have not told Mrs. Le Marchant yet?"</p> + +<p>But the smile that the memory—so fresh, only half an hour old—of +Elizabeth's loveliness has laid upon Byng's lips still lingers there; +and makes his response dreamy and vague.</p> + +<p>"No, not yet; not yet! <i>She</i> had taken one of her gloves off; her little +hand lay, palm upward, on her knees almost all the way; once or twice I +thought of taking it, of taking possession of it, of telling her mother +in that way; but I did not. It seemed—out in the sunshine, no longer in +the sacred mist of that blessed wood—too high an audacity, and I did +not!"</p> + +<p>He stops, his words dying away into a whisper, his throat's too narrow +passage choked by the rushing ocean of his immense felicity.</p> + +<p>Burgoyne looks at him in silence, again with a sort of admiration mixed +with wrath. How has this commonplace, pink-and-white boy managed to +scale such an altitude, while he himself, in all his life, though with a +better intelligence, and, as he had thought, with a deeper heart, had +but prowled around the foot? Why should he try to drag him down? On the +peak of that great Jungfrau of rapture no human foot can long stand.</p> + +<p>"As I told you, Mrs. Le Marchant turned me away from their door," +pursues Byng. "It struck me—I could not pay much attention to the fact, +for was not I bidding <i>her</i> good-night—taking farewell of those +heavenly eyes?—did you ever see such astonishing eyes?—for four +colossal hours—but it struck me that her mother's manner was a little +colder to me than it usually is. It had been a little cold all day—at +least, so I fancied. Had the same idea occurred to you?"</p> + +<p>Burgoyne hesitates.</p> + +<p>"But even if it were so," continues Byng, his sun breaking out again in +full brilliancy from the very little cloud that, during his last +sentence or two, had dimmed its lustre, "how can I blame her? Does one +throw one's self into the arms of the burglar who has broken open one's +safe and stolen one's diamonds?"</p> + +<p>Burgoyne still hesitates. Shall he tell the young ranter before him what +excellent reasons he has for knowing that any filial disposition on his +part to throw himself on Mrs. Le Marchant's neck will be met by a very +distinct resistance on that lady's part, or shall he leave him poised on</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"The jag<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of his mountain crag"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>till morning? The morning light will certainly see him tumbling at the +least some few kilometres down. He decides generously to leave him in +present possession of his peak; but yet, so inconsistent is human +nature, his next speech can have no drift but that of giving a slight +jog to his friend's towering confidence.</p> + +<p>"And your own mother?"</p> + +<p>It may generally be concluded that a person has not a very pertinent +response to give to a question if his only answer to that question be to +repeat it in the same words.</p> + +<p>"My own mother?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; you will write at once to tell her, I suppose?"</p> + +<p>For a second the young man's forehead clouds, then he breaks into an +excited laugh.</p> + +<p>"Tell her? I should rather think I should! Do you suppose that I shall +lose a moment in telling everybody I know—everybody I ever heard of? I +want you to tell everybody too—every single soul of your acquaintance!"</p> + +<p>"<i>I?</i>"</p> + +<p>"Tell Amelia; tell Cecilia"—quite unaware, in his excitement, of the +freedom he is taking, for the first time in his life, with those young +ladies' Christian names—"tell the other one—the sick one; tell them +all! I want <i>her</i> to feel that all my friends, everybody I know, welcome +her—hold out their arms to her. I want them all to tell her they are +glad—you most of all, of course, old chap; she will not think it is all +right till you have given your consent!"—laughing again with that +bubbling-over of superfluous joy. "Do you know—it seems +incomprehensible now—but there was a moment when I was madly jealous of +you? I was telling <i>her</i> about it to-day; we were laughing over it +together in the wood."</p> + +<p>Burgoyne feels that one more mention of that wood will convert him into +a lunatic, quite as indisputable as his companion, only very much more +dangerous.</p> + +<p>"Indeed!" he says grimly. "I should have thought you might have found a +more interesting subject of conversation."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps I was not so very far out either"—possibly dimly perceiving, +even through the golden haze of his own glory, the lack of enjoyment of +his last piece of news conveyed by Jim's tone—"for she has an immense +opinion of you. I do not know anyone of whom she has so high an opinion; +she says you are so dependable."</p> + +<p>The adjective, as applied to himself by Elizabeth and her mother, has +not the merit of novelty in the hearer's ears, which is perhaps the +reason why the elation that he must naturally feel on hearing it does +not translate itself into words.</p> + +<p>"So dependable," repeats Byng, apparently pleased with the epithet. "She +says you give her the idea of being a sort of rock; you will come +to-morrow, and wish her joy, will not you?"</p> + +<p>"I am afraid that my wishing it her will not help her much to it," +answers Burgoyne, rather sadly; "but I do not think you need much doubt +that I do wish it. Joy"—repeating the word over reflectively—"it is a +big thing to wish anyone."</p> + +<p>The extreme dampness of his tone arrests for a few minutes Byng's +jubilant pæan.</p> + +<p>"You do not think that my mother will be pleased with the news?" he asks +presently, in a changed and hesitating key.</p> + +<p>"I do not think about it; I know she will not!"</p> + +<p>"I suppose not; and yet"—with an accent of stupefaction—"it is +inconceivable that she, who has always shown such a tender sympathy for +me in any paltry little bit of luck that has happened to me, should not +rejoice with me when all heaven ope——"</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes; of course."</p> + +<p>"Do you think"—with a gleam of hope—"that my mother may have tried to +dissuade me because she thought I was only laying up disappointment for +myself—because she thought it so unlikely that <i>she</i> should deign to +stoop to me?"</p> + +<p>Burgoyne shakes his head.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps," he says, with the slowness of a man who is saying what he +himself does not believe, "a part of your mother's dislike to the idea +may be in the fact of Miss Le Marchant's being older than you."</p> + +<p>"<i>Older!</i>" cries Byng, with almost a shout of angry derision at the +suggestion. "What have creatures like <i>her</i> to do with age? I neither +know nor care what her age is! If you know, do not tell me! I will not +listen! Upon that exquisite body time and change are powerless to work +their hideous metamorphoses!"</p> + +<p>"Fiddlesticks!" replies Burgoyne gruffly. "If she live long enough, she +will be an old woman, and will look like one, I suppose!" though, even +as he speaks, he realizes that to him this is almost as incredible as to +the young madman whom he is so pitilessly snubbing. "But, however that +may be, I think you had better make up your mind to meeting the most +resolved opposition on the part of your mother."</p> + +<p>"I believe you are right," replies Byng, out of whose voice his kind +Mentor has at last succeeded in momentarily conjuring the exaltation. +"Her prejudice against them, against <i>her</i>, always filled me with +stupefaction. I never dared trust myself to discuss it with her; I was +afraid that if I did I might be led into saying something to her, +something I should be sorry for afterwards. Thank God, I have never +spoken unkindly to her in all my life!"</p> + +<p>"You would have been a sweep if you had!" interjects Jim.</p> + +<p>"I never heard her give any reason for it, did you? It was as baseless +as it was senseless." After a pause, his voice taking on again its +inflection of confident, soaring triumph: "But it cannot last—it is +absolutely beyond the wildest bounds of possibility that it can last! +After five minutes' talk mother will be at her feet; I know my mother so +well! Not one of her exquisite ways will be lost upon her, and <i>she</i> +will do her very best to win her! Jim, I ask you—I put it to you +quietly and plainly—I know you think I am mad, but I am not—I am +speaking quite rationally and coolly—but I ask you—<i>you</i>, an impartial +bystander—do you think that any human being, anything made of flesh and +blood, could resist <i>her</i>—<i>her</i> when she puts herself out to +please—<i>her</i> at her very best?"</p> + +<p>As Burgoyne is conscious of not being in a position to answer this +question with much satisfaction to himself, he leaves it unanswered.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV.</h2> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">"Some say the genius so<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Cries 'Come' to him that instantly must die."<br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>A new day has awaked, and Firenze, fresh-washed after yesterday's rain, +smelling through all her streets of lilies, laughs up, wistaria-hung, to +a fleckless sky. If poor Amelia had but deferred her treat for +twenty-four hours, what a different Vallombrosa would she and her +companions have carried home in their memories! Amelia's treat!</p> + +<p>"I shall not forget Amelia's treat in a hurry!" Burgoyne says to +himself, as he sits appetiteless over his solitary breakfast. "I had +better go and tell her the result of it."</p> + +<p>As he makes this reflection, he rises with some alacrity, and, leaving +his scarcely-tasted coffee and his not-at-all-tasted omelette, walks out +of the <i>salle-à-manger</i>. His motive for so early a visit to the +Anglo-Américain is less an excessive eagerness to proclaim his piece of +news than the thought that by so doing he will, at least for a few +hours, escape the necessity of being in his young friend's company. As +to where that young friend at present is, whether, after having wandered +about the town all night, he is now sleeping late, or whether he is +already off to persecute poor Mrs. Le Marchant for that maternal +blessing which she has so little inclination to give, Jim is ignorant. +All he knows is that such another dose of Byng's erotic eloquence as he +had to swallow last night will leave him (Burgoyne) either a murderer or +suicide.</p> + +<p>Owing to his arrival at the Anglo-Américain so much sooner than usual, +he finds himself coming in for the ceremony of Sybilla's installation +for the day in the drawing-room. There is always a little pomp and fussy +bustle about this rite. Sybilla totters in (grave doubts have +occasionally crossed the minds of her family as to whether she does not +in reality possess a pair of excellent and thoroughly dependable legs), +supported on one side by Amelia and on the other by her maid. Cecilia +goes before with an air cushion, and Mr. Wilson follows, when he does +not turn restive—which is sometimes the case—with a duvet. To-day, as +I have said, this rite is in full celebration when Jim arrives, but it +is being performed with mutilated glories. The rite is going forward, +but the high priest is absent. That ministrant, upon whose arm the +sufferer is wont to lean far the most heavily; she upon whom devolves +the whole responsibility of arranging the three cushions behind the long +limp back; the properly covering the languid feet; the nice +administering of the reviving cordial drops that are to repair the +fatigue of the transit from bedroom to sitting-room—that most important +and unfailing ministrant is nowhere to be seen. No artist wishes his +picture to be viewed in an inchoate, unfinished stage, nor is Sybilla at +all anxious to have the public admitted to the sight of that eminent +work of art herself until she is stretched in faint, moribund, graceful +completeness on her day-bed. At the moment of Burgoyne's entry she has +just reached that unbecoming point, where she is sitting sideways on her +sofa, before her wasted limbs—Burgoyne is one of those heretics who +have never believed that they are wasted—have been carefully lifted +into their final posture of extension upon the Austrian blanket. It is, +of all moments, the one at which interruption is least welcome; nor is +the intruder at all surprised at being greeted by the invalid with a +more than sub-acid accent.</p> + +<p>"My dear Jim, <i>already</i>! Why you become more <i>matinale</i> every day! you +<i>are</i> the early bird indeed! You do not"—with an annoyed laugh—"give +us poor worms a chance of being beforehand with you."</p> + +<p>"I am very sorry if I am too soon," replies he, his eyes wandering away +from the fretful features before him in search of others upon which he +knows he shall find written no complaint of his prematureness—"but I +came to——Where's Amelia?"</p> + +<p>"You may well ask," replies Sybilla, with a sort of hysterical laugh. +"It is pretty evident that she is not <i>here</i>! My dear Cis, would you +mind remembering that my head is not made of mahogany? you gave it such +a bang with that cushion. I am very sorry to trouble you. The heaviest +load a sick person has to bear is the feeling that she is such a burden +to those around her; and certainly, my dear, you do not help me to +forget it."</p> + +<p>"Where is she?" repeats Burgoyne hastily, both because he wants to know, +and because he is anxious to strangle in its infancy one of those +ignoble family bickerings, to assist at many of which has been the +privilege or penalty of his state of intimacy.</p> + +<p>"She is not well," replies Cecilia shortly, her rosy face rosier than +usual, either with the joy of imminent battle, or with the exertion of +swaddling, under protest, the invalid's now elevated legs.</p> + +<p>"Not well! Amelia not well," echoes he, in a tone of incredulity.</p> + +<p>During all the years of their acquaintance not once has he heard his +patient sweetheart complain of ache or pain. Manlike, he has therefore +concluded that she can never have felt either.</p> + +<p>"It is very thoughtless of her," says Cecilia, with a not altogether +amiable laugh, and giving a final irritated slap to Sybilla's +coverlet—"considering how much illness we already have in the house; +ha! ha! but it is true all the same: she is not well, not at all well; +she is in bed."</p> + +<p>"<i>In bed!</i>"</p> + +<p>"She must have caught a chill yesterday on that disgusting excursion; +driving home that long distance in wet shoes and stockings."</p> + +<p>"But I thought, I hoped that—I asked her to change them."</p> + +<p>"She had them dried in a sort of way; but I could see when she put them +on again that they were really wringing wet still. I told her so, but +she only answered that even if they were, what matter? she never caught +cold. You know that Amelia never thinks that anything matters that +concerns herself."</p> + +<p>This would be an even handsomer tribute to Amelia than it is, if it did +not suggest a secondary intention of administering a back-hander to +someone else.</p> + +<p>"In the case of my children," says Mr. Wilson, making his voice heard +for the first time from the window, where he is discontentedly peering +up and down the sheets of a journal through his spectacles, "there seems +to be no mean possible between senseless rashness and preposterous +self-indulgence."</p> + +<p>Mr. Wilson likes his eldest daughter. He is uneasy and upset, and rather +angry at her indisposition, and this is his way of showing his paternal +tenderness.</p> + +<p>"<i>In bed!</i>"</p> + +<p>The human animal is the most adaptive of created beings; but even it +requires some little time to adjust itself to entirely new conditions of +existence.</p> + +<p>"Amelia," continues Mr. Wilson, fanning the flame of his ire with the +bellows of his own rhetoric, "is the one among you whom I did credit +with the possession of a head upon her shoulders, and now here she is +wantonly laying herself up!"</p> + +<p>"You talk as if she did it on purpose, father," says Cecilia, with an +indignant laugh—"as if she enjoyed it. I do not think that anyone, even +Sybilla"—with a resentful side-glance at the sofa—"could enjoy having +her teeth chattering with cold, her head as heavy as lead, and her knees +knocking together under her."</p> + +<p>"Good heavens!" cries Jim, his bewildered surprise swallowed up in +genuine alarm; "you do not mean to say that she is as bad as that?"</p> + +<p>Sybilla laughs, and even in the midst of his real anxiety, Burgoyne has +time for the reflection that the Wilson family seem this morning to have +<i>se donné le mot</i> to show in how many different styles it is possible to +be merry without the least tinge of genuine mirth in any.</p> + +<p>"My dear Jim, have not you known Cis long enough not to take her <i>au +pied de la lettre</i>? Do not you know of old what a magnificent colourist +she is?—a perfect Tintoret! Of course Amelia is not quite the thing, +poor dear—she has no one but herself to blame for that!—but equally of +course, to a colossally healthy person such as she, any little ailment +appears a mountain."</p> + +<p>This speech is uttered with the accent of such entire conviction that it +ought to carry reassurance into the heart of the person to whom it is +addressed. Sybilla really and honestly disbelieves in the reality of any +claims but her own to sincere sickness. But Jim unreasonably neither is +nor feigns to be reassured.</p> + +<p>"You have had advice for her? You have sent for Dr. Coldstream?" he asks +rapidly of the two sound members of the family, turning his back +unceremoniously upon the invalid.</p> + +<p>"I was going to send for him at once," answers Cecilia, her own latent +anxiety quickened by the evident alarm of her interlocutor, "but Sybilla +said it was needless, as in any case he was coming to see her this +afternoon."</p> + +<p>"I think he wishes to change my medicine," puts in Sybilla in a piano +voice, that shows an evident desire to assert her threatened position of +prime and only genuine invalid, a sort of "beware of imitations" tone; +"he is not quite satisfied with the effect of the last, I think; it has +not brought up the pulse and quickened the appetite in the way he hoped. +I thought that he might run up and look at Amelia at the end of his +visit to me."</p> + +<p>"And is it possible," inquires Jim, with some heat, "that you are going +to let half a day go by without doing anything for her? I suppose you +have not exaggerated, have you?" turning with an earnest appeal in his +eyes to Cecilia; "but in any case I am very sure that nothing short of +being really and gravely ill would have kept her in bed—she who is +always waiting hand and foot upon us all, whom we all allow to spend her +life in hewing wood and drawing water for us."</p> + +<p>"Send for Dr. Coldstream at once," says Mr. Wilson irritably; "at once, +I tell you; he is so very seldom out of the house that I have often +thought of suggesting to him to take a room here; and now, on the only +occasion on which he is really needed, he is not at hand."</p> + +<p>"If you will write the note," says Jim, a shade relieved at having at +last succeeded in rousing Amelia's relations to prompt action, and +feeling a feverish desire to be doing something, "I will take it at +once; it will be the quickest way; I may catch him before he goes out +and bring him back with me."</p> + +<p>"Do you really think it is necessary?" asks Sybilla, as Jim hustles +Cecilia to her writing-table, and stands, nervously fidgeting beside her +as she writes; "do you think, if it is only a common cold, as I suspect, +that it is quite fair to worry a man who is so run off his legs already? +He will probably laugh in your face; still, if you are so set upon it, +it is perhaps more satisfactory."</p> + +<p>"You need not go into details—just a line—make haste!" cries Jim, +hanging tiresomely over Cecilia, rather impeding her than the reverse by +his impatience, and leaving entirely unnoticed Sybilla's observation, +which indeed has been uttered more to preserve her own self-respect than +with much hope that in the present wrong-headed state of mind of her +family any member will pay much heed to it.</p> + +<p>In five minutes more, Jim, with Cecilia's note in his pocket, is being +borne rapidly in a fiacre through the sweet, gay streets. But, drive as +rapidly as he may, he is not quick enough to intercept the popular +English doctor, who, although, as his servant tantalizingly informs Jim, +he is almost always at home at that hour, has, on this occasion, been +sent for to an urgent case of sudden illness out of Florence, at the +village of Peretola. Jim has to content himself with the assurance that +immediately on his return the note will be given him; and with this +unsatisfactory intelligence Mr. Burgoyne reappears at the +Anglo-Américain. He finds the three persons whom he had left much as he +had quitted them—uneasy, cross, and unemployed.</p> + +<p>"It is all the fault of that odious expedition yesterday," says Cecilia, +harking back to her old cry. "Why we set out at all, I can't imagine; on +such a day, it was madness, and——"</p> + +<p>"It is not much use thinking of that now," interrupts Burgoyne +impatiently, and wincing at these philippics against his poor bride's +miserable treat as if they had been directed against herself.</p> + +<p>"Well, it is an ill-wind that blows nobody any good," pursues the young +lady. "I suppose that two of us enjoyed it enough to make up for the +wretchedness of the other four."</p> + +<p>Her large prominent eyes are fixed upon Jim as she speaks with a sort of +knowingness overlying their former lugubrious expression.</p> + +<p>"Do you mean Mr. Byng and Miss Le Marchant?" inquires he, pronouncing +both names with a laboured distinctness, while his voice sounds to +himself loud and wooden. "You are perfectly right in your conjecture; no +doubt they enjoyed themselves. Byng wished me to tell you that they are +engaged to be married."</p> + +<p>If the essence of a good piece of news is to surprise, Jim can certainly +not flatter himself that his comes under that head.</p> + +<p>"It did not require a conjurer to prophesy that," is Cecilia's comment. +"I never saw two people who troubled themselves less to disguise their +feelings. I saw that they neither of them knew whether they were on +their heads or on their heels, when they emerged dripping from that +horrid pine wood. Dear me!"—with a good-sized sigh—"how smoothly +things run for some people! how easily some of these affairs come off, +without a hitch anywhere from beginning to end!"</p> + +<p>She pauses, and it is plain to those acquainted with her heart history +that her thoughts are coursing mournfully back to the all-along +reluctant and ultimately entirely faithless clergyman who had last +possessed her young affections.</p> + +<p>"Without a hitch from beginning to end?" cries Jim hotly, jarred more +than he would like to own to himself by this phrase. "How can you +possibly tell? These are early days to assert that so dogmatically.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'There's many a slip<br /></span> +<span class="i1">'Twixt the cup and the lip.'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>"Do you mean to say that you think it will not come off?" asks Cecilia, +a slightly pleasurable light coming into her eyes as she asks—not that +she has any ill-will towards Elizabeth, nor any distinct design of her +own upon Byng; but that there is something not absolutely disagreeable +to her in the idea of his being still among the ranks of the possible.</p> + +<p>"I am sure he would make a delightful husband," puts in Sybilla, her +praise given emphasis by her desire to employ it as a weapon of offence +against one who is at present more deeply than usual in her black books; +"he has such gentle, feminine ways; he comes into a room so quietly, and +when he asks one how one is really listens for the answer."</p> + + +<p>"Perhaps you are right, and it will fall through," says Cecilia +thoughtfully; "many engagements do!" (sighing again). "She is a sweet, +pretty creature, and looks as if butter would not melt in her mouth; but +she is evidently older than he."</p> + +<p>"Jim will not allow that to be an objection," cries Sybilla, with a +faint laugh, "will you, Jim? How much older than you is Amelia? I always +forget."</p> + +<p>"I never can help thinking that she has a history," resumes Cecilia, in +a meditative voice, "and that Mr. Greenock knows it. If ever her name is +mentioned he always begins to look wise, as if there were something that +he was longing to tell one about her; it is continually on the tip of +his tongue—some day it will tumble over the tip."</p> + +<p>"I do not think that there is any use in my staying all this while!" +cries Jim, jumping up. "Dr. Coldstream cannot be here at soonest for +another hour; and I do not think that we are, any of us, very good +company for each other to-day, so I will look in again later."</p> + + +<p>He is out of the room and out of the hotel before his companions can +take exception to his disappearance. For some time he walks along +aimlessly, his mind a jumble of misery, and dull, remorseful anxiety +about Amelia; intolerable comparisons between his own lot and his +friend's; sharp knives of jealousy as often as—which is almost +unintermittently—his imagination wings its cruel way to the Piazza +d'Azeglio—through one opulent week, <i>his</i> Piazza. At this moment—this +moment, while his own leaden feet are treading goalless the hot flags +that for him lead nowhere—Byng is enthroned with <i>her</i> in the heaven of +the mean little <i>salon</i>. He unconsciously shows his teeth in a stern +smile to the surprised passers-by. He had jeered Byng for his +hyperboles, and now he is <i>out-hyperboling</i> him. What a detestable verb +he has invented! He laughs out loud. Are they sitting at the window, +looking out at the judas tree and the Paulownia? Not they! The window is +commanded to a certain extent by the roadway. The window is for +acquaintances, banal acquaintances, like himself—no place for the +permitted freedoms of exquisite new love. Are they then on the sofa, the +vulgar walnut sofa, over which Elizabeth has thrown her blue Neapolitan +tablecloth? It is a little sofa, scarcely room for two upon it, but, oh! +plenty of room for them! Or are they at the piano? Is she singing him +some sugared ditty "lovely well" until he breaks into her song with the +storm of his kisses, and her little white hands drop from the keys, and +they lie sobbing with ecstasy in each other's arms? It is quite certain +that Byng will sob. He is always delighted at having an opportunity for +turning on the water-works. Is there a bare possibility that Mrs. Le +Marchant may carry her disapprobation to the pitch of impeding by her +presence their <i>tête-à-tête</i>? The idea gives him a momentary +alleviation. Why should not he go and see for himself whether it is so? +It will be a method of passing the tedious interval before he can hear +the doctor's verdict on Amelia. He must at some time or other comply +with Byng's pressing prayer to him to offer his congratulations to +Elizabeth, and he may as well have a day of complete and perfect +pain—pain of various flavours and essences mixed into one consummate +draught—a day of which not one hour shall be without its ache.</p> + +<p>Having come to this conclusion, his aimless walk quickens, and changes +into a purposeful striding through streets and Piazzas, till he finds +himself standing at the door of 12<i>a</i>. He looks up at the <i>entresol</i> +windows—they are all open, but no one is either sitting in or looking +out at them. It is as he had thought. The window is too public for them; +neither can they be at the piano, for not a sound of either voice or +instrument is wafted down to him. He runs up the stone stairs, and rings +the electric bell. The standing before the unopened portal, and the +trembling jar of the bell, bring back to him, with a vividness he could +do without, those other long-ago days—they seem to him long ago—when +he stood there last, with no easy heart even then, but yet with how +different anticipations. He has found it hard enough to bear the brunt +of Byng's furious inhuman joy when alone with him. How will he stand it +when he sees them together?</p> + +<p>He is recalled from these reflections by the opening of the door, and +the appearance in it of the ministering angel who has usually admitted +him into his Eden—Annunziata. It strikes him that Annunziata looks +older and more dishevelled than ever, and is without that benevolent +smile of welcoming radiance which her hard-featured face generally +wears. Nor does she, as has been her wont, stand back to let him pass in +almost before he has put his question, as if she could not admit him +quickly enough. But to-day she stands, on the contrary, in the doorway +without a smile. In a second the idea flashes across Jim's mind that +Byng has forbidden anyone to be let in. It turns him half sick for the +moment, and it is with an unsteady voice that he stammers:</p> + +<p>"The Signora? The Signorina?"</p> + +<p>Annunziata lifts her shoulders in a dismal shrug, and stretches out her +hands:</p> + +<p>"Gone!"</p> + +<p>"<i>Gone?</i> You mean gone out driving?" Then remembering that her English +is as minus a quantity as his Italian, he adds in eager explanation, "En +fiacre?"</p> + +<p>She shakes her head, and then nods vaguely in the direction of the whole +of the rest of the world—the whole, that is, that is not 12 bis.</p> + +<p>"No, <i>gone</i>!"</p> + +<p>"But <i>where</i>? <i>Dove?</i>" cries he, frantic with irritation at his own +powerlessness either to understand or be understood.</p> + +<p>Again she shakes her head.</p> + +<p>"I do not know; they did not say."</p> + +<p>He gathers this to be her meaning, and hurriedly puts another query.</p> + +<p>"When? <i>Quando?</i>"</p> + +<p>But her answer being longer and more voluble, he can't take in its +drift, seeing which she retreats a step, and, motioning him with her +hand to enter, points down the passage. He does not require to have the +dumb-show of invitation twice repeated, but, rushing past her, hurries +down the well-known little corridor to the <i>salon</i> door. It is open, and +he stands within. At the first glance it seems to him to wear much its +usual air. There is even a score of music standing on the piano, the +copper pots are full of rose-branches, and the <i>scaldini</i> brimming with +Firenze's own lilies, the bit of red Venetian brocade, with the little +old tinsel fringe, still hangs over the arm-chair by the fireplace, and +the blue Neapolitan table-cover still disguises the vulgarity of the +sofa. He has misunderstood Annunziata—it is really monstrous to be so +helplessly ignorant of the language of the country you are living in—or +she has lost her wits, or——He had thought the room empty, but as he +advances a step further into it, he discovers that he is not the sole +occupant: that lying stretched upon the floor, with his fair head buried +in a little pillow, against which both men have often seen Elizabeth's +small white cheek resting, is Byng!—the Byng whose riotous, insolent +happiness he had doubted his own powers of witnessing without murdering +him!—the splendid felicity of whose lot he has been so bitterly laying +beside his own destiny—the Byng whom he had been gnashing his teeth at +the thought of—at the thought of him lying in Elizabeth's arms!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI.</h2> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Cressid, I love thee in so strained a purity,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That the blest gods—as angry at my fancy,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">More bright in zeal than the devotion which<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Cold lips blow to their deities—take thee from me."<br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>"What does this mean?"</p> + +<p>The question has to be twice repeated before the person to whom it is +addressed gives any sign of having heard it. His ears must be so deeply +embedded in the pillow that the passage to his hearing is blocked. It is +not till the interrogation is put a second time, in a louder key, and +accompanied by a not very gentle shake of the shoulder, that he at +length looks up, and reveals what Jim knows to be, and yet has some +difficulty in recognising, as the features of Byng—features so altered, +so distorted, so swollen by excessive weeping, that no one less +intimately acquainted with them than the person who has been already +contemplating them, under the influence of a variety of circumstances +for a couple of months, could possibly put the owner's name to them. Jim +has expected that his young friend would spend some portion of this day +in crying, knowing well both his powers of, and his taste for, "turning +on the water-works," as he but lately cruelly and uncivilly phrased it +to his own mind. But the warm tears of emotion, few and undisfiguring, +with which he had credited him, have not much kinship with the scalding +torrents that have made his handsome young eyes mere red blurs on his +ashen face, that have furrowed his cheeks, and damped his disordered +curls, and taken all the starch out of his immaculate "masher" collar. +They have wetted, too, into a state of almost pulp, a crumpled sheet of +note-paper, which his head seems to have been burrowing in, upon the +pillow.</p> + +<p>"What does it mean?" repeats Burgoyne, for the third time, a hideous +fear assailing him, at the sight of the young man's anguish, that he +himself may have mistaken Annunziata's meaning; that her "gone" may have +stood for the final one; that some instant stroke may have snatched +lovely Elizabeth away, out of the world. Surely no catastrophe less than +death can account for such a metamorphosis as that wrought in Byng. "Why +do you look like that?" he goes on, his voice taking that accent of rage +which extreme fear sometimes gives. "Why do not you speak?"</p> + +<p>The other, thus adjured, plainly makes a violent effort for +articulation; but his dry throat will let pass nothing but a senseless +sob.</p> + +<p>"What does that paper mean?" goes on Burgoyne, realizing the impotence +of his friend to obey his behest, and rendered doubly terrified by it; +"what is it? what does it say? Does it—does it—explain anything?"</p> + +<p>He points as he speaks to the blurred and rumpled <i>billet</i>, and Byng +catches it up convulsively, and thrusts it into his hand.</p> + +<p>"It is the first letter I ever had from her," he says, the words rushing +out broken and scarcely intelligible upon a storm of sobs, and so flings +his head violently down upon the floor again in a new access of furious +weeping.</p> + +<p>Burgoyne holds the paper in his fingers, but for a moment or two he is +unable to read it. There is an ugly swimming before his eyes for one +thing; for another, Byng's treatment has not improved it as a specimen +of caligraphy; but it never in its best days could have been a very +legible document. And yet it is not long. Its few words, when at length +he makes them out, ran thus:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"<i>Good-bye, I was mad yesterday. I shall never marry you; I +have no right to marry anyone. For God's sake do not ask me +what I mean; and oh! don't, don't, DON'T come after me!</i>"</p></blockquote> + +<p>There is neither date nor signature. As Jim stands staring at the five +crooked, straggling sentences, a great swelling compassion fills his +heart. Did ever poor little scribble make it so easy to construct the +small shaking hand, and the tender breaking heart that penned it? An +immense pity fills his soul; yet does it quite fill it? Is there room +besides, in one corner, for a small pinch of devilish joy?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"There's many a slip<br /></span> +<span class="i1">'Twixt the cup and the lip."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>His own words of ill-natured croaking, uttered not an hour ago, to +Cecilia Wilson, recur to his mind. How little he thought that that +prophecy would so soon be fulfilled! He remains so long motionless and +silent, his fingers still holding the paper, whose contents he has long +ago mastered, that Byng—the violence of his paroxysm of grief at length +exhausted—struggles to his feet and speaks—speaks as well as the catch +in his sobbing breath and his quivering lips will let him.</p> + +<p>"It is not her doing! You may think it is her doing, but I know it is +not! I know her better than you do."</p> + + +<p>"I never made any pretensions to knowing her well," replies the other +sadly, and relinquishing as he speaks the note to its owner.</p> + +<p>"Is it likely, I ask you?" cries Byng excitedly. "I put it to you +fairly: is it likely that she, with her seraph nature, all love and +burning, she that is tender over drowning flies, would have put me to +this horrible pain?—O God, you do not know what pain it is" ["Do not +I?" aside]—"of her own free will?"</p> + +<p>"I do not know; as you say, I do not know her well."</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'Then tell, oh tell! how thou didst murder me?'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>says Byng, beginning to walk up and down the room with the tears still +rolling down his cheeks, but in his spouting voice—a voice which at +once assures Jim of an amelioration in his friend's condition, and +hardens his heart against him. As a broad rule, indeed, it may be laid +down that that sorrow which courses through one of the numberless +channels cut by the poets for it will not bring its owner to Waterloo +Bridge.</p> + +<p>"But what am I saying?" lapsing out of his quotation into broken-hearted +prose again. "It was not she! If I thought it were she, could I live a +moment? It is her mother; no sane person can doubt that it is her +mother's doing! She was always so sweetly docile, and her mother has +conceived some prejudice against me. Did not I tell you how barbarously +she shut the door upon me last night?—shut the door of my heaven in my +face just as I thought I had won the right to enter it. Who would not +have thought that it was won who had seen us together in the wood?"</p> + +<p>Jim writhes.</p> + +<p>"Oh, never mind the wood now!"</p> + +<p>"Someone has prejudiced her against me, but who? I did not know that I +had an enemy in the world. Someone has told her about—about +Oxford—about my being sent down."</p> + +<p>Jim is silent.</p> + +<p>"If it is only that——" a tearful buoyancy beginning to pierce through +his despair.</p> + +<p>"It is not that."</p> + +<p>"Someone has put a spoke in my wheel; but who? You are the only person +who could, and you, dear old chap, are the last person who would, though +you were not very encouraging to me last night! <i>You</i> did not?"</p> + +<p>There is so direct an interrogation in the last words, accompanied by so +confiding a look of affection, that yet has an uneasy touch of doubt in +it, that Jim is obliged to answer.</p> + +<p>"No, I did not put a spoke in your wheel; but"—his honesty forcing the +admission—"I am not at all so sure that I am the last person who would +have done so, if I could."</p> + +<p>Byng has wiped his eyes to clear his vision of the blinding tears, and +has again directed them to the note, which he has all this while been +alternately pressing against his heart, laying upon his forehead, and +crushing against his mouth.</p> + +<p>"It seems blasphemy to say so of anything that came from her hand," he +says, poring for the hundredth time over each obscure word, "but it +reads like nonsense, does it not? '<i>I shall never marry you! I have no +right to marry anyone!</i>' No right? what does she mean?"</p> + +<p>Jim shakes his head sadly.</p> + +<p>"How can I tell?"</p> + +<p>"Do you think it is possible"—lifting his disfigured eyes in horrified +appeal to his friend—"it is a dreadful hypothesis, but I can think of +no other—that that bright intelligence was clouded—that—that her dear +little wits were touched when she wrote this?"</p> + +<p>"No, I do not think so."</p> + +<p>"You—you are not keeping anything from me?"—coming a step nearer, and +convulsively clutching his friend's arm—"you—you do not know +anything—anything that could throw light upon—upon this? I do not know +whether you are conscious of it, but there is something in your manner +that might lead me to that conclusion. Do you know—have you heard +anything?"</p> + +<p>"I know nothing," replies Jim slowly, and looking uncomfortably away +from the questioner, "but I conjecture, I fear, I believe +that—that——"</p> + +<p>"That what? For God's sake, be a little quicker!"</p> + +<p>"That—that—there is a—a—something in her past."</p> + +<p>Byng falls back a pace or two, and puts up his hand to his head.</p> + +<p>"What—what do you mean? What are you talking about? Her past? +What"—soaring into extravagance again—"what can there be written on +that white page?—so white that it bedazzles the eyes of even the angels +who read it."</p> + +<p>"I do not know what there is," replies Jim miserably, irritated almost +beyond endurance by this poetic flight, and rendered even more wretched +than he was before by the <i>rôle</i> that seems to be forced upon him, of +conjecturally blackening Elizabeth's character. "How many times must I +tell you that I <i>know</i> no more than you, only from—from various +indications I have been led to believe that she has <i>something</i>—some +great sorrow behind her?"</p> + +<p>There is a silence, and when it is broken it is infringed by what is not +much more than a whisper.</p> + +<p>"What—what do you mean; what—what sort of a sorrow?"</p> + +<p>"I tell you, I do not know."</p> + +<p>Byng's tears have stopped flowing, and he now lifts his eyes, full of a +madness of exaltation, to the ceiling.</p> + +<p>"I will go to her," he cries; "if sorrow has the audacity to approach +her again, it will have to reckon with me. There is no sorrow, none, in +the whole long gamut of woe, for which love such as mine is not a balm. +Reciprocal love!"—trailing the words in a sort of slow rapture—"no one +that had seen her in the wood could have doubted that it <i>was</i> +reciprocal."</p> + +<p>"No doubt, no doubt."</p> + +<p>"I will go to her!"—clasping his hands high in the air—"I will pour +the oil and spikenard of my adoration into her gaping wounds! I will +kiss the rifts together, though they yawn as wide as hell—yes, I will."</p> + +<p>"For heaven's sake, do not talk such dreadful gibberish," breaks in Jim, +at length at the end of his patience, which had run quite to the extreme +of its tether indeed at the last mention of that ever-recurring wood. +"It <i>is</i> a knockdown blow for you, I own, and I would do what I could to +help you; but if you will keep on spouting and talking such terrible +bosh——"</p> + +<p>"I suppose I am making an ass of myself," replies Byng, thus brought +down with a run from his heroics. "I beg your pardon, I am sure, old +man. I have no right to victimize you," his sweet nature asserting +itself even at this bitter moment; "but you see it is so horribly +sudden. If you had seen her when I parted from her last night at the +door! She lingered a moment behind Mrs. Le Marchant—just a moment, just +time enough to give me one look, one wordless look. She did not speak; +she was so divinely dutiful and submissive that nothing would have +persuaded her by the lightest word to imply any censure of her mother; +but she gave me just a look, which said plainly, 'It is not <i>my</i> fault +that you are turned away! <i>I</i> would have welcomed you in!' Upon that +look I banqueted in heaven all night."</p> + +<p>He stops, choked.</p> + +<p>"Well?"</p> + +<p>"And then this morning, when I got here—I think I ran all the way; I am +sure I did, for I saw people staring at me as I passed—to be met by +Annunziata with the news that they were <i>gone</i>! I did not believe her; I +laughed in her face, and then she grew angry, and bid me come in and see +for myself! And I rushed past her, in here, with my arms stretched out, +confident that in one short moment more <i>she</i> would be filling them, and +instead of her"—dropping upon his knees by the table with a groan—"I +find this!"—dashing the note upon the floor—"all that she leaves me to +fill my embrace instead of her is this poor little pillow, that still +seems to keep a faint trace of the perfume of her delicate head!"</p> + +<p>He buries his own in it again as he speaks, beginning afresh to sob +loudly.</p> + +<p>Jim stands beside him, his mind half full of compassion and half of a +burning exasperation, and his body wholly rigid.</p> + +<p>"When did they go? at what hour? last night or this morning?"</p> + +<p>"This morning early, quite early."</p> + +<p>"They have left all their things behind them"—looking round at the +room, strewn with the traces of recent and refined occupation.</p> + +<p>"Yes"—lifting his wet face out of his cushion—"and at first, seeing +everything just as usual, even to her very workbasket—she has left her +very workbasket behind—I was quite reassured. I felt certain that they +could have gone for only a few hours—for the day perhaps; but——"</p> + +<p>He breaks off</p> + +<p>"Yes?"</p> + +<p>"They left word that their things were to be packed and sent after them +to an address they would give."</p> + +<p>"And you do not know where they have gone?"</p> + +<p>"I know nothing, nothing, only that they are gone.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'Then tell, oh tell! how thou didst murder me?'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Oh! oh!! oh!!!"</p> + +<p>"You never heard them speak of their plans, mention any place they +intended to move to on leaving Florence?"</p> + +<p>"Never!"</p> + +<p>"It is too late for Rome," says Jim musingly; "England? I hardly think +England," recalling Elizabeth's forlorn admission made to him at Monte +Senario, "Why should we go home? We have nothing pleasant to go to."</p> + +<p>"I do not think they had any plans," says Byng, speaking in a voice +which is thick with much weeping; "they never seemed to me to have any. +She was so happy here, so gay, there never was anything more lovely than +her gaiety, except—except—her tenderness."</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes, no doubt. Then you are absolutely without a clue?"</p> + +<p>"Absolutely."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean to say that up to yesterday—all through yesterday, +even—she never gave you a hint of any intention of leaving Florence?"</p> + +<p>"Never, <i>never</i>. On the contrary, in the——" (he is going to say "the +wood," but thinks better of it), "we were planning many more such +expeditions as yesterday's. At least, I was planning them."</p> + +<p>"And she assented?"</p> + +<p>"She did not <i>dis</i>sent. She met me with a look of divine acquiescence."</p> + +<p>Jim turns away his head. He is involuntarily picturing to himself what +that look was like, and with what sweet dumb-show it was accompanied.</p> + +<p>"What powers of hell"—banging his head down upon the table +again—"could have wrought such a hideous change in so few hours? Only +ten! for it was eight in the evening before I left them, and they were +off at six this morning. They could have seen no one; they had received +no letters, no telegrams, for I inquired of Annunziata, and she assured +me that they had not. Oh no!"—lifting his face with a gleam of moist +hope upon it—"there is only one tenable hypothesis about it—it is not +<i>her</i> doing at all. She wrote this under pressure. It is her +handwriting, is it not?—though I would not swear even to that. I—I +have played the mischief with my eyes"—pulling out his drenched +pocket-handkerchief, and hastily wiping them—"so that I cannot see +properly; but it <i>is</i> hers, is not it?"</p> + +<p>"I do not know; I never saw her handwriting; she never wrote to me."</p> + +<p>"It was evidently dictated to her," cries Byng, his sanguine nature +taking an upward spring again; "there are clear traces, even in the very +way the letters are formed, of its being written to order reluctantly. +She did it under protest. See how her poor little hand was shaking, and +she was crying all the while, bless her! There, do not you see a blister +on the paper—here on this side?"</p> + +<p>Burgoyne does not see any blister, but as he thinks it extremely +probable that there was one, he does not think himself called upon to +wound his friend by saying so.</p> + +<p>"I declare I think we have got hold of the right clue at last," cries +Byng, his dimmed eyes emitting such a flash as would have seemed +impossible to them five minutes ago. "Read in this light, it is not +nearly so incomprehensible: '<i>I shall never marry you, I have no right +to marry anyone.</i>' Of course, I see now! What an ass I was not to see it +at once! What she means is that she has no right to leave her mother! To +anyone who knew her lofty sense of duty as well as I ought to have done +it is quite obvious that that is what she means. Is not it quite +obvious? is not it as clear as the sun in heaven?"</p> + +<p>Jim shakes his head.</p> + +<p>"I am afraid that it is rather a forced interpretation."</p> + +<p>"I do not agree with you," rejoins the other hotly; "I see nothing +forced about it. You do not know as well as I do—how should you?—her +power of delicate, self-sacrificing devotion. It is overstrained, I +grant you; but there it is—she thinks she has no right to leave her +mother now that she is all alone."</p> + +<p>"She is not alone; she has her husband."</p> + +<p>"I mean now that all her other children are married and scattered. There +are plenty more—are not there?—though I never could get her to talk +about them."</p> + +<p>"There are two sisters and two brothers."</p> + +<p>"But they are no longer any good to their mother," persists Byng, +clinging to his theory with all the greater tenacity as he sees that it +meets with no very great acceptance in his friend's eyes; "as far as she +is concerned they are non-existent."</p> + +<p>"I do not know what right you have to say that."</p> + +<p>"And so she, with her lofty idea of self-sacrifice, immolates her own +happiness on the altar of her filial affection. It is just like +her!"—going off into a sort of rapture—"blind mole that I was not to +divine the motive, which her ineffable delicacy forbade her to put into +words. She thought she had a right to think that I should have +comprehended her without words!"</p> + +<p>He has talked himself into a condition of such exalted confidence before +he reaches the end of this sentence that Jim is conscious of a certain +brutality in applying to him the douche contained in his next words.</p> + +<p>"I do not know why you should credit Mrs. Le Marchant with such colossal +selfishness; she never used to be a selfish woman."</p> + +<p>But Burgoyne's cold shower-bath does not appear even to damp the +shoulders for which it is intended.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'Since you left me, taking no farewell,'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>murmurs Byng, beginning again to tramp up and down the little room, with +head thrown back and clasped hands high lifted; and in his rapt poet +voice:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'Since you left me, taking no farewell,'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I must follow you, sweet! Despite your prohibition, I must follow you.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'We two that with so many thousand sighs,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Did buy each other.'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Then, coming abruptly down to prose—"Though they left no address, it +will of course be possible, easy, to trace them. I will go to the +station and make inquiries. They will have been seen. It is out of the +question that she can have passed unnoticed! No eye that has once been +enriched by the sight of her can have forgotten that heavenly vision. I +will telegraph to Bologna, to Milan, to Venice. Before night I shall +have learnt her whereabouts. I shall be in the train, following her +track. I shall be less than a day behind her. I shall fall at her feet, +I shall——"</p> + +<p>"You are talking nonsense," answers Burgoyne impatiently; and yet with a +distinct shade of pity in his voice; "you cannot do anything of the +kind. When the poor woman has given so very unequivocal a proof of her +wish to avoid you, as is implied in leaving the place at a moment's +notice, without giving herself even time to pack her clothes, it is +impossible that you can force your company again upon her—it would be +persecution."</p> + +<p>"And do you mean to tell me," asks Byng slowly, and breathing hard, +while the fanatical light dies out of his face, and leaves it chalk +white; "do you mean to say that I am to acquiesce, to sit down with my +hands before me, and submit without a struggle to the loss of——O my +God"—breaking out into an exceeding bitter cry—"why did you make me</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"'so rich in having such a jewel,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As twenty seas, if all their sands were pearl,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold,'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>if it were only to rob me of her?"</p> + +<p>"I do not see what other course is open to you," replies Jim, answering +only the first part of the young sufferer's appeal, and ignoring the +rhetoric, terribly genuine as is the feeling of which it is the florid +expression. "It is evident that she has some cogent reasons—or at least +that appear cogent to her—for breaking off her relations with you."</p> + +<p>"What cogent reasons can she have that she had not yesterday?" says Byng +violently—"yesterday, when she lay in my arms, and her lips spoke their +acquiescence in my worship—if not in words, yet oh, far, far more——"</p> + +<p>"Why do you reiterate these assertions?" cries Burgoyne sternly, since +to him there seems a certain indecency in—even in the insanity of +loss—dragging to the eye of day the record of such sacred endearments. +"I neither express nor feel any doubt as to the terms you were on +<i>yesterday</i>; what I maintain is that <i>to-day</i>—I do not pretend to +explain the why—she has changed her mind; it is not"—with a sarcasm, +which he himself at the very moment of uttering it feels to be cheap and +unworthy—"it is not the first time in the world's history that such a +thing has happened. She has changed her mind."</p> + +<p>"I do not believe it," cries Byng, his voice rising almost to a shout in +the energy of his negation; "till her own mouth tell me so I will never +believe it. If I thought for a moment that it was true I should rush to +death to deliver me from the intolerable agony of such a thought. You do +not believe it yourself"—lifting his spoilt sunk eyes in an appeal that +is full of pathos to his friend's harsh face. "Think what condemnation +it implies of her—her whom you always affected to like, who thought so +greatly of you—her whose old friend you were—her whom you knew in her +lovely childhood!"</p> + +<p>"You are right," replies Jim, looking down, moved and ashamed; "I do not +believe that she has changed her mind. What I do believe is that +yesterday she let herself go; she gave way for one day, only for one +day, after all, poor soul, to that famine for happiness which, I +suppose"—with a sigh and a shrug—"gnaws us all now and then—gave way +to it even to the pitch of forgetting that—that something in her past +of whose nature I am as ignorant as you are, which seems to cast a +blight over all her life."</p> + +<p>He pauses; but as his listener only hangs silently on his utterance he +goes on:</p> + +<p>"After you left her, recollection came back to her; and because she +could not trust herself again with you, probably for the very reason +that she cared exceedingly about you"—steeling himself to make the +admission—"she felt that there was nothing for it but to go."</p> + +<p>Either the increased kindness of his friend's tone, or the conviction +that there is, at least, something of truth in his explanations, lets +loose again the fountain of Byng's tears, and once more he throws his +head down upon his hands and cries extravagantly.</p> + +<p>"It is an awful facer for you, I know," says Burgoyne, standing over +him, and, though perfectly dry-eyed, yet probably not very much less +miserable than the young mourner, whose loud weeping fills him with an +almost unbearable and yet compunctious exasperation.</p> + +<p>"What is he made of? how can he do it?" are the questions that he keeps +irefully putting to himself; and for fear lest in an access of +uncontrollable irritation he shall ask them out loud, he moves to the +door. At the slight noise he makes in opening it Byng lifts his head.</p> + +<p>"Are you going?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; if it is any consolation to you, you have not a monopoly of +wretchedness to-day. Things are not looking very bright for me either. +Amelia is ill."</p> + +<p>"Amelia," repeats the other, with a hazy look, as if not at first able +to call to mind who Amelia is; then, with a return of consciousness, "Is +Amelia ill? Oh poor Amelia! Amelia was very good to her. Amelia tried to +draw her out. She liked Amelia!"</p> + +<p>"Well"—with an impatient sigh—"unfortunately that did not hinder +Amelia from falling ill."</p> + +<p>"She is not ill <i>really</i>?"—his inborn kind-heartedness struggling for a +moment to make head against the selfishness of his absorption.</p> + +<p>"I do not know"—uneasily—"I am going back to the hotel to hear the +doctor's verdict. Will you walk as far as to the Anglo-Américain with +me? There is no use in your staying here."</p> + +<p>But at this proposition the lover's sobs break out louder and more +infuriating than ever.</p> + +<p>"I will stay here till I die—till I am carried over the threshold that +her cruel feet have crossed.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'Then tell, oh tell! how thou didst murder me?'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Against a resolution at once so fixed and so rational, Jim sees that it +is useless to contend.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXVII.</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>The sun rides high, as Burgoyne issues into the open air, and beats, +blinding hot, upon the great stone flags that pave the Florentine +streets, and seem to have a peculiar power of absorbing and retaining +light and heat. He must have been longer in the Piazza d'Azeglio than he +had thought, and the reflection quickens his steps as he hurries, +regardless of the midsummer blaze—for, indeed, it is more than +equivalent to that of our midsummer—back to the Anglo-Américain. As he +reaches it, he hears, with annoyance, the hotel clocks striking one. He +is annoyed, both because the length of his absence seems to argue an +indifference to the tidings he is expecting, and also because he knows +that it is the Wilsons' luncheon hour, and that he will probably find +that they have migrated to the <i>salle-à-manger</i>. In this case he will +have to choose between the two equally disagreeable alternatives of +following and watching them at their food, or that of undergoing a +<i>tête-à-tête</i> with Sybilla, who, it is needless to say, does not +accompany her family to the public dining-room; a <i>tête-à-tête</i> with +Sybilla, which is, of all forms of social intercourse, that for which he +has the least relish.</p> + +<p>But as he apprehensively opens the <i>salon</i> door, he sees that his fears +are unfounded. They have not yet gone to luncheon; they are all sitting +in much the same attitudes as he had left them, except that Sybilla is +eating or drinking something of a soupy nature out of a cup. There are +very few hours of the day or night in which Sybilla is not eating +something out of a cup. There is that about the entire idleness of the +other couple which gives him a fright. Are they too unhappy? Have they +heard too bad news to be able to settle to any occupation? Urged by this +alarm, his question shoots out, almost before he is inside the door:</p> + +<p>"Has not he come yet? Has not the doctor come yet?"</p> + +<p>"He has been and gone; you see, you have been such a very long time +away," replies Cecilia. She has no intention of conveying reproach, +either by her words or tone; but to his sore conscience it seems as if +both carried it.</p> + +<p>"And what did he say?"</p> + +<p>"He did not say much."</p> + +<p>"Does he—does he think that it is anything—anything serious?"</p> + +<p>"He did not say."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean to tell me"—indignantly—"that you did not ask him?"</p> + +<p>"If you had been here," replies Cecilia, with a not inexcusable +resentment, "you might have asked him yourself."</p> + +<p>"But did not you ask him?" in too real anxiety to be offended at, or +even aware of, her fleer. "Did not he say?"</p> + +<p>"I do not think he knew himself."</p> + +<p>"But he must have thought—he must have had an opinion!" growing the +more uneasy as there seems no tangible object for his fears to lay hold +of.</p> + +<p>"He says it is impossible to judge at so early a stage; it may be a +chill—I told him about that detestable excursion yesterday, and he +considered it quite enough to account for anything—it may be +measles—they seem to be a good deal about; it may be malaria—there is +a good deal of that too."</p> + +<p>"And how soon will he know? How soon will it declare itself?"</p> + +<p>"I do not know."</p> + + +<p>"But has he prescribed? Is there nothing to be done—to be done <i>at +once</i>?" asks Jim feverishly, chafing at the idea of this inaction, which +seems inevitable, with that helpless feeling which his own entire +ignorance of sickness produces.</p> + +<p>"Do not you suppose that if there was we should have done it?" cries +Cecilia, rendered even more uncomfortable than she was before, by the +contagion of his anxiety. "We are to keep her in bed—there is no great +difficulty about that, poor soul; she has not the least desire to get +up; she seems so odd and heavy!"</p> + +<p>"So <i>odd and heavy</i>?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; I went in to see her just now, and she scarcely took any notice of +me; only when I told her that you had been to inquire after her, she lit +up a little. I believe"—with a rather grudging smile—"that if she were +dead, and someone mentioned your name, she would light up."</p> + +<p>A sudden mountain rises in Jim's throat.</p> + +<p>"If she is not better to-morrow, Dr. Coldstream will send a nurse."</p> + +<p>"But does he think it will be necessary?"</p> + +<p>"He does not know."</p> + +<p>Jim writhes. It seems to him as if he were being blind-folded, and +having his arms tied to his sides by a hundred strong yet invisible +threads.</p> + +<p>"Does no one know anything?" he cries miserably.</p> + +<p>"I have told you exactly what the doctor said," says Cecilia, with the +venial crossness bred of real anxiety. "I suppose you do not wish me to +invent something that he did not say?"</p> + +<p>"Of course not; but I wish I had been here—I wish I had been +here!"—restlessly.</p> + +<p>"Why were not you?"</p> + +<p>No immediate answer.</p> + +<p>"Why were not you?" repeats she, curiosity, for the moment, superseding +her disquiet. "What prevented you? I thought, when you left us, that you +meant to come back at once?"</p> + +<p>"So I did, but——"</p> + + +<p>"But what?"</p> + +<p>"I could not; I was with Byng."</p> + +<p>"With Byng?" repeats Cecilia, too genuinely astonished to remember even +to prefix a "Mr." to Byng's name. "Why, I should have thought that if +there were one day of his life on which he could have done without you +better than another, it would have been to-day!"</p> + +<p>"Were not you rather <i>de trop</i>?" chimes in Sybilla's languid voice from +the sofa. "Rather a bad third?"</p> + +<p>"I was not a third at all."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean to say," cries Cecilia, her countenance tinged with the +pink of a generous indignation, "that you were <i>four</i>—that Mrs. Le +Marchant stayed in the room the whole time? I must say that now that +they are really and <i>bonâ fide</i> engaged, I think she might leave them +alone together."</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Le Marchant was not there at all." Then, seeing the open-mouthed +astonishment depicted on the faces of his audience, he braces his mind +to make the inevitable yet dreaded announcement. "I had better explain +at once that neither Mrs. nor Miss Le Marchant was there; they are +gone."</p> + +<p>"Gone!"</p> + +<p>"Yes; they left Florence at seven o'clock this morning." There is a +moment of silent stupefaction.</p> + +<p>"I suppose," says Cecilia, at last slowly recovering the power of +speech, "that they were telegraphed for? Mr. Le Marchant is dead or ill? +one of the married sisters? one of the brothers?"</p> + +<p>Never in his life has Jim laboured under so severe a temptation to tell +a lie, were it only the modified falsehood of allowing Cecilia's +hypothesis to pass uncontradicted; but even if he were able for once to +conquer his constitutional incapacity, he knows that in this case it +would be useless. The truth must transpire to-morrow.</p> + +<p>"I believe not."</p> + +<p>"Gone!" repeats Cecilia, in a still more thunderstruck key than +before—"and where are they gone?"</p> + +<p>"I do not know."</p> + +<p>"Why did they go?"</p> + +<p>Jim makes an impatient movement, fidgeting on his chair. "I can only +tell you their actions; they told me their motives as little as they did +you."</p> + +<p>"Gone! Why, they never said a word about it yesterday."</p> + +<p>This being of the nature of an assertion—not an interrogation—Jim +feels with relief that it does not demand an answer.</p> + +<p>"Gone, at seven o'clock in the morning! Why, they could not have had +time to pack their things!"</p> + +<p>"They left them behind."</p> + +<p>The moment that this admission is out of Burgoyne's mouth, he repents +having made it; nor does his regret at all diminish under the shower of +ejaculations from both sisters that it calls forth.</p> + +<p>"Why, it was a regular flit! they must have taken French leave."</p> + +<p>There is something so horribly jarring in the semi-jocosity of the last +phrase that Jim jumps up from his chair and walks towards the window, +where Mr. Wilson is sitting in dismal idleness.</p> + +<p>Mr. Wilson has never cared much about the Le Marchants, and is now far +too deeply absorbed in his own trouble to have anything but the most +inattentive indifference to bestow upon the topic which to his daughters +appears so riveting. Jim blesses him for his callousness. But the window +of a small room is not so distant from any other part of it that sounds +cannot, with perfect ease, penetrate thither, as Jim finds when +Cecilia's next eager question pursues him.</p> + +<p>"Did Mr. Byng know that they were going?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>There is a pause.</p> + +<p>"It is absolutely incomprehensible!" says Cecilia, with almost a gasp. +"I never saw any one human being so much in love with another as she was +yesterday—there was so little disguise about it, that one was really +quite sorry for her—and this morning at cockcrow she decamps and leaves +him without a word."</p> + +<p>"You are mistaken—she left a note for him."</p> + +<p>"Poor dear boy!" sighs Sybilla, "is not he quite prostrated by the blow? +I am not apt to pity men generally—they are so coarse-grained—but he +is much more delicately strung than the general run."</p> + +<p>"I suppose he is frightfully cut up," says Cecilia, with that +inquisitiveness as to the details of a great affliction which we are all +apt to experience.</p> + +<p>For some perverse reason, inexplicable even to himself, Jim would like +to be able to answer that his friend is not cut up at all; but truth +again asserting its empire, he assents laconically, "Frightfully!"</p> + +<p>"How did he take it?"</p> + +<p>"How do people generally take such things?"</p> + +<p>The impatience of the key in which this is uttered, coupled with the +implied side-allusion to an acquaintance with sorrows of a somewhat +similar nature on her own part, silences the younger and sounder Miss +Wilson for a moment, but only for a moment—a moment long enough to be +filled by another sighing "Poor dear boy!" from Sybilla.</p> + +<p>"You say that she left a note for him?"—with a renewed light of +curiosity in her eyes—"have you any idea what was in it?"</p> + +<p>Jim hesitates; then, "Yes," he replies; "but as it was not addressed to +me, I do not think that I have any right to repeat it."</p> + +<p>"Of course not!"—reluctantly; "but did it throw no light—absolutely no +light at all—upon this extraordinary stampede?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Did not she even tell him where they were going?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Nor whether they were coming back?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Nor ask him to follow her?"</p> + +<p>"If she did not tell him where she was going, is it likely that she +would ask him to follow her?" cries Jim irritably, deeply annoyed to +find that he is, by the series of negatives that is being forced from +him, doing the very thing which he had just denied his own right to do.</p> + +<p>"It is the most incomprehensible thing I ever heard in my life. I +wonder"—with an air of even alerter interest than before—"what Mr. +Greenock will say? Perhaps he will now tell what he knows about them; if +they are gone, there will no longer be any need to conceal it. I am +afraid this looks rather as if there were something!"</p> + +<p>For the second time in one day the mention of an amiable <i>flâneur's</i> +name makes Jim vault to his feet.</p> + +<p>"Well, I will not keep you any longer from your luncheon," he cries +hastily. "I will call in again later."</p> + +<p>"Are you going?" asks Mr. Wilson dully, lifting his head from his chest, +upon which it is sunk. "Well, you are about right; we are not much good +to anyone when our mainspring is gone."</p> + +<p>The phrase strikes cold on Jim's heart.</p> + +<p>"Are you going back to the poor dear boy?" inquires Sybilla as he passes +her. "By-the-bye, if it is not too much trouble, would you mind tucking +the Austrian blanket a little closer in on the left side?" and as he +stoops to perform the asked-for service, she adds: "Let him know how +sincerely I sympathize with him; and if he wants anything quieting for +his nerves, tell him that there is nothing that I can more +conscientiously recommend than——"</p> + +<p>But what Sybilla can conscientiously recommend is shut into the closing +door. Outside that door Jim finds that Cecilia has joined him. Anxiety +has quite banished the not altogether disagreeable curiosity of five +minutes ago, from the troubled face she lifts to his.</p> + +<p>"You will come back, will not you?" she asks. "You are not of much use, +I suppose; but still, one feels that you are there, and we are all so +much at sea. You have not an idea how much we are at sea—without her."</p> + +<p>"I think that I have a very good idea," he answers mournfully. "Tell me, +Cis; do you think she is really very ill?"</p> + +<p>As he puts the question, he feels its irrationality. He knows that the +person to whom he is making his futile appeal has already given him all +the scanty tidings she has to give; yet he cannot help indulging a faint +hope that her response to this last query of his may perhaps set +Amelia's condition in a slightly more favourable light. A look of +helpless distress clouds Cecilia's already cloudy face.</p> + +<p>"I tell you I do not know; I am no judge; I have seen so little real +illness. Sybilla would kill me if she heard me say so, would not +she"—with a slight parenthetical smile—"but I have seen so little real +illness, that I do not know what things mean; I do not know what it +means that she should be so heavy and stupid. As I told you before, the +only time that she roused up at all was when I mentioned your—"</p> + +<p>He stops her, breaking rudely into her sentence. He cannot bear to hear +that it is only at the magic of his name that his poor faithful love +lifts her sick head.</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes; I remember."</p> + +<p>"Some one ought to sit up with her, I am sure," pursues Cecilia, still +with that same helpless air of disquiet; "she ought not to be left alone +all night; but who? I should be more than willing to do it, but I know +that I should fall asleep in five minutes, and I am such a heavy sleeper +that, when once I am off, there is no possibility of waking me. I am a +dreadfully bad sick-nurse; father can never bear to have me near him +when he has the gout."</p> + +<p>Burgoyne is too well aware of the perfect truth of this last statement +to attempt any contradiction of it.</p> + +<p>"Amelia has always been the one to sit up when any one was ill," +continues she woefully; "and even now, by a stupid confusion of ideas, I +catch myself thinking, 'Oh, Amelia will sit up with her!' before I can +realize that <i>her</i> is Amelia herself."</p> + +<p>Jim can well sympathize with this same confusion, when, several times +during his walk back to the Piazza d'Azeglio, a muddled thought of +comfort, in the idea that he will go and tell Amelia what a terrible day +of anxiety about some one he has been having, taps at the door of his +brain. The portals of No. 12 are once again opened to him by Annunziata, +who indicates to him, by a series of compassionate gestures and liquid +Tuscan sentences, that the <i>povero</i> is still within, and the Padrona, +who this time also appears on the scene, and who is possessed of +somewhat more English than her handmaid, intimates, albeit with a good +deal of sympathy for his sufferings, yet with still more of +determination, that it would be no bad thing were he to be removed, +since, whether the sun shines or the rain falls, people must live, and +the apartment has to be prepared for new occupants.</p> + +<p>Anything that speaks less intention of removing than Byng's pose, when +his friend rejoins him, it would be difficult to imagine. He is +stretched upon the parquet floor, with his head lying on the small +footstool that has been wont to support Elizabeth's feet; her rifled +workbasket stands on the floor beside him, while her bit of embroidery +half shrouds his distorted face. The needle, still sticking in it, may +prick his eyes out for all he cares; the book she last read is open at +the page where she has put her mark of a skein of pale silk; and the +yellow anemones, that he must have plucked for her yesterday in drenched +Vallombrosa, are crushed under his hot cheek. But outwardly he is quite +quiet. Jim puts his hand on his shoulder.</p> + +<p>"Come away, there is no use in your staying here any longer."</p> + +<p>As he receives no answer, he repeats the exhortation more imperatively, +"Come."</p> + +<p>"Why should I come? Where should I come to?" says the young man, lifting +his head, "where can I find such plain traces of her as here? I will +stay."</p> + +<p>He says this with an air of resolution, and once more lays down his face +upon the footstool, which, being entirely worked in beads, has impressed +the cheek thrust against it with a design in small hollows, a fact of +which the sufferer is quite unaware.</p> + +<p>"You cannot stay!" cries Burgoyne, the more impatiently that his own +share of anxiety is fretting his temper almost past endurance; "you +cannot stay, it is out of the question; they want to come into the +rooms, to prepare them for new occupants."</p> + +<p>"<i>New occupants!</i>" repeats Byng, turning over almost on his face, and +flattening his nose and lips against the beaded surface of his stool, +"other occupants than <i>her</i>. Never! never!"</p> + +<p>It is to be placed to the credit side of Mr. Burgoyne's account that he +does not, upon this declaration, withdraw the resting-place from his +young friend's countenance and break it over his head. It is certainly +not the temptation to do so that is lacking. Instead, he sits down at +some distance off, and says quietly:</p> + +<p>"I see, you will force them to call in the police. You will make a +discreditable <i>esclandre</i>. How good for her; how conducive to her good +name. I congratulate you!"</p> + +<p>The other has lifted his head in a moment.</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"Do you think," asks Jim indignantly, "that it is ever very advantageous +to a woman to have her name mixed up in a vulgar row? And do you suppose +that hers will be kept out of it? Come"—seeing a look of shocked +consternation breaking over the young man's face, and determined to +strike while the iron is hot—"I will call a fiacre, and we will go home +to the hotel. Put back her things into her basket. What right have you +to meddle with them? You have no business to take advantage of her +absence to do what you would not do if she were here."</p> + +<p>Byng obeys with a scared docility; his eyes are so dim, and his fingers +tremble so much, that Jim has to help him in replacing Elizabeth's small +properties. His own heart is pricked with a cruel smart that has no +reference to Amelia's illness, as he handles the departed girl's spools +and skeins, and awkwardly folds her scrap of broidery. Byng offers no +further resistance, and, equally indifferent to his own bunged-up eyes, +bead-marked cheeks, and dishevelled locks, follows his companion dully, +down the stone stairs, compassionately watched from the top by +Annunziata, whose heart is an inconveniently tender one to be matched +with so tough a face. They get into the fiacre, and drive in dead +silence to the Minerva. Arrived there, Jim persuades his friend, who now +seems prepared to acquiesce meekly in whatever he is told to do, to lie +down on his bed, since the few words that he utters convey the fact of +his being suffering from a burning headache, a phenomenon not very +surprising, considering his late briny exercises, since, even at the +superb age of twenty-two, it is difficult to spend six hours in banging +your forehead against a parquet floor, in moaning, bellowing, and +weeping, without leaving some traces of these gymnastics on your +physique.</p> + +<p>Burgoyne stands or sits patiently beside him, bathing his fiery temples +with eau-de-Cologne, not teasing him with any questions, having, indeed, +on his own part, the least possible desire for conversation; and so the +heavy hours go by. The day has declined to evening before Burgoyne quits +his <i>protégé's</i> side to dine, shortly and solitarily, previous making a +third visit to the Anglo-Américain, to learn the latest news of his +betrothed.</p> + +<p>He had left Byng still stretched upon his bed, apparently asleep, and is +therefore the more surprised, on returning to take a final look at him +before setting out on his own errand, to find him up, with hat and stick +in hand, evidently prepared for a walk.</p> + +<p>"You are going out?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Where are you going?"</p> + +<p>The other hesitates.</p> + +<p>"I am going back there."</p> + +<p>"Impossible!"</p> + +<p>"But I am," replies Byng doggedly; "it will not do <i>her</i> any injury, for +I shall not attempt to go in, I shall only ask at the door whether any +telegram has yet been received from—from them; they must telegraph to +direct where their things are to be sent to, and it is most probable +that they have done so already."</p> + +<p>"It is most <i>im</i>probable."</p> + +<p>"Well, at all events, it is possible, it is worth trying, and I mean to +try it."</p> + +<p>There is such a fixed resolution in his voice, which is no longer +quavering with sobs, and in his ashy face, that Jim offers no further +resistance. The only concession he can obtain from him is that of +permitting him to accompany him.</p> + +<p>"You will not mind coming with me to the Anglo-Américain first, will +you?" inquires Jim, as they set off walking across the Piazza.</p> + +<p>"It will delay us quite half-an-hour," answers the other restlessly. +"But stay" (a hazy look of reminiscence dawning over his preoccupied +haggard face), "did you tell me that Amelia was ill—or did I dream it?"</p> + +<p>"No, you did not dream it," replies the other sadly. "She <i>is</i> ill."</p> + +<p>Perhaps the wretchedness that pierces through his friend's quiet tones +recalls the young dreamer to the fact that the world holds other +miseries than his own. There is at all events something of his old quick +sympathy in his next words, and in the way in which they are uttered:</p> + +<p>"Oh, poor Amelia, I <i>am</i> sorry! By all means let us go at once and ask +after her. Is there nothing that we can get?—nothing that we can do for +her?"</p> + +<p>It is the question that Jim, in baffled anxiety, puts when he is +admitted inside the dull <i>salon</i>, where no love-glorified, homely face +to-night lights up the tender candles of its glad eyes, from over its +stitching, at his entry.</p> + +<p>Sybilla is lying less comfortably than usual on her sofa, her cushions +not plumped up, and her bottle of smelling-salts rolled out of her +reach. Mr. Wilson is walking uneasily up and down the room, instead of +sitting placidly in his chair, with the soothing voice—which he had +always thought as much to be counted on, and as little to be +particularly thankful for, as the air that fills his lungs—lullingly +reading him to sleep.</p> + +<p>"Cecilia is with her just now," he says, in a voice of forlorn +irritation. "I wish she would come down again; I have no great opinion +of Cecilia as a sick-nurse, and she must know how anxious we are." A +moment later, still pursuing his fidgety ramble from wall to wall, and +exclaiming peevishly, as he stumbles over a footstool: "If it would only +declare itself! There seems to be nothing to lay hold of, we are so +completely in the dark—if it would only declare itself!"</p> + +<p>A not very subdued sob from the sofa is the only answer he gets, an +answer which evidently irritates still further his fretted nerves.</p> + +<p>"I cannot think what Cecilia is doing!" he cries, hastening to the door, +opening it noisily, and then listening.</p> + +<p>"Let me run up and see," says Jim, his heart going out to the fractious +old man in a sympathy of suffering. "Yes, I know where her room is—<i>au +troisième</i>, is not it?" (a flash of recollection lighting up the fact +that Amelia's is distinctly the worst room of the suite occupied by the +Wilson family; the room with most stairs to climb to, and least +accommodation when you reach it). "I will knock quite gently. Do not be +afraid, I will not disturb her, and I will come down immediately to tell +you."</p> + +<p>Without waiting for permission, he springs up the stairs, and, standing +on the landing, taps cautiously on the closed door, whose number (by one +of those quirks of memory that furnish all our minds with insignificant +facts) he has recollected. His first knock is so superfluously soft that +it is evidently inaudible within, since no result follows upon it. His +second, a shade louder, though still muffled by the fear of breaking +into some little fitful yet salutary sleep, brings Cecilia out. His +first glance at her face shows him that she has no good news, either to +warm his own heart, or for him to carry down as a solace to the poor old +man below.</p> + +<p>"Oh, it is you, is it?" says she, shutting the door behind her with a +clumsy carefulness that makes it creak. "No, I do not think she is any +better; but it is so difficult to tell, I am no judge. She does not +complain of anything particular; but she looks so <i>odd</i>."</p> + +<p>It is the same adjective that Cecilia had applied earlier in the day to +her sick sister, and it fills Jim with an impotent terror.</p> + +<p>"If she is asleep, might not I just look in at her?" he asks. "I do not +know what you mean when you say she looks <i>odd</i>."</p> + +<p>"She is not asleep," replies Cecilia, in a noisy whisper, much more +likely to pierce sick ears than a voice pitched in its normal key; "at +least, I think not. But I am sure you ought not to see her; Dr. +Coldstream said she was to be kept very quiet, and nothing would upset +her so much as seeing you."</p> + +<p>"She need not see me; I would only take just one look at her from behind +the door," persists Jim who feels a desire, whose gnawing intensity +surprises himself, to be assured by the evidence of his own eyes that +his poor love's face has not undergone some strange and gruesome change, +such as is suggested by Cecilia's disquieting epithet.</p> + +<p>"Do you think she would not know you were there?" asks she scornfully, +"Why, she hears your step three streets off!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII.</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>So that night Jim does not see Amelia. After all, as Cecilia says, it is +better to be on the safe side, and to-morrow she will be brighter, and +he can sit by her, and tell her lovingly—oh very lovingly!—what a +fright she has given him. Yes, to-morrow she will be brighter. The +adjective is Cecilia's; but, apparently, he cannot improve upon it, for +he not only keeps repeating it to himself as he runs downstairs, but +employs it for the reassurance of Miss Wilson's anxious relatives.</p> + +<p>"She will be brighter to-morrow; sick people are always worse at night, +are not they?"—rather vaguely, with again that oppressive sense of his +own inexperience in illness. "Not that she is <i>worse</i>"—this is hastily +subjoined, as he sees her father's face fall—"Cecilia never said she +was <i>worse</i>—oh, no, not <i>worse</i>, only not distinctly better; and, after +all, it would have been irrational to expect that. She will be brighter +to-morrow—oh, yes, of course she will be brighter to-morrow!"</p> + +<p>He leaves the hotel with the phrase, which sounds cut and dried and +unreal, still upon his lips, after bidding a kinder good-night than +usual to Mr. Wilson, after having offered to supply Amelia's place by +reading aloud to him, a feat he has not performed since the evening of +his disastrous experience of the Provident Women of Oxford; and lastly, +having even—as a reward to Sybilla, who has been understood to murmur +something tearful about letting her maid look in upon Amelia at +intervals through the night—tucked in her Austrian blanket, and picked +up her smelling-bottle. He has expected to rejoin Byng outside, as he +had promised to wait for him with such patience as a cigar could lend, +and on the condition that his absence should not exceed a stipulated +period. But either the promise has been broken, or the period exceeded, +for Byng is gone. The fact does not greatly surprise Burgoyne, though it +causes him a slight uneasiness, which is, perhaps, rather a blessing for +him, distracting his mind in some slight measure from the heaviness of +his own trouble.</p> + +<p>He walks fast to the Piazza d'Azeglio; but he neither overtakes him of +whom he is in pursuit, nor finds him at 12 bis. He has been there, has +inquired with agitation for the telegrams, which have naturally not been +received, and has then gone away again immediately. Whither? The +Padrona, who has answered the door-bell herself and, with Italian +suavity, is doing her best to conceal that she is beginning to +think she has heard nearly enough of the subject, does not know. For a +few moments Jim stands irresolute, then he turns his steps towards the +Arno. It is not yet too late for the charming riverside promenade, the +gay Lung'Arno, to be still alive with <i>flâneurs</i>; the stars have lit +their lamps above, and the hotels below. The pale planets, and the +yellow lights from the opposite bank of the river, lie together, sweet +and peaceful upon her breast. In both cases the counterfeits are as +clear and bright as the real luminaries; and it seems as if one had only +to plunge in an arm to pick up stars and candles out of the stream's +depths.</p> + +<p>Leaning over the parapet near the Ponte Vecchio, Burgoyne soon discovers +a familiar figure, a figure which starts when he touches its arm.</p> + +<p>"I thought I would wait about here for an hour or so," says Byng, with a +rather guilty air of apology, "until I could go back and inquire again. +The telegram has not arrived yet—I suppose it is too early. Of course +they would not telegraph until they get in to-night. You do not +think"—with a look of almost terror—"that they are going through to +England, and that they will not telegraph till they get there?"</p> + +<p>"How can I tell?"</p> + +<p>"There is nothing in the world less likely," cries Byng feverishly, +irritated at not having drawn forth the reassurance he had hoped for. "I +do not for a moment believe that they have gone home; I feel convinced +that they are still in Italy! Why should they leave it, when they—when +she is so fond of it?"</p> + +<p>Jim looks down sadly at the calm, strong stream.</p> + +<p>"I do not know, I cannot give an opinion—I have no clue."</p> + +<p>"I will ask again in about an hour," says Byng, lifting his arms from +the parapet, "in an hour it is pretty certain to have arrived; and +meanwhile, I thought I would just stroll about the town, but there is no +reason—none at all—why I should keep you! You—you must be wanting to +go back to Amelia."</p> + +<p>He glances at his friend in a nervous, sidelong way, as he makes this +suggestion.</p> + +<p>"I am not going back again to-night," replies Jim quietly, without +giving any evidence of an intention to acquiesce in his dismissal. +"There is nothing that I can do for her—there is nothing to be done."</p> + +<p>His tone, in making this statement, must be yet more dreary than he is +aware, as it arouses even Byng's self-absorbed attention.</p> + +<p>"Nothing to be done for her?" he echoes, with a shocked look. "My dear +old chap, you do not mean to say—to imply—"</p> + +<p>"I mean to imply nothing," interrupts Jim sharply, in a superstitious +panic of hearing some unfavourable augury as to his betrothed put into +words. "I mean just what I say—neither more nor less; there is nothing +to be done for her to-night, nothing but to let her sleep—a good sleep +will set her up: of course a good sleep will quite set her up."</p> + +<p>He speaks almost angrily, as if expecting and challenging contradiction. +But Byng's spirit has already flown back to his own woes. He may make +what sanguine statements he pleases about Amelia's to-morrow, without +fearing any demurrer from his companion. What attention the latter has +to spare is evidently only directed to the solving of the problem, how +best, with amicable civility, to be rid of him. Before he can hit upon +any expedient for attaining this desired end, Burgoyne speaks again, his +eye resting with a compassionate expression upon his junior's face, +whose wild pallor is heightened by the disorder of his hair, and the hat +crushed down over his brows.</p> + +<p>"You have not had anything to eat all day—had not you better come back +to the hotel and get something to eat?"</p> + +<p>"Eat!" cries the other, with almost a scream; "you must have very little +comprehension of——" Then, checking himself and with a strong and +palpable effort for composure: "It would not be worth while, I should +not have time; in an hour—less than an hour now, for I must have been +here quite ten minutes at the least—I have to return to the Piazza +d'Azeglio."</p> + +<p>"Then go to Doney's; why not get something to eat at Doney's? It will +not take you five minutes to reach the Via Tornabuoni."</p> + +<p>"What should I do when I got there?" asks Byng impatiently. "If I tried +to swallow food, it would stick in my throat; no food shall pass my lips +till I learn where she is; after that"—breaking out into a noisy +laugh—"you may do what you please with me—we will make a night of it +with all my heart, we will—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"'Drink, drink,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till the pale stars blink!'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Jim looks blankly at him. Is he going mad?</p> + +<p>"If you think that you will get me to go back to the hotel to-night, you +are very much mistaken," continues Byng recklessly; "no roof less high +than this"—jerking back his head, to throw his fevered look up to the +cool stars—"shall shelter my head; and besides, where would be the use +of going to bed when I should have to be up again so early? I shall be +off by one of the morning expresses: until I have learnt—as, of course, +I shall do to-night—where she has gone, I cannot tell which; but +neither of them starts much later than seven."</p> + +<p>For a moment Jim stands dumb with consternation at the announcement of +this intention; but, reflecting that it would not be a whit more +irrational to attempt to reason with a madman who had reached the +padded-room stage of lunacy, than with his present companion, he +contents himself with saying:</p> + +<p>"And supposing that you do not learn to-night where she has gone?"</p> + +<p>"There is no use in supposing anything so impossible!"</p> + +<p>But as the hours go by, the possibility becomes a probability, the +probability a certainty! Midnight comes, and the closed telegraph-office +puts a final extinguisher upon the expectation, which no one but the +unhappy lover had ever entertained, that Florence would be enlightened +before the dawn of another day as to the place whither her two truants +have fled.</p> + +<p>Burgoyne has accompanied his friend upon his last importunate visit to +the now-going-to-bed and justly-incensed 12 bis. He has been ashamed +again to present himself at the so-often-attacked door, so has awaited +at the bottom of the stairs, has heard Byng's hoarse query, and the +negative—curter and less suave than the last one—that follows it; has +heard the door shut again, and the hopeless footsteps that come +staggering down to him.</p> + +<p>"You will go home now?"</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'Perchance, Iago, I shall ne'er go home!'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>replies Byng; and, though he is compelled to admit that there is no +longer any possibility of his to-night obtaining the information for +which he so madly hungers, that there can consequently be no question of +his setting off by one of the early trains, since he would not know in +which direction to go, and might only be fleeing further from her whom +he would fain rejoin, yet he still keeps with fevered pertinacity to his +project of spending the night <i>à la belle étoile</i>.</p> + +<p>Finding it impossible to dissuade him, Jim resigns himself to bearing +him company. It is with very little reluctance that he does so. There is +no truer truism than that all sorrows, however mountainous, are more +easily carried under God's high roof than man's low ones, and he who +does not sleep has for compensation that at least he can have no +dreadful waking. So the two men wander about all night in the boon +southern air, and see—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">"The moon exactly round,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all those stars with which the brows of ample heaven are crown'd;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Orion, all the Pleiades, and those seven Atlas got;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The close-beam'd Hyades, the Bear, surnamed the Chariot,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That turns about heaven's axle-tree, holds ope a constant eye<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Upon Orion, and of all the cressets in the sky,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His golden forehead never bows to the Ocean's empery."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>There are not many hours of a summer's night during which the stir of +life has ceased and has not yet reawaked in an Italian town, the talk +and the tread and the mule bells, and the flutes of the voiceful people +lasting on till near the small hours, and beginning again ere those +hours have had strength to grow big. But yet there is a space of time +when Florence lies silent, baring her beauty to the constellations +alone; and under this unfamiliar and solemn and lovely aspect the two +night-wanderers see her. They see her Campanile</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Commercing with the skies,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>with no distracting human bustle about her feet; they see her Perseus +battling beneath her Loggia, and her San Giorgio standing wakeful at his +post on Or san Michele. They see her scowling palace rows, her stealing +river, and her spanning bridges—palaces out of which no head peeps, a +river on which no boat oars, bridges upon which no horse-hoof rings. +They have all her churches—Santa Croce, Arnolpho's great "Bride," that +<i>new</i> Maria that is now four hundred years old or more, the humbly +glorious San Marco—to themselves; all her treasure houses, all her +memories, all her flower-embalmed air—for a few hours they possess them +all. She is but a little city, this fair Firenze, and in these few hours +they traverse her in her length and breadth, rambling aimlessly wherever +Byng's feverishly miserable impulses lead them. Burgoyne offers no +opposition to any of these, but accompanies his friend silently down +slumbrous thoroughfare, or across sleeping Piazza, by Arno side, under +colonnade or arch. It is all one to him; nor is he sensible of any +fatigue, when at length, at about the hour when Byng had meant to have +caught the early morning train, they return to the hotel, and the +younger man, happily dead-beat at last, worn out with want of food, +tears, and weariness, flings himself down, dressed, upon his bed, and +instantly falls into a leaden sleep. Jim feels no desire, nor indeed any +power of following his example. He is not easily tired, and his former +life of travel and hardship has made him always willing to dispense with +the—to him—unnecessary luxury of a bed; and, under ordinary +circumstances, a night passed in the open air would have had an effect +upon him rather exhilarating than otherwise. He has his bath, dresses, +breakfasts, and then jumps into a fiacre, and has himself driven to the +Anglo-Américain.</p> + +<p>The day is so exactly the counterpart of its predecessor, in its even +assured splendour, that Jim has a hazy feeling that they both make only +one divided into two parts by the narrow dark blue ribbon of the +exquisite brief night. When did yesterday end and to-day begin? As he is +borne along, his memory, made more alert by sleeplessness, +reproduces—merely, as it seems to him, the better to fill him with pain +and remorse—the different states of mind in which he has passed over +the often trodden ground. Here, at the street corner, what a nausea had +come over him at the thought of the interest he would have to feign in +those humdrum details, so dear to Amelia's soul, of their future +<i>ménage</i>, with all its candle-end economies and depressing restrictions. +Here, in the church shadow, how he had tried to lash himself up into a +more probable semblance of pleasure in her expected and dreaded +caresses. There seems to be scarcely an inch of the way where he has not +had some harsh or weary thought of her; he is thankful when the brief +transit, that has appeared to him so long, is over. And yet the change +is only from the sharp sting of recollected unkindness to the dull +bruising ache of anticipated ill. A <i>garçon</i> is sweeping out the +<i>salon</i>, for the hour is not much beyond eight, so Jim goes into the +dreary little dining-room, where two places are laid with coffee-cups +and rolls. Only two. And, though he knows that nothing short of a +miracle could have already restored Amelia so completely as to enable +her to come down to breakfast, yet the ocular demonstration of the fact +that her place is and will be empty, strikes a chill to his boding +heart. He is presently joined by Cecilia, whose carelessly-dressed hair, +heavy eyelids, and tired puffy face, sufficiently show that not to her, +any more than to himself has night brought</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Sweet child sleep, the filmy-eyed."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>"How fresh and cool you are!" she cries, with an almost reproachful +intonation. "Do not look at me!"—covering her face with her hot +hands—"I am not fit to be seen; but what does that matter? What do I +care?"—beginning to cry—"Oh, she is so bad! We have spent such a +dreadful night! As I tell you, I am a shocking sick-nurse; I never know +what to do; I lose my head completely; and she has been so odd—she has +been talking such gibberish!"</p> + +<p>"Delirious?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I suppose that is what you would call it. I never saw anybody +delirious before, so I do not know. I have seen Sybilla in hysterics, +but I never believed that they were real—I always thought that a bucket +of water would bring her round."</p> + +<p>As a general rule, Jim may be counted upon for cordial co-operation in +any hit directed against Sybilla, but now he is too spiritless even to +notice it.</p> + +<p>"I was so frightened," continues Cecilia; "it is not cheerful being all +alone at the dead of night with a person talking such nonsense as she +was. Amelia, of all people, to talk nonsense! I could not quite make out +what it was about, but it seemed to have more or less reference to you. +She was begging you to forgive her for something she had done, as far as +I could gather; some treat she had prepared for you, and that you had +not liked. Have you the least idea what she could have meant?"</p> + +<p>He has every idea; but it would seem profanation to explain that her +poor wandering brain is still distressedly labouring with the abortive +project she had so happily framed for his enjoyment.</p> + +<p>"She is quieter now. Sybilla's maid is with her; Sybilla really has not +behaved badly—<i>for her</i>; she let her maid look in several times during +the night; but still, for the most part I was alone with her! Oh, I do +trust"—shuddering—"that I may never again have to be alone at night +with a person who is not right in her head!"</p> + +<p>This aspiration on the youngest Miss Wilson's part is, for the present +occasion, at least, likely to be gratified; for, by the time that +another night settles down on Florence, Amelia's illness has been +declared by Dr. Coldstream to have every symptom of developing into the +malarious Florentine fever, which not unfrequently lays low the chilled +or over-fatigued, or generally imprudent foreign visitor to that little +Eden. Amelia has Florentine fever; and the verification of this fact is +followed by all the paraphernalia of serious sickness—night and day +nurses, disinfectants, physic phials.</p> + +<p>The announcement of her being attacked by a definite and recognised +disease brings at first a sort of relief to Burgoyne's mind, which, +under Cecilia's frightened and frightening word-pictures, had been beset +by terrors great in proportion to their vagueness. Now that Amelia is +confessedly sick of a fever, there is nothing abnormal in her being +"odd," and "stupid," and "wandering," these being only the inevitable +stages on a road which will—which <i>must</i> lead to ultimate recovery. His +heart is heavy, yet scarcely so heavy as it had been upon his arrival in +the morning, when, late in the afternoon—not sooner do the claims upon +him of the disorganized and helpless family of his betrothed relax—he +returns to the Minerva to look after Byng. Having had every reason to +fear that he will not find him at the hotel, but will be obliged again +to set off in pursuit of him through the streets and squares so +repeatedly traversed last night, he is relieved to learn from the hotel +servants that the young man is in his bedroom. He finds him there +indeed; no longer stretched in the blessed oblivion of deep sleep upon +his bed, but sitting on a hard chair by the open window, his arms +resting upon the back, and his face crushed down upon them. By no +slightest movement does he show consciousness of his friend's entrance.</p> + +<p>"I am afraid I have been a long time away," says the latter kindly.</p> + +<p>"Have you?" answers Byng, his voice coming muffled through lips still +buried in his own coat-sleeve. "I do not know; I have done with time!"</p> + +<p>"I do not know how you have managed that," rejoins Jim, still +indulgently, though a shade dryly. "Have you been here all day?"</p> + +<p>"I do not know where I have been. Yes,"—lifting his head—"I do; I have +been to the Piazza d'Azeglio."</p> + +<p>"Well?"</p> + +<p>"They know where she is. They were packing her things; through the door +I saw them tying the label on the box; if I had tried I could have read +the address on the label, but I did not. She had forbidden them to give +it to me; in her telegram she had forbidden them to give it to anyone."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXIX.</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Jim refrains from saying how likely this culmination of his friend's +woes has appeared to him, since it would have been the height of the +illogical for the Le Marchants to have put themselves to extreme +inconvenience in order to escape from a person to whom they immediately +afterwards gave the power of following them. He refrains from saying it, +because he knows of how very little consoling power the "told you so" +philosophy is possessed.</p> + +<p>"And what will you do now?"</p> + +<p>"Do! What is there to do? What does a man do when he is shot through the +heart?"</p> + +<p>"I believe that in point of fact he jumps his own height in the air. I +know that a buffalo does," replies Burgoyne with a matter-of-fact +dryness, which proceeds less from want of sympathy, than from an honest +belief that it is the best and kindest method of dealing with Byng's +heroics.</p> + +<p>"<i>Shot through the heart!</i>" murmurs the latter, repeating his own phrase +as if he found a dismal pleasure in it. "I had always been told that it +was a painless death; I now know to the contrary."</p> + +<p>"Shall you stay here? There is no longer any use in your staying here."</p> + +<p>"There is no longer any use in my doing anything, or leaving anything +undone.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'There's nothing in this world can make me joy;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>So saying, he replaces his head upon his arms, and his arms upon the +chair-rail, with the air of one who, upon mature consideration, has +decided to maintain that attitude for the remainder of his life.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>A week has passed; a week upon which Burgoyne looks back as upon a blur +of wretchedness, with distinct points of pain sticking up here and there +out of it. It is a blur; for it is a time-space, without the usual +limitations and divisions of time; a week not cut up into orderly +lengths of day and night, but in which each has puzzlingly run into and +overlapped each. There have been nights when he has not been in bed at +all, and there have been days when he has slept heavily at unaccustomed +hours. He has not dined at any particular time; he has shared forlorn +breakfast, dotted about the morning as the less or more anxiety about +Amelia dictated, with the Wilsons. He has drunk more tea than he ever +did in his life before, and the result of this whole condition of things +is, that he cannot for the life of him tell whether the day of the week +is Wednesday, or Thursday, or Friday, and that he has lost all sense of +proportion. He has not the least idea whether the dreadful moments when +he stood on the landing outside Amelia's door, and heard her +heartrendingly beg him not to go away from her for <i>quite</i> so long, to +be a little gladder to see her when he came back; or again affectingly +assure him that she can do quite well, be quite cheerful without +him—whether, I say, those dreadful moments were really only moments, or +stretched into hours.</p> + +<p>Besides the agony of remorse that the impotent listening to those +pathetic prayers and unselfish assurances causes him, he suffers too +from another agony of shame, that the father and sister, standing like +himself with ears stretched at that shut door, should be let into the +long secret of his cruelty and coldness, that secret which for eight +years she has so gallantly been hiding. It is an inexpressible relief to +him that at least the old man's thickened hearing admits but very +imperfectly his daughter's rapid utterances.</p> + +<p>"Poor soul! I cannot quite make out what it is all about," he says, with +his hand to his ear; "but I catch your name over and over again, Jim; I +suppose it is all about you."</p> + +<p>Cecilia, however, naturally hears as well as he himself does, and +apparently pitying the drawn misery of his face, whispers to him +comfortingly—</p> + +<p>"You must not mind, you know it is all nonsense. She talks very +differently when she is well."</p> + +<p>The Wilson family have never hitherto shown any very marked affection +for Burgoyne, but now it seems as if they could hardly bear him out of +their sight. They cling to him, not because he is <i>he</i>—Jim makes +himself no illusion on that head—but because they have got into such a +habit of leaning, that it is no longer possible to them to stand +upright. He had never realized till now how helpless they are. He had +known that Amelia was the pivot upon which the whole family turned; but +he had not brought home to himself how utterly the machine fell to +pieces when that pivot was withdrawn.</p> + +<p>In the course of the past week each member of the family has confided to +him separately how far more she or he misses Amelia, than can be +possible to either of the others. Upon this head Sybilla's lamentations +are the loudest and most frequent. She had at first refused to admit +that there was anything at all the matter with her sister, but has now +fallen into the no less trying opposite extreme of refusing to allow +that there is any possibility of her recovery, talking of her as if she +were almost beyond the reach of human aid. Sybilla's grief for her +sister is perfectly genuine; none the less so that it is complicated by +irritation at her own deposition from her post of first invalid, at +having been compelled to confess the existence in the bosom of her own +family of a traitor, with an indisputably higher temperature and more +wavering pulse than she.</p> + +<p>"It is ridiculous to suppose that a person in such rude health as +Cecilia <i>can</i> miss her as I do," she says querulously; "I was always her +first object, she always knew by instinct when I was more suffering than +usual; who cares now"—breaking into a deluge of self-compassionating +tears—"whether I am suffering or not?"</p> + +<p>Then, when next he happens to be alone with Cecilia, it is her turn to +assert a superiority of woe; a superiority claimed with still more +emphasis the next half hour by the father. With a patience which would +have surprised those persons who had seen him only in his former +relations with the family of his betrothed he tries to soothe the sorrow +of each—even that of Sybilla—in turn; but to his own heart he says +that not one of their griefs is worthy to be weighed in the balance with +his. In the case of none of theirs is the woof crossed by the hideous +warp of self-reproach that is woven inextricably into his. They have +worked her to death, they have torn her to pieces by their conflicting +claims; their love has been exacting, selfish, inconsiderate; but at +least it has been love; they have prized her at almost her full worth +while they had her. For him it has been reserved as for the base Indian, +to</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Throw a pearl away<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Richer than all his tribe."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In the intervals—neither long nor many—between his ministrations at +the Anglo-Américain, Burgoyne hurries back to the Minerva to see that +Byng has not blown his brains out. In the present state of mind of that +young gentleman this catastrophe does not appear to be among the least +likely ones. He has refused to leave Florence, always answering the +suggestion with the same question, "Where else should I go?" and if +pressed, adding invariably in the same words as those employed by him on +the first day of his loss, when his friend had urged the advisability of +his removing his countenance from the beaded stool—"Where shall I find +such recent and authentic traces of her as here?"</p> + +<p>He passes his time either on the Lung' Arno, staring at the water, or +stretched face downwards upon his bed. He walks about the town most of +the night, and Jim suspects him of beginning to take chloral. +Occasionally he rouses up into a quick and almost passionate sympathy +with his friend's trouble, asking for nothing better than to be sent on +any errand, however trivial, or however tiresome, in Amelia's behalf. +But no sooner have the immediate effects of the appeal to his +kind-heartedness died away, than he sinks back into his lethargy, and +Jim is at once too much occupied and too miserable to use any very +strenuous endeavours to shake him out of it. But yet the consciousness +of the tacit engagement, under which he lies to the young man's mother, +to look after him, coupled with the absolute impossibility, under his +present circumstances, of fulfilling that engagement, and his uneasiness +as to what new form the insanity of Byng's grief may take on, from day +to day, add very perceptibly to the weight of his own already +sufficiently ponderous burden.</p> + +<p>It is the ninth day since Amelia fell sick, that ninth day which, in +maladies such as hers, is, or is at least reckoned to be, the crisis and +turning-point of the disease. Jim has been up all night, and has just +rushed back to the Minerva, for the double purpose of taking a bath, and +of casting an uneasy eye upon his charge. He finds the latter not in his +room, but leaning over the little spiky balcony, out of his window, +hanging over it so far, and so absorbedly, that he does not hear his +friend's approach, and starts violently when Jim lays a hand on his +shoulder.</p> + +<p>"What are you looking at?"</p> + +<p>"I; oh—nothing particular! What should I be looking at? What is there +to look to? I was only—only—wondering as a mere matter of curiosity, +how many feet it is from here to the pavement? Sixteen? eighteen? +twenty?"</p> + +<p>Jim's only answer is to look at him sadly and sternly; then he says +coldly:</p> + +<p>"I do not recommend it; it would be a clumsy way of doing it."</p> + +<p>"What matter how clumsy the way, so that one attains the end?" asks Byng +extravagantly, throwing off even the thin pretence he had at first +assumed; "who cares how bad the road is so that it leads him to the +goal?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'Oh, amiable lovely death!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou odoriferous stench, sound rottenness!'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Jim shudders. Death has been so near to him for the last nine days, that +the terrific realism of Constance's apostrophe seems to be almost more +than he can bear.</p> + +<p>"It is silliness to live when to live is a torment, and then, have we a +prescription to die, when death is our physician?" continues Byng loudly +and wildly, clasping his hands above his head, and apparently perfectly +indifferent as to whether the other inmates of the hotel, or passers-by +on the piazza, overhear him.</p> + +<p>"If you stay here much longer you will spare yourself the trouble of +putting an end to your existence," replies Jim, glancing at the other's +head, exposed hatless to the scorch of the Tuscan sun, "for you will +certainly get a sunstroke."</p> + +<p>So saying, he takes him quietly, yet decidedly, by the arm, and leads +him within the room. Either his matter-of-fact manner, or the sight of +his face, upon which, well-seasoned as it is, vigil and sorrow have +begun to write their unavoidable marks, brings the young madman back to +some measure of sense and self-control.</p> + +<p>"I had no fixed intention," he says apologetically, still looking white +and wild; "you must not think I meant anything; but, even if I had—do +you know—have you ever happened to read anything about the statistics +of suicide? Do you know what an increasing number of people every year +find life intolerable?"</p> + +<p>"I know that you are fast making <i>my</i> life intolerable," answers Jim, +fixing his tired, sleepless eyes with melancholy severity upon his +companion. "Amelia is—you are as well aware of it as I am—probably +dying, and yet even now, thanks to you, into my thoughts of her is +continually pushing the fear that I may have to tell your mother that +you have had the colossal selfishness to rush out of the world, because, +for the first time in your pampered life, the toy you cried for has not +been put into your hand."</p> + +<p>Burgoyne's hopes have not been high, as to any salutary result of his +own philippic while uttering it. But our words, sometimes, to our +surprise, turn from wooden swords to steel daggers in our hands. For a +moment Byng stands as if stunned; then he breaks into a tornado of sobs +and tears, such tears as have often before angered his friend, but which +now he welcomes the sight of, as perhaps precursors of a saner mood.</p> + +<p>"Oh, my dear old chap!" he cries, catching at Jim's unresponsive hand, +and wringing it hard, "she is not dying <i>really</i>? You do not mean it? +You are only saying it to frighten me? Oh! dear, kind Amelia. Not dying! +not dying?"</p> + +<p>"I do not know: to-day is the turning-point, they say; even now it may +have come."</p> + +<p>"And why are not you with her? Why do not you go back to her?" cries +Byng, in a broken voice of passionate excitement, the tears still racing +down his face.</p> + +<p>"And leave you to go tomfooling out there again?" asks Jim, with a nod +of his head towards the balcony, seen from where they stand, grilling in +the midday blaze.</p> + +<p>The verb employed, if closely looked into, bears a ludicrous +disproportion to the intended action indicated, but neither of the men +sees anything ridiculous in it.</p> + +<p>"I will not!" cries Byng, in eager asseveration; "I give you my word of +honour I will not; if you do not believe me, take me with you! Keep me +with you all day! Do you think that I, too, do not want to know how +Amelia is? Do you think that I am indifferent as to whether she lives or +dies? Poor, good Amelia! When I think of that drive to Vallombrosa, only +ten days ago! They two sitting side by side, so happy, laughing and +making friends with each other!"</p> + +<p>He covers his face with his hands, and through them the scalding drops +trickle; but only for a moment. In the next, he has dashed them away, +and is moving restlessly about the room, looking for his hat.</p> + +<p>"Let us go this instant," he says urgently; "my poor old man, do you +think I would willingly add a feather weight to your burden? I should +never forgive myself if I kept you a second longer from her at such a +time; let us go at once."</p> + +<p>Burgoyne complies; but under pretext of making some change in his dress, +escapes from his friend, for just the few minutes necessary to write and +despatch a telegram to the young man's mother. It runs thus:</p> + +<p>"<i>No cause for alarm, but come at once. He is perfectly well, but needs +you.</i>"</p> + +<p>If, as is to be hoped, Mrs. Byng is still in London, reaping the +succession of the old relative whose death-bed she had quitted Florence +to attend, his message will bring her hither within forty-eight hours, +and the burden of responsibility, now grown so insupportable, will be +shifted from his shoulders. Until those forty-eight hours have elapsed, +he must not again let Byng out of his sight.</p> + +<p>The day rolls by, the critical ninth day rolls by on its torrid wheels +to eventide, and when that eventide comes, it finds Cecilia Wilson +running down from Amelia's room, to give the last news of her to the +three men and one woman waiting below.</p> + +<p>"I think he seems quite satisfied," she says, in answer to the silent +hungry looks of question addressed to her, and alluding to the doctor, +who is still with the patient; "the strength is maintained; the +temperature lower." What a dreadful parrot-sound the two phrases, so +familiar to us all in the newspaper bulletins of distinguished men on +their death-beds, have during the last week assumed in Burgoyne's ears; +"you can speak to him yourself when he comes down, of course, Jim; but I +am sure he is satisfied."</p> + +<p>"She is better!—she is saved!" cries Byng, rushing forward and +snatching both Cecilia's hands—"do you say that she is really saved?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, are you here still, Mr. Byng? how very kind of you!" replies +Cecilia, a tinge of colour rushing over her mealy face—that face, ten +days ago, clothed in so many roses—"well, I am afraid he does not go +quite so far as that, but he says it is as much as we can expect, and +even I can see that she is not nearly so restless."</p> + +<p>"Thank God!—thank God!"</p> + +<p>In the ardour of his thanksgiving he presses her hands closer, instead +of dropping them, a fact of which he is entirely unaware, but so is not +she; and who knows, even at that serious moment, what tiny genial hope +may slide into her plump heart!</p> + +<p>Again this night Burgoyne does not go to bed, from a superstitious fear +that if he does, if he seems to take for granted an improvement, that +very taking for granted may annul it—may bring on a relapse. But when +the next morning finds no such backsliding to have taken place, when +each hour through the cheerfully broadening day brings falling fever and +steadying pulse, then indeed he cautiously opens the door of his heart +to let a tiny rose-pinioned hope creep in—then at last, on the third +night, he stretches his tired limbs in deep slumber upon his bed.</p> + +<p>He has received a brief telegram from Mrs. Byng to announce her arrival +as fast as boat and train can bring her; and seven o'clock on Saturday +morning—he having sent his despatch to her on the previous +Wednesday—finds him pacing the platform of the railway-station, +awaiting the incoming of the morning express from Turin. He is pacing it +alone, for he has thought it best not to reveal to her son the fact of +her expected return, not being at all sure in what spirit he will +receive it, nor whether indeed the news of it might not even drive him, +in his present unsound state of mind, to fly from the place at her +approach.</p> + +<p>The morning air, in its early clear coolness, blows sweet here, under +the station-roof, unconquered even by engine smoke, and on Jim's face as +he walks up and down—careworn as it still is—there comes, now and +again, a half-born smile. He is never one to hope very easily, but +surely now—now that yet another night has been prosperously tided over, +there can, even to him, seem no reasonable ground for doubt that Amelia +has turned the corner. Amelia, with the corner turned—Byng, in five +minutes wholly off his hands! The only wonder is, that the small smile +never comes quite to the birth.</p> + +<p>The train is punctual, and almost at its due moment draws up in dusty +length at the platform. Its passengers are comparatively few; for at +this latening season most of the English are winging home to their rooky +woods; and he has no difficulty in at once discovering among them the +tall smart figure—smart even after forty-eight hours of the unluxurious +luxury of a <i>wagon-lit</i>—of the lady he is awaiting. As he gives her his +hand to help her down the high step, the admiring thought crosses his +mind of what a large quantity of fatigue, dust, and uneasiness of mind a +radically good-looking Englishwoman, in radically good clothes, can +undergo without seeming much the worse for them. Before her neat narrow +foot has touched the pavement, a brace of eager questions shoots out of +her mouth.</p> + +<p>"Am I in time? Am I too late?"</p> + +<p>"In time for <i>what</i>? Too late for <i>what</i>?"</p> + +<p>"Has he—has he done anything—anything irrevocable? Is he—is he? I +suppose that horrid woman has got hold of him? I suppose that is why you +sent for me!"</p> + +<p>By this time she is safely landed at his side, which is possibly the +reason why he at once lets fall her hand.</p> + +<p>"I am not aware that there is any 'horrid woman' in the case."</p> + +<p>"Oh, what does it matter what I call her?" cries the mother, fast +becoming frantic at the delay in answering her passionate questions. "I +will call her what you please; you know perfectly whom I mean; she <i>has</i> +got hold of him, I suppose. I always knew she would! Did not I tell you +so? but is it too late? is there no way of getting him off?"</p> + +<p>Now that Burgoyne has a nearer view of Mrs. Byng, he sees that she has a +more fagged and travel-worn air than he had at first supposed, and her +dusty eyes are fastened upon him with such a hunger of interrogation, +that, angered and jarred as he is by her tone, he has not the heart any +longer to keep her in suspense.</p> + +<p>"If you are alluding to Miss Le Marchant, I may as well tell you at once +that she has left Florence."</p> + +<p>"Left Florence! Do you mean to say that she has run away with someone +else?"</p> + +<p>She puts the question in all good faith, her lively imagination having +easily made the not very wide jump from the fact already established in +her own mind of Elizabeth being an adventuress, to the not much more +difficult one to swallow, of her having devoured another <i>fils de +famille</i>, as well as Mrs. Byng's own.</p> + +<p>For a moment, Burgoyne turns away, voice and countenance alike beyond +his control. He has by no means perfectly recovered either, when he +answers—</p> + +<p>"Yes, with someone else—she has reached the pitch of turpitude of +leaving Florence with her mother."</p> + +<p>"She is gone?" cries Mrs. Byng, with an accent of the highest relief and +joy; "gone away altogether, do you mean?—oh, thank God!"—then, with a +sudden lapse into affright, she adds rapidly—"and he is gone after +her?—he is not here?"</p> + +<p>"No, he is here."</p> + +<p>"Then why has not he come to meet me?"—suspiciously.</p> + +<p>"He did not know you were expected."</p> + +<p>"You did not tell him?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Why did not you tell him?"</p> + +<p>"I did not know how he would take it."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean to say"—falling from her former rapidity of utterance to a +dismayed incredulous slowness—"that he will not be glad to see +me?—that <i>Willy</i> will not be glad to see <i>me</i>?"</p> + +<p>"I mean to say that I am afraid you will not find him very much in +sympathy with you; I do not think he will find it easy to hear you speak +of Miss Le Marchant in the terms, and make the implication about her +that you did just now," replies Jim, avenging by this sentence the +wrongs done to Elizabeth, and doing it so well, that a moment later a +feeling of compunction comes over him at the success of his own attempt +at retributive justice.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Byng turns pale.</p> + +<p>"Then she has got hold of him?" she says under her breath.</p> + +<p>"Got hold of him?" repeats Jim, his ire aroused again, no sooner than +allayed, by this mode of expression; "you certainly have the most +extraordinary way of misconceiving the situation! <i>Got hold of him?</i> +when she had to leave Florence at a moment's notice to escape his +importunities!"</p> + +<p>But at this, Mr. Burgoyne's auditor looks so hopelessly bewildered that +he thinks it the simplest plan at once, in the fewest possible words, to +put her in possession of the tale of her son's achievements and +disasters. He does this, partly to stem the torrent of her questions, +the form that they have hitherto taken producing in him a feeling of +frenzied indignation, which he doubts his own power much longer to +conceal—partly in order to set Elizabeth's conduct with the least +possible delay in its true light before her. Surely, when she has been +told of her magnanimous renunciation, she will do her justice, will +cease to load her with those hard names and insulting assertions that +have made him grind his own teeth to listen to. But in this expectation +he soon finds that he is mistaken. The wrath of Mrs. Byng against +Elizabeth for having "drawn in" her son, as she persists in stating the +case, is surpassed only by indignation at her insolence in having +"thrown him over." As to the genuineness of this last action she +expresses, it is true, the most complete incredulity.</p> + +<p>"It was only to enhance her own value. Do you suppose that she expected +him to take her at her word? She thought, of course, that he would +follow her—that he would employ detectives—it is a proof"—with an +angry laugh—"that he cannot be quite so bad as you make him out, that +he has not done so."</p> + +<p>"I would not put it into his head, if I were you," replies Jim, with an +anger no less real, and a merriment no less spurious than her own.</p> + +<p>By this time they have reached the hotel; and Jim, having helped his +companion out of the fiacre, shows symptoms of leaving her.</p> + +<p>"Will not you stay to breakfast with me?" she asks, a little aghast at +this unexpected manœuvre; "I cannot make my toilette till the luggage +arrives: and I suppose that he"—her eyes wandering wistfully over the +hotel front till they rest on her son's closed persiennes—"that he is +not up yet; it would be a sin to wake him; do stay with me."</p> + +<p>"I am afraid I cannot."</p> + +<p>"Why cannot you?"—with an impatient but friendly little mocking +imitation of his tone. "You are not"—with a conciliatory smile—"angry +with an old hen for standing up for her own chick?"</p> + +<p>Jim smiles too.</p> + +<p>"I do not think that the old hen need have clucked quite so loudly; but +that is not why I am leaving her; I <i>must</i> go."</p> + +<p>"Where <i>must</i> you go?"</p> + +<p>"To the Anglo-Américain."</p> + +<p>She lifts her eyebrows.</p> + +<p>"At this hour—you forget how early it is. Well, Amelia <i>has</i> got you +into good training; but I can assure you that you will still find her in +bed."</p> + +<p>He sighs.</p> + +<p>"I am afraid that there is not much doubt of that."</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?—she is not ill, surely?"—in a tone of lively +surprise—"Amelia ill?—impossible!"</p> + +<p>He looks at her with an irrational stupefaction. It appears to him now, +in the distortion of all objects that the last fortnight has brought, as +if Amelia's illness had spread over the whole of his life, as if there +had never been a time when she had not been ill, and yet of this event, +immense as it seems to him in its duration, the woman before him +obviously has never heard. When he comes to think of it, how should she? +In point of fact it is not a fortnight since Miss Wilson fell sick, and +during that fortnight he himself has not written her a line; neither, he +is equally sure, has her son.</p> + +<p>"I am evidently very much behind the time," she says, noting the, to +her, unintelligible astonishment in his face; "but you must remember +that I have been kept completely in the dark—has she been ill?"</p> + +<p>In answer he tells her, with as much brevity and compression as he had +employed in the tale of Elizabeth's disappearance, that of Amelia's +illness, often interrupted by her expressions of sympathy. At the end +she says:</p> + +<p>"I am so thankful I did not hear till she was getting better! It would +have made me so wretched to be such a long way off!"</p> + +<p>Her adoption of his trouble as her own, an adoption whose sincerity is +confirmed by her impulsive seizure of his hand, and the feeling look in +her handsome eyes make him forgive the exaggeration of her statement, +and go some way towards replacing her in that position in his esteem +which her diatribes against Elizabeth had gone near to making her +forfeit.</p> + +<p>"But it will be all right now," continues she sanguinely; "there will be +nothing to do but to build up her strength again, and she is young—at +least"—as the reminiscence of Amelia's unyouthful appearance evidently +flashes across her mind, of that prematurely middle-aged look which an +unequal fortune gives to some plain women—"at least, young enough for +all practical purposes."</p> + +<p>Whether it be due to the possession of this modified form of juvenility, +to an excellent constitution, or to what other reason, certain it is +that the next two days go by without any diminution, rather with a +sensible and steady increase, in Miss Wilson's favourable symptoms, and, +on the afternoon of the latter of these days, Cecilia, in rather +impatient answer to Jim's long daily string of questions about her, +says:</p> + +<p>"You could judge much better if you saw her yourself. I do not see why +you should not see her to-morrow for a minute, that is to say, if you +would promise not to talk or ask her any questions."</p> + +<p>"But would it be safe?" inquires he, with a tremble in his voice. He +desires passionately to see her; until he does he will never believe +that she is really going to live; he has a hunger to assure himself that +no terrible metamorphosis has passed over her in these nightmare days; +and yet, coupled with that hunger, is a deep dread, which translates +itself into his next halting words.</p> + +<p>"Shall I be—shall I be very much shocked? is she—is she very much +changed?"</p> + +<p>"She does look pretty bad," replies Cecilia half sadly, yet with the +sub-lying cheerfulness of assured hope; "for one thing she is so wasted. +I suppose that that is what makes her look so much older; but then you +know Amelia never did look young."</p> + +<p>It is the second time within two days that the fact of his betrothed's +maturity has been impressed upon him, and formerly it would have caused +him a pang; but now, of what moment is it to him that she looks a +hundred, if only she is living, and going to live?</p> + +<p>"Has she—has she asked after me?"</p> + +<p>"We do not allow her to speak, but if anyone mentions your name there +comes a sort of smile over her face; such a ridiculous-sized face as it +is now!"</p> + +<p>The tears have come into Cecilia's large stupid eyes, and Jim himself +is, with regard to her, in the position of the great Plantagenet, when +he heard the lovely tale of York and Suffolk's high death.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">"I blame you not<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For hearing this; I must perforce compound<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With mistful eyes; or they will issue too!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>As he walks away he is filled with a solemn joy, one of those deep +serious gladnesses with which not the stranger, no, nor even the close +friend or loving kinsman intermeddleth. He is under an engagement to +meet Mrs. Byng at a certain hour, but although that hour has already +come and passed, he feels that he cannot face all her sincere +congratulations without some preparatory toning down of his mood.</p> + +<p>The streets, with their gay <i>va-et-vient</i>, their cracking whips and +shouting drivers, seem all too secular and every-day to match the +profundity of his reverent thankfulness. He takes it with him into the +great cool church that stands so nigh at hand to his hotel, Santa Maria +Novella. The doors fall behind him noiselessly as he enters, shutting +out the fiery hot piazza, and the garish noises of the world. In the +great dim interior, cold and tranquil, there is the usual sprinkling of +tourists peering up at its soaring columns, trying to read themselves, +out of their guide-books, into a proper admiration for Cimabue's +large-faced Virgin and ugly Bambino, folded, with all its gold and +sombre colours, in the dignity of its twice two centuries of gloom. +There are the usual three or four blue-trousered soldiers strolling +leisurely about, there is a curly-tailed little dog trotting hither and +thither unforbidden, ringing his bell, and there are the invariable +tanned peasant-women kneeling at the side-altars. He does not belong to +the ancient Church, but to-day he kneels beside them, and the tears he +had hastened away to hide from Cecilia come back to make yet dimmer to +his view the details of the dim altar-pieces behind the tall candles. +His eye, as he rises to his feet again, falls on the contadina nearest +him. What is she praying for? In the expansion of his own deep joy he +longs to tell her how much he hopes that, whatever it is, she will +obtain it. It is not the contadina who, standing a little behind, joins +him as he turns away from the altar.</p> + +<p>"I saw you go into the church," says Mrs. Byng, her smile growing +somewhat diffident as she sees the solemnity of his face, "so I thought +I would follow you; do you mind? shall I go away?"</p> + +<p>He would, of the two, have preferred that she had not followed him, that +he had been given five more minutes to himself; but he naturally does +not say so.</p> + +<p>"Since we are here, shall we go into the cloisters?" and he assents.</p> + +<p>A small Dominican monk, with a smile and a bunch of keys, is opening a +door to some strangers, prowling like our friends about the church. The +latter follow, the little monk enveloping them too in his civil smile. +Down some steps into the great cloister, under whose arches pale +frescoes cover the ancient walls—where in Florence are there not +frescoes?—and the hands that painted them seem all to have wielded +their brushes in that astounding fifteenth century, which was to +Florence's life what May is to Italy's year. For some moments they stand +silent, side by side, perhaps picking out familiar scenes from among the +sweet faded groups—a slim Rebecca listening to Eliezar's tale, and +looking maiden pleasure at his gifts; a shivering Adam and Eve chased +out of Paradise; an Adam and Eve dismally digging and stitching +respectively; Old Testament stories that time has blurred, that +weather—even in this dry air—has rubbed out and bedimmed, and that +yet, in many cases, still tell their curious faint tale decipherably.</p> + +<p>"Good news this evening, I hope?" says Mrs. Byng presently, growing a +little tired of her companion's taciturnity, being indeed always one of +those persons who are of opinion that the gold of which silence is said +to be made has a good deal of alloy in it.</p> + +<p>"I am to see her to-morrow."</p> + +<p>He speaks almost under his breath, either because he has no great +confidence in his voice, if he employ a higher key, or because there +seems to him a certain sanctity in this promised meeting on the kindly +hither side of the grave which has so lately yawned.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Byng is much too old and intimate a friend of Jim's not to have +been pretty well aware of the state of his feelings during the past +eight years, though certainly not through any communication from him. So +it is, perhaps, scarcely to be wondered at that she presently says, in a +tone tinged with admiring surprise:</p> + +<p>"How fond you are of her!"</p> + +<p>He receives the remark in a jarred silence, his eye resting on the +square of neglected graves in the middle of the cloister, how unlike our +turfy quads and lawns. A commonplace nineteenth century photographer, +with his vulgar camera planted on the time-worn stones, is evidently +trying to persuade the little monk to pose for his picture. The +gentle-looking Fra laughs, and draws up his cowl, then lowers it again, +folding his arms, and trying various postures.</p> + +<p>"You are so much fonder of her than you were!"</p> + +<p>This speech—though such is certainly far from the good-natured +speaker's intention—stings Burgoyne like a whip-lash.</p> + +<p>"I was always fond of her—I always thought her the very best woman in +the world; you know!"—with an accent of almost anguished appeal—"that +I always thought her the very best woman in the world."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes; of course, I know you did," replies she, astonished and +concerned at the evident and extreme distress of his tone. "That is not +quite the same thing as being <i>fond</i> of her, is it? But"—with a laugh +that is at once uneasy and reassuring—"what does that matter <i>now</i>? +<i>Now</i> your fondness for her is as indisputable as Tilburina's madness; +and, for my part, I always think people get on quite as well, if not +better, afterwards, if they do not begin quite so volcanically."</p> + +<p>But her light and well-meant words fail to remove the painful impression +from her hearer's mind. Has she, during all these years, been crediting +him with a wish for Amelia's death, that she should be so much +astonished at his thankfulness for her being given back to him?</p> + +<p>"I believe that this illness is the best thing that could have happened +to you both," continues Mrs. Byng, feeling uncomfortably that she has +not been happy in her choice of a topic, and yet unable to leave it +alone. "It will have drawn you so much together: in fact"—again +laughing nervously—"I think we are all looking up. As I told you, after +the first shock, Willy really was rather glad to see me; and you would +not believe how discreetly I handle the burning subject—yes, everything +is on the mend, and we are all going to have a lovely time, as the +Yankees say!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXX" id="CHAPTER_XXX"></a>CHAPTER XXX.</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The world's a city full of straying streets,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And Death the market-place where each one meets."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The words are scarcely out of Mrs. Byng's mouth before she adds, in a +changed key, and with an altered direction of the eyes—</p> + +<p>"Is this person looking for you? He seems to be coming straight towards +us."</p> + +<p>Jim turns his head at her speech, and at once recognises in the figure +hastening towards them the porter of the Anglo-Américain hotel. The man +looks strangely, and carries a slip of paper, unfolded and open, in his +hand.</p> + +<p>In a second Jim has sprung to his side, has snatched the paper, and is +staring at its contents. They are hardly legible, scrawled tremblingly +with a pencil, and for a moment he cannot make them out. Then, as he +looks, in one horrible flash their import has sprung into his eyes and +brain.</p> + +<p>"<i>She is gone; come to us!</i>"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Byng is reading too, over his shoulder.</p> + +<p>In going over the scene in memory afterwards, he believes that she gives +a sort of scream, and says, "Oh, what does it mean? It is not true!" But +at the time he hears, he knows nothing.</p> + +<p>He is out of the church; he is in the fiacre waiting at the door: he is +tearing through the streets, with the hot summer air flowing in a quick +current against his face. He thinks afterwards at what a pace the horse +must have been going, and how the poor jade must have been lashed to +keep it up to that useless speed. At the time he thinks nothing, he +feels nothing. He rushes through the court of the hotel, rushes through +what seem to be people; he thinks afterwards that they must have been +waiters and chambermaids, and that there came a sort of compassionate +murmur from them as he passed. He is up the stairs, the three flights; +as he tears up, three steps at a time, there comes across his numbed +intelligence a flash of wonder why they always give Amelia the worst +room. He is at that door, outside which he has spent so many hours of +breathless listening; he need no longer stay outside it now. It is open, +inviting him in. He is across that, as yet, unpassed threshold, that +threshold over which he was to have stepped in careful, soft-footed joy +to-morrow. He has pushed through the people—why must there be people +everywhere?—of whom the room seems full, unnecessarily full; he is at +the bedside. Across the foot a figure seems thrown—he learns afterwards +that <i>that</i> is Sybilla. Another figure is prostrate on the floor, +heaving, in dreadful dry sobs; that is Cecilia. A third is standing +upright and tearless, looking down upon what, an hour ago, was his most +patient daughter. They have left her alone now—have ceased to tease +her. They no longer hold a looking-glass to her pale mouth, or beat her +tired feet, or pour useless cordials between her lips. They have ceased +to cry out upon her name, having realized that she is much too far away +to hear them. Neither does he cry out. He just goes and stands by the +father, and takes his thin old hand in his; and together they gaze on +that poor temple, out of which the spirit that was so much too lovely +for it has fleeted. Later on they tell him how it came about; later on, +when they are all sitting huddled in the little dark <i>salon</i>. Cecilia is +the spokeswoman, and Sybilla puts in sobbing corrections now and again.</p> + +<p>"She was sitting up the moment before; the nurse was holding her propped +up—she said she was so tired of lying. She had been quite laughing, the +nurse said."</p> + +<p>"Almost laughing," corrects Sybilla, who has forgotten to lie down upon +her sofa, and is sitting on a hard chair like anyone else.</p> + +<p>"Quite laughing," continues Cecilia, "at her own arm for being so thin. +She had pushed up her sleeve to look at it, and had said +something—something quite funny, only the nurse could not remember the +exact words—and then, all in a minute, she called out, in quite an +altered voice, 'The salts! Quick! Quick!' and her head just fell back, +and she was gone!"</p> + +<p>"And she had not bid one of us good-bye!" cries Sybilla, breaking into a +loud wail.</p> + +<p>Then comes a dreadful and incongruous flash of that ridiculous, which is +the underlining to all our tragedies, across Jim's mind at this last +lament. The going, "taking no farewell," naturally seems to Sybilla the +most terrible feature in the whole case, to her who has so repeatedly +taken heartrending last farewells of her family.</p> + +<p>"Who would ever have thought that I should have survived her?" pursues +Sybilla, still sobbing noisily, and without the least attempt at +self-control. Cecilia, who is sitting with her head on her arms resting +on the table, lifts her tear-blurred face and answers this apostrophe in +a voice choked with weeping.</p> + +<p>"Jim always did; he always said that you would see us all out."</p> + +<p>Again that dreadful impulse towards mirth assails Burgoyne. Is it +possible that, at such an hour, he can feel a temptation to laugh out +loud? But, later again, this horrible mood passes; later, when they have +all grown more composed, when their tears run more gently, when their +voices are less suffocated, and they are telling each other little +anecdotes of her, aiding each other's memories to recall half-effaced +traits of her homely kindness, of her noiseless self-denials, of her +deep still piety.</p> + +<p>They bring out her photographs, mourning over their being so few, and +such old and long-ago ones. There are effigies by the dozen of Cecilia, +and even touching presentments of Sybilla stretched in wasted grace upon +her day bed; but it had never occurred to anyone—least of all to Amelia +herself—that there is any need for <i>her</i> image to be perpetuated. And +now they are searching out, as treasures most precious, the scanty faded +likenesses that exist of her, planning how they can be enlarged, and +repeated, and daintily framed, and generally done homage and tender +reverence to.</p> + +<p>Jim listens, occasionally putting in a low word or two, when appealed to +to confirm or correct the details of some little story about her. But it +seems to him as if his anguish only begins when the stream of their +reminiscences turns into the channel of her love for him.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Jim, she <i>was</i> fond of you! We were none of us anywhere, compared +to you; she worshipped the ground you trod upon. We all knew—did not +we, Sybilla?—did not we, father?—when you used to be away for so long, +and wrote to her so seldom——Oh, I know!"—hastily—"that you were not +to blame, that you were in out-of-the-way places, where there was no +post: but there were sometimes long gaps between your letters; and we +always knew—did not we?—when she had heard from you by her face, long +before she spoke."</p> + +<p>Next it is—</p> + +<p>"How she fired up if anyone said anything slightingly of you: she never +cared in the least if one abused herself; she always thought she quite +deserved it; but if anybody dared to say the least disparaging thing of +<i>you</i>"—it is pretty evident, though at the moment in his agony of +preoccupation the idea does not occur to Jim, that this has not been an +uncommon occurrence—"she was like a lioness at once."</p> + +<p>"The saddest thing of all," says Sybilla, taking up the antiphonal +strain, "is that she should have died just as she was beginning to be so +happy!"</p> + +<p><i>Just beginning to be so happy?</i> And he might have made her heavenly +happy so easily, since she asked so little—for eight years. The groan +he utters is low in proportion to the depth of the fountain whence it +springs, and they do not hear it. If they did, they would in mercy stop; +instead, they go on.</p> + +<p>"Did you ever see anything so radiant as she was—that last fortnight? +She used to say that she was quite ashamed of being so much more +fortunate than anyone else, she seemed always trying to make up to us +for not being so happy as she. Oh, she was happy that last fortnight!"</p> + +<p>This time he does not groan, he seems to himself to have passed into +that zone of suffering which cannot be expressed or alleviated by the +utterance of any sound. Perhaps, by-and-by, Cecilia dimly divines +something, some faint shadow of what he is enduring; for she begins with +well-intentioned labour to try to assert lamely that Amelia had always +been happy, well, <i>fairly</i> happy, as happy as most people. You could not +expect, in this dreadful world, to be always in the best of spirits, but +she had never complained. And, oh! that last fortnight she <i>had</i> been +happy, it was a pleasure to see her! And, oh, what a comfort it must be +now to Jim to think that it was all owing to him.</p> + +<p>She puts out her hand kindly to him as she speaks, and he takes it, and +silently wrings it in acknowledgment of the endeavour—however +clumsy—to lay balm upon that now immedicable wound.</p> + +<p>He stays most of the night with them; and when at length, overcome with +weariness and sorrow, they rise from their grief-stricken postures to go +to bed, he kisses them all solemnly, even the old man. He has never +kissed any of them before, except once or twice Cecilia on some return +of his from the Antipodes, and because she seemed to expect it.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Three days later Burgoyne leaves Florence; and, as his arrival in the +City of Flowers had been motived by Amelia alive, so is his departure to +companion her dead.</p> + + +<h3>END OF PART ONE.</h3> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="PART_II" id="PART_II"></a>PART II.</h2> + +<h3>Elizabeth.</h3> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IA" id="CHAPTER_IA"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"It was a chosen plot of fertile land,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Amongst wide waves set like a little nest,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As if it had by Nature's cunning hand<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Been choycely picked out from all the rest,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And laid forth for ensample of the best.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No daintie flower or herb that grows on ground,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">No arborete with painted blossomes drest,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And smelling sweete, but there it might be found<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To bud out faire, and throwe her sweet smell all around."<br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Time has stepped upon another year; not much more than stepped, since +that year's first month is not yet out; and Burgoyne has stepped upon +another continent before we again rejoin him. There are few, if any of +us, who, in the course of our lives, have not had occasion to wish that +certain spaces in those lives might be represented by the convenient +asterisks that cover them in books; but this is unfortunately impossible +to Jim, as to the rest of us; and he has fought through each minute and +its minuteful of pain (happily no minute can contain two minutefuls) +during the seven months that have elapsed since we parted from him. At +first those minutes held nothing but pain; he could not tell you which +of them it was that first admitted within its little compass any alien +ingredient; and he was shocked and remorseful when he discovered that +any such existed. But that did not alter the fact. He has not sold his +guns; on the contrary, he has bought two new ones, and he has visited +his old friends, the Rockies. Since Amelia's funeral—immediately after +which he again quitted England—he has seen no member of his dead +betrothed's family, nor has he held any intercourse, beyond the exchange +of an infrequent letter, with Mrs. Byng or her son. From the thought of +both these latter he shrinks, with a distaste equal in degree, though +inspired by different causes. From Mrs. Byng, because he knows that she +was aware of his weariness of his poor love—that poor love whom, had he +but known it, he had so short a time to be weary of; and from Byng, +because, despite the ocean of sorrow, of remorse, of death that rolls in +its hopelessness between him and her, he cannot even yet think, without +a bitter pang, of the woman who had inspired the young man's hysterical +tears and sincere, though silly, suicidal impulses. Jim took that pang +with him to the Rockies, stinging, even through the overlying load of +his other and acknowledged burden of repentant ache and loss, and he has +brought it back with him. He packs it into his portmanteau as much as a +matter of course as he does his shirts—in fact more so, for he has once +inadvertently left his shirts behind, but the pang never.</p> + +<p>It is the 20th day of January; here, in England, the most consistently +detestable month in the year. The good Januaries of a British +octogenarian's life might be counted upon the thumbs of that +octogenarian's hands. The favoured inhabitants of London have +breakfasted and lunched by gaslight; have groped their way along their +dirty streets through a fog of as thick and close a fabric as the furs +gathered round their chilled throats; have, even within their houses, +seen each other dimly across a hideous yellow vapour that kills their +expensive flowers, and makes their unwilling palm-trees droop in +homesick sadness. There is no fog about the Grand Hotel, Mustapha +Supérieur, Algiers; no lightest blur of mist to dim the intensity of the +frame of green in which its white face is set. It is not so very grand, +despite its unpromising big name, as it stands high aloft on the +hillside, looking out over the bay and down on the town, looking down +more immediately upon tree-tops, and on the Governor's summer palace. It +is an old Moorish house, enlarged into an hotel, with little arched +windows sunk in the thick walls, with red-tiled floors, and balconies, +with low white balustrades of pierced brick, up which the lush creepers +climb and wave—yes, climb and wave on this 20th of January.</p> + +<p>From the red-floored balcony over the creepers, between the perennial +leafage of the unchanging trees, one can daily descry in the azure bay +the tiny puff of smoke that tells that the mail steamer from Marseilles +has safely breasted the Gulf of Lyons, threaded her away among the +Isles, and brought her freight of French and English and American news +to the hands and ears of the various expectant nationalities. To-day, +blown by a gently prosperous wind, the boat is punctual. It is the +<i>Eugène Perrère</i>, the pet child of the Transatlantic Company, the narrow +and strong-engined little vessel which is wont to accomplish the transit +in a period of time less by an hour than her brother craft. To-day she +has brought but one guest to the Grand Hotel, who, having left the bulk +of his luggage to be struggled for by Arabs, and by the hotel-porter at +the Douane, arrives at the modest Moorish-faced hostelry, having, with +British mercifulness, walked up the break-neck green lane that leads +from the steep main road in order to spare the wretched little galled, +pumped horse that has painfully dragged him and his bag from the pier. +He has travelled straight through from London—fifty-five hours without +a pause—so that it is not to be wondered at that his thoughts turn +affectionately towards a wash and a change of raiment. Having extracted +from the case of unclaimed letters in the bar two or three that bear the +address of James Burgoyne, Esq., he is ushered to his room by the civil +little fussy Italian landlord, who, in order to enhance his appreciation +of the apartment provided for him, assures him, in voluble bad French, +that only yesterday he had been obliged to turn away a party of eight.</p> + +<p>It is not until refreshed by a completed toilette—and who can overrate +the joy of a bath after a journey?—that it occurs to him to look out of +window. His room possesses two. One faces the hill's rich-clothed +steepness, and a row of orange-trees covered with fruit, and at whose +feet tumbled gold balls lie. But the dusk is falling fast, and he can +only dimly see the prodigality of green in which the modest Grand Hotel +lies buried. The other window looks out—but a very little way lifted +above it, for the room is on the ground floor—upon the red-tiled +terrace. It is growing very dim too. At the present moment it is empty +and deserted, but the chairs studded over its surface in talkative +attitudes, as if sociable twos and threes had drawn together in chat, +tell plainly that earlier in the day it had been frequented, and that +several people had been sitting out on it. Jim's London memories are too +fresh upon him for him not to find something ludicrous in the idea of +sitting out of doors on the 20th of January. How pleasant it would have +been to do so to-day in Hyde Park! He turns back to the table with a +smile at the idea, and, taking out a writing-case, sits down to scribble +a line. Jim's correspondence is neither a large nor an interesting one. +On the present occasion, his note is merely one of reminder as to some +trifling order, addressed to the landlord of his London lodgings. It +does not take him ten minutes to pen, and when it is finished he turns +to have one final look out of window before leaving the room. How +quickly the dark has fallen! The empty chairs show indistinct outlines, +and the heavy green trees have turned black. But the terrace is no +longer quite empty. A footfall sounds—coming slowly along it. One of +the waiters, no doubt, sent to fetch in the chairs; but, no! an +overworked Swiss waiter, hurried by electric bells, and with an imminent +swollen table <i>table d'hôte</i> upon his burdened mind, never paced so +slowly, nor did anything male ever step so lightly.</p> + +<p>It must be a woman; and even now her white gown makes a patch of light +upon the dark background of the quickly on-coming night. A white gown on +the 20th of January! Again that pleasing sense of the ludicrous tickles +his fancy. She must be one of the persons who lately occupied the empty +chairs, and have come in search of some object left behind. He +recollects having noticed an open book lying on the low parapet. She has +a white gown; but what more can be predicated of her in this owl-light? +The radiance from the candle behind him makes a small illuminated square +upon the terrace, falling between the bars of the window through which +the Moorish ladies once darted their dark and ineffectual ogles.</p> + +<p>Having apparently accomplished her errand, the white-gowned figure +obligingly steps into the illumined square, and still more obligingly +lifts her face and looks directly up at him. It is clear that the action +is dictated only by the impulse which prompts all seeing creatures to +turn lightwards, and no gleam of recognition kindles in the eyes that +are averted almost as soon as directed towards him. Placed as he is, +with his back to the light, his own mother could not have distinguished +his features; and, after her one careless glance, the white-gowned lady +turns away and disappears again into the gloom. She has one more oasis +of light to traverse before she reaches the hotel porch, just +discernible, gleaming in its whitewash, at the far end of the terrace; +just one more lit window throws its chequered lustre on the tiles. He +presses his face against the bars of his own lattice, and holds his +breath until she has reached and crossed that tell-tale patch. Her +traversing of it does not occupy the tenth part of a second, and yet it +puts the seal upon what he already knows.</p> + +<p>Five minutes later he is standing before the case, hung on the wall of +the entrance hall, which contains the names and numbers of the rooms of +the visitors, eagerly scanning them with eye and finger. He scans them +in vain. The name he seeks is not among them. Had it not been for that +five minutes' delay—that five minutes of stunned and stupid staring out +into the dark after her—he must have met her in the hall. He is turning +away in baffled disappointment, when the little host again accosts him.</p> + +<p>Monsieur must excuse him, but he must explain that the list of visitors +that monsieur has been so obliging as to peruse is by no means a full or +correct one. To-morrow morning he shall have the pleasure of placing +beneath monsieur's eye a proper and complete list of the visitors; but, +in point of fact, there has been such a press of business, he has been +daily obliged to turn away such large and <i>comme il faut</i> families from +the door, that time has been inadequate for all his obligations, which +must be his excuse.</p> + +<p>Burgoyne accepts his apologies in silence. It would seem easy enough to +inquire whether among the English visitors there are any of the name of +Le Marchant; but the question sticks in his throat. It is seven months +since he has pronounced that name aloud, and he appears to have lost the +faculty of doing it. The host comes to his aid.</p> + +<p>Is there perhaps a family—a friend whom monsieur expects to meet? But +monsieur only shakes his head, and moves away. He has ascertained that +the <i>table d'hôte</i> is at seven, and it is now half-past five. He has, +therefore, only an hour and a half of suspense ahead of him. She will +surely appear at the <i>table d'hôte</i>? But will she?</p> + +<p>As the hour of seven approaches, ever graver and graver doubts upon this +head assail his mind, both when he reflects upon how much it is a habit +with the better sort of travelling English to dine in their own rooms, +and also when he calls to mind the extremely retired character of +Elizabeth's and her mother's habits. Even if she does appear in the +public room—and the more he thinks of it, the less probable, it +seems—it is most unlikely that he will be placed near her. But he might +possibly intercept her in the hall on her way to the <i>salle à manger</i>.</p> + +<p>In pursuance of this project he takes up his position before the bell, +tingling so lengthily as to reach the ears of the deafest and most +distant, has summoned the company together; and it is several minutes +before enough are assembled to justify, according to the etiquette +prevailing at the Grand Hotel, a move to the dining-room. Men, at that +hotel, although in a very distinct minority—as when, indeed, are they +not?—are yet not quite the same choice rarities as at some of the Swiss +and Italian ones. But the young of the one sex are perennially +interesting to the other; and Burgoyne, as "the new man," is an object +of some attention to half a dozen young girls, and even to two or three +sprightly-hearted old ones. His eyes are eagerly shining as each opening +door, each step on the staircase, raises his hopes afresh. But neither +door nor staircase yields the form he seeks, and he is at last obliged, +under penalty of exciting remark, reluctantly to follow the band that go +trooping hungrily down a flight of steps to the whitewashed dining-room. +He finds himself placed between a bouncing widow who is too much +occupied in fondling an old valetudinarian on her other side to have +much notice to spare for him; and a sparkling creature of +five-and-thirty in a red shirt, who, before dinner is over, confides to +him that she fears she has not got a nice nature, and that she cannot +get on at home because her mother and the servants insist upon having +cold supper instead of dinner on Sunday. When she tells him that she has +not a nice nature, he absently replies that he is very sorry for it, and +her confidence about the Sunday supper provokes from him only the +extremely stupid observation that he supposes she does not like cold +meat. It is a wonder that he can answer her even as rationally as he +does. It is more by good luck than good management that there is any +sense at all in his responses. And yet he may as well give his full +attention to his neighbour, for now every place at the E-shaped table is +filled up, and, travel as his eye may over those who sit, both at the +long and cross-boards, it fails to discover any face in the least +resembling that which lifted itself from the dusk terrace into his +candle-light.</p> + +<p>Was it her little ghost, then, that he had seen, her dainty delicate +ghost? But why should it appear to him <i>here</i>? Why haunt these +unfamiliar shores? The only places in the room which still remain +untenanted are those at a round table laid for three, in the embrasure +of a Moorish window, not very distant from where he sits. On first +catching sight of it his hopes had risen, only immediately to fall +again, as he realizes that it is destined for a trio. Why should three +places be laid for Elizabeth and her mother?</p> + +<p>With a disheartened sigh he tums to his neighbour, intending to put to +her a question as to the habitual occupants of the empty table; but she +is apparently affronted at his tepidness, and presents to him only the +well-frizzled back of her expensive head. He is reduced to listening to +the conversation of his <i>vis-à-vis</i>, an elderly couple, who have been +upon some excursion, and are detailing their experiences to those around +them. They have been to Blidah apparently, and seen real live monkeys +hopping about without organs or red coats on real palm trees. He is +drawn into the conversation by a question addressed to him as to his +journey.</p> + +<p>It is five minutes before he again looks towards the table in the +window. His first glance reveals that the three persons for whom it is +destined have at length arrived and taken their seats. Idiot that he is! +he had forgotten Mr. Le Marchant's existence.</p> + +<p>"They are nice-looking people, are they not?" says his neighbour in the +red shirt, apparently repenting of her late austerity, and following the +direction of his eyes; "but they give themselves great airs; nobody in +the hotel is good enough for them to speak to. M. Cipriani evidently +thinks them people of importance; he makes twice as much fuss about them +as he does about anyone else. Look at him now!"</p> + +<p>And in effect the obsequious little host may be seen hanging anxiously +over the newcomers, evidently asking them with solicitous civility +whether the not particularly appetizing fish (the strongest point of the +blue Mediterranean does not lie in her fishes, of which some are coarse, +some tasteless, and some even lie under the suspicion of having +poisonous qualities)—whether it is not to their liking.</p> + +<p>At something that M. Cipriani says they all laugh. Elizabeth, indeed, +throws back her little head, and shows all her perfect teeth, in a +paroxysm of the most genuine mirth. It gives Burgoyne a sort of shock to +see her laugh.</p> + +<p>Not a day, scarcely an hour, has passed since he last saw her in which +he has not pictured her as doing or suffering, or living through +something; he has never pictured her laughing. It seems to him now but a +moment since he was reading her broken-hearted, tear-stained note; since +he was seeing Byng grovelling in all the utter collapse of his +ungoverned grief on the floor of the little Florentine <i>entresol</i>. What +business has she to laugh? And how unchanged she is! How much less +outwardly aged than he himself is conscious of being! Sitting as she now +is, in her simple white tea-gown, with one slight elbow rested on the +table, her eyes all sparkling with merriment and laughter, bringing into +prominence that one enchanting dimple of hers, she does not look more +than twenty. But a few moments later he forgives her even her dimple. +However <i>empressé</i> may be the little landlord, he has to move away after +a time; and the merriment moves away, too, out of Elizabeth's face. Jim +watches it decline, through the degrees of humorous disgust, as she +pushes the coarse white fish about her plate, without tasting it (she +was always a very delicate eater), into a settled gravity. And now that +she is grave he sees that she is aged, almost as much as he himself, +after all. Her eyes had ever had the air of having shed in their time +many tears; but since he last saw her, it is now evident to him that the +tale of those tears has been a good deal added to.</p> + +<p>There is no pleasing him. He was angry with her when he thought her gay, +and now he quarrels with her for looking sad. As if, in her +unconsciousness of his neighbourhood, she was yet determined to give him +no cause of complaint, she presently again lays aside her sorrowful +looks, and, drawing her chair confidentially nearer to her mother's, +makes some remark of an evidently comic nature upon the company into her +ear.</p> + +<p>They stoop their heads together—what friends they always were, she and +her mother!—and again the blue twinkle comes into her eyes; the +dimple's little pitfall is dug anew in her white cheek. Was there ever +such an April creature? Mr. Le Marchant appears to take no part in the +jokes; he goes on eating his dinner silently, and his back, which is +turned towards Burgoyne, looks morose.</p> + +<p>How is it that Elizabeth's roving eye has not yet hit upon himself? He +sees presently that the cause lies in the fact of her look alighting +upon old and known objects of entertainment, rather than going in search +of new ones. But it must sooner or later embrace him in its range. The +fond fat widow beside him must surely be one of her favourites, and, in +point of fact, as he feverishly watches to see the inevitable moment of +recognition arrive, he perceives that Miss Le Marchant and her mother +are delightedly—though not so openly as to be patent to the rest of the +room—observing her. And then comes the expected careless glance at him, +and the no less expected transformation. Her elbows have been carelessly +resting on the table, and she has just been pressing her laughing lips +against her lightly-joined hands to conceal their merriment. In an +instant he sees the right hand go out in a silent desperate clutch at +her mother's, and the next second he knows that she also has seen him. +They both stare helplessly at him—at least, the one <i>at</i> him, and the +other beyond him! How well he remembers that look of hers over his +shoulder in search of someone else. But yet it is not the old look, for +that was one of hope and red expectation. Is there any hope or +expectation lurking even under the white dread of this one? His jealous +heart is afraid quite to say no to this question, and yet an +indisputable look of relief spreads over her face as she ascertains that +he is alone. She even collects herself enough to give him a tiny +inclination of the head—an example followed by her mother; but they +are, in both cases, so tiny as to be unperceived, save by the person to +whom they are addressed.</p> + +<p>He would not have been offended by the minuteness of their salutations, +even had he not divined that it was dictated by a desire—however +futile—to conceal the fact of his presence from their companion. His +heart goes out in all the profundity of his former pity towards them, as +he sees how entirely that one glance at him (for she does not look again +in his direction) has dried the fountain of Elizabeth's poor little +jests; of how white and grave and frightened, and even shrunk, his mere +presence has made her. Now that they have detected him, good breeding, +and even humanity, forbid his continuing any longer his watch upon them. +The better to set them at ease he turns the back of his head towards +their table, and compels the reluctant widow to relinquish her invalid +booty for fully ten minutes in his favour. Perhaps when Elizabeth can +see only the back of his head she may resume her jokes. But all the same +he knows that, for her, there will be no more mirth to-day.</p> + +<p>"That is what they always do!" cries a voice on Burgoyne's left +hand—the voice of his other neighbour, who begins to think that his +attention has been usurped quite long enough by her plump rival. "That +is what they always do—come long after dinner has begun, and go out +long before it has ended. Such swagger!"</p> + +<p>There is a tinge of exasperation in both words and voice, nor is the +cause far to seek.</p> + +<p>The table in the window is again empty. In the meantime the "swaggering" +Elizabeth is clinging tremblingly about her mother's neck in the privacy +of their own little salon. The absence of the husband and father for the +moment in the smoking-room has removed the irksome restraint from both +the poor women.</p> + +<p>"Did you see him?" asks Elizabeth breathlessly, as soon as the door is +safely closed upon them, flinging herself down upon her knees beside +Mrs. Le Marchant, who has sunk into a chair, and cowering close to her +as if for shelter. "What is he doing here? Why has he come? When first I +caught sight of him I thought that of course—" She breaks off, sobbing; +"and when I saw that he was alone I <i>was</i> relieved; but I was +disappointed too! Oh, I must be a fool—a bad fool—but I <i>was</i> +disappointed! Oh, mammy! mammy! how seeing him again brings it all +back!"</p> + +<p>"Do not cry, dear child! do not cry!" answers Mrs. Le Marchant +apprehensively; though the voice in which she gives the exhortation is +shaking too. "Your father will be in directly; and you know how +angry——"</p> + +<p>"I will not! I will not!" cries Elizabeth, trying, with her usual +extreme docility, to swallow her tears; "and I do not show it much when +I have been crying; my eyes do not mind it as much as most people's; I +suppose"—with a small rainy smile—"because they are so used to it!"</p> + +<p>"Perhaps he will not stay long," murmurs the mother, dropping a fond +rueful kiss on the prone blonde head that lies on her knees; "perhaps if +we are careful we may avoid speaking to him."</p> + +<p>"But I <i>must</i> speak to him," breaks in the girl, lifting her head, and +panting; "I <i>must</i> ask him; I <i>must</i> find out; why, we do not even know +whether Willy is dead or alive!"</p> + +<p>"He is not dead," rejoins the elder woman, with melancholy common-sense; +"if he had been, we should have seen it in the papers; and, besides, why +should he be? Grief does not kill; nobody, Elizabeth, is better able to +attest that than you and I."</p> + +<p>Elizabeth is now sitting on the floor, her hands clasped round her +knees.</p> + +<p>"He is aged," she says presently; and this time it is evident that the +pronoun refers to Burgoyne.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Le Marchant assents.</p> + +<p>"He must have cared more for that poor creature than we gave him credit +for. Get up, darling; dry your eyes, and sit with your back to the +light; here comes your father!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IIA" id="CHAPTER_IIA"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>One of the reasons, though not the sole or even the main one, of +Burgoyne's visit to Algiers is that the Wilson family are wintering +there. And yet he dreads the meeting with them inexpressibly. When they +last parted, immediately after having stood together round Amelia's open +grave, they had all been at a high pressure of emotion, and of +demonstrative affectionateness, which nothing in their tastes, habits, +or natures could possibly make continuous. He has a horrible fear that +they will expect to take up their relations at the same point at which +he had left them. He would do it if he could, but he feels that it is +absolutely impossible to him. The door of that room in his memory which +is labelled "Amelia" is for ever locked. It is only in deepest silence +and solitude that he permits himself now and again to turn the key and +sparely and painfully look in. How will he bear it if they insist on +throwing the portals wide, dragging its disused furniture to the light, +rummaging in its corners?</p> + +<p>He sleeps ill on this, his first night of Africa; and even when at +length he succeeds in losing importunate consciousness, he is teased by +absurd yet painful dreams, in which Amelia and Elizabeth jostle each +other impossibly with jumbled personalities and changed attributes. +Extravagant as his visions are, they have yet such a solid vividness +that, at his first waking, he feels a strange sense of unsureness as to +which of the two women that have beset his pillow is the dead, and which +the living one. In dreams, how often our lost ones, and those whom we +still possess, take hands together on equal terms! Even when he is wide +awake, nay more, dressed and breakfasted, that feeling of uncertainty, +that something akin to the</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Blank misgivings of a creature,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Moving about in worlds not realized,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>remains strong enough to drive him once again to the list of visitors in +the entrance-hall, in order to assure himself that his brain has not +been the dupe of his eye.</p> + +<p>M. Cipriani has been as good as his word. The corrected list, promised +overnight, has replaced the incomplete one, and almost the first names +that Jim's eye alights upon are those of "Mr., Mrs., and Miss Le +Marchant, England." His own name immediately follows, and he takes as a +good augury what is merely an accident due to the fact of his room and +theirs being on one floor. Elizabeth is, beyond question, beneath the +same roof as himself; nay, even now she may probably be sunning herself +like a white pigeon on that terrace, whose red tiles he sees shining in +the morning sun through an open side-door.</p> + +<p>The thought is no sooner formed than he follows whither it leads him; +but she is not on the terrace; and though a moment ago his nerves were +tingling at the thought of speech with her, yet he is conscious of a +feeling of relief that their meeting is, for the moment, deferred. What +can he say to her? What can she say to him?</p> + +<p>He stands looking down on the green sea of richly-clothed dark trees +beneath him—ilex and eucalyptus, and all the unfamiliar verdure of the +soft South. From the fiercely-blazing red purple of a Bougainvillia, so +unlike the pale, cold lilac blossom, to which in our conservatories we +give that name, his eye travels over tree-tops and snowy villas, cool +summer palace and domy mosque, to the curving bay, round which the Atlas +Mountains are gently laying their arms; and Cape Matifou, with the haze +of day's young prime about it, is running out into the Mediterranean.</p> + +<p>He is alone at first, but presently other people come forth; the old +valetudinarian, for once delivered from his fostering widow, sits down +with a pile of English newspapers to enjoy himself in the sun, which +does not yet ride so high as to be sun-strokey. Jim's last night's +neighbour in the red shirt comes out too, bonneted and prayer-booked. +She is going to church; so is he: but he does not tell her so, for fear +she should offer to accompany him. She observes to him that the climate +is a fraud; that this is the first day for three weeks in which she is +able to go out without a mackintosh and umbrella.</p> + +<p>"We are not so green for nothing, I can tell you," says she, with a +laugh, and a rather resentful glance at the splendid verdure around her, +and so leaves him.</p> + +<p>He, too, as I have said, is going to church, and is presently asking his +way to the English chapel. The Wilson family will certainly be there, +and it has struck him that the dreaded meeting will be robbed of half +its painful awkwardness if it takes place in public. At a church-porch, +crowded with issuing congregation, Sybilla cannot fall into +hysterics—it is true that Sybilla never attends divine service—nor can +Cecilia weepingly throw her arms about his neck. But whatever means he +may take to lessen the discomfort and smart of that expected encounter, +the thought of it sits like lead upon his spirits, as he walks +quickly—it is difficult to descend slowly so steep a hill—down the +precipitous lane, which is the only mode of approach for man or +labouring beast to the high-perched hotel he has chosen. But he is +young, and presently the cheerful, clean loveliness of the day and the +sight of Nature's superb vigour work their natural effect upon him. It +must, indeed, be an inveterate grief that refuses to be soothed by the +influences of this green Eden.</p> + +<p>What a generosity of vegetation, as evidenced by the enormous garlands +of great-leaved ivy, waving from tree to tree as for some perpetual +fête! Along the high hill bank that skirts this steep by-road, +eucalyptus rear their lofty heads and their faintly-scented blossoms, +aloe draws her potent sword, and thick-fleshed prickly pear displays her +uncouth malignity. Beneath, what a lush undergrowth of riotous +great-foliaged plants—acanthus, and a hundred other green sisters, all +flourishing and waxing, so unstinted, so at large! He has reached the +main road—the shady road that leads by a three-mile descent from +Mustapha Supérieur to the town.</p> + +<p>How shady it is! Pepper-trees hang their green hair, so thick and fine, +over it; and ilexes hold the thatch of their little dark leaves. Past +the Governor's summer palace, with its snowy dome and Moorish arcades +gleaming through its iron gates. From a villa garden a flowering shrub +sends a mixed perfume of sweet and bitter, as of honey and hops, from +its long yellow flower-tassels to his pleased nostrils.</p> + +<p>At a sharp turn, where the hill falls away more precipitously than +before, the bay, the mole, the shipping, the dazzling little city, burst +upon him—the little city swarming up her hill, from where the French +town bathes its feet in the azure ripples, to where the Arab town loses +the peak of its triangle, in the Casbah and the fort of the now +execrated Emperor. Blinding white, ardent blue, profound green—what a +pleasant picture for a summer Sunday morning! And how gay the road is +too, as the East and the West step along it together!</p> + +<p>Here is a tram tearing down the steep incline with five poor little thin +horses abreast. It is full of English church-goers, and yet, oh anomaly! +standing up in the vulgarest of modern vehicles, with his slight dark +hands grasping the tramrail, is a tall Arab, draped with the grave grace +of the Vatican Demosthenes. But alas! alas! even upon him the West has +laid its claw, for, as the tram rushes past, Jim's shocked eyes realize +that he, who in other respects might have fed the flocks of Laban in +Padan-aram, wears on his feet a pair of old elastic-sided boots.</p> + +<p>Here come clattering a couple of smart Chasseurs d'Afrique, in blue and +red, followed by a woman dressed as Rachel was at the palmy well—so +dressed, that is to say, as to her white-shrouded upper woman, for, +indeed, there is no reason for supposing that Rachel wore a pair of Rob +Roy Tartan trousers! Past the Plateau Saulière, where, in the +lichen-roofed lavoir Frenchwomen are sousing their linen in water +that—oh, hideous thought!—is changed but once a week; along an ugly +suburb, and past a little wood; through the arch in the fortifications, +the Porte d'Isly, till at length the Episcopal chapel—why are the +Protestant places of worship scattered over the habitable globe +everywhere so frightful?—stands before him.</p> + +<p>He had thought himself in good time, but he must have loitered more than +he had been aware of, as the bell is silent and the porch closed. He +enters as quietly as may be, and takes his place near the door. The +building strikes damp and chilly, despite the warming presence of the +whole English colony, emptied out of the four hotels sacred to +Anglo-Saxons, and out of many an ilex-shaded orange-groved campagne +besides. The building is quite full, which is, no doubt, the reason why +Jim fails to catch any glimpse of the Wilson family throughout the +service. He has plenty of time to interrogate with his eye the numerous +rows of backs before him, as the sermon is long. Jim had known that it +would be so from the moment when the clergyman entered the pulpit with +an open Bible—no written sermon—in his hand. The sound of a brogue, +piercing, even through the giving out of the text, soon puts him in +possession of the further fact that he is in the clutches, and at the +mercy, of an entirely uneducated yet curiously fluent Irishman.</p> + +<p>Is Elizabeth writhing under the infliction too? Never, in the Moat days, +was she very patient under prolonged pulpit eloquence. He can see her +with his memory's eye not very covertly reading her hymn-book—can hear +her foot tapping. Several people around him now are, not very covertly, +reading <i>their</i> hymn-books, but she is not among them. He has no more +sight of her than he has of Cecilia; but in neither case—such are the +disadvantages of his position—does his failure to see prove the absence +of the object he seeks. He is one of the first persons to be out of +church when at length set free, and stands just outside the porch while +the long stream of worshippers defiles before him. It takes some time to +empty itself into the sunshine, and nearly as long before he catches +sight of any member of either of the families he is on the look-out for. +Of the Le Marchants, indeed, he never catches sight, for the excellent +reason that they are not to be caught sight of, not being there. In the +case of the Wilsons he is more fortunate, though here, too, a sort of +surprise is in store for him. He has involuntarily been scanning, in his +search for them, only those of the congregation who are dressed in +mourning. The picture that the retina of his eye has kept of Cecilia is +of one tear-swollen and crape-swaddled; and though, if he had thought of +it, his reason would have told him that, after seven months, she is +probably no longer sobbing and sabled, yet even then the impression that +he would expect to receive from her would be a grave and a black one. +This is why, although he is on the look-out for her, she yet comes upon +him at last as a surprise.</p> + +<p>"Jim!" cries a voice, pitched a good deal higher than is wont to make +itself heard within the precincts of a church—a female voice of +delighted surprise and cheerful welcome; "father, here is Jim!"</p> + +<p>Burgoyne turns, and sees a lady in a very smart bonnet, full of spring +flowers, and with a red <i>en tout cas</i>—for they have now issued into the +day's potent beam—shading her rosy face; a lady whose appearance +presents about as wide a contrast to the serious and inky figure he had +expected to see as it is well possible to imagine.</p> + +<p>Cecilia, indeed, is looking, what her maid admiringly pronounced her +before sending her forth to triumph, "very dressy." Mr. Wilson is black, +certainly—but, then, clergymen always are black—and he still has a +band upon his hat; but it is a very narrow one—sorrow nearing its +vanishing-point. In answer to his daughter's joyous apostrophe, he +answers:</p> + +<p>"'Sh, Cecilia! do not talk so loud. How are you, Jim?"</p> + +<p>And then the meeting is over—that first meeting which Jim had shrunk +from with such inexpressible apprehension—as certain to be so fraught +with intolerable emotion; with calls upon him that he would not be able +to answer; with baring of incurable wounds. The contrast with the +reality is so startling that at first it makes him almost dizzy. Can the +showy creature beside him, preening herself under her gay sunshade, be +the same overwhelmed, shrunk, tear-drenched Cecilia whom at their last +meeting he had folded in so solemn an embrace? Her cheerful voice +answers for herself:</p> + +<p>"It is so nice to see you again! When did you come? We did not expect +you quite so soon; in your last letter you were rather vague as to +dates; I can't say that you shine as a correspondent. You will come back +to luncheon with us, of course, will not you? <i>déjeûner</i>, as they call +it here; I always thought <i>déjeûner</i> meant breakfast. You will come, +will not you? Sybilla will be so glad to see you—glad, that is to say, +in her dismal way."</p> + + +<p>She ends with a laugh, which he listens to in a silence that is almost +stunned. The sound of her voice, though set to so different a tune from +what he had anticipated, has brought back the past with such astonishing +vividness to him; her very fleer at Sybilla seems so much a part of the +old life that he half turns his head, expecting once more to see +Amelia's deprecating face, to hear her peace-making voice put in a plea, +as it has done so many hundred times, for the peevish <i>malade +imaginaire</i>.</p> + +<p>They have been strolling towards the carriages waiting outside, and have +now reached one, driven by an <i>indigène</i>, a Moor, dusky as Othello, +solemn as Rhadamanthus, and with his serious charms set off by a striped +yellow and white jacket and a red sash.</p> + +<p>"Is not he beautiful?" asks Cecilia, with another laugh, alluding to her +coachman, as she and Burgoyne set off upon their <i>tête-à-tête</i> drive, +Mr. Wilson seeing, apparently, no reason in the fact of his (Burgoyne's) +appearance on the scene for departing from his invariable custom of +walking home from church; "is not he beautiful? When first we came here +we were in mourning; as if"—catching herself up with a stifled +sigh—"there were any need to tell <i>you</i> that; and father wanted to put +him into black, but I would not hear of it: was not I right? He would +have been nothing in black; it is his red and yellow that give him his +<i>cachet</i>."</p> + +<p>Jim feels inclined to burst out laughing. There is something so +ludicrous in the disproportion between his fears and their fulfilment, +in the fact of the whole importance of Amelia's death resolving itself +into a sash or no sash for an Arab coachman, that he has some difficulty +in answering in a key of which the irony shall not be too patent:</p> + +<p>"I think you were perfectly right."</p> + +<p>He does not know whether she perceives the dryness of his tone; he +thinks probably not, as she goes on to ask him a great many questions as +to his journey, etc., talking quickly and rather flightily, scarcely +leaving room between her queries for his monosyllabic replies, and +ending with the ejaculation:</p> + +<p>"How nice it is to see you again!"</p> + +<p>"Thank you." His acknowledgment seems to himself so curt that, after a +moment, he feels constrained to add something to it. That something is +the bald and trivial inquiry: "And you—how have you all been getting +on?"</p> + +<p>Cecilia shrugs her shoulders.</p> + +<p>"We are better off than we were; you know that, of course. Nobody ever +thought that father's brother would have died before him. Wait till you +see our villa—it is one of the show ones here; and of course it is very +pleasant having more money; but one cannot help wishing that it had come +earlier." She sighs as she speaks; not an ostentatious sigh, but a +repressed and strangled one; and, despite the flower-garden in her +bonnet, his heart softens to her. Perhaps his look has rested on that +flower-garden with a more open disapprobation than he knows, for she +says presently: "I think that one may be very bright-coloured outside, +and very black inside. Father and I are sometimes very black inside."</p> + +<p>"Are you?"</p> + +<p>"We do very well when we are alone together, father and I; we like to +talk about her. Dear me! what a place Algiers is for dust! that is why +there are so many blind people here. How it gets into one's eyes!" She +puts her handkerchief up hastily to her face as she speaks; but Jim is +not taken in by the poor little ruse, and he listens to her in a silence +that is almost tender, as she goes on: "Sybilla begins to cry if we even +distantly allude to her; yet I know"—with exasperation—"that she talks +of her by the hour to strangers—to her new doctor, for instance; yes, +she has picked up a new doctor here—a dreadful little adventurer! She +will probably talk of nothing else but her to you."</p> + +<p>"God forbid!"</p> + +<p>They have by this time left the town behind them, and have turned +through a stone-pillared gate down an ilex and ficus-sheltered drive, +along which the <i>indigène</i>, whipping up his horses to an avenue canter, +lands them at the arched door of a snowy Moorish house, whose whitewash +shows dazzling through the interstices of a Bougainvillia fire blazing +all over its front.</p> + +<p>Two minutes later Jim is standing by Sybilla's couch. She is holding +both his hands in hers, and there is something in her face which tells +him that she means that he shall kiss her.</p> + +<p>"When I think—when I think of our last meeting!" she says hysterically.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he says, gasping; "yes, of course. What a beautiful villa you +have here!"</p> + +<p>The observation is a true one, though, for the moment, he has not the +least idea whether it is beautiful or not, as he turns his tormented +eyes round upon the delicious little court, with its charming +combination of slender twisted marble columns, of mellow-tinted tiles, +of low plashing fountain. Originally it has been open, roofless to the +eye and the breath and the rains of heaven; but its Northern purchaser +has covered it in with glass, and set low divans and luxuriantly +cushioned bamboo chairs about its soft-tumbling water.</p> + +<p>Sybilla has let fall her hands, and the expression of the wish for a +sisterly embrace has disappeared out of her face. For a few moments she +remains absolutely silent. He looks round anxiously for Cecilia, but she +has gone to take off her bonnet, and Mr. Wilson has not yet come in. +Under pretence of examining the tiles, he walks towards the lovely +little colonnade of horseshoe arches that form the court, and his uneasy +look rests, scarcely seeing them, upon the vertical lines of lovely old +faïence that intersect the whitewash with softest blues and greens and +yellows.</p> + +<p>When will Cecilia return? Behind him he presently hears the invalid's +voice, steadied and coldened.</p> + +<p>"It is very beautiful; and, of course, it is everything for weary eyes +to have such pleasant objects to rest upon. I believe"—with a little +laugh—"that we sick people really take in most of our nourishment +through the eyes. Was not it wonderfully enterprising of us to come +here? I suppose your first thought when you heard the news was, 'How mad +of Sybilla to attempt it!'"</p> + +<p>It is needless to say how innocent of the mental ejaculation attributed +to him Jim has been, and the consciousness of it makes him inquire with +guilty haste:</p> + +<p>"But you were none the worse? you got over it all right?"</p> + +<p>"I was really wonderful," replies she; "we sick people"—with a little +air of playfulness—"do give you well ones these surprises sometimes; +but I must not take the credit to myself: it is really every bit due to +Dr. Crump, my new doctor, who is a perfect marvel of intuition. I always +tell him that he never need ask; he <i>divines</i> how one is; he says he is +a mere bundle of nerves himself; that is, I suppose, why one can talk to +him upon subjects that are sealed books with one's nearest and dearest."</p> + +<p>Her voice has a suspicious tremble in it which frightens Jim anew.</p> + +<p>He looks again apprehensively for help towards the two tiers of curving +column and rounding arch, which rise in cool grace above each other, and +sees, with relief, the figure of Cecilia leaning over the balustrade +that runs along the upper tier, and looking down upon him. At the same +moment Mr. Wilson enters, and shortly afterwards they all go to +luncheon. It is not a very pleasant repast, although the cool +dining-room, with its beautiful old pierced stucco ceiling and its +hanging brass lamps, contributes its part handsomely towards what should +be their enjoyment. There is no overt family quarrel, but just enough of +covert recrimination and sub-acid sparring to make an outsider feel +thoroughly uncomfortable, and to prove how inharmonious a whole the +soured little family now forms.</p> + +<p>"We quarrel more than we used to do, do not we?" says Cecilia, when Jim, +a little later, takes leave, and she walks, under her red sunshade, up +the ilexed drive with him to the pillared gate; "and to-day we were +better than usual, because you were by. Oh, I wish you were always by!"</p> + +<p>He cannot echo the wish. He had thought that he had already held his +dead Amelia at her true value; but never, until to-day, has he realized +through what a long purgatory of obscure heroisms she had passed to her +reward.</p> + +<p>"I do hope you will not drop us altogether. Of course, now that the link +that bound us to you is broken"—her voice quivers, but he feels neither +the fear nor the rage that a like phenomenon in Sybilla has produced in +him—"there is nothing to hold you any longer; but I do trust you will +not quite throw us over."</p> + +<p>"My dear old girl, why should I? I hope that you and I shall always be +the best of friends, and that before long I shall see you settled in a +home of your own."</p> + +<p>"You mean that I shall marry? Well, to be sure"—with a recurrence to +that business-like tone which had always amused him formerly in her +discussion of her affairs of the heart—"I ought to have a better chance +now than ever, as I shall have a larger fortune; but"—with a lapse into +depression—"this is not a good place for men—I mean Englishmen. There +are troops of delightful-looking Frenchmen, Chasseurs d'Afrique, and +Zouaves; but, then, we do not know any of them—not one. Well, +perhaps"—philosophically—"it is for the best; one always hears that +Frenchmen make very bad husbands."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IIIA" id="CHAPTER_IIIA"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Notre Dame d'Afrique—Lady of Africa—is an ugly lady, homely and black; +and the church that is dedicated to her is ugly too—new and +mock-Moorish; but, like many another ugly lady, being very nobly placed, +she has a great and solemn air. It is Our Lady of Africa who first gives +us our greeting as we steam in from seawards; it is to Our Lady of +Africa that the fisher-people climb to vespers, and to the touching +office that follows, when priests and acolytes pass out of the church to +the little plateau outside, where, sheer against the sky, stands a small +Latin cross, with a plain and, as it seems, coffin-shaped stone beneath +it, on which one reads the inscription:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"À la mémoire de tous ceux, qui ont péri dans la mer, et ont +été ensevelis dans ses flots."</p> + +<p>"<i>All those who have perished in the sea, and been buried in +her waves.</i>"</p></blockquote> + +<p>What a gigantic company to be covered with one little epitaph!</p> + +<p>Notre Dame d'Afrique stands grandly on the cliff-tops, overlooking the +sea, whose cruel deeds she is so agonizedly prayed to avert, whose +cruelty she is sometimes powerful to assuage, witness the frequent +votive tablets with which the church walls are covered:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Merci, oh ma mère."<br /></span> +<span class="i0">"J'ai prie, et j'ai été exaucé."<br /></span> +<span class="i0">"Reconnaissance à Marie."<br /></span> +<span class="i0">"Reconnaissance à Notre Dame d'Afrique."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>She does not look very lovable, this coal-black Marie, who stands in her +stiff brocade, with her ebon hands stretched straight out above the +high-altar; but how tenderly these poor fisherwives must have felt +towards her when she brought them back their Pierre or their Jean, from +the truculent deeps of the ocean!</p> + +<p>Burgoyne has been told, both by his guide-book and by his <i>table-d'hôte</i> +neighbour, that he ought to see Notre Dame d'Afrique; nor is he loth to +pay further obeisance to that high lady who already yesterday beckoned +to him across the blue floor of her waters. He does not tell Cecilia of +his intention, as he knows that she would offer to accompany him; but on +leaving her he takes his way through the gay French town, along its +Arab-named streets, Bab-a-Zoun and Bab-el-Oued, towards the village of +St. Eugène, and breasts the winding road that, with many an elbow and +bend, heading a deep gorge that runs up from the sea to the church-foot, +leads him within her portals. The congregation is sparse—a few +peasants, a blue and red Zouave, and several inevitable English. Now and +again a woman, clad in humble black that tells of prayers in vain, goes +up with her thin candle, and, lighting it, sticks it in its sconce among +the others that burn before the altar. For awhile Burgoyne finds it +pleasant after his climb to sit and watch her, and speculate pityingly +with what hope of still possible good to herself she is setting her +slender taper alight—now that her treasure has all too obviously gone +down beneath the waves; to sit and speculate, and smell the heady +incense, and listen to the murmur of chanted supplication; but +presently, growing weary of the uncomprehended service, he slips outside +to the little plateau, with its view straight out—no importunate +land-object intervening—towards the sea, across which a little steamer +is cutting her way; and on the horizon two tiny shining sails are lying.</p> + +<p>Here, on this bold headland, it seems as if one were one's self in +mid-ocean; and one has to lean far over the low wall in order to realize +that there is some solid earth between us and it; that two full cities +of the dead—a Jewish and a Christian—lie below. From the +land-cemeteries to the vast sea-cemetery—for read by the light of that +plain inscription upon which his eyes are resting, what is even the +azure Mediterranean but a grave? For the matter of that, what is all +life but a grave?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"First our pleasures die, and then<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Our hopes, and then our fears, and when<br /></span> +<span class="i0">These are dead, the debt is due:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dust claims dust, and we die too."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He turns away, and, muttering these words half absently between his +lips, begins to make the circuit of the church; and in doing so, comes +suddenly upon three persons who are apparently similarly employed. The +party consists of a man and two ladies. Being a little ahead of him, +they are, for the first moment or two, not aware of his presence, an +ignorance by which he, rather to his own discomfiture, profits to +overhear a scrap of their conversation certainly not intended for his +ears.</p> + +<p>"I suppose that you were wool-gathering, as usual?" Mr. Le Marchant is +saying, with an accent of cold severity, to his daughter; "but I should +have thought that even <i>you</i> might have remembered to bring a wrap of +some kind for your mother!"</p> + +<p>Jim starts, partly at having happened so unexpectedly upon the people +before him, partly in shocked astonishment at the harshness both of +voice and words.</p> + +<p>In the old days Elizabeth had been the apple of her father's eye, to +oppose whose lightest fancy was a capital offence, for whom no words +could be too sugared, no looks too doting. Yet now she answers, with the +sweetest good-humour, and without the slightest sign of surprise or +irritation, or any indication that the occurrence is not a habitual one:</p> + +<p>"I cannot think how I could have been so stupid; it was inexcusable of +me."</p> + +<p>"I quite agree with you," replies the father, entirely unmollified; "I +am sure you have been told often enough how liable to chills +insufficient clothing makes people in this beastly climate at sundown."</p> + +<p>"But it is not near sundown," breaks in Mrs. Le Marchant, throwing +herself anxiously, and with a dexterity which shows how frequently she +is called upon to do so, between the two others; "look what a great +piece of blue sky the sun has yet to travel."</p> + +<p>"You shall have my jacket," cries Elizabeth impetuously, but still with +the same perfect sweetness; "it will be absurdly short for you, but, at +least, it will keep you warm." So saying, she, with the speed of +lightning, whips off the garment alluded to, and proceeds to guide her +mother's arms into its inconveniently tight sleeves, laughing the while +with her odd childish light-heartedness, and crying, "You dear thing, +you do look too ridiculous!"</p> + +<p>The mother laughs too, and aids her daughter's efforts; nor does it seem +to occur to any of the three that the fatal Southern chill may possibly +strike the delicate little frame of Elizabeth, now exposed, so lightly +clad in her tweed gown, to its insidious influence.</p> + +<p>"I wish you had a looking-glass to see yourself in!" cries she, rippling +into fresh mirth; "does not she look funny, father!" appealing to him +with as little resentment for his past surliness as would be shown by a +good dog (I cannot put it more strongly), and yet, as it seems to Jim, +with a certain nervous deprecation.</p> + +<p>The next moment one of them—he does not know which—has caught sight of +himself, and the moment after he is shaking hands with all three. It is +clear that the fact of his presence in Algiers has been notified to Mr. +Le Marchant, for there is no surprise in his coldly civil greeting. He +makes it as short as possible, and almost at once turns to continue his +circuit of the church, his wife at his side, and his daughter meekly +following. Doubtless they do not wish for his (Jim's) company; but yet, +as he was originally, and without any reference to them, going in their +direction, it would seem natural that he should walk along with them.</p> + +<p>He is hesitating as to whether or no to adopt this course, when he is +decided by a very slight movement of Elizabeth's head. She does not +actually look over her shoulder at him, and yet it seems to him as if, +were her gesture completed, it would amount to that; but it is arrested +by some impulse before it is more than sketched. Such as it is, it +suffices to take him to her side; and it seems to him that there is a +sort of satisfaction mingled with the undoubted apprehension in her +face, as she realizes that it is so. Her eyes, as she turns them upon +him, have a hungry question in them which her lips seem afraid to put. +Apparently she cannot get nearer to it than this—very tremblingly and +hurriedly uttered, with a timid glance at her father's back, as if she +were delivering herself of some compromising secret instead of the mere +platitude which she so indistinctly vents:</p> + +<p>"A—a—great many things have happened since—since we last met!"</p> + +<p>Her eye travels for a moment to his hat, from which, unlike Cecilia's +rainbow raiment, the crape band has not yet been removed; and he +understands that she is comprehending his troubles as well as her own in +the phrase.</p> + +<p>"A great many!" he answers baldly.</p> + +<p>He has not the cruelty to wish to keep her on tenterhooks, and he knows +perfectly what is the question that is written in the wistful blue of +her look, and whom it concerns; but it would be impertinence in him to +take for granted that knowledge, and answer that curiosity which, +however intense and apparent, has yet not become the current coin of +speech. Probably she sees that he is unable or unwilling to help her, +for she makes another tremendous effort.</p> + +<p>"I hope that—that—all your friends are well."</p> + +<p>"All my friends!" repeats he, half sadly; "they are not such a numerous +band; I have not many friends left still alive."</p> + +<p>His thoughts have reverted to his own loss, for, at the moment, Amelia +is very present to him; but the words are no sooner out of his mouth +than he sees how false is the impression produced by his reply—sees it +written in the sudden dead-whiteness of her cheek and the terror in her +eye.</p> + +<p>"Do you mean"—she stammers—"that anybody—any of your friends—is—is +lately dead?"</p> + +<p>"Oh no! no!" he cries reassuringly; "you are making a mistake; nobody is +dead—nobody, that is"—with a sigh—"that you do not already know of. +All our friends—all our common friends—are, as far as I know——"</p> + +<p>"Elizabeth!" breaks in Mr. Le Marchant's voice, in severe appellation; +he has only just become aware that his daughter is not unaccompanied, +and the discovery apparently does not please him.</p> + +<p>Without a second's delay, despite her twenty-seven years, she has sprung +forwards to obey the summons; and Jim has the sense to make no further +effort to rejoin her. By the time that their circuit is finished, and +they have again reached the front of the church, vespers are ended, and +there is a movement outwards among the worshippers. They stream—not +very numerous—out on the little terrace. The priests follow, tonsured, +but—which looks strange—with beards and whiskers. The acolytes, in +their red chasubles, carry a black and white pall, and lay it over the +memorial stone below the cross. On either hand stand a band of decently +clad youths—sons of drowned seamen—playing on brass instruments. It is +a poor little music, doubtfully in tune; but surely no rolling organ, no +papal choir, could touch the heart so much as this simple ceremonial. +The little Latin cross standing sheer out against the sea; the black +pall thrown over the stone that commemorates the sea's innumerable dead; +the red-clad acolytes, standing with eyes cast down, holding aloft their +high tapers, whose flickering flame the sea-wind soon puffs out; and the +sons of the drowned sailors, making their homely music to the +accompaniment of the salt breeze. The little service is brief and those +who have taken part in it are soon dispersing. As they do so, Jim once +more finds himself for a moment close to Elizabeth.</p> + +<p>The sun has nearly touched the sea-line by this time, and he sees, or +thinks he sees, her shiver.</p> + +<p>"You are cold," he says solicitously; "you will get a chill."</p> + +<p>She looks back at him, half surprised, half grateful, at the anxiety of +his tone.</p> + +<p>"Not I!" she answers, with a gentle air of indifference and +recklessness; "naught never comes to harm!"</p> + +<p>"But you shivered! I saw you shiver."</p> + +<p>"Did I? It was only"—smiling—"that a goose walked over my grave. Does +a goose never walk over your grave?"</p> + +<p>And once more she is gone.</p> + +<p>He does not see her again that day. Of the three places laid for dinner +at the round table in the <i>salle à manger</i>, only two are occupied; hers +is, and remains, empty. She is not with her parents, and, what is more, +she does not appear to be missed by them. It fills Jim with something of +the same shocked surprise as he had felt on hearing the cold and surly +tone in which she had been addressed by her father, to see how much +more, and more genially, that father talks; how much less morose his +back looks than had been the case on the previous evening.</p> + +<p>The next morning rises superb in steady splendour, and Jim, on issuing +out on the little red-tiled terrace, finds the whole strength of the +hotel gathered upon it. Even the worst invalids, who have not shown +their noses outside their rooms for a fortnight, are sunning themselves, +wrapped in apparently unnecessary furs. The Arabs and Turks have spread +their gay rugs and carpets, and displayed their bits of stuff, their +brasswork, and their embroidery. They make a charming garden of colour +under the blue. One is lying beside his wares, in an azure jacket and a +rose-red sash, twanging a "gunébri," or little Arab mandolin. Apart from +the rest of the company, at the extreme end of the terrace, in a place +which is evidently hers by prescriptive right, close to the balustrade, +upon whose blue and white tiled top her books are lying, Elizabeth is +sitting—and sitting alone, neither truculent father not frightened +mother barring approach to her. He makes his way at once to her.</p> + +<p>"You were not at dinner last night?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"I hope that did not mean that you were ill?"</p> + +<p>Her eyes are not lifted to his—resting rather on the balustrade, +through whose pierced brickwork little boughs of Bougainvillia are +pushing.</p> + +<p>"No, I was not ill," she replies slowly; "but I had made such a figure +of myself by crying that mammy thought I had better stay away. When I +looked in the glass," she adds humorously, "I thought so myself."</p> + +<p>"There was not much sign of tears about you when we parted at Notre Dame +d'Afrique," he says brusquely.</p> + +<p>"No, but"—with a sudden lifting of her pretty lashes—"you know there +is never any medium in me; I am always either laughing or crying; and, +of course, seeing you again brought—brought things back to me."</p> + +<p>She looks wistfully at him as she makes this leading remark.</p> + +<p>He can no longer have any doubt as to her wish to embark upon the +subject which, even in the three minutes of their meeting on the +previous day, she had sought to approach. If he is kind, he will enter +into her wish, he will make her path easier for her; but for the moment +he does not feel kind—angry, rather, and rebellious.</p> + +<p>Is his intercourse with her to be a mere repetition of that which, +although now seven months ago, makes him still writhe, in the +recollection of his latter intercourse with Byng? Is he again to be +spitted upon the skewer of reminiscences of the Vallombrosan wood? +<i>Never!</i></p> + +<p>He looks obstinately away from her—towards where first an ivied bank +rises, with red gladioli flowering upon it; then a little space of bare +ground, then a row of orange-trees; then some young stone-pines, holding +their heads against the blue to show what an exquisite contrast they +make to it; then, topping, or seeming to top the hill, a white villa, +with little blue jewels of sky, seen through the interstices of the +balustrade on its roof, its whitewash making the solid wall of sapphire +behind it look even more desperately and unnameably blue than elsewhere. +What a blue! sapphire! turquoise! lapis! To what poor shifts are we +driven to express it! How could we describe its glory to a blind person? +If to such a one the colour of scarlet is represented by the sound of a +trumpet, surely this divine tint above us can be best conveyed by the +whole heavenly hierarchy of burning seraphs and winged angels, harping +and quiring together.</p> + +<p>"I always think," says Elizabeth, following the direction of his +eyes—"perhaps it may be fancy—that this particular corner of the sky +is much bluer than any other."</p> + +<p>There is a shade of disappointment in her tone at his failure to take up +her challenge, but she is far too gentle to make any further effort in a +direction which, for some reason, is disagreeable to him; and since he +will not follow her inclination, she is pliantly willing to follow his.</p> + +<p>The Arabs have come up in might to-day, and, no longer fearing rain, +have carpeted almost the whole terrace with their wares. They hang over +the low wall, and cover the red tiles; blue and purple, and Moslem +green, and Venetian red; dazzling white <i>haiks</i>, blinding in the +blinding sunshine; carpets, embroidered jackets, flashing back gold in +the gold light. A pert English miss is standing over them, and saying +disparagingly about each:</p> + +<p>"You can get this 7-1/2d. cheaper at Whiteley's. I saw a much better one +than this for half the price at Marshall's," etc., etc.</p> + +<p>One longs to ask the "miss" whether she saw the sunlight, and the cobalt +sea, and the glorified whitewash, with its amethyst shadows, for 7-1/2d. +at Whiteley's too, and, if so, why she did not stay there?</p> + +<p>Burgoyne's friend in the red shirt is beating down a one-eyed Kabyle, +and having a happy haggle with him over a Mozambique coat.</p> + +<p>"She does not get on with her own family at home, and she has quarrelled +with all her travelling companions!" says Elizabeth, in a delighted +explanatory whisper. Wistfulness and disappointment have alike vanished +out of her small face, which is one ripple of mischief. "The fat widow +in the weepers, who is preening herself like a great pouter pigeon, is +trying to marry the wizened old gentleman in the bamboo chair. Sometimes +we think she will succeed; sometimes we think she will not: it is <i>so</i> +interesting!"</p> + +<p>Jim looks down at her with an astonishment bordering on indignation.</p> + +<p>Is this the woman who cried herself sick last night over memories of the +so recent past? In this mobile nature, is there nothing that one can lay +hold of?</p> + +<p>"Mammy and I get an infinity of amusement out of them," continues she, +still playfully, but faltering a little under the severity of his look; +"oh, we know a great deal about them all; and those that we do not know +about we make stories for!"</p> + +<p>"Indeed!"</p> + +<p>His tone is so curt that the stream of her gaiety dries up under it, and +she relapses into silence, looking towards the flashing sea, and the +ficus-tree, that is casting its now grateful shade.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IVA" id="CHAPTER_IVA"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>"You said just now that seeing me brought things back to you."</p> + +<p>It is partly remorse at having snubbed her, and partly perversity, which +dictates this sentence on Jim's part. The perversity is, perhaps, the +predominating element in his motive—a perversity which, having chilled +her away from the subject when she was eagerly seeking an opening to it, +now forces her to return to it. She starts a little.</p> + +<p>"Yes—yes," she answers; "but 'brought things back' is not quite the +right phrase; they"—her voice growing low and tremulous—"had not very +far to come."</p> + +<p>The quiver in her voice annoys him almost as much as Byng's tears used +to do.</p> + +<p>"If you would like to ask me any questions," he says stiffly, "I am +ready to answer them."</p> + +<p>"Are you?" she cries hungrily; "oh, that is kind of you! but, then, you +always <i>were</i> kind; but not here"—looking apprehensively round—"I +could not trust myself to talk about—about him here; I—I should break +down, and nothing"—with a smile that, though watery, is still +humorous—"would induce me to make a fool of myself before the widow +Wadman." Then, seeing him look at a loss: "Come indoors!" she says +impulsively, standing up, and half stretching out her hand as if to draw +him after her. "Come into our salon—no, you need not be afraid; we +shall have it all to ourselves; father and mother have gone out for +their usual constitutional on the Boulevard Mustapha."</p> + +<p>He follows her silently, and neither speaks till they find themselves +<i>tête-à-tête</i> in the private apartment of the Le Marchants.</p> + +<p>It is on the <i>rez-de-chaussée</i>, a suite of three little whitewashed +rooms, transmogrified from their original hotel nakedness by flowers and +brocade bits. Three large green jars on the chimney-piece, full of +generous rose-branches, and boughs of salvia and iris, and stalwart +yellow jessamine, make the air sweetly and lightly perfumed. On the +table is a litter of Tauchnitz novels, disastrously old English papers, +the little scurrilous Algerian sheet, and, lastly, Elizabeth's +workbasket—the big workbasket which Jim had last seen standing on the +floor in the <i>entresol</i>, at the Piazza d'Azeglio, with its contents +strewn all over his friend's prostrate body. At the sight a bitter smile +breaks over his face.</p> + +<p>"An old acquaintance!" he says, making a mock salutation to it; "it is +in better order than when last I had the pleasure of seeing it."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean in Florence?" she asks, very slowly.</p> + +<p>"Yes"—still with that acrid smile—"after you were gone, I had the +honour of helping to pack it to send after you. I am afraid I was rather +clumsy over it; but, at any rate, I managed better than he. By-the-bye, +did you find any rust on your scissors and thimble when next you had +occasion to use them? Poor boy! he cried enough over them to take all +the polish off!"</p> + +<p>She has sunk down upon the sofa, over which a great woollen <i>haik</i>, dyed +with harmonious dull tints, is thrown.</p> + +<p>"Do not sneer at me!" she says faintly. "You would not if you knew how +you hurt me. Is he—is he—how is he?"</p> + +<p>"He is not ill."</p> + +<p>The answer ought to be reassuring; but there is something in the manner +in which it is uttered that tells her that it neither is, nor is meant +to be so. It is so ominous that her lips, after a feeble effort or two, +give up the endeavour to frame any query. All her power of interrogation +has passed into those eyes, out of which her companion has been so +brilliantly successful in chasing their transient morning mirth.</p> + +<p>"When a man," says Jim gravely, "at the outset of his life, gets such a +facer as he did, if he has not a very strong character, it is apt to +drive him off the rails, to give him a shove downwards."</p> + +<p>"I see; and you think I have given him a shove downwards?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>There is a pause. Jim's eyes are resolutely turned away from the face of +Elizabeth, upon whose small white area twitches of pain are making cruel +disfigurement. He does not want to have his heart softened towards her, +so he stares persistently over her head at a Mussulman praying-carpet, +which, old and still rich-toned, despite the wearing of pious knees, +hangs on the wall. At length she speaks, in a key as low as—were not +the room so entirely still—would be inaudible.</p> + +<p>"If I had married him, I should have given him a much worse shove down."</p> + +<p>Jim holds his breath. Is he about to hear from her own lips that secret +which he has magnanimously resisted all opportunities of hearing from +other sources? But the words that, after a pause, follow this almost +whispered statement are not a confession. They are only an appeal.</p> + +<p>"You would be doing the kindest thing that you ever did in your life, if +you could bring yourself to say that you thought I did it for the best."</p> + +<p>He feels that if he submits his eyes to hers, his will must go with +them; he will have no power left of dissent from any request she may +choose to make; so he still stares over her head at a screen which hides +the doorless entrance to the third room of the little suite. One leaf, +folded back, gives a peep through the little chamber, through its +deep-arched window to where a date-palm stands up straight against the +sea.</p> + +<p>"I could not possibly say that unless I knew the circumstances of the +case," he answers judicially.</p> + +<p>He hears a low sigh, not of impatience, but of melancholy acquiescence.</p> + + +<p>"Then you must go on thinking ill of me."</p> + +<p>There is such a depth of dejection, as well as such an unalterable +sweetness, in her voice, that the words of little Prince Arthur, +addressed to Hubert, flash upon his mind:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"If Heaven be pleased that you should use me ill,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Why, then you must!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>After all, what power in earth or sky has appointed him her executioner?</p> + +<p>"I do not wish to think ill of you," he answers sadly. "Good heavens! do +I need to tell you that? I have tried all along to keep myself from +judging you; but I should not be human—you must know that I should not +be human—if I did not ask myself why you did it."</p> + +<p>"Why I left Florence?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>She sits stock-still for a moment, the very little colour that there +ever was in it retreating out of her face.</p> + +<p>"If I told you that, I should be telling you everything."</p> + +<p>He is looking at her now; after all, he cannot keep his gaze pinned to +the screen for ever, and, as he looks, he sees an emotion of so +transcendently painful a nature set her little sad features working, +that the one impulse that dominates him is to ease her suffering.</p> + +<p>Poor little docile creature! She is going to tell him her secret, since +he exacts it, though it is only with a rending asunder of soul and body +that it can be revealed. He puts out his hand hurriedly, with a gesture +as of prohibition.</p> + +<p>"Then do not tell me."</p> + +<p>She sinks back upon her <i>haik</i> with a movement of relief, and puts up +her fine handkerchief to her pale lips. There is a perfect silence +between them for awhile. At his elbow is a great un-English, unwintry +nosegay of asphodel and iris. He passes his fingers absently over the +freakish spikes.</p> + +<p>"How did he take it? how did he take it at first?"</p> + +<p>Her voice, though now tolerably distinct, is stamped with that character +of awe which fills us all at approaching a great calamity.</p> + +<p>"He would not believe it at first; and then he cried a great deal—oh, +an immense deal!"—with an accent of astonishment, even at the +recollection of his friend's tear-power—"and then—oh, then, he thought +of putting an end to himself!"</p> + +<p>Jim had meant to have made this relation in a tone of dispassionate +narrative, but against his will and intention, as his memory recalls +what seem to him the unworthy antics played by Byng's grief, his voice +takes a sarcastic inflection. The horror written on his auditor's face +as he utters the latest clause of his sentence recalls him to himself.</p> + +<p>"Do not be afraid!" he says, in a tone which has no longer anything akin +to a sneer in it, though it is not devoid of bitterness; "the impulse +was a short-lived one; he is not thinking of putting an end to himself +now, I can assure you of that; he is only thinking of how he can best +amuse himself. Whether he is much more successful in that than he was in +the former, I am not so sure."</p> + +<p>Her eyes have dropped to her own fragile, ringless hands as they lie on +her lap.</p> + +<p>"Poor boy! poor boy!" she says over softly twice, moving her head up and +down with a little compassionate movement.</p> + +<p>At the pity expressed by her gesture, an unjust and unjustifiable hard +anger takes harsh possession of him.</p> + +<p>"It was a pity you let it go so far," he says austerely; "you must allow +me to say that much; but I suppose, in point of fact, the ball once set +rolling, it was past your power to stop it."</p> + +<p>She listens to his philippic, with her head meekly bent.</p> + +<p>"I did not try," she answers, in a half·whisper; then, after a pause, +raising her down-dropped eyes, lit with a blue fire of excitement, +almost inspiration, to his, "I said to myself, 'If I have any luck, I +shall die before the smash comes;' and I just lived on from day to day. +I had not the heart to stop it; I knew it would stop of itself before +long; I had never—hardly ever"—correcting herself, as it seems, with a +modifying afterthought—"in my life before known what happiness meant; +and oh! <i>oh!</i> OH!"—with a groan of deepening intensity at each repeated +interjection—"what a big word it is!"</p> + +<p><i>Never—hardly ever—known what happiness meant before!</i> Why, surely she +was happy at the Moat! and before his mind's eye there rises an image of +her in her riotous rosy gaiety; but even as it does, there flashes upon +him a comprehension of her speech.</p> + +<p>It is not the careless merriment of childhood to which she is alluding; +it is to <i>the</i> happiness, <i>par excellence</i>, of life. If this is the +case, why did she correct herself and modify her negative with a +"hardly"? A jealous feeling of someone else—someone beside Byng; a +jealousy none the less keen for being vague—for not knowing on what +object it can lay hold—sharpens his tone as he repeats aloud, and with +an accent of interrogation, her qualifying adverb:</p> + +<p>"<i>Hardly</i> ever, that implies——"</p> + +<p>But she breaks in hurriedly, as if dreading—and at the same time +doubting her own power of baffling—cross-examination upon that subject +on whose borders they are continually hovering.</p> + +<p>"Talking of happiness makes one think of unhappiness, does not it? We +both know something about that, do not we?"</p> + +<p>She pauses, and he sees that she is alluding to his own sorrow, and that +her eye is sounding his to see whether he would wish her to approach it +more nearly. His eye, in answer, must give but a dubious beam, since he +himself is quite unsure of what his wishes on the subject are; and she +goes on with the haste and yet unsteadiness of one who is treading on +swampy ground, that gives beneath his feet.</p> + +<p>"We saw it in the papers; I could not believe it at first. It was the +last thing I ever expected to happen. I thought of writing to you, but I +did not."</p> + +<p>She looks at him rather wistfully, and although but two minutes ago she +had been confessing to him her passion for another man, he sees that she +is anxious he should tell her that her sympathy would have been precious +to him. He feels the same sensation as before of mixed anger and +fascination at the ductility of her nature. What business has she to +care whether he would have liked to hear from her or not?</p> + +<p>"It seemed such a pity that it was she, and not I!"</p> + +<p>Again her eye interrogates his, as if asking for acquiescence in this +suggestion, but he cannot give it. With a shock of surprise—nay, +horror—at himself, he finds that he is unable to echo the wish that +Elizabeth had died and Amelia lived.</p> + +<p>"I said so to mammy at the time. Ah, here is mammy!"</p> + +<p>And, indeed, as she speaks the door opens, and Mrs. Le Marchant enters +in her walking-dress. At the sight of Jim, a look, which certainly does +not betoken pleasure, though good breeding prevents its representing the +opposite emotion, crosses her handsome, worn face.</p> + +<p>"I brought Mr. Burgoyne in here," says Elizabeth, in what seems rather +precipitate explanation, "because we could not talk comfortably out on +the terrace; they listen to everything we say: they have such long +ears—the Widow Wadman and Miss Strutt!"</p> + +<p>"I do not know what State secrets you and Mr. Burgoyne can have to +discuss," replies the mother, with a smile that, though courteous, but +ill disguises the underlying anxiety. "Yes, dear child, I shall be very +much obliged if you will take my bonnet upstairs for me"—this in answer +to little tender overtures from Elizabeth, overtures that remind Jim of +12 <i>bis</i>, Piazza d' Azeglio. "I do not know whether you have yet found +it so" (to Jim); "but this <i>is</i> a slack place."</p> + +<p>No sooner has the door closed upon her daughter than her tone changes.</p> + +<p>"What have you been talking about to her," she inquires rapidly; "not, I +hope, about <i>him</i>?"</p> + +<p>"I could not help it; she asked me."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Le Marchant strikes her hands together, and gives utterance to that +short and shapeless monosyllable which has a prescriptive right to +express vexation.</p> + +<p>"Th! th!" A moment later, "I am sure you will understand that I do not +mean to imply any ill-will to you; but it <i>is</i> unlucky that we should +have happened to meet you here; it has brought it all back to her, and +she was just beginning to pluck up her spirits a little."</p> + +<p>"Did she—did she take it so much to heart?" inquires Jim, in a tone of +almost as awed concern as Elizabeth had employed but a quarter of an +hour before in putting nearly the same question with regard to Byng.</p> + +<p>"<i>Did she take it to heart!</i>" repeats Mrs. Le Marchant, with the +irritation of one to whom a perfectly senseless and superfluous inquiry +is put; "why, of course she did! I thought at one time that she would +have gone out of her mind!"</p> + +<p>No one can feel less merry than Jim; and yet his lips at this juncture +cannot resist the impulse to frame themselves into a gloomy smile.</p> + +<p>"And I thought that <i>he</i> would have gone out of <i>his</i> mind," he rejoins.</p> + +<p>As he speaks, it flashes upon his memory that one of the hypotheses that +have formerly occurred to him to account for the mystery that hangs over +Elizabeth's past was that she had been mad; and though he had long +abandoned the idea, her losing her wits now recurs to him with a shock +as a possibility. Might not that changeful, mobile, emotional mind lose +its balance under the blow either of a sudden calamity or of a long +wearing sorrow? It has escaped—evidently but barely escaped the first. +Will it escape the second too?</p> + +<p>His heart goes out in a great yearning to her at the thought of what a +touching little lunatic she would make; and, with an oblivion of his own +personal feelings, which is generous, if not very lasting, he says +compassionately:</p> + +<p>"It seems a pity—a great pity!"</p> + +<p>"A pity!" repeats the mother, with a sort of wrath, down which he +detects a broad stripe of agony running; "I should think it <i>was</i> a +pity! Pity is a weak word! The whole thing is piteous! her whole +history! If you only knew——"</p> + +<p>She breaks off.</p> + +<p>He is silent, waiting to see whether that impulse towards confidence in +him will go any further; but it does not. She has evidently gone beyond +her intention, and is passionately vexed with herself for having done +so.</p> + +<p>"They were so well suited to each other," continues Jim slowly, but +still generously. Possibly his generosity becomes more easy as he sees +how hopeless is the plea upon which he employs it. "Is it—I do not wish +to intrude upon your confidence, but in the interests of my friend you +will allow me to say that much—is it quite out of the question?"</p> + +<p>"Quite! quite!" replies the mother, in painful excitement; "what, poor +soul, is not out of the question for her that has any good or happiness +in it? and that—<i>that</i> more than anything! If you have any mercy in +you, do not put it into her head that it is not!"</p> + +<p>"If it is not in her head already, I could not put it there," replies +Jim gravely; "but I will not—I promise you I will not."</p> + +<p>As he speaks, a slight smile touches the corners of his serious mouth as +he reflects how entirely easy it is to comply with a request <i>not</i> to +urge Byng's suit upon its object, and how cheaply a character for +magnanimity may sometimes be bought.</p> + +<p>"That is very kind of you!" replies the poor woman gratefully; "and I am +sure when you say a thing I can depend upon you for it; and though, of +course, it was unlucky our happening to meet you, yet you need not see +much of her. Although it is not in the least 'out of sight, out of mind' +with her"—sighing—"yet she <i>is</i> very much influenced by the objects +around her; and when you are gone—I dare say you do not mean to make a +long stay; this is not a place where there is much for a man to do—for +a man like you——"</p> + +<p>She breaks off, and her imploring eye invites him to reassure her by +naming a speedy day for his own departure. But magnanimity may have +calls made upon it that exceed its power to answer, and Jim's silence +sufficiently proves that he is not going to allow himself to be seduced +into a promise to go.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VA" id="CHAPTER_VA"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>The next morning proves the truth of Miss Strutt's words that "we are +not so green here in Algiers for nothing." The weather changes some time +after dark has fallen. A mighty wind arises. Jim's slumbers are broken +by the fact that somebody's outside shutters bang, loose and noisy all +night. The great sign at the top of the hotel swings and creaks and +groans. In the morning, as far as can be seen through blurred panes, the +trees—eucalyptus, ilex, stone-pine—are all cowering and stooping +before the wind's lash. The fan palm before Mrs. Le Marchant's window, +with its fans all pinched and bent, is staggering before the gale. One +cannot conceive what that unlucky tropical product can be doing in this +galley, and it requires a strong effort of reason and will to resist the +conviction that the oranges and lemons are tied upon the shivering trees +instead of growing naturally there.</p> + +<p>"And this is 'Afric's burning strand'!" says Jim to himself, over his +breakfast in the <i>salle à manger</i>, through whose shut windows the mad +rain forces itself; and the blast, coming to his wet sister's aid, +bursts them open now and again.</p> + +<p>The day seems enormously long. He gets through the morning tolerably +well with letter-writing, and after the twelve o'clock <i>déjeûner</i> he +faces the gale in a determined walk down into the town. Seldom in the +course of his wide wanderings has he felt the furious scourge of more +tremendous rain. The side-path is whitened with big hailstones; red +torrents tear with ferocious speed and violence down the steep incline. +The great acanthus-leaves, and all the plentiful undergrowth, are +dripping and rejoicing.</p> + +<p>Through the blinding white deluge he gets forlorn peeps of the villas +that had shone yesterday with the white splendour one associates with +the city of the saints of God; and instead of, as yesterday, "laced with +heaven's own tinct," the Mediterranean is whitening the bay's rounded +curve with its angry breakers, and the snow is sprinkling the Atlas +crests. A few Arabs are sitting on the ground under the Pont d'Isly, +packed up into whitish woollen parcels, knees to nose, and arms and +hands all withdrawn into the protection of the sheltering burnous. But +no one else, who can help it, is abroad.</p> + +<p>It seems to Jim as if his disagreeable tussle with the elements had +lasted a long time, and yet, on his return to the hotel, he finds that +it is only half-past two. He thinks at first that the clocks must have +stopped, but finds, on examination, that they are all ticking, and all +unanimous. His drenched condition is at least a resource, necessitating +an entire and fundamental change of raiment; but even this expedient, +though dragged out to its utmost possible limit, does not carry him +further than three. How is he to dispose of the seven or eight hours +that must elapse before he can seek refuge in bed? He has exhausted his +correspondence, which is never a large one, and he has seldom in his +life been so short of books.</p> + +<p>He makes his way through the hall, which is crammed with young people +playing battledore, and noisily counting; with elder persons, dreadfully +short of a job, looking on and applauding; to the <i>salon</i>, in hopes of +there finding a Tauchnitz novel, or even a superannuated <i>Pall Mall</i> or +<i>World</i>. But half a dozen other weather-bound sufferers have been before +him, and the tables are swept clean of all literature save a +three-months-old <i>Court Journal</i>.</p> + + +<p>Miss Strutt and the pert votary of Whiteley are sitting shawled, and +with their heads close together. By their titters, and the fragments he +catches of their talk, they seem to be concocting a practical joke of +some kind. The widow Wadman, shawled too, and her valetudinarian in a +comforter, are stopping over a wood-fire, which refuses to burn, the +souches being wringing wet. Jim rather injudiciously approaches them, +and offers his assistance in piling the damp logs; but he is so +evidently <i>de trop</i>, that he retires discomfited. On the other hand, the +invitation in Miss Strutt's and her coadjutor's eye is so apparent that +he beats a hasty retreat out of the room, in dread lest he should be +drawn into their mysterious pleasantry.</p> + +<p>He never is quite clear afterwards how he gets over the hours that +intervene before dinner—whether sleep comes to his aid, or whether he +is after all reduced to perusing in the <i>Court Journal</i> the narrative of +which direction the Queen and Princess Henry of Battenburg took their +walk in, in October. But at length the welcome bell rings, drowning +even, for two minutes, the banging of the wind; and the whole hotel, +unwontedly punctual, rushes in answer to its summons. People who have +hitherto scarcely exchanged words, have eyed each other with hardly +veiled distrust, now show a feverish desire to enter into conversation, +to detain one another after dinner on the steps of the <i>salle à manger</i>.</p> + +<p>As the evening advances, Jim sees an intention among the younger portion +of the company to launch out into noisy, romping games, to institute a +Dumb Crambo. He feels it is far from impossible that he himself may fall +so low as to be drawn into it. Miss Strutt's eye is on him, but before +he succumbs he will make one effort on his own behalf. He embraces a +desperate resolution. He has seen the Le Marchants eating their dinner +near, and yet hopelessly far from him. Elizabeth had given him one +furtive smile, and her mother a hurried bow; this is, to tell the truth, +all the encouragement he has to go upon—all that he can find to keep +his courage up as he knocks at their door, telling himself that his +excuse—that of asking them to lend him a book—is a quite sufficient +and legitimate one. He knocks, and Elizabeth's voice at once answers:</p> + +<p>"Herein!"</p> + +<p>It is clear that she takes him for the German waiter, Fritz. She remains +in this belief even after he has opened the door, since she does not at +first look up. She is alone—not in the pretty flowered room in which +she had yesterday received him, but in the first and less adorned of the +little series—one that he had, on his former visit, cursorily supposed +to be chiefly used as an ante-room—sitting alone at a table, and before +her are spread writing-materials, over which she is stooping. An odious +and ridiculous thought darts, with a prick, across his mind.</p> + +<p>Is she sitting here, all alone, in order to write to Byng?</p> + +<p>"I came——" he begins; and at the unexpected voice she looks up with a +start:</p> + +<p>"Oh, it is you!" she says, in a low key, glancing rather apprehensively +at the closed door, which separates them from the inner room, in a +manner which tells him that her parents are within.</p> + +<p>"I came"—his voice almost unconsciously sinking to the level hers has +indicated to him—"to ask you to lend me a book."</p> + +<p>"A book!" she repeats doubtfully, with another and still more nervous +glance at the shut door; "I am afraid that they are all in there."</p> + +<p>"Oh, it is of no consequence!" rejoins Burgoyne hastily, unwittingly +quoting the words of the immortal Mr. Toots; "it does not matter in the +least."</p> + +<p>As he speaks, he begins to retreat towards the door, but so slowly as to +give her plenty of time to recall him had she so wished. But she does +not. She only stands looking uncertain and distressed. He cannot take +such a melancholy impression of her little face away for the whole night +with him—it would give him the blues too seriously after this dismal +day—so he takes a step or two forward again.</p> + +<p>"Are not you rather lonely?" he asks, with an expressive look round.</p> + +<p>She gives a small, uncomplaining smile.</p> + +<p>"Oh no; I do very well. I am generally alone at this time of day; they +like to have their evenings to themselves—at least, father likes to +have mammy to himself; I am sure it is quite natural."</p> + +<p>There is not the slightest trace of any sense of being aggrieved in +either words or tone.</p> + +<p>Again that picture of the adored Elizabeth of former days, of whose +prattle her father was never weary, whose jokes were always considered +so unequalled, and whose pre-eminence in favour was so allowed that her +intercession and influence were always employed by the others as certain +in their efficacy, rises before Jim's eyes.</p> + +<p>"They are like lovers still," continues Elizabeth softly; "it is very +pretty when people are lovers still after nearly thirty years."</p> + +<p>"And you—you write letters?"</p> + +<p>"No, I do not; I have not anyone to write to."</p> + +<p>A pang of shame at his unworthy suspicion, coupled with a sense of +astonishment at her simple confession of friendlessness, prevent his +speaking; and it is she who goes on:</p> + +<p>"I was writing an Italian exercise; I began to learn Italian in +Florence"—with the inevitable low sigh that always accompanies her +mention of that name—"and to-day, for something to do, I took it up +again. It has been a long day, has not it? Oh, <i>what</i> a long day!"</p> + +<p>"<i>Long!</i>" repeats Jim emphatically; "it might choose to call itself a +<i>day</i>; but many a century has been shorter."</p> + +<p>"Someone was playing battledore and shuttlecock in the hall. I wonder to +what number they kept it up? how many years it is since I have played +battledore and shuttlecock!"</p> + +<p>There is a suppressed envy in her tone, which tells how far from +disagreeable the innocent noisy pastime to which she alludes would be to +her even now. She has sat down again on the straight-backed chair from +whose elevation she had commanded her Italian studies; a large grayish +cloak, lined and heavily collared, and bordered with fur, hangs, +unfastened at the throat, about her. Out of the dark beaver her delicate +neck and head rise, like a pale primrose from out of piled dead +oak-leaves in a yet wintry wood. Through the door, which he has left +open behind him, come bursts of maniac mirth from the votaries of Dumb +Crambo.</p> + +<p>"What a noise they are making!"</p> + +<p>"I should think they were!"</p> + +<p>"I wonder what they are doing?"</p> + +<p>"I can inform you on that point; they are playing Dumb Crambo."</p> + +<p>She repeats the words after him with a lingering intonation, in which +there again is, or, at least, he thinks that he detects it, a tinge of +envy.</p> + +<p>"Dumb Crambo!"</p> + +<p>"Would you like to join them?"</p> + +<p>"No"—slowly—"not quite that; but—it sounds ridiculous—but I should +like to play Dumb Crambo again. We used"—in an affectionate, lingering +tone—"to play it when we were children."</p> + +<p>It is the first time that she has ever voluntarily alluded to the Moat, +and he calls to mind her earnest prohibition addressed to him at +Florence against any mention of it.</p> + +<p>"I know you did; once or twice I played with you."</p> + +<p>"<i>You?</i>"</p> + +<p>She starts. It is evident that the unimportant fact of his having taken +part in their games has quite escaped her; but, a moment later, her soft +and courteous nature evidently making her fear that he will look upon +her obliviousness as unkind—</p> + +<p>"Oh yes, to be sure!" Then again lapsing into reminiscence, "What odd +words we used to choose sometimes—words that nobody could guess! I +wonder what words they have chosen?"</p> + +<p>He thinks of saying jocosely, "Shall I go and ask them?" but refrains, +because he fears it would put it into her head to send him away.</p> + +<p>A sort of piercing squeal makes itself heard from the <i>salon</i>.</p> + +<p>"Do you think that that can be meant for a <i>pig</i>?" asks Elizabeth, her +line ears pricked in unaffected interest. "Oh!"—with a return of +uneasiness—"I wish that they would not make so much noise; father does +so dislike noise. They might as well have put it off till to-morrow."</p> + +<p>"Why would to-morrow's noise be more endurable than to-night's?"</p> + +<p>"It would not have mattered to-morrow; father will not be here; he is +going to Hammam Rhira."</p> + +<p>Burgoyne's jaw drops. Is this the alternative course decided upon by</p> + +<p>Mrs. Le Marchant? Having failed to dislodge him from Algiers, is she +going to remove herself and her daughter out of his reach?</p> + +<p>"Do you mean—are you <i>all</i> going to Hammam Rhira to-morrow?—<i>all</i> +going away?"</p> + +<p>Is it some effect of light from the rose-shaded lamp that makes it seem +to him as if a tiny smile, and a yet smaller blush, swept over +Elizabeth's face at the aghastness of his tone—an aghastness much more +marked than he had intended it should be.</p> + +<p>"Not to-morrow; not all of us. Father and mammy are going there for a +couple of nights to see what the place is like—one hears such +contradictory accounts; and if they are pleased with it—"</p> + +<p>"Yes?"</p> + +<p>"If they are pleased with it we shall all probably move on there in a +day or two."</p> + +<p>He would like to be sure that this sentence ends with a sigh, but a +prodigious storm of hand-clapping from the extempore theatre prevents +his hearing whether it has that regretful finish.</p> + +<p>"And they are going to leave you behind?"</p> + +<p>"Why not? there would not be much use in taking me; and, as I tell you, +they love being <i>tête-à-tête</i>."</p> + +<p>"And you love being alone?"</p> + +<p>The moment that the question is out of his mouth, he realizes its full +unkindness. He is perfectly aware that she does <i>not</i> like being alone; +that she is naturally a most sociable little being; that, even now, +these frightened five minutes of unsatisfactory broken talk with himself +have made her look less chilled, less wobegone, less white. Her answer, +if it can be looked upon as one, must be taken by him as a rebuke. It is +only that she says nervously:</p> + +<p>"One certainly does hear dreadfully plainly here with the door open."</p> + +<p>Her tone is of the gentlest, her look no angrier than a dove's, and yet +he would be obtuser than he is if he did not at once comprehend that her +remark implies a wish that he should presently shut that door behind him +on the outside. He complies. With that newly-gained knowledge as to +to-morrow's Hammam Rhira, he can afford to comply.</p> + + +<p>The next morning's light reveals that the weather, pleased with having +so indisputably proved its power of being odious, has recovered its +good-humour.</p> + +<p>Beyond the tree-tops a radiant sea is seen laughing far below; and the +wet red tiles on the little terrace shine like jewels. A sea even more +wonderful than radiant; no servile copy of the sky and clouds to-day, +but with astonishing colours of its own—a faint yet glorious green for +a part of its watery breadth; then what our poverty compels us to call +blue; and then a great tablecloth of inky purple, which looks so solid +that the tiny white boats that are crossing it seem to be sailing on dry +land. From amongst the glossy green of the wooded hill, mosque and +campagne start out, dazzling, in their recovered lustre; one cool +entrancing villa in especial, backed with a broken line of dusky +stone-pines, stands, snowy-arcaded, enthroned high up among the verdure.</p> + +<p>Jim is very anxious to be out of the way at the hour of the Le +Marchants' departure. He has a panic fear of being waylaid by the +mother, and having some earnest supplication addressed to him to +abstain, during her absence, from any converse with Elizabeth. He is not +quite clear at what time they will set off, so, to insure himself +against mistakes, he resolves to spend the morning and lunch at the +Villa Wilson. Arrived there, he is shown by an Arab man-servant into the +court, and, finding it empty, sinks down into a cane chair, and lets his +eyes wander round to the fountain, lullingly dripping into its basin; to +the tiles, the white-arched doorways, carved in low relief, and +themselves so low that it must be a humble-statured person who enters +them without stooping. What a home for love in idleness! Who can picture +any of the vulgar work of the world done in such a house? any harder +labour ever entered upon than a listening to some lady singing "with +ravishing division to her lute"?</p> + +<p>The lady who presently joins Jim appears, by her ruffled air, to have +been engaged upon no such soothing occupation as luting to a recumbent +lover.</p> + +<p>"You will not mind staying here?" asks Cecilia; "Dr. Crump is in the +drawing-room with Sybilla; I am sure that you do not want to see Dr. +Crump!"</p> + +<p>"I cannot express how little I wish it."</p> + +<p>"I cannot think what has happened to Sybilla"—wrinkling up her forehead +into annoyed furrows—"but she is so dreadfully sprightly when he is +there; she never was sprightly with Dr. Coldstream, and he is such an +impossible man!—the sort of man who, when first he comes in, always +says, 'Well, how are we this morning?' Do not you think that it stamps a +man to say 'How are we?'"</p> + +<p>"I think it does."</p> + +<p>"He talks such nonsense to her!"—with irritation—"he tells her that +he, too, is a bundle of nerves! if you could only see him! And one day +he told her that when first he came here he had seen the Angel of Death +waving his fans above her head! and she swallows it all!"</p> + +<p>"I am not at all surprised."</p> + +<p>"It makes me sick!" cries she energetically; "let us go into the +garden."</p> + +<p>So into the garden they go; both the new one, whose luxuriant growth of +verdure is the outcome of but eight or nine years; and the old one, +along whose straight walks the feet of the Moorish ladies used to patter +under the orange-trees. Beneath them now there are no white bundles of +muslin; only on the ground the oranges lie thick, no one in this +plenteous land thinking it worth while to pick them up. Jim and his +companion pace rather silently to a pretty Moorish summer-house, dug, a +few years ago, by the English architect out of a farm-house, into which +it had been built. It is dainty and cool, with a little dome and lovely +green and blue tiles; and an odd small spring, which is taught to wander +by tiny snaky channels into a little basin. They go into the +summer-house and sit down.</p> + +<p>"Yes, it is pretty," says the girl absently! but her mind is evidently +preoccupied by some other subject than the beauty of the giant bignonia +which is expanding the multitude of its orange-red clusters all over a +low wall, making it into one burning hedge, and has called forth an +exclamation of delight from Burgoyne. What that subject is immediately +appears.</p> + +<p>"Do you know who is in Algiers—whom I saw driving through the Place +Bressant on Sunday afternoon?"</p> + +<p>"Who?"</p> + +<p>"The Le Marchants. Ah, you are not surprised!"—rather suspiciously. +"You knew already!"</p> + +<p>Jim hesitates a second; then, reflecting that, whether or not he +acknowledges the fact now, Cecilia is certain to learn it in a day or +two at latest, he answers with a slight laugh:</p> + +<p>"It would be odd if I did not, seeing that they are staying at my +hotel."</p> + +<p>"You knew that when you went there?"—very quickly.</p> + +<p>"Of course not!"—with a movement of impatience.</p> + +<p>A pause.</p> + +<p>"I suppose," says Cecilia, rather cautiously, as if aware that she is +treading on dangerous ground, "that you have not found out why they +stampeded from Florence in that extraordinary way? Oh no, of course +not!"—as this suggestion is received with a still more accented writhe +than her former one. "It is not a thing upon which you could question +them; and, after all, it was their own affair; it was no business of +ours, was it?"</p> + +<p>"Not the slightest."</p> + +<p>"I always used to like them," continues Cecilia pensively; "at +least"—becoming aware of an involuntary movement of surprise at this +statement on the part of her neighbour—"at least, they never gave me +the chance of <i>liking</i> them; but I always <i>admired</i> them. I wonder are +they more accessible than they were in Florence? There are so few nice +English here this year; everybody says that there never was a year when +there were so few nice English!"</p> + +<p>The tentative towards sociability implied in this last speech is +received by Jim in a discouraging silence. He has not the slightest +desire to promote any overture on the part of Cecilia towards intimacy +with Elizabeth. He knows that they would be unsuccessful; and, moreover, +he is conscious that he would be annoyed if they were not.</p> + + +<p>"I can fancy that this would be a very pleasant place if one had someone +to go about with," continues she; "but father grows less and less +inclined to move. Poor dear! he is not so young as he was, and I am not +quite old enough yet, I suppose, to go about alone."</p> + +<p>She makes a rather wistful pause—a pause which he feels that she +intends him to fill by an offer of himself as her escort. But none such +comes. Realizing this, she goes on with a sigh:</p> + +<p>"There are not many advantages in being old; but, at least, one is +freer, and in a youth spent as mine is, there is really not much profit +or pleasure."</p> + +<p>The tone in which she makes this lugubrious reflection is so extremely +doleful that Jim cannot refrain from a laugh.</p> + +<p>"Cheer up, old girl! there is a good time coming! It is a long lane that +has no turning."</p> + +<p>But he contents himself with these vague forms of consolation. He has no +engagements of his own. Why, then, is he conscious of so strong a +reluctance towards tying himself by any promise to the broadly-hinting +lady beside him? There is another pause, during which Cecilia looks down +on the floor with a baffled air, and traces the outlines of the tiles +with the point of her red sunshade.</p> + +<p>"There is a band plays twice a week in the Place de Gouvernement—plays +admirably. Now, I suppose that there would be nothing odd; that no one +could say anything; that it would not be the least improper, considering +our connection and everything, if you were to take me to hear it some +day?"</p> + +<p>"I never have the slightest idea of what is improper and what is not," +replies he; but there is more of alarm than of encouragement in his +tone.</p> + +<p>"No more have I"—laughing rather awkwardly—"but in this case I am +pretty sure. Tuesdays and Fridays are the days on which the band plays."</p> + +<p>"Oh!"</p> + +<p>"To-day is Tuesday, is not it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>Another pause.</p> + +<p>"I thought that perhaps, if you had nothing better to do, you might take +me to-day?"</p> + +<p>The direct proposal which he has in vain tried to avert has come. If he +accept it, of what profit to him will the absence of the Le Marchant +parents be? He does not formulate this fact to himself, not having, +indeed, owned to his own heart that he has any set design upon +Elizabeth's company for the afternoon.</p> + + +<p>"I am afraid——" he begins slowly.</p> + +<p>"You are vamping up an excuse!" cries Cecilia, reddening. "I see it in +your eyes. You cannot have made any engagements here yet. You do not +know anybody, do you, except the Le Marchants?"</p> + +<p>"And they have gone to Hammam Rhira," replies he precipitately.</p> + +<p>He is ashamed the moment that the words are out of his mouth, for he +knows that they convey a falsehood.</p> + +<p>"At least——"</p> + +<p>But she interrupts him before he can add his conscience clause.</p> + +<p>"To-morrow, then?"</p> + +<p>Again he hesitates. The same objections apply with even greater force to +the morrow.</p> + +<p>"But the band does not play to-morrow."</p> + +<p>"Oh! what does that matter?" rejoins she impatiently. "I had just as +soon go somewhere else—the Arab town, the Kabyle village, anywhere."</p> + +<p>He is driven into a corner, and remains there silent so long that there +is a distinct element of offence in the tone and large sigh with which +the girl resumes.</p> + +<p>"Well, times are changed! I always used to make one in those happy +excursions at Florence; and somehow—thanks to her, I suppose—I never +felt a bad third."</p> + +<p>She rises as she speaks, and takes a couple of huffy steps towards the +house; but he overtakes and stops her. The allusion to Amelia has +annoyed and yet stirred in him the sea of remorse, which is always lying +but a very little way below the surface in his soul.</p> + +<p>"Why, Cis!" he says, in a tone of affectionate rallying, "are we going +to quarrel at this time of day—you and I? Of course I will take you to +the band and the Kabyle village, and any other blessed sight you choose +to name, only tell me by which of them you would like to begin to ride +round."</p> + +<p>As he leaves the house and the appeased fair one, after luncheon, an +hour and a half later, he tells himself that he has got off cheaply in +having vaguely sacrificed the whole of his Algerian future, but having +preserved to-day and to-morrow.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIA" id="CHAPTER_VIA"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And therein sat a lady fresh and fayre,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Making sweet solace to herself alone.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sometimes she sang as lowd as lark in ayre,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Sometimes she laught, as mery as Pope Joan."<br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Jim's first care on returning to his hotel is to ascertain that the +departure for Hammam Rhira has really taken place, and, having been +reassured on this point, retires to his own bedroom to reconnoitre the +terrace, upon which it gives. The sun has long drunk up the rain from +the tiles, and the chairs have been set out again. The hotel guests, in +all the sociability of their after-luncheon mood, are standing and +sitting about. The widow Wadman, with great play of eyebrow and lip, is +pacing up and down in arch conversation with her habitual victim. +Snatches of her alluring talk reach Jim behind his muslin curtain as she +comes and goes:</p> + +<p>"I think that caged birds ought to be <i>loved</i>!" "The Prophet was a +wise man, was not he? he knew a little about us," etc.</p> + +<p>In her usual place, aloof from the rest of the company, Elizabeth is +sitting in a clinging white gown of some woolly stuff. With a dainty +white kerchief twisted about her head, and a bundle of many-tinted +Eastern stuffs on her knees, she looks like a little Romney. Now and +again, as fragments of the widow's siren strains reach her ears, he sees +her lips curl up into delighted laughter; but, for the most part, she +seems to be looking round rather uneasily, as if seeking something or +someone. Can it be himself that she, in her innocence of being observed, +is on the watch for? He has no right to be playing the spy on her in any +case. It is clear that, dressed as she is, she cannot be meditating +going out. He must not frighten her by any too direct or sudden +attentions. In a little while the other occupants of the terrace will +drift away, and he will stroll out and join her, and together they will +watch the shade of the ficus-tree, lengthening over the red flags. But +she presently baffles his calculations by rising, and, with her +rainbow-tinted pile of brocades clasped in her slender arms, slowly +passes into the house. Has she retreated thither for good? and will he +have to frame some new flimsy excuse for knocking at her door? But again +he is out of his reckoning, for in about a quarter of an hour she +re-issues, dressed for walking; and after one more lingering and, as it +seems to him, disappointed glance around her, paces, a solitary little +figure, down the hill. He lays his watch before him, and, having counted +five minutes on its dial-plate, sets off in pursuit. He overtakes her +just as she reaches the point where the lane debouches into the +highroad. She stands, looking rather disconsolately, first up the hill, +then down it, evidently uncertain which direction to choose.</p> + +<p>"You cannot make up your mind?" he says, pausing beside her, and taking +off his hat.</p> + +<p>She gives a slight start, and a friendly, pleased smile runs all over +her face and up into her eyes—a smile that makes him say to himself +confidently that it <i>was</i> he whom her glance had been seeking on the +terrace.</p> + +<p>"Which do you advise?"</p> + +<p>"I advise the town."</p> + +<p>He has long known her teachableness, so it is no great surprise to him +that she at once turns in the direction counselled.</p> + +<p>"As I am going there myself, will you allow me to walk a little way with +you?"</p> + +<p>He makes the request with respectful diffidence; and she, after one +small troubled look, evidently given to the memory of her father, +assents.</p> + +<p>They set off down the hill together, the air, sharp after the rain—as +sharp, at least, as Algiers' stingless air ever is—bringing the colour +to Elizabeth's cheeks, as she steps along light-heartedly, scarcely +refraining from breaking into a run, down the steep incline. Her spirits +are so evidently rising at every yard that he hazards his next step.</p> + +<p>"I am going to see the Arab town; Miss Strutt says that I ought."</p> + +<p>"She meant you to ask her to show it you!" cries Elizabeth, with a +laugh; "but she was quite right—it is delightful; I am sure you will +like it."</p> + +<p>"You have been there?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, once or twice; not half so often"—regretfully—"as I should like +to have been."</p> + +<p>Dare he speak upon the last innocent hint? But while he is doubting she +goes on:</p> + +<p>"You must take care not to lose yourself; it is such a puzzling place; +all the streets are exactly like each other."</p> + +<p>"You do not feel inclined to show me the way about it?"</p> + +<p>He throws out the suggestion in a semi-bantering voice, so that if it +meet with obvious disapproval he may at once withdraw it. She stops +suddenly stock-still, and faces him.</p> + +<p>"Are you speaking seriously? It would be very delightful; but do you +think I might? do you think I ought?"</p> + +<p>She lifts her eyes, widely opened, like a child's at hearing of some +unexpected treat, to his. How astonishingly clear they are! and how +curiously guileless! He has not the least doubt that she will sweetly +acquiesce in his decision, whichever way it tends; and, for a second, a +movement of irritation with her for her pliability crosses his mind. She +ought to be able to have an opinion of her own. While he hesitates, she +speaks again.</p> + +<p>"It is just the afternoon to do something pleasant on," she says +wistfully, and yet gaily too. "Oh, how good the air tastes! and how +dearly I love the sun!"—lifting her face with sensitive lips, half +open, as if to suck in his beams, to the great gold luminary pouring +down his warmth through the pepper-trees upon them. "But I will take +your advice; I know of old"—with a pretty flattering smile—"that you +always give good advice. Do you think that I ought—do you <i>really</i> +think that I ought?"</p> + +<p>He throws conscience to the winds, and although not two hours ago he had +professed to Cecilia his inability to decide upon the propriety or +impropriety of any given course of female action, now answers with an +almost brutal decisiveness:</p> + +<p>"I do not think that there is the smallest doubt about it."</p> + +<p>A relieved look crosses her features.</p> + +<p>"Then I am sure it is all right," she says, with a joyful surrendering +of her judgment into his keeping, and so, once again, steps along with +her quick feather-light feet at his side.</p> + +<p>For the moment she is the happier of the two, since he is not perfectly +pleased either with himself or her. It is in vain that he tells himself +that it is no babe whom he is beguiling; that, difficult as it is to +believe it, those limpid eyes have looked at the sun for +seven-and-twenty years. He still has a lingering sense of discomfort at +having availed himself, for his own profit, of her ductility. And yet, +five minutes later, he takes yet further advantage of that quality in +her. They have reached the Plateau Saulière, and the stand of fiacres +that "stationnent" there. Jim pauses.</p> + +<p>"It is a good distance to the Arab town, I fancy, and very tiring +walking when you get there."</p> + +<p>"It is as steep as the side of a house; we shall be like flies on a +wall," cries she delightedly.</p> + +<p>"It would be a pity to be too tired to enjoy it before you got there, +would not it?" says he doubtfully, and eyeing her bright slenderness +with an air of uncertainty as to her powers of endurance. "Had not we +better—would you mind—our driving there?"</p> + +<p>"I am not at all tired," replies she; "I do not feel as if I ever should +be tired to-day; but if you think it better——"</p> + +<p>Still he looks at her dubiously. To him there appears to be a much +greater degree of the compromising in a <i>tête-à-tête</i> drive than in a +walk. In the one case the meeting may have been accidental; in the other +there can be no mistake as to the deliberate intention. But either this +does not strike Elizabeth, or she thinks, "In for a penny, in for a +pound"; or, lastly, and most probably, having given up her judgment into +his keeping, she finds it easiest and most natural to acquiesce in +whatever he may propose.</p> + +<p>The ungenerous thought flashes across him that if this is the principle +on which she has guided her life, it is small wonder if she have made +shipwreck of it. He hails a fiacre, and silently hands her in, and again +they are off.</p> + +<p>Elizabeth has disclaimed fatigue, and yet the restful position is +evidently agreeable to her delicate body; and she thanks him so +gratefully for his thought of her that his hard thoughts of her dissolve +into remorse, and by-and-by change into an enjoyment almost as entire +and uncalculating as her own.</p> + +<p>Elizabeth has astonishing powers of enjoying herself. If he had not +known that fact before, the afternoon would have revealed it to him.</p> + +<p>She must have driven through the French town almost every day since her +arrival, and yet its cheerful white-shuttered houses, its boulevards of +glossy-leaved ficus-trees, its cafés, its arcaded streets with their +polyglot promenaders, seem to fill her with as lively a pleasure as if +she had but just landed from the steamboat that brought her.</p> + +<p>The three Spahis, eternally sitting in a row on a bench outside some +general officer's quarters, robed in their great red cloaks, with +muslin-swathed swart heads and long red-leather boots, dimly descried +beneath the stately sweep of their mantles, sitting there motionless, +solemn and silent as the Fates; a venerable Arab, only to be +distinguished from Abraham or Isaac by his carrying a vulgar brown +umbrella; a short Kabyle seen in back view, with his rope-bound +headdress, his brown-and-white striped frock, and his bare red legs +striding along, looking exactly like a ludicrous and indelicate old +woman; a Biskrah water-carrier, poising a great burnished copper pot on +his shoulder; two little baggy trousered white ladies waddling along; a +dozen of smart blue Turcos. She is enraptured with them all.</p> + +<p>They leave their fiacre in the Place de la Cathédrale, and enter upon +the mysterious recesses of the Arab town. Up and down endless flights of +steps, up street after street—if streets they can be called, that are +not wider than a yard in their widest part—and above their heads the +rafter-supported houses lean together, letting scarce a glint of +daylight drip down upon the dusky path far below.</p> + +<p>They pass arched doorways, with pretty designs in plaster—doorways +whose doors open inwards upon mysterious interiors—house or court, or +mosque or Marabé. All along stand tiny shops, like wild-beast dens, as +far as light and space go, lit only by the tempered light—in reality, +only semi-darkness—that enters in front. How can they see to +work—plait straw, for instance? as the three ebon-black negroes are +doing, upon whom they stare in, asquat upon the ground. The turbans, and +the red sashes, and the burnouses glimmer out of the little dim +frontages, where charming pierced-brass Moorish lamps hang and swing +aloft; and tempting piles of dully splendid brocades and bright +gold-laminated gauzes gleam from the crowded shelves.</p> + +<p>The narrow streetlets are full of unbusy, un-hurrying Easterns, hideous +old negresses grinning like monkeys, idle Arabs sauntering along in +their lazy grace, draped like Greek statues, sauntering along between +the blue-washed walls that look in their effective variation upon the +blinding whitewash as if some of the sky-colour had rubbed off upon +them.</p> + +<p>Jim and Elizabeth have paused, in their leisurely strolling and staring, +to look from the straight shadowed alley in which they are standing up a +long flight of steps to a low carved doorway, and a bit of starch-blue +wall at the top. Down the steep flight a veiled, trousered woman is +waddling, her immense pantaloons waggling awkwardly as she descends.</p> + +<p>Elizabeth stands still, shaking with laughter at the sight. Jim laughs +too.</p> + +<p>"There is no expense spared in material there, is there? It would not be +a bad dress for a fancy ball. Did you ever go to a fancy ball as a +Moorish lady?"</p> + +<p>Her laughter lessens, though her face is still alight with mirth.</p> + +<p>"I never was at a fancy ball."</p> + +<p>"<i>Never?</i>"</p> + +<p>"Never; I never was at any ball in my life."</p> + +<p>Her laughter is quite dead now.</p> + +<p>"Never at any ball in your life!" repeats he, his surprise betraying him +into one of those flights back into the past for which she has always +showed such repugnance. "Why, you used to love dancing madly! I remember +your dancing like a dervish. What is more, I remember dancing with you."</p> + +<p>"Oh, do not remember anything to-day!" cries she, with a sort of writhe +in her voice; "do not let either of us remember anything! let us have a +whole holiday from remembering!"</p> + +<p>So saying, she moves on quickly; and yet with the dance gone out of her +feet. It never quite comes back. They look into an Arab club, where men +are squatting, playing with odd-looking cards and drinking muddy coffee. +Then a loud noise of jabbering young voices makes them peep in upon an +Arab school, where a circle of little Moslems is sitting on the ground, +scribbling Arabic on slates; while between the knees of the turbaned +master a tiny baby scholar, of three or four, is standing in a lovely +dull green coatlet. Elizabeth strokes the baby-learner's coppery cheek +with her light hand, and says, with a laugh, that it seems odd to see +little street-boys writing Arabic; but her laughter is no longer the +bubbling, irrepressible joy-drunk thing it was before he had indulged in +his tactless reminiscences; it is the well-bred, civil, grown-up sound +that so often has no inside gladness to match it. In his vexation with +himself for the clouding over of his little heaven that he himself has +effected, he tries to persuade himself that it is caused by bodily +fatigue.</p> + +<p>"If I were asked," he says, by-and-by, looking down affectionately at +her pallid profile, "I should say that you had had about enough of this; +your spirit"—smiling—"is so very much too big for your body that one +has to keep an eye upon you."</p> + +<p>"It would not be much of a spirit if it were not," replies she, with a +pretty air of perfectly sincere disparagement of her own slight +proportions; "I know that I look a poor thing, but I am rather a fraud: +I do not tire easily; I am not tired now."</p> + +<p>"Bored, then?" with a slight accent of pique.</p> + +<p>She lifts her sweet look, with a sort of hurry of denial in it.</p> + +<p>"Most distinctly not."</p> + +<p>"You would like to go on, then?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Or back?"</p> + +<p>She hesitates, her eye exploring his with, as he feels, a genuine +anxiety in it to discover what his own wishes are, so that her decision +may jump with them.</p> + +<p>"Yes—perhaps; I have really no choice."</p> + +<p>He both looks at and speaks to her with a streak of exasperation.</p> + +<p>"Do you never have a will—a preference of your own?"</p> + +<p>It is evidently no unfamiliar thing to her to be addressed with +causeless irritability. The recollection of her father's tone in +speaking to her flashes back remorsefully upon Jim's memory. Is he +himself going to take a leaf out of that book? It would be a relief to +him were she to answer him sharply; but to do that is apparently not +within her capabilities, though the tender red that tinges her cheek +shows that she has felt his snub.</p> + +<p>"In this case I really have not," she answers gently; "but I dare say +that it was tiresome of me not to speak more decidedly; let us—let +us"—another swift and apparently quite involuntary glance at him to see +that she is not, after all, running counter to his inclinations—"let us +go home!"</p> + +<p>So they go home. It is near sun-setting as they drive along the +Boulevard de la République, the fitting end to so princely a day. At the +quay the moored vessels lie, their masts and spars making a dark design +against an ineffable evening sky of mother-of-pearl and translucent +pink. The sea, which to-day has not been of sapphire, but of +"watchet-blue," pierced and shot with white, now copies exactly the +heavens. It, too, shades from opal to translucent pink. How many changes +of raiment there are in the wardrobe of the great wet mother!</p> + +<p>"If I had as many gowns as the Mediterranean, how well-dressed I should +be!" says Elizabeth, with a smile.</p> + + +<p>It is the first time she had spoken since they had set off on their +return-drive. She is lying back, with her hands carefully shielding in +her lap a few little crockery pots that she has bought of a fat Turk for +some children at her hotel Her face looks tired; and yet over its small +area is spread an expression of content that makes his heart warm. Is it +only the pageant of sky and ocean that has called forth that look of +real, if passing, happiness on the features of her who is always so +tremblingly sensitive an instrument for all influences of beauty and +grandeur to play upon? or has his own neighbourhood anything to say to +it? Before he can give himself an answer to this anxious question, she +speaks again.</p> + +<p>"You do not mind my not talking, do you?" she asks, half apologetically, +and yet with a confidence in his sympathy that still further quickens +the beats of his already not very still heart.</p> + +<p>"No, I am sure you do not. Somehow—it is a great gift—you always feel +in tune with one, and one does not chatter most when one is most greatly +pleased, does one? Oh, what a treat you have given me!"</p> + +<p>As she speaks, her humid eyes travel from his face to where, beyond the +long Atlas range, delicately toothed and cut out, rises the gold-washed +snow of the Kabyle mountains, that retire majestically invisible on dull +days, and only come out, candescent and regal, when the great sun rides +in pomp. Above their heads wild plumes of deep rose, that it seems +ridiculous to call clouds, tuft the sky.</p> + +<p>Jim's look has followed his companion's; the chins of both are in the +air; the cheerful <i>va et vient</i> of the boulevard is lost upon them. They +see neither the Frenchmen nor plump Frenchwomen drinking coffee outside +the cafés, nor the idle <i>indigènes</i> leaning draped against the sea-wall. +(Never does that industrious race seem to attempt any severer exertion.)</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But it is brought back to life with a jump.</p> + +<p>"<i>Arrêtez! arrêtez!</i>" cries a female voice. "Jim! Jim! do you not see +us? <i>Arrêtez! arrêtez!</i>"</p> + +<p>Obedient to his ears, Burgoyne's eyes make one bound from the heavenly +spectacle down to earth, and alight upon the Wilsons' carriage, which, +going in the same direction as himself, has just been brought to a +standstill alongside of his fiacre, by the solemnly beautiful, +yellow-jacketed native coachman.</p> + +<p>It is, of course, Cecilia's voice that has apostrophized him, but oh, +portent! does his vision, so lately recalled from the skyey bowers, play +him false? or is it really the moribund Sybilla, stretched beside her, +with only two instead of three cushions at her back, with a bonnet on +her head—he did not even know that she possessed a bonnet—and with a +colour in her cheek and a lustre in her eye that may owe their origin +either to the freshness of the evening air, or to the invigorating +properties of the conversation of the very ordinary-looking young man +seated opposite to her?</p> + +<p>In a second Jim has leapt out of his own vehicle, and gone to the side +of the other. It is a perfectly futile impulse that leads him to do so. +Not all the leaping in the world from her side now can alter the fact +that he has been driving <i>tête-à-tête</i> with Elizabeth Le Marchant, and +that the Wilson sisters have seen him so doing; but yet it is a dim +instinct of preservation towards, and shielding of her, that leads him +to adopt this useless course of action. It is Cecilia who has summoned +him, and yet, when he reaches her side, she does not seem to have +anything particular to say to him. Sybilla is the one to address him.</p> + +<p>"A miracle! a miracle! I know you are saying to yourself!" cries she, in +a sprightly voice; "and well you may! This is the miracle-monger!" +indicating with a still sprightlier air her <i>vis-à-vis</i>. "Dr. Crump, let +me present to you Mr. Burgoyne—Jim, our Jim, whom I have so often +talked to you about."</p> + +<p>The person thus apostrophized responds by a florid bow, and an +over-gallant asseveration that any person introduced to his acquaintance +by Miss Sybilla needs no further recommendation.</p> + +<p>"It is an experiment, of course; there is no use in pretending that it +is not an experiment," continues she, with a slight relapse into +languor; "but"—lowering her voice a little—"they wished me to make the +effort."</p> + +<p>It is a favourite allocation of Sybilla's that any course of action +towards which she is inclined is adopted solely under the pressure of +urgent wishes on the part of her family. Burgoyne has long known, and +been exasperated by, this peculiarity; but at present she may say what +she pleases; he hears no word of it, for his ear is pricked to catch the +sentences that Cecilia is leaning over the carriage-side to shoot at +Elizabeth.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Miss Le Marchant! is it you? I beg your pardon, I did not recognise +you at the first moment. One does not recognise people—does one?—when +one is not expecting to see them"—is an intended sting lurking in this +implication? "How are you? How do you like Algiers? I hope Mrs. Le +Marchant is well. What a long time it is since we met! I hope we shall +see something of you."</p> + +<p>(No, evidently no sting was meant. Cecilia, with all her faults, is +really a good soul, and he will take her to hear the band play next +Tuesday.)</p> + +<p>There seems to him to be a slight falter in the tone with which +Elizabeth responds, and her voice sounds curiously small and low; but +that may be merely owing to its flute quality, following upon and +contrasting the other's powerful organ.</p> + +<p>It is not till the two parties have again separated, and that he is once +more seated by her side in the fiacre, that he dares steal a look at her +face to see how plainly written on it are the traces of vexation caused +by a meeting which has produced in his own breast such acute annoyance. +Good heavens! it is even worse than he had expected. Down the cheek +nearest to him two good-sized tears are unmistakably trickling. No doubt +the consciousness of the mysterious story attaching to her past makes +her smartingly aware of how doubly discreet her own conduct should +be—makes her bitterly repent of her present indiscretion.</p> + +<p>He is a strait-laced man, and it seems to him as if there were something +gravely compromising to her in this <i>tête-à-tête</i> drive with himself, in +the known absence of her parents at Hammam Rhira. Why was he fool enough +this morning to admit to Cecilia that they had gone thither? He had no +business to have led her into temptation, and she had no business to +have fallen into it. Remorse and irritation give a tartness to his tone +as he says:</p> + +<p>"After all, I do not think you need take it so much to heart."</p> + +<p>"Take what to heart?" she asks, in unaffected surprise, turning her full +face, and her eyes, each with one hot raindrop dimming its slate-blue, +upon him. "Oh, I see"—a sudden enlightenment coming to her, and +changing her with instant spring from a snowdrop to a carnation—"I see +what you mean; but you are mistaken. I—I—it had not occurred to me; I +was only thinking—only remembering that the last time I saw her was +at—at Vallombrosa."</p> + +<p><i>Vallombrasa!</i> Is he never to hear the last of Vallombrosa?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIIA" id="CHAPTER_VIIA"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>The latest waking impression left on Jim's fancy is that it is the +golden rule of Elizabeth Le Marchant's life to comply with any and every +request that is made to her; moreover, that in her mind the +boundary-line which parts the permitted from the unpermitted is not so +clearly defined as, did she belong to him (the naked hypothesis makes +his strait-laced heart give a jump), he should wish it to be. If on the +morrow, with the sun shining and the leaf-shadows dancing on the fretted +balcony-wall, he invite her to some fresh junket, he is sure that she +will readily and joyfully acquiesce; that her spirits will go up like +rockets at the prospect; and that her one anxiety will be that she may +be sure to hit in her choice upon the form of dissipation most congenial +to him. He will therefore not invite her. He will have a greater care +for her reputation than apparently she has for it herself. Not until the +return of her parents, not until the difficulties of intercourse with +her are centupled, and the pleasure minimized, will he again seek her.</p> + +<p>To put himself beyond the reach of temptation, he sets off immediately +after breakfast on a long walking expedition, which he means to occupy +the whole of the daylight hours. He wanders about the great plain of the +Metidje; he visits a Kabyle village, with its hovels cowering among its +hideous fat-fleshed cactus; later on in the afternoon he finds himself +in the little French hamlet of Biermandreis, and finally drops down upon +the Jardin d'Essai, that delightful botanic garden which is one of the +many blessings for which Algerian France has to thank the +much-vilipended Napoleon III.</p> + +<p>It is difficult for even the reddest Republican to think hardly of that +dead ruler as he walks down the avenue of gigantic palms that lead, +straight as a die, to where, like a deep blue gem far away, the +Mediterranean shows</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">"No bigger than an agate stone<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On the forefinger of an alderman."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Jim walks along beneath the huge date-palms that give him a crick in the +neck to gape up at ere he can perceive their towering head of waving +plumes far up against the blue. They remind him absurdly of the pictures +in the missionary books of his youth—the palm-tree, the log cabin, the +blackamoors, and the missionary in a palm hat. Is <i>he</i> the missionary, +and is this inky negress in a black bonnet, scarcely distinguishable +from her face, his one catechumen?</p> + +<p>Alternating with the date are superb fan-palms, of which it is difficult +to realize that it is their stunted, puny brothers which, anxiously +tended, sponged, and cosseted, drag out a languid existence in London +drawing-rooms. Among their Titan fans lies their mighty fruit, like a +bunch of grapes, a yard and a half long, strung upon ropes of yellow +worsted.</p> + +<p>Half-way down its length the main avenue is intersected by a splendid +alley of bamboos, which lean their smooth-jointed stems and their +luxuriant narrow leaves towards each other across the dimmed interspace, +and unite in a pointed Gothic arch of living green.</p> + +<p>Jim paces objectlessly down the long arcade, stooping now and again to +pick up a fragment of the peeled bark that looks so strangely like a +papyrus roll with a mother-of-pearl glaze upon it. He pulls it idly +open, as if expecting to find the secret of some forgotten race written +upon its shining surface; but if he reads any secret there, it is only +his own, which, after all, is not much of a secret. He merely sees +written there that it is too early to go home yet; that there is no +security that Elizabeth may not still be sitting on the terrace +stitching away with her gold thimble and her coloured silks. The sun, it +is true, has left the garden, but he departs thence over-early. It will +be safer to stay away yet half an hour or so.</p> + +<p>Thus resolving, he retraces his steps, and explores in a new direction; +saunters down a rose-alley, where, climbing immoderately high up tall +palms, seeming as if they would strangle them with their long bowery +arms, rose-trees wave far above him in the still air; and upon them, +though it is still but the month of January, when people are skating, +blue-nosed, in England, creamy tea-roses show their pale-yellow hearts, +fair and frequent, on the unpruned boughs, rioting in licensed liberty +above his head. The walk ends in a circle of gigantic magnolias, which +take hands round a square fountain-basin. Each huge trunk is, as it +were, a little commonwealth of trees rolled into one, instead of a +single tree. Beneath them benches stand. Upon one his negress sits, +chatting with a French <i>bonne</i>; on a second there is also something +female and slender, something with its little white profile—how white +it looks in this deceiving light!—lifted, although white, yet smiling, +animated, and talking to a man standing beside it.</p> + +<p>He has dawdled and kicked his heels, and run the chance of contracting a +spiteful Southern chill, in order to avoid Elizabeth; and he has +succeeded in running straight into her arms.</p> + +<p>He does not at the first glance recognise her companion, but a second +look shows him that he is one of the inmates of the hotel—a French +Vicomte; and though Jim knows that he is both consumptive and the father +of a family, that knowledge does not hinder the rising in his breast of +the jealous and censorious thought that he has detected Elizabeth in +throwing a great deal more than the necessary modicum of amiability into +her manner to him.</p> + +<p>As Jim comes into sight, the Frenchman clicks his heels, doubles up his +body, lifts his hat, and walks away. It is evident, at all events, that +their meeting was a casual one; and the reflection brings with it a +sense of relief, coupled with a feeling of shame at his own rooted +readiness to suspect her, on any or no evidence, which yet, on the other +hand, is not strong enough, when she turns her sweet bright look towards +him, to hinder the thought that it is scarcely, if at all, sweeter or +brighter than that which he had caught her squandering on the casual +<i>table d'hôte</i> acquaintance who has just quitted her.</p> + +<p>"You, too!" she says; "why, the whole hotel seems to be emptied out into +these gardens; the widow Wadman is buying violets—mark if they do not +appear upon Uncle Toby at dinner to-night. The Vicomte——"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I saw you engaged in animated dialogue with him," interrupts Jim, +with slight acrimony; "I had no idea that you were such allies."</p> + +<p>"Had not you?" rejoins she innocently. "He was telling me about his +English governess, what a treasure she is"—her face dimpling +mischievously—"and how wonderfully pure her accent. So it is—pure +Cockney. You should hear the little Vicomte talk of the b<i>i</i>by and the +p<i>i</i>pers."</p> + +<p>He rewards her small pleasantry only by an absent smile, and she speaks +again—rather wistfully this time.</p> + +<p>"Have you been on another expedition?"</p> + +<p>"No, not an expedition; only a walk. If"—yielding to the temptation of +putting a question which no one would have judged more severely than he, +had it been put by anyone else—"if I had invited you to do me the +honour of making another excursion with me to-day, do you think that you +would have consented?"</p> + +<p>As he speaks, he departs yet further from the line of conduct he has +marked out for himself by sitting down on the bench at her side.</p> + +<p>Her eyes are fixed upon the soaring date-palm, which stands, instead of +a water-jet, in the middle of the fountain-basin, and on which last +year's dead plumes hang sapless, and ready to fall off, in contrast to +this year's verdant vigour.</p> + +<p>"Is not that rather a tantalizing question when you did not ask me?" +inquires she, with soft archness. "Yes, I suspect that I should; I was +so very happy yesterday; and although you told me the other +night"—swallowing a sigh—"that you supposed I must love my own +society, in point of fact, I do not think I do."</p> + +<p>After all, the sun is not quite gone; there are flashes of light in the +verdant gloom, and green reflections in the water.</p> + +<p>"And yet," says Jim thoughtfully, "you seem to have a good deal of it; I +suppose, in your position, it is unavoidable."</p> + +<p>He had meant an allusion to her situation as bad third to her uxorious +parents; before his mind's eye has risen a picture of the little forlorn +shawled figure he had seen studying its Italian Grammar with the door +shut upon its loneliness; but almost before the words have left his +lips, he sees of how different, of how cruel, a construction they may be +capable.</p> + +<p>He snatches a glance of real terror at her, to see whether she has made +that erroneous, yet all too plausible application—a glance which +confirms his worst fears. She has turned as white as the +pocket-handkerchief which she is passing over her trembling lips.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she says in a hollow whisper; "you are right. In my position it +<i>is</i> unavoidable, and it is cowardly of me not to accept it as such."</p> + + +<p>"I mean"—he cries desperately—"I only meant—I mean——"</p> + +<p>But she does not suffer him to finish his stuttered explanation.</p> + +<p>"It is cold," she says, rising. "I will go home."</p> + +<p>He does not attempt to accompany or follow her.</p> + +<p>After she is gone, he rages about the garden, and passes beyond it to +where—still sunlight-smitten—the blue Mediterranean is breaking in +joyous foam.</p> + +<p>He sits down on the shelly strand, and, in futile anger, hurls back the +wet pebbles into the sea's azure lap. Away to the left, the +three-cornered town swarms candescent up the hill, and the white +lighthouse stands out against the lapis-coloured air.</p> + +<p>How sharp-cut and intense it all is!—none of our dear undecided grays. +Here, if you are not piercing blue, you are dazzling white or profound +green. There is, indeed, something less sharp-cut and uncompromising—a +something more of mystery in the glory that—bright, too, but not making +its full revelation—envelopes the long hill range that, ending in Cape +Matifou, stretches away to the far right. Round the corner, to the right +too, a party of Arabs, sitting sideways on little donkeys, white draped, +with their <i>haik</i>-swathed heads, are disappearing on their small beasts +in the clear air. It is like a page out of the Bible—a flight into +Egypt—and they are going towards Egypt too.</p> + +<p>Jim's eye follows the placid Easterns, but without catching the +infection of their tranquillity. "Whenever I see her, I stick a knife +into her! It is impossible! There is no use trying! I will give up the +attempt. It is out of the question to have any happy relations with a +woman who has a past!"</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>After all, Mr. Le Marchant does not like Hammam Rhira. He thinks the +hotel cold and the roads bad. Jim overhears him telling someone this, +and his own heart leaps.</p> + +<p>It is true that he takes it to task for doing so. Perhaps, after all, +Elizabeth's removal would have been the best solution of his problem. +Had she left Algiers, he could scarcely have followed her, and she would +have been freed from the chance of his clumsy stabs.</p> + +<p>But all the same his heart leaps. It leaps yet higher a day or two later +when he discovers that, though Hammam Rhira has not met with Mr. Le +Marchant's approbation, yet that, by his trip to it, he has been bitten +with a taste for travel, the outcome of which is his solitary departure +on an expedition to Constantin, Tunis, etc., which must occupy him at +least a week. His wife accompanies him to the station, but his daughter +is not allowed to go beyond the hotel steps.</p> + +<p>Jim surreptitiously watches her hovering with diffident affection round +her father, unobtrusively and unthanked fetching and carrying for him. +He sees the cold kiss that just brushes her cheek, and hears the chill +parting admonition to look well after her mother and see that she does +not overtire herself.</p> + +<p>It is accepted with ready meekness, but leaves the recipient so +crestfallen, as she stands looking after the departing vehicle, that +Burgoyne cannot forbear joining her, with some vague and, as he knows, +senseless velleity of championship and consolation.</p> + +<p>"He is gone for a week, is not he?" is the form that his sympathy takes, +in a tone which he is at but small pains not to render congratulatory.</p> + +<p>"Yes, quite a week."</p> + +<p>"Are you"—he is perfectly conscious while asking it that he has not the +slightest right to put the question—"are you glad or sorry?"</p> + +<p>She starts perceptibly.</p> + +<p>"Why should I be glad? Do you mean"—with an unconquerable streak of +satisfaction in her own voice—"because I shall have mammy all to +myself? You must not think"—with an obvious rush of quickly following +compunction—"that I am not fond of him, because he sometimes speaks a +little roughly to me." After a pause, in a lowered voice: "You see, when +you have broken a person's heart, you can scarcely blame him for not +having a very high opinion of you."</p> + +<p>So saying, she suddenly leaves him as she had left him in the Jardin +d'Essai. He does not again approach her that day, but at dinner-time he +has the answer to his question as to her being glad or sorry at her +father's departure. She is apparently in the best of spirits, sitting +nestled close up to her mother for the better convenience of firing a +series of little jokes and comments into that parent's appreciative ear.</p> + +<p>"They make fun of the whole hotel," observes Miss Strutt with +exasperation. "I do not believe that one of us escapes! When he is not +there to check them, there is no holding them!"</p> + +<p><i>No holding</i> Elizabeth! The phrase recurs to him several times during +the next few days, as not without its justness, when he sees its object +flitting about the house, gay as a linnet; when he meets her singing +subduedly to herself upon the stairs; when he watches her romping with +the French children, and mischievously collecting flowers of Clapham +eloquence from their governess, which she is good enough to retail for +his own and her mother's benefit when evening unites the three in the +retirement of their little salon. For, strange and improbably blissful +as it seems, he has somehow, ere three days are over, effected an +entrance into that small and fragrant sanctuary.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Le Marchant's first fears that the meeting with him again would +re-open sorrow have disappeared in the light of her daughter's childish +gaiety, and are even exchanged for a compunctious gratitude to him for +having been in part the cause of her new light-heartedness. The weather +has again broken, a fact which he alone of the whole hotel does not +deplore, since it was his own ostentatiously displayed wet-day +dreariness that was the cause of his first admission within the doors +that are closed upon all others. Moreover, had it not been wet weather, +could he have held an umbrella over Elizabeth's head when he met her in +the eucalyptus wood, and they walked among the naked trunks, while the +long, loose, pale foliage waved like dishevelled hair in the rain, and +the pungent asphodels grew thick about their feet in the red earth? And +when, by-and-by, the clouds disperse again, and there comes a fair day, +bracketed between three or four foul ones—the usual Algerian +proportion—it has grown quite natural to all three that he should sit +opposite to them in their drives; that he should haggle with Arabs for +them, and remonstrate with the landlord, and generally transfer all the +smaller roughnesses of life from their shoulders to his own. Brought +into more intimate communion with them than he has ever been before, +Burgoyne realizes how much they belong to the kneeling, leaning, +spoiling type of womankind. Elizabeth would be the easiest woman in the +world to manage. How is it that in her ten years of womanhood no man has +been found to undertake the lovely facile task? He himself knows +perfectly the treatment that would befit her; the hinted wishes—her +tact is too fine and her spirit too meek to need anything so coarse as +commands—the infinitesimal rebukes and the unlimited—oh! +limitless—caresses:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Every day he finds himself repeating Wordsworth's line, and every day, +in his fancied guidance of her, he tells himself that the blame should +be less and the kisses more.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Mr. Le Marchant has been gone more than a week, and February has come +wetly in, with rain wildly weeping against the easements, and +angry-handed rain boxing the unlucky orange-trees' ears. It has rained +for forty-eight hours without a break. The Grand Hotel is at the end of +its resources. Uncle Toby, his struggle ended, lies vanquished in the +widow's net; and there is murder in the lurid eye which Miss Strutt +turns on the votary of Whiteley.</p> + +<p>Jim alone, outdoor man as he habitually is, looking upon a house merely +in the light of a necessary shelter, has no quarrel either with the +absent sun or the present deluge? for are not they the cause of his +having spent two whole afternoons in the company of Elizabeth and her +mother? To-day has not Elizabeth been singing to him, and cutting him +orange-flower bread-and-butter, when Fritz brought in the afternoon tea, +and set the real English kettle fizzing over its spirit-lamp? And, in +return, has not he now, after dinner, been helping her to weed out her +own and her mother's photograph-books? As he does so the idea strikes +him of how very meagre her own collection of acquaintances seems to be. +From that weeding have they not, by an easy transition, at her +suggestion, passed to the more playful and ingenious occupation of +amputating the heads of some of the rejected friends and applying them +to the bodies of others? Each armed with a pair of scissors, and with +Mrs. Le Marchant for umpire, they have been vying with each other as to +who can produce the most startling results by this clever process.</p> + +<p>The palm has just been awarded to Elizabeth for a combination which +presents the head of an elderly lady, in a widow's cap, mounted upon the +cuirass and long boots of a Life Guardsman. Jim's application of the +cornet's discarded head to the body of a baby in long clothes, although +allowed to be a pretty conceit, commands but little real admiration—an +instance of nepotism which he does not allow to pass without protest.</p> + +<p>Elizabeth, elated by her triumph, has flown out of the room to examine +her private stores for fresh material, and Jim and her mother—for the +first time, as it happens, since that early meeting, when her anxious +eye had so plainly implored him to leave Algiers—are <i>tête-à-tête</i>. Her +changed aspect towards him as she sits, with a lingering laugh still on +her face, beside the wood fire—which, after having twice gone out, as +it almost always does, the souches being invariably wet, burns bright +and crackly—strikes him with such a feeling of warm pleasure that he +says in a voice of undisguised triumph:</p> + +<p>"What spirits she is in, is not she?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; is not she?" assents the mother eagerly. "Oh, I cannot say how +grateful I am to you for having cheered her up as you have done! Oh," +with a low sigh that seems to bear away on its slow wings the last +echoes of her late mirth, "if it could only last!"</p> + +<p>"Why should not it last?"</p> + +<p>"If nothing fresh would happen!"</p> + +<p>"Why should anything fresh happen?"</p> + +<p>She answers only indirectly;</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'Fear at my heart, as at a cup,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The life-blood seemed to sip.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>"Sometimes I think that Coleridge wrote those lines expressly for me." +After a pause, in a voice of anxious asking: "She has not mentioned him +to you lately, has she?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"That is a good sign. Do not you think that that is a good sign? I think +that she is getting better; do not you?"</p> + +<p>For a moment he cannot answer, both because he is deeply touched by the +confidence in him and his sympathy evidenced by her appeal, and for a +yet more potent reason. Little she guesses how often, and with what +heart-searchings and spirit-sinkings, he has put that question to +himself.</p> + +<p>"I do not know," he replies at last, with difficulty; "it is hard to +judge."</p> + +<p>"You have not told him that we are here?" in a quick, panic-struck tone, +as of one smitten with a new and sharp apprehension.</p> + +<p>"Oh no!"</p> + +<p>"You do not think that he is at all likely to join you here?"</p> + +<p>"Not in the least!" with an almost angry energy, which reveals to +himself how deeply distasteful the mere suggestion of Byng's +reappearance on the scene is to him.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Le Marchant heaves a second sigh. This time it is one of relief.</p> + +<p>"Then I do not see," with a sudden bound upwards into sanguineness which +reminds him of her daughter, "why we should not all be very +comfortable."</p> + +<p>Jim is pondering in his mind upon the significance of this "all," +whether it is meant to include only Mr. Le Marchant, or whether, under +its shelter, he himself may creep into that promised comfort, when she +of whom they have been speaking re-enters. She has a packet of +photographs, presumably suitable for amputation, in her hand, in which +is also held a telegram, which she extends to Burgoyne.</p> + +<p>"I met M. Cipriani bringing you this. It seems that you ought to have +had it two days ago, but, by some mistake, it was put into another +gentleman's room—a gentleman who has never arrived—and there it has +remained. He was full of apologies, but I told him what culpable +carelessness it showed. I do trust," with a sweetly solicitous look, +"that it is not anything that matters."</p> + +<p>"It cannot be of much consequence," replies Jim indifferently, while a +sort of pang darts through him at the thought of how strangely destitute +he is of people to be uncomfortably anxious about, and so tears it open.</p> + +<p>An English telegram transmitted by French clerks often wears a very +different air from that meant to be imparted to it by the sender, which +is, perhaps, the reason why Jim remains staring so long at his—so long +that the two women's good manners prompt them to remove their +sympathetic eyes from him, and to attempt a little talk with each other.</p> + +<p>"I hope you have no bad news?"</p> + +<p>The elder one permits herself this inquiry after a more than decent +interval has elapsed, during which he has made no sign.</p> + +<p>He gives a start, as one too suddenly awaked out of deep sleep.</p> + +<p>"Bad news?" he repeats in an odd voice—"what is bad news? That depends +upon people's tastes. It is for you to judge of that; it concerns you as +much or more than it does me."</p> + +<p>So saying, he places the paper in her hand, and, walking away to the +little square window—open, despite the wildness of the weather—looks +out upon the indigo-coloured night.</p> + +<p>Although his back is turned towards them, he knows that Elizabeth is +reading over her mother's shoulder—reading this:</p> + +<blockquote> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"<span class="smcap">Bourgouin</span>,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">"Grand Hotel,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">"Algiers.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>"Have heard of Le Marchants. If you do not wire to the +contrary, shall cross to-morrow.—<span class="smcap">Byng</span>, Marseille."</p></blockquote> + +<p>He is not left long in doubt as to their having mastered the meaning of +the missive.</p> + +<p>"He is coming!" says Mrs. Le Marchant with a species of gasp; "and you +told me—not five minutes ago you told me"—with an accent of +reproach—"that there was not the remotest chance of it. Oh, stop him! +stop him! Telegraph at once! The office will be open for two or three +hours yet! There is plenty, plenty of time! Oh, telegraph at once—at +once!"</p> + +<p>"It is too late," replies Jim, retracing his steps to the table; "you +forget that it is two days old. You see, they have spelt my name wrong; +that accounts for the mistake. <i>Bourgouin!</i> It looks odd spelt +<i>Bourgouin</i>, does not it?"</p> + +<p>He hears himself giving a small, dry laugh, which nobody echoes.</p> + +<p>"He must have sailed yesterday," continues the young man, wishing he +could persuade his voice to sound more natural; "he may be here at any +moment. If the weather had been decent, he would have arrived ere now."</p> + +<p>"Then there is nothing to be done!" rejoins Mrs. Le Marchant in a tone +of flat desperation, sitting down again on the chair out of which she +had instinctively risen at the little stir of the telegram's arrival.</p> + +<p>Elizabeth is dead silent. Though there is no direction by the eye to +show that Jim's next remark is aimed at her, there can be no doubt that +it is awkwardly thrown in her direction.</p> + +<p>"If this had not been delayed—if it had not been too late, would you +have wished, would you have decided to stop him?"</p> + +<p>"What is the use of asking me such a question now that it <i>is</i> too +late?" replies she, with more of impatience, almost wrath, in her voice +than he has ever before heard that most gentle organ express.</p> + +<p>But besides the ire and irritation, there is another quality in it which +goads him to snatch a reluctant glance at her. She is extremely +agitated, but underlying the distress and disturbance of her face there +is an undoubted light shining like a lamp through a pale pink shade—a +light that, with all her laughter and her jokes, was not there half an +hour ago. He had often reproached himself that, by his clumsiness, he +had stuck a knife into her tender heart. She is even with him to-night. +To-night the tables are turned. It is she that has stuck a knife into +him. It is clear as day that she is <i>glad</i> it is too late.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIIIA" id="CHAPTER_VIIIA"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>"After all," says Mrs. Le Marchant presently, rallying a little, her +naturally buoyant temperament—that temperament which she has +transmitted with such curious fidelity to her child, coming to her +rescue; "after all, there is no reason why you should see him, +Elizabeth. There is no reason why she should see him, is there, Mr. +Burgoyne? It could serve no possible end—could it?—and only be +exceedingly painful to them both. You will explain to him, will not you? +You will take any message from her? You will tell him that she really is +not up to it, will not you? It is quite true, I am sure. You are not, +are you darling? She is not, is she?"</p> + +<p>The mother turns as she speaks eagerly from one to the other, addressing +each in turn; but from neither does she obtain any answer.</p> + +<p>"Or I would speak to him myself; if you thought that better," continues +she, still interrogating them with her handsome, careworn eyes. "I would +say anything you wished said to him, and I would be careful to say it as +kindly as possible. I am sure he would understand; he would see the +sense, the justice of it, would not he? There is no need for her to +expose herself to such useless suffering, is there, Mr. +Burgoyne?"—appealing desperately to him by name, since he will not +respond to any less direct address—"when either you or I are more than +ready to shield her from it, are not we?"</p> + +<p>Thus apostrophized, Jim is compelled to break the silence, which seems +to himself to wall him round like a petrifaction. It is to Elizabeth +that he offers his hardly-won speech.</p> + +<p>"I think I need not tell you," he says gravely, and with passable +steadiness, "that I would help you in any way I could."</p> + +<p>She stands a moment or two irresolute, her features all quivering as if +with pain; and yet, underlying and under-shining the pain, something +that is not pain. Then she puts out a hand impulsively to each. If the +one that gives itself to Burgoyne had struck him on the mouth, instead +of offering itself with affectionate confidence to his clasp, it could +not have hurt him more than do those small fingers that lie in his, +trembling with a passion that is not for him.</p> + +<p>"You are both very good to me," she says brokenly. "As to you, mammy, +that is an old story. But I really believe that there is nothing +disagreeable that you, too"—with a slight grateful pressure of the +lifeless hand that so slackly keeps possession of hers—"would not do +for me. But do not think me obstinate if I say that I think—I am +sure—that it would be better—that it would hurt him less—if I spoke +to him myself."</p> + +<p>"It is not a question of what will hurt him least," cries Mrs. Le +Marchant, with an agony of impatience in her tone. "The thing to be +considered is what will hurt <i>you</i> least. Mr. Burgoyne, am I not right? +Do tell her that I am! Ought not she to think of what will hurt her +least?"</p> + +<p>But Jim is incapable of coming a second time to her rescue. His eyes are +painfully fastened upon Elizabeth, and he is watching the pain fall off, +as it were, from her face, and the light spread rosily over it. Some +instinct makes her withdraw that hand of hers which he has shown so +little eagerness to retain, ere she says, in a low but perfectly firm +voice:</p> + +<p>"Well, then, I think it will hurt me least, too."</p> + +<p>Five minutes later Jim has left the room—ostensibly to make +arrangements for his friend's arrival, in reality because he cannot +count upon his own self-control if he remain in it. The survivors of +Elizabeth Le Marchant's acquaintance remain undecapitated. The +widow-headed Life Guardsman and the baby-bodied cornet lie unregarded on +the table, while Elizabeth herself is stretched along the floor, with +her face pressed against her mother's knees. Jim has decided to sit up +for his friend. He is perfectly aware that neither will the two women go +to bed. But he has no desire that their vigil should be shared in +common. It is equally impossible to him to take part in the noisy mirth +of the rest of the hotel, which, having taken the place of their +measureless daylight ennui, now boils over in ebullient laughter, in +dancing, squeaking, and noisily scampering out of the public +drawing-room into the hall and up the stairs. It is not till the clamour +has declined, until, indeed, its total cessation tells him that the +promiscuous revellers have retired to their apartments, that he issues +from his, and takes possession of the now empty smoking-room, whence he +can hear more distinctly than from his own bedroom any noise of wheels +approaching the hotel. The wind has risen again, and it needs an ear +very finely pricked to dissever from its mad singing, and from the +storming of the frantic rain, any lesser and alien sound. What a +terrific night in which to be out on the raging sea! Worse even than +that one last week, when the <i>Moïse</i> broke her shaft, and tossed for +twenty-four hours at the mercy of the waves. Possibly the weather may +have already yesterday been so rough at Marseille as to prevent his +setting off. But the idea—at the first blush eagerly welcomed by +him—is dismissed from his mind almost as soon as entertained. If the +boat has started—and it is only under such heavy penalties that the +mail-boats do not start, that this contingency hardly ever occurs—Byng +will have started too. A terrific bang at the casement seems to come as +a comment upon this conviction. He will have started; but will he ever +arrive? It is said that in eight years during which they have been +running no catastrophe has ever sent one of this line of steamers to the +bottom; but yet they are cranky little craft, with engines too big for +them—built rather for speed than safety. The clock has struck, with a +repetition that seems strangely frequent through the sleeping house: 11, +11.30, 12, 12.30.</p> + +<p>"I will give him half an hour more," says the watcher to himself, "and +then I will turn in."</p> + +<p>Of this allotted half-hour only five minutes are yet left to run, when, +in a lull in the hurricane, the sound which Jim's hearing has been so +long stretched to catch—the sound of wheels on the gravel—is at length +audible. During the last two hours he has heard many phantom +wheels—many of those ghostly coaches that the wind drives shrieking +through the winter nights. But these are real ones. Before the drowsy +porter, nodding in his little den, can reach the hall-door, Jim has +opened it—opened it just in time to admit a man who, his pace still +further accelerated by the mighty hands of the pushing blast, is +bounding up the steps. If any doubt as to this person's identity +lingered in Jim's mind, his first words would dispel it.</p> + +<p>"She is here? There is no mistake? She is here?"</p> + +<p>"How late you are!" cries the other, apparently regarding the new +arrival's utterance more as an ejaculation than as a question expecting +or needing an answer. "Why are you so late? Did the engines break down?"</p> + +<p>"She is here?" repeats Byng insistently, taking no notice of the queries +addressed to him. "You have not deceived me? For mercy's sake say that +you have not deceived me!"</p> + +<p>"Why should I deceive you?" rejoins Jim impatiently. "Yes; certainly she +is here."</p> + +<p>They are in the hall by now—the hall which, the Grand Hotel being +gasless, is lit by only one weak paraffin lamp, which the gust from the +door, necessarily still open to admit of the carrying in of the +traveller's bags and rugs, is making even more faint and flickering than +its wont.</p> + +<p>"You must have had a fine tossing!"</p> + +<p>"I believe you; they all thought we were going to make a dinner for the +fishes—ha, ha! All but I. I knew better. I knew that I could not come +to grief when <i>she</i> had called me to her."</p> + +<p>Byng's hat is rammed down over his brows, and his fur coat turned up so +high round his ears that it is impossible in the obscurity to see his +face; but there is something in the tone of his voice—a loud, wild +rollicking—that makes the idea cross Jim's mind that he has been +drinking. What a shock it will give to Elizabeth if, in her covert +vigil—he has no more doubt that she has been watching than that he has +been doing so himself—she overhears that thick, raised voice! Prompted +by this thought, he says hastily:</p> + +<p>"Come into the dining-room. I told them to put something to eat for you +there."</p> + +<p>Byng complies; and when they have reached the empty <i>salle à manger</i>, +whose whitewash looks weird and unnatural in the chill of the night, he +sends his hat skimming down one of the long tables, and, grasping both +Jim's hands in his, cries out, in the same loud tone of intoxicated +triumph:</p> + +<p>"Oh, my dear old chap, how good it is to see your ugly old mug again! If +you had known—oh, if you had only known!—what I went through during +the twenty-four hours after I sent you that telegram, when through every +hour, through every minute and second of every hour, I said to myself, +'It may come <i>now</i>—my death-warrant may come <i>now</i>! In five minutes it +may have come!' But it did not, it did not! I ought to have known"—with +an accent of ecstasy—"that of her pitifulness she would relent at last. +She is infinitely pitiful, is not she? but I shall upbraid her a +little—oh, do not be afraid; it will be gently, <i>most</i> gently—for +having kept me so long, so inhumanly long, upon my gridiron! I had +always"—breaking into a rather wild laugh—"something of a tenderness +for St. Lawrence, but during the last seven months I have loved him like +a brother!"</p> + +<p>He goes on again, with scarcely a pause, or apparently any consciousness +of the unresponsive silence of his auditor:</p> + +<p>"But what does it matter now?" beginning to stride about with his eyes +cast up to the beamed ceiling and his lifted hands locked +together—"what does it matter? 'After long grief and pain, to feel the +arms of my true love round me once again!' You may think that I word it +extravagantly," returning to Jim as he leans downcast and shocked upon +one of the chairs of the monotonous <i>table-d'hôte</i> row; "but in the hope +itself, the more than hope, there is nothing extravagant; you must own +that yourself. If she had not meant to put an end to my long agony, she +would not have sent for me; <i>not</i> to stop me was to send for me."</p> + +<p>"You are labouring under a mistake," says Jim coldly, and yet with an +inward quaking as to the effect that his words may produce; "she had not +the option of stopping you. By some accident I did not receive your +telegram till four hours ago. She could not have stopped you if she had +wished."</p> + +<p>The idea, as I have already said, has occurred to Burgoyne that his +companion is under the influence of intoxication; but either this is not +the case, or the shock of the last words has the effect of instantly +sobering him.</p> + +<p>"I—I—do not understand," he says in a voice out of which all the +insane exhilaration has been conjured as if by magic; "I do not follow +you. What do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"I mean," replies Jim, in a matter-of-fact, level tone, meant to have a +calming effect upon his auditor, "that owing, I suppose, to my name +being spelt wrongly—Bourgouin instead of Burgoyne—your telegram was +given to someone else, and did not reach me till nine o'clock this +evening."</p> + +<p>Byng puts up his hand to his throat, and, unfastening the collar of his +fur coat as if it were strangling him, throws back the coat itself. Now +that he sees him freed from enveloping wrap and concealing hat-brim, Jim +can realize the full amount of change and deterioration that are visible +in his appearance; can see how bloodshot his eyes are; how lined his +mouth; and how generally ravaged and dimmed his good looks.</p> + +<p>"I am to understand, then, that—that she would have stopped my coming +if she could."</p> + +<p>Jim is silent. He cannot answer that question with any certainty even to +himself.</p> + +<p>"She would have escaped me again if she had had the chance! What am I +saying?"—with a sudden access of terror in his tone—"she may have +escaped me already! She may be gone! Tell me the truth—do not dare to +tell me anything but the bare truth. I saw that you hesitated when I +asked you whether she was really here. Is she gone?"</p> + +<p>"Gone!" repeats Jim, with an exasperated jerk of the head towards the +window, against which the rain and wind are hurling themselves with +threefold rage, as if to recapture the victim just escaped them. +"To-night—in this storm? How likely! Come, be rational; try to keep +your head, and let us have a truce to this ranting. I give you my word +of honour that she is here, under this roof; asleep, I should hope, if +your bellowings have not awoke her."</p> + +<p>The latter clause may perhaps come under the head of a pardonable +fiction; at all events, it has, despite its incivility, the desired +effect of soothing, to some extent, the agitation of him to whom it is +addressed.</p> + +<p>"Asleep!" he repeats, while an ecstatic smile breaks over his handsome, +dissipated face. "Good angels guard her slumbers! But"—with a rather +ominous return of excitement—"are you sure that she <i>is</i> asleep—that +she has gone to bed yet? They used to sit up very late in Florence +sometimes. If she has not gone to bed, why should not I see her; why +should not I fall at her feet <i>now</i>—to-night?"</p> + +<p>"My dear boy," rejoins Jim, with a praiseworthy attempt to answer this +modest and sensible proposal with patient good-humour, "have you any +idea what time it is? I should have thought it might have occurred even +to you that 1.30 <span class="smcap">A.M.</span> is scarcely a suitable hour for paying a morning +call! Do not be a fool! Pull yourself together. I swear to you that she +has every intention of seeing you to-morrow. Come"—trying to +laugh—"you will not have long to wait! It is to-morrow already; and, +meantime, sit down and eat something; you must be as empty as a drum."</p> + +<p>But to this prudent if homely counsel Byng opposes an obstinate +negation, adorned with excited asseverations that food shall never cross +his lips until they have pastured upon his lady's pardoning hand.</p> + +<p>The same prohibition does not, however, apparently apply to drink, as he +pours more than half the bottle of happily not very potent wine, +prepared for his refreshment, into a tumbler, and tosses it off at a +draught. He offers an even stouter refusal to Burgoyne's suggestion that +he should go to bed; and as he utters it a flash of cunning suspicion +comes into his eyes, shocking his friend with a gleam as of possible and +scarcely latent madness. Across the latter's brain darts the query, +which had proposed itself more than once to him last spring at Florence:</p> + +<p>"Is there insanity in Byng's blood"</p> + +<p>Not certainly on the distaff side, the side of his eminently sane and +wholesome mother; but can he be throwing back to some distempered +ancestor?</p> + +<p>"What security have I if I go to bed that she will not steal away from +me in the night? It was in the night—almost in the night—that she +stole away from me before."</p> + +<p>From this logic it is impossible to move him; and although, with some +return to his old sweet-natured kindliness of manner, he begs his friend +not to think it necessary to keep him company, yet the latter is far too +ill at ease as to his condition, both of mind and body, to comply.</p> + +<p>The porter, having drawn the natural inference that as soon as the +traveller has refreshed his body he will wish to retire to rest, has put +out the lights in the smoking-room; the <i>salle à manger</i> is therefore +the only room in the hotel where lamps still burn, and in it the two men +spend the dreary remaining hours of the night, Byng walking up and down +like a captive beast, frequently going to the door, opening it, putting +his head out into the darkness, and listening suspiciously if, +perchance, he may hear the footfall of Elizabeth fleeing away from him +even through the hurricane. As the time goes on, his restlessness +increases rather than diminishes. Jim has vainly tried to distract his +thoughts by putting questions to him as to his pursuits and companions +since their last parting—by inquiries as to the extent and direction of +his travels.</p> + +<p>Did he get as far as Palestine? How long is it since he left Cairo? etc. +But to all his interrogations Byng gives brief and unsatisfactory +answers, putting a final stop to them by breaking out excitedly:</p> + +<p>"Why do you go on questioning me as to where I have been, and what I +have done? I tell you I have been nowhere, and done nothing; I believe +that my body has been here and there, but my soul has been nowhere; it +has been lying dead! Would you expect a man who has been lying six +months in his coffin to give you a catalogue of his adventures? My soul +has been dead, I tell you—dead and putrescent. What is the use of +putting me through a catechism about its doings?"</p> + +<p>Before the long-delaying dawn shows its pale profile upon the deep +obscurity, it seems to Jim as if six midwinter nights must have pieced +themselves end to end. But it comes at last; and at last also, by dint +of strenuous representations to his companion as to how unfit he is, in +his present travel-stained and disordered condition, to offer himself to +Elizabeth's eyes, he induces him to let himself be led to the bedroom +prepared overnight for him, and to refresh himself with a bath and a +change of clothes. Even this concession he obtains only in exchange for +an exacted promise to seek out Elizabeth at the earliest possible hour +at which she may be presumed accessible, and urgently to entreat of her +an instant interview with his friend.</p> + +<p>Jim feels that he is keeping his word handsomely when, not a minute +later than nine o'clock, he finds himself knocking at the door of the Le +Marchants' apartment—that door with which of late his knuckles have +grown so pleasantly and friendlily familiar. It is opened to him by +Elizabeth herself, and he follows her silently through the ante-room +into the little <i>salon</i>. Arrived there, he looks mournfully round with a +sort of feeling as of taking farewell of the familiar objects.</p> + +<p>It is impossible that Elizabeth can have spent the just-past stormy +night in gathering flowers, and yet the flowers have a freshened air. +She must have been carefully rearranging them. The bits of brocade, too, +the Turkish embroideries, the <i>haiks</i>, and the praying-carpets, wear a +more festal appearance than usual. The little room looks decked as if +for a gala. His jealous fancy cannot but admit that Elizabeth herself is +dressed in her ordinary morning gown, but even over it some holiday +transmutation has passed. He cannot trust himself to verify whether that +holiday look is on her face too.</p> + +<p>"He has come; you know that, I suppose?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>What a catch in her breath! He must steal a glance at her. She will +think it unnatural if he does not; and perhaps his eye may not be +offended by so much radiance as he feared. In her voice there was +something not very distant from a sob. The result of his glance shows +itself in what sounds like a reproach.</p> + +<p>"I do not believe that you went to bed at all."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I did! yes, I did!" hurrying away eagerly from the subject of +herself, as from something irrelevant and importunate; "and—he—how is +he? How does he look? Had not he a dreadful crossing? Does he want to +see me? to see me soon? to-day?"</p> + +<p>There is such a breathless passion in her tone, coupled with something +so apologetic for putting her questions to him, that his heart, hitherto +half touched, half angered by the pathos of her little preparations, +melts wholly towards her.</p> + +<p>"Of course he wants to see you—wants it very, very much," replies he; +and, to his credit, replies without any harshness marring the cordial +kindness of his tone. "As much as"—with a rather melancholy smile—"you +want to see him. No, do not be angry. Why should not you wish to see +each other?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, there is every reason!" cries she miserably—"the same reason that +there always was. But"—with rising agitation—"where is it to be? How +soon? When does he wish it?"</p> + +<p>"He is waiting outside now."</p> + +<p>She starts painfully.</p> + +<p>"<i>Now!</i> Oh, poor fellow! we must not keep him waiting; and +yet"—stretching out her hand in detention—"tell me, before he comes +in—tell me, is he changed? Is he? Is he the same as he was?"</p> + +<p>Jim hesitates, and the painful perplexity written on his brow is misread +by her.</p> + +<p>"You are vexed with me for teasing you with so many tiresome questions. +Oh, forgive me! I ought not to take advantage of your kindness; but we +have grown to depend upon you so; and I will promise not to worry you +with any other, if you will only answer me this one. Is he changed—much +changed?"</p> + +<p>"I am afraid," replies Jim, with the slowness of one who is trying to +convey unpleasant tidings in the least unpleasant terms, "that you must +be prepared to find him a good deal altered."</p> + +<p>"Altered! How?"</p> + +<p>"I do not quite know how to describe it"—uneasily—"but you must not be +shocked if you find him a good deal changed in looks; and he is—he +seems, in a very excited state."</p> + +<p>She makes a clutch at his hand.</p> + +<p>"Do you mean"—her voice has sunk to a horror-struck whisper—"that he +is—mad?"</p> + +<p>"Mad! Oh, of course not," with a strained laugh; "you must not jump to +such conclusions. But I do not think he is quite himself, that is all. +He looks as if he had not eaten or slept for a fortnight; and if you +play such tricks as that with yourself, you must expect to get a little +off your balance."</p> + +<p>She is still terrifiedly clutching his hand, though with no +consciousness of doing so, nor that the fingers so tightly gripped by +her are not made of dry stick.</p> + +<p>"You must not look so frightened," he says soothingly. "I would not have +said anything to you, only that I thought it better you should be +prepared—that it should not take you quite by surprise; and also +because I wanted to give you a hint, that you might be a little careful +what you say to him, or, at all events, how you say it."</p> + +<p>Still she does not speak, and there is scarcely any diminution of the +horror of her look.</p> + +<p>"If you do not mind, I think it would be as well to have someone within +call, if he—he—became—unreasonable."</p> + +<p>"Do you think," she asks, with a sort of scorn, "that I am afraid of +him—afraid for myself?"</p> + +<p>"No, that I am sure you are not; but I cannot shake off the idea +that—poor fellow!—he may be on the verge of some grave illness; and in +that sort of case one never knows what may happen. So, if you do not +mind——"</p> + +<p>"As you please," she answers, docile even now. "Do as you think best; +and will you tell him that I am ready to see him?"</p> + +<p>The misgivings with which Jim complies with this request are not much +allayed by the manner and voice of him who receives it, and who has been +raging up and down the narrow corridor.</p> + +<p>"She will not see me, I suppose?"</p> + +<p>"On the contrary, she will see you now. But stay!" catching him by the +arm as he springs past him. "One moment! For God's sake control +yourself! Behave like a gentleman. Do not make her a scene; she is not +up to it."</p> + +<p>Byng's answer is to fling resentfully away the detaining hand of his +Mentor, while he says, with a furious look coming into his bloodshot +eyes:</p> + +<p>"What do you mean by keeping me here, preaching to me, while <i>she</i> is +waiting for me?"</p> + +<p>The rudeness of both words and actions is so unlike the real Byng, that +it is with an even more sinking spirit than before that Jim follows him +with his eyes as he passes out of sight into the <i>salon</i>. As soon as the +door is shut behind him, he himself takes up the position he had +suggested in the ante-room.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IXA" id="CHAPTER_IXA"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>There are few things more trying to an active-minded person than to sit +occupationless, vaguely waiting. At first, it is true, the keenness of +Jim's alarm prevents his feeling the ennui which would be the natural +result of his situation. Poignantly anxious questions succeed each other +in his mind. Has he had any right to permit the interview at all? How +far is Byng accountable for his actions? What chance is there that his +already rocking reason will stand the shock of a meeting which, even in +his sanest moments, would have so wildly excited him? And if not, what +may be the consequences? Grisly headings of newspaper paragraphs write +themselves in the air before him—"Homicidal Mania," "Murder and +Suicide."</p> + +<p>The details of a tragic story which, illustrated by sensational +woodcuts, he had idly read a day or two ago in a venerable <i>Police +News</i>, left lying on the smoking-room table, recur to his memory. It was +a tale of a groom who, in an access of jealous madness, had shot a +scullion sweetheart through the head, and then blown his own brains out. +The tale had made but little impression on him at the time—unhappily, +it is scarcely possible to take up a journal without the eye alighting +upon some such—but it comes back to him now with terrifying vividness. +What security is there that such tragedies may be confined to grooms and +kitchen-maids? How does he know that Byng has not a revolver hidden in +his breast-pocket? How can he tell that he is not at this very moment +drawing it out? He (Jim) ought to have made sure, before exposing her to +such a peril, that the danger was minimized by Byng's being weaponless. +Is it too late to make sure of that even now?</p> + +<p>He takes one step towards the <i>salon</i> door, then hastily retraces it. +Pooh! he is growing as mad as Byng. They will come out and find him +eavesdropping.</p> + +<p>He retreats to the table, which is at the greatest distance allowed by +the room's narrow enceinte from the scene of the drama whose +<i>dénouement</i> he is expecting, and, sitting down, takes up a book. It +happens to be Elizabeth's Italian exercise-book, and the sight of it +conjures up before his memory her forlorn figure stooping disconsolately +over the page, wrapped in her brown furs, as he had seen it on that +rainy night that seems now so distant. He had pitied her for being +lonely then. Well, whatever else she may be, she is not lonely now.</p> + +<p>He catches his breath. It is quite a quarter of an hour since he began +his watch. How quiet they are! There is a murmur of voices, but there is +nothing that in the least indicates violence. Before his eyes there +flashes in grotesque recollection the hideous picture in the <i>Police +News</i> which illustrates the high words with which the catastrophe of the +groom and kitchenmaid had been heralded. He has been making a mountain +out of a mole-hill; has been exaggerating his friend's emotional +temperament, naturally further heightened by sleeplessness and want of +food, into incipient insanity. If he were mad, or at all tending that +way, would he be talking in the low rational key which he obviously must +be? It is evident that her presence, her eye, her—yes, what more +likely?—her touch have soothed and conjured away what of excessive or +perilous there was in his emotion.</p> + +<p>They have been together half an hour now. All danger is certainly over. +Why should he any longer continue his officious and needless +watch?—superfluously spying upon them?</p> + +<p>Relieved as to what he had thought his worst fear, and yet with an +uncommon bitterness about his heart, he turns to withdraw, and his hand +is already on the lock of the door which leads into the corridor, when +suddenly, without any warning, there reaches his ear the noise of a +loud, crashing fall, followed—accompanied, rather—by a piercing +scream.</p> + +<p>In infinitely less than a second he finds himself on his knees beside +the prostrate body of Byng, who, with blood pouring from his forehead, +is stretched upon the floor of the <i>salon</i>. Even at this second there +flashes upon him, ludicrous and dreadful, the memory of the <i>Police +News</i>. This scene has a grotesque likeness to the final one of the groom +and kitchenmaid series, only that in the present case the heroine, +instead of staggering backward with the top of her head flying up to the +ceiling, is hanging unharmed over her fallen lover.</p> + +<p>"Are you hurt?" cries Jim in frantic anxiety, looking at her across the +prostrate figure, and unable to eradicate from his mind the revolver +idea. "Did he hit you? I did not hear a shot."</p> + +<p>"Oh no, no! but he," fetching her breath in terrible gasps, and hanging +over the bleeding man with that utter abandonment of all disguise, in +which a great naked grief sweeps away our sophistications—"he is dead!"</p> + +<p>"Oh no, he is not," answers Jim hastily, tearing open Byng's waistcoat +and laying his hand upon his heart. "He has only fainted. Get some +water! Have you got any salts? No; do not lift his head"—seeing that +she is agonizedly trying to raise his prone head and rest it upon her +knees—"he had better be as flat as he can. Quick, some water!"</p> + +<p>She does not need to be twice told. In an instant she has sprung to the +table, and brought thence the china jug out of which she is wont to +water her flowers, and also the big cut-glass bottle of smelling-salts +with which Jim has often seen poor Mrs. Le Marchant solacing herself +when racked with that neuralgic headache which means worry. He splashes +water out of the one upon Byng's ashy face, and holds the other to his +pale nostrils; while Elizabeth, once more flinging herself upon her +knees, wipes the blood from his temples with her little useless gossamer +inch of handkerchief.</p> + +<p>"How did it happen?" asks Jim rapidly. "What did he do to himself?"</p> + +<p>The heads of the two ministrants are very close to each other as they +bend together over the swooned youth. Jim can see a little smear of +Byng's blood upon one of her white cheeks. The sight gives him a +shudder. Byng seems to have made her more his own by that gory baptism +than by all his frenzied vows and tears.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I do not know," she answers, still fetching both breath and words +with difficulty. "He was standing up, and he seemed quite right; and +then, all of a sudden, in a minute, he went down like a log, and hit his +forehead against the sharp corner of the table"—with a convulsive +shiver at the recollection. "I ought to have saved him! I ought; but I +was not quick enough. I stood stock-still, and now he is dead! You say +that he is not; but I am sure he is dead!"</p> + +<p>"Oh no, nonsense! he is not," replies Jim brusquely, thinking a certain +harshness of manner the best recipe for her. "He is alive, sure enough; +and as for the cut on his forehead, now that you have wiped the blood +away, you can see for yourself that it is not at all a deep one. It is +merely a big scratch. I have often had a worse out hunting from a +bramble, in jumping through a hedge. Oh, Mrs. Le Marchant, here you are! +That is all right. We have had an accident, you see. He has fallen down +in a faint, and given himself a bit of a knock. That is all; do not be +frightened. It looks worse than it is—Oh, M. Cipriani, vous voilà! +Envoyez chercher un médecin tout de suite! Il y a un M. Crump"—catching +in his destitution at the thought of even Sybilla's objectionable +friend.</p> + +<p>But hereupon half a dozen voices—for by this time even more than that +number of inmates of the hotel have thronged into the little room—raise +themselves to pronounce another name—the name of one who both stands +higher in medical fame and is more quickly procurable. In search of him +Zameth, the porter, is instantly despatched, and meanwhile about the +inanimate body sympathizers stand three deep, until reluctantly +dispersed by a hint of a nature so broad as not to be misunderstood from +Jim, to the effect that the patient would have a better chance of coming +to himself if he were allowed to have a breath of air. By the time the +doctor arrives—there is some small delay before he appears—all are got +rid of, and, Mrs. Le Marchant having gone to give directions for having +Jim's room arranged for the sick man, both because it is on the +ground-floor and also of a better size than that allotted to him, Jim +and Elizabeth are once again left <i>tête-à-tête</i>.</p> + +<p>Once again they kneel on either side of the prone figure. How dreadfully +dead and how extravagantly long it looks! Once again he sees that +blood-smear on her face. It is just above her one dimple, and stands out +in ghastly incongruity over that little pitfall for love and laughter. +How passionately he wishes that he might ask her to go and wash it off! +If he did she would not hear him. She has no ears left, no eyes, no +sense, save for that livid face, splashed with the water which has not +brought him back to life, and with the red drops still slowly trickling +from the wound on his brow, and which have stained here and there the +damp tendrils of his hair—for that livid face and for the flaccid +hands, which she rubs between her own with an ever more terrified +energy, as he still gives no sign of returning consciousness.</p> + +<p>By-and-by he is taken out of her custody. She is robbed even of the +wretched satisfaction of chafing his poor senseless fingers. On the +arrival of the doctor he is carried off, and laid upon the bed that has +been made ready for him. She follows them miserably as they bear him +staggeringly across the hall—a powerfully-built young man of over six +feet high, in the perfect inertness of syncope, is no light weight—and +looks hungrily over the threshold of the bedroom; but when she attempts +to cross it Jim puts her gently back.</p> + +<p>"No, dear, no!" he says. (He is almost sure afterwards that for that +once in his life he calls her "dear.") "You had better not. We think he +is coming round, and if you are the first person he sees when he comes +to himself it might be bad for him—might hurt him. You would not hurt +him, would you?"</p> + +<p>"No, I would not hurt him," she answers slowly. And so turns in her +utter tractableness, and goes away meekly without a word.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>It is evening again now, almost the same hour at which Jim and Elizabeth +were beheading photographs twenty-four hours ago. Twenty-four hours! It +feels more like twenty-four years. This is what he says to himself as he +once again opens the door of the Le Marchants' apartment. It is the +first time during the whole day, except to snatch a couple of mouthfuls +of food, that he has left Byng's side; and it is only due to the fact +that Mrs. Le Marchant is supplying his place, and has sent him on a +message to her daughter, that he has quitted his post. He knows that she +has meant to do him a kindness in despatching him upon this errand; but +he is not sure that it is one.</p> + +<p>Elizabeth is not in the <i>salon</i>, but the screen that masks the door +separating that room from the little alcove beyond is folded back. Over +the doorway is a hanging of Eastern embroidery—as to the meaning of the +strange gold scrolls that look like Arab letters on whose red ground +Elizabeth and he have often idly speculated. He pushes it aside, and +sees her standing with her back towards him, the flimsy muslin +window-curtains drawn back as she looks out on the night. The alcove is +on ordinary occasions scarcely ever occupied, and there is something +uneasy and uncomfortable that matches the wretchedness of her other +circumstances in finding her standing there alone and idle.</p> + +<p>The elements have long finished their raging, and fallen to boisterous +play. It has been a fine day, and though the sun has long laid down his +sceptre, he has passed it on with scarcely diminished, though altered, +radiance to his white imitator. It is broad moonlight—startlingly +broad. The moon hangs overhead, with never a cloud-kerchief about her +great disk. The winds that, loudly sporting, are up and abroad have +chased every vapour from the sky, which is full of throbbing white +stars. Before he reaches her side she has heard him, and turned to meet +him, with a mixed hunger and pitiful hope in her wan face. She thinks +that he has come to fetch her. He must kill that poor hope, and the +quicklier the more mercifully.</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Le Marchant sent me. I came to tell you that he has recovered +consciousness. You see, you were wrong"-with an attempt at a reassuring +smile—"he is not dead, after all. He is conscious; that is to say, he +is not insensible; but I am afraid he is not quite himself yet, and you +must not—must not mind—must not be frightened, I mean—if he begins to +shout out and talk nonsense by-and-by: the doctor says it is what we +must expect."</p> + +<p>"And may I—mayn't I—will not you let me?"</p> + +<p>What a quivering voice the hope has, and yet how alive it is! However +clumsily, and with whatever bitter yearnings over the pain he is causing +her, he must knock it on the head at once.</p> + +<p>"Go to him?—impossible! quite out of the question! The great object is +to keep him perfectly quiet, and if once he caught sight of you—"</p> + +<p>"But if he is not himself," interrupts she, with a pathetic pertinacity, +"he would not know me. I could not do him any harm if he did not know +me, and I might do something—oh, ever such a little thing for him! If +you knew what it was to stand here and do nothing—<i>do nothing</i> +indeed!"—with a change of tone to one of agonized self-reproach;—"have +not I done enough already? Oh, would anyone have believed that it would +be I that should kill him!"</p> + +<p>She turns back to the window again, and dashes her forehead with +violence against the frame. Outside the tall date-palm is shaken through +all its plumes by the loud breeze; it is swaying and waving and blowing, +and not less is its solid shadow cut out by the moonshine's keen knife +on the terrace, wavering and shaking too, as if convulsed by laughter. +The porch of the hotel—mere whitewash and plaster, as memory and reason +tell one that it is—stands out in glorified ivory like the portals of +such a palace as we see in vision, when</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Good dreams possess our fancy."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>"I can't have you talking such nonsense," says Jim, in an exceedingly +kind and not very steady voice, for his own feelings are horribly +harrowed; and on thinking over the scene afterwards, he cannot swear +that, at this point, he did not pass a most brotherly arm for one moment +round the poor little heaving shoulder, which is shaking almost as much +as the palm-tree's shadow. "He is not going to die; he is not thinking +of dying. Nobody has killed him—least of all you."</p> + +<p>She makes him no answer, nor lifts her stricken head, over which he +looks out, while the ghostly mirth shakes the landscape; at his wits' +end, in search of consolation. Below waves a sea of foliage, out of +which the strong elfin light has stolen all the colour. From that +colourless dark ocean rises far away to the right the dazzling little +snowy dome of a mosque, showing like a transfigured mushroom; and down +below the rounding bay is seen laying its foam-lips in white glory on +the land.</p> + +<p>"Dr. Stephens feels sure that he must have had a sunstroke. You know +that he has been in the East. He was a month in Cairo; the sun has great +power there, even in winter, and he is sure to have exposed himself +recklessly. He was on his way home—had got as far as Paris, it +seems—when he accidentally heard that you were here. Since then, no +doubt, he has neither eaten nor slept; so you see how little you are to +blame. You know that I told you how odd he was before you even saw him. +Do not you remember?"—trying to recall every circumstance that may tend +to reassure her—"I warned you that you would have to be careful what +you said to him?"</p> + +<p>His words have a very different effect from that intended by him.</p> + +<p>"Oh, that is why I cannot forgive myself!" says she, with what sounds +almost like a cry of physical pain. "You <i>did</i> warn me; I had no excuse. +In his state I ought never—it was murdering him to tell him—"</p> + +<p>She breaks off. To tell him what? Jim bites his lips hard to hinder +himself from putting this question, as he again, in mercy to her, looks +away from her out into the night.</p> + +<p>The moon has swum over the housetop by now; but one can see her +handiwork as plainly as ever in the broad argent fringe, like the border +of a cloak, that marks where the waves are breaking on the beach.</p> + +<p>One often talks of a fringe without really meaning that there is much +likeness to one; but to-night the moon-washed breakers really do wear +that aspect—a fringe of silver with long silver tags and ends.</p> + +<p>"But I was so deceived," she continues, with that wail still in her +voice; "he was not violent. After what you had told me, I expected him +to be violent; but he was not: he was quite gentle and quiet, and he did +beg so hard, and I was so glad to see him again, that I felt I was +giving in—that I should give way altogether if I did not tell him—tell +him at once, without giving myself time to think; and so I did"—growing +very breathless and incoherent—"and in a second; and then all in a +minute, without any warning, just as if I had shot him through the head, +he went down with a crash. I did not see it, for I was not looking at +him. I could not bear to look at him while I told him. I had both hands +over my face, and then—and then—I heard him fall."</p> + +<p>What can Jim say to her? Fear lest any dastardly unchivalrous curiosity +may seem to pierce through whatever sympathetic question he might put to +her keeps him dumb, and stupidly staring at the bowing, ironically merry +palm.</p> + +<p>"And now," she goes on, lifting her face, and he is shocked to see how +livid it is in the moonlight, "he will go out of the world thinking me +much worse than I really am, for I had not time to tell him all. He +heard only the bare fact; he did not hear what excuse I had—that I was +not really so wicked as—as—he will die thinking me."</p> + +<p>The sob with which she ends alarms him by its kinship to a convulsion.</p> + +<p>"I do not know what to say to you," he says, desperately making a snatch +at her two hands, as if by the violence of his grip he could convey to +her some little portion of the deep compassion that is swelling up in +his heart for her; "I am so much in the dark. No, no, no!" with a return +of that terror lest this ejaculation should seem the outcome of any +inquisitiveness; "I do not want you to tell me anything! What is more, I +will not listen to you if you attempt it; but what there is not the +least manner of doubt about is that his fainting had no sort of +reference to what you said to him: he would have fainted whatever you +had said to him, or if you had said nothing at all. He was as mad as a +hatter when he went in to you. It is all part of the same +thing—over-fatigue, sunstroke. But he is not going to die"—with a +hurried trip back to his former strain of consolation—"he is not +thinking of it; I promise you, I give you my word of honour"—becoming +perfectly reckless and completely insensate—"that he shall not!"</p> + +<p>But she is too strangled with sobs to make any rejoinder.</p> + +<p>"He shall have the best of nursing," goes on Jim. "I have telegraphed +for a nurse to Nice. How astonishing it is that in a place of this size +you cannot get a decent sick-nurse! I hoped we might have caught the one +who nursed General Smith before——"</p> + +<p>He stops abruptly, with a too tardy recollection that the allusion is +not a happy once, since the General died two days ago. Unfortunately, +she also remembers, as is evidenced by the strong shudder that passes +over her.</p> + +<p>"If he dies, will he be buried in that deep narrow, red grave that they +showed us in the Protestant cemetery, and which they said that they +always kept open for English visitors? If he dies! if he dies! Oh, if I +could but have told him! if he would but have waited for me to tell him +how it really was!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XA" id="CHAPTER_XA"></a>CHAPTER X.</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Though "February Fill-dyke" was never and nowhere truer to her name than +this year, and in Algiers—coming laden with wet days to make the green +Sahel, if possible, greener than it was before; yet the inhabitants of +the Grand Hotel do not again, for a matter of three weeks, relieve their +ennui or let off their energies in far from Dumb Crambo, or loud +charade. The voice of the battledore is silent in the entrance-hall, and +the shuttlecock sleeps. M. Cipriani has scarcely had to do more than +mention his request that they would lay aside their more noisy pastimes, +for they are, most of them, rather good-natured persons than otherwise, +since, indeed, it is quite as uncommon to be very ill-natured as to be +very selfless, or very foolish, or very wise. Those of them who have +been fortunate enough to be present at the catastrophe have carried away +such a moving image of a wounded Adonis, apparently several yards long, +stretched upon Mrs. Le Marchant's Persian carpet, that they have +infected those less happy persons who know of him only by hearsay with a +compassionate interest scarcely inferior to their own.</p> + + +<p>The only person in the hotel who makes much noise is poor Byng himself, +and for awhile he falls it with clamour enough to furnish two or three +of those bump suppers of which, not so long ago, he was a conspicuous +ornament.</p> + +<p>There had never, even when he was in his wits, been much disguise as to +the state of his feelings; now that he is out of them, the whole house +rings with his frantic callings upon the name of Elizabeth, uttered in +every key of rage, expostulation, tenderness, and appeal. These cries +reach Elizabeth herself as she sits cowering in that one of the little +suite of rooms which is nearest the door of entrance—sits there +cowering, and yet with the door, through which those dreadful sounds +penetrate to her, ajar, in order the better to hear them—cowering, and +for several days alone.</p> + +<p>Owing to various accidents, similar in their results, though differing +in character, almost a week elapses from the first breaking out of +Byng's malady before the arrival of either the hospital nurse or of Mrs. +Byng. When the latter event occurs, Mrs. Le Marchant retires from her +post at the sick man's bedside with the same unostentatious +matter-of-factness with which she had assumed it, and Elizabeth is no +longer alone. But to set against this advantage is the counterbalancing +evil that, after the arrival of Byng's mother, she can no longer steal +out, as she had before done a hundred times a day, to his door, to glean +fragments of tidings from any outcomer thence. She is never able to +repeat those little surreptitious excursions after that occasion when +Mrs. Byng, coming suddenly out upon her, passes her with such speaking, +if silent, hostility and scorn in her tired and grief-stricken eyes, +that the luckless spy slinks back sobbing to her own tender mother; and +there Jim, flying out a while after to carry them a crumb of +reassurance, finds them, to his indignation, mingling their bitter +tears.</p> + +<p>Whatever else his faults may be, Mr. Burgoyne is a man of his word; he +certainly keeps his promise to Elizabeth that Byng shall be well nursed. +He keeps his other promise, too—though that is more by good luck than +good management—that Byng shall not die. Whether to hinder his friend +from being made a liar, or because he himself is loth to leave a world +which he has found so pretty, cruel, and amusing, Byng does not +die—Byng lives.</p> + +<p>By her 25th day February has dried her tears, though they still hang on +her green lashes, and a great galleon of a sun steers through a +tremendous sea of blue, as Jim persuades Byng's mother to go out for her +first delicious drive in that fresh and satin-soft air of the Algerian +February, which matches our best poets' May. He takes her along the +Route des Aqueduques, that lovely route which runs high along the +hillside among the villas above the town, so high as to be on a level +with the roofs of the lofty-standing Continental and Orient Hotels. It +is a most twisting road, which in curves and loops winds about the head +of narrow deep gorges, full of pale olive-trees, caroubiers, and ilex. +Below lies the red-roofed white town. Slowly they trot past the campagne +of the "English Milor," "L'Epicier Anglais," and many others, over whose +high walls bougainvillias light their now waning purple fires, and big +bushes of fleurs de Marie stoop their milky stars.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Byng's eyes, sunk and diminished by watching and weariness, have +been lying restfully on the delightful spring spectacle—on the great +yellow sorrels by the wayside; she now turns them tear-brimmed to her +companion.</p> + +<p>"I could jump out of my skin!" she says shakily. "What a sun! what a +sea! And to think that, after all, we have pulled him through."</p> + +<p>Jim's only answer is a sympathetic pressure of the extremely +well-fitting glove nearest him. If Willy had died instead of lived, her +gloves would have fitted all the same.</p> + +<p>"But we are not out of the wood yet," continues she, with a shake of the +head. "He is cured, or nearly cured, of one disease, but what about the +other?"</p> + +<p>"What other?" inquires he, obstinately stupid, and with somewhat of a +heart-sinking at the prospect of the engagement which he sees ahead of +him.</p> + +<p>How many elbows the road makes! It seems to have been cut in places +right through the wet red rock, now overhung by such a torrent of +vegetation.</p> + +<p>At the head of one of the deep clefts that run up from the sea they +pause, and look down upon a second sea of greenery that would seem to +belong to no month less leafy than June. To June, too, belong the murmur +and hum and summer trickle of running water at the ravine bottom.</p> + +<p>"I do not see why, if he goes on as swimmingly as he is now doing," says +Mrs. Byng in a restless voice—"why we should not get him off in a week, +even if he were carried on board the boat."</p> + +<p>"A week? Is not that rather sanguine?"</p> + +<p>"I do not think so, the sooner the better; and during that week I should +think she could hardly make any attempt to see him."</p> + +<p>"Has she shown any signs of making one hitherto?"</p> + +<p>"Well, no"—rather grudgingly. "In fact, between you and me, considering +that it is they who have brought him into this plight, I think they +might have shown a little more solicitude about him. In the last ten +days I do not believe that they have been once to the door to inquire."</p> + +<p>"You do not seem to be aware," says Jim, in a voice which, though quiet, +is not pacific, "and that is odd, considering how often I told you, that +until you came Mrs. Le Marchant nursed him like a mother; not like a +mother, indeed"—correcting himself with a somewhat malicious +intention—"for mothers grow flurried, and she never did."</p> + +<p>"You mean that she nursed him better than I do," in a jealous tone. +"Well"—more generously—"how shabby of me to mind, if she did! I do not +mind. God bless her for it! I always thought"—compunctiously—"that +she looked a nice woman."</p> + +<p>"She <i>is</i> nice—as nice"—descending into a slang unworthy of his ripe +years—"as they make 'em."</p> + +<p>"And the girl—I suppose one can hardly call her a girl—<i>looks</i> nice +too."</p> + +<p>They are passing the Casbah, the solid Moorish fortifications, about +which now hang only a few gaitered, sunburnt, baggy Zouaves.</p> + +<p>Jim has a silly hope that, if he maintains an entire silence, the +current of his companion's ideas may drift into another channel; but he +is soon undeceived.</p> + +<p>"I suppose that she must have been quite, <i>quite</i> young when—when those +dreadful things happened that Willy talked about in his delirium?"</p> + +<p>"Is it possible"—indignantly—"that you take the ravings of a +fever-patient au pied de la lettre?"</p> + +<p>"No, I do not; but"—with an obstinate sticking to her point—"there was +a substratum of truth in them; that was only too evident."</p> + +<p>Jim shuts his teeth tight together. His vow of silence is harder to keep +than he had thought.</p> + +<p>"Since he came to himself he has never mentioned her to me," continues +his companion anxiously; "has he to you?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"I quite tremble whenever he opens his lips, lest he should be going to +begin the subject, and one could not contradict him yet awhile; he is so +quixotic, it is quite likely that he may have some distorted idea that +her being—how shall I say?—<i>flétrie</i>—is an additional reason for +standing by her, rehabilitating her, marrying her. He is so chivalrous."</p> + +<p>They have left the Prison Civile and the Zouave Barracks behind them. A +longer interval than that usually supposed to elapse between a remark +and its rejoinder has passed, before Jim can bring himself to utter the +following sentence with the calmness which he wishes:</p> + +<p>"Has it never occurred to you that she may be chivalrous too?"</p> + +<p>Perhaps Mrs. Byng does not readily find a response to this question; +perhaps it sets her off upon a train of speculation which does not +conduce to garrulity. Certain it is that, for the rest of the drive, she +is as silent as Jim could wish her. It is a sharp surprise to him two +days later to be mysteriously called outside the sick man's door by her, +in order to be informed that she has invited Miss Le Marchant to +accompany her on a drive.</p> + +<p>"I went to call upon them," she says, avoiding—or so he fancies it—his +eye as she speaks; "and I asked the girl to drive with me to the Mole, +and get a good blowing about."</p> + +<p>"How kind of you!" cries Jim, a flash of real pleasure in his serious +look; "how like you—like your real self, that is!"</p> + +<p>And he takes her hand to thank it by a friendly pressure. But she draws +it away rather hastily.</p> + +<p>"Oh, it was nothing so very wonderful—nothing to thank me for."</p> + +<p>She seems confused and a little guilty, and escapes with some +precipitation from his gratitude. Mrs. Byng is not a woman addicted to +double-dealing, and if she ever makes any little essays in that +direction, she does them, as on this present occasion, villainously.</p> + +<p>Burgoyne is not at the hall-door to help the ladies into the carriage +when they set off. Perhaps this may be because he is in attendance upon +the invalid. Perhaps because—glad as he had at first felt and expressed +himself at their friendliness—some misgiving may, upon reflection, have +beset him at so strange a conjunction. At all events, it is only Fritz +who throws the light Arab rug over their knees and gives them his +encouraging parting smile.</p> + +<p>Poor Miss Le Marchant needs his encouragement, for, indeed, it is in a +very frightened spirit that she sets forth on her pleasuring. But before +the horse-bells have jingled to the bottom of Mustapha Supérieur, her +spirits are rising. The sun shines, and he has shone so seldom in +Elizabeth's life that a very few of his beams, whether real or +metaphorical, suffice to send up her quicksilver. She does not +consciously admit for a second the hope that in the present overture on +the part of her companion lies any significance. But yet a tiny +trembling bliss now and then taps at her heart's door, and she pushes it +away but feebly.</p> + +<p>Before they have reached the Amirauté, where they are to get out, she +has thanked Mrs. Byng with such pretty and unsuspecting gratitude for +bringing her, and has made her laugh so irrepressibly by her gay and +naïve comments upon the motley passers-by, that the latter is filled +with a compunctious regret that a person with such lovely manners, and +such a sense of a joke, should have made so disastrous a fiasco of her +life as renders necessary the extremely distasteful errand on which she +herself is at present bound. At the Amirauté, as I say, they get out; +and, turning under a groined roof that looks as if it were the crypt of +a church, find themselves presently upon the long stone breakwater that +runs out into the bay. It was built, they tell us, in old days by the +wretched Christian captives; but the sea has taken care that not much of +the original labour of blood and tears has survived.</p> + +<p>The wind is high, and the sunshine ardent and splendid. On their right +as they walk, with the wind officiously helping them from behind, is a +world of dancing sapphire, each blue billow white-tipped. On their left +are great blocks of masonry, built strong and square, with narrow +intervals between to break the might of the water. How little their +strength has availed against that of their tremendous opponent is seen +at every step, since nearly half the blocks are overthrown or in +semi-ruin; though the date engraved upon them shows for how few seasons +they have been exposed to the ravages of the tempestuous sea. They walk +on to the end, till they can go no further, since, just ahead of them, +the waves are rolling in half-fierce play—though the day is all +smiles—over the breakwater; and even where they stand, their footing is +made unsure by lengths of slimy seaweed that set them slipping along. +Elizabeth insists upon the elder woman taking her slight arm—insists +upon carrying her wraps, and generally waiting upon and ministering to +her. From the bottom of her heart Mrs. Byng wishes that she would not, +since every instance of her soft helpfulness, so innocent and +spontaneous, makes more difficult the answer to that question which she +has been asking herself ever since they set foot upon the Mole:</p> + +<p>"How shall I begin?"</p> + +<p>It is unanswered still, when, retracing their steps a little, they sit +down under the lee of one of the half-wrecked blocks to enjoy the view.</p> + +<p>From here the sea is a lake, the distant mountains and the breakwater +seeming—though in reality parted by how wide a wet waste—to join in +embracing it. The mountains are dim and filmy to-day, Cape Matifou +scarcely visible; but the Koubah shows white-domed on the hillside, and +all the dazzling water is shot through with blinding light. The town, +Arab-French, is dazzling too; the arcaded quay, the fortifications, one +can scarcely look at any of them. Two or three steamers, with a little +vapour issuing from their ugly black and red funnels, lie moored; and +other smaller craft lift their spars against the heaven. Near by a man +is sitting with his legs dangling over the water, fishing with a line; +and two or three Arabs, draped in the dignity of their poetic rags, lie +couched round a fire that they have kindled. Beneath and around them is +the banging and thundering of the sea. August noise! "A voice like the +sound of many waters." Could there be a more awful comparison? Just +underneath them, where the sea has made a greater breach than usual, it +is boiling as in a caldron. Looking down and in, they see the water +comparatively quiet for a moment; then, with a shout of its great +jubilant voice, rushing and surging in, tossing its mane. Elizabeth's +eyes are resting on the heavenly sapphire plain.</p> + +<p>"<i>How</i> blue!" she says, under her breath; "one cannot believe that it is +not really blue; one feels that if one took up a little in a spoon it +would be just as blue as it is now."</p> + +<p>"I dare say it will not <i>feel</i> so blue when we are on it," replies Mrs. +Byng, lugging in somewhat awkwardly, as she feels, the subject which she +finds it so hard to introduce, "as I suppose we shall be within a week +now."</p> + +<p>Her charity bids her not glance at her companion as she speaks, so she +is not quite sure whether or not she gives a start.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Burgoyne thinks that I am sanguine; but I am all for moving him as +soon as possible; it cannot be too soon."</p> + +<p>She tries to throw as much significance as they are capable of holding +into the latter words, and feels that she has succeeded.</p> + +<p>"Of course he may refuse to go," continues she, with a rather strained +laugh. "Do you remember Victor Hugo's definition of heaven as a place +where children are always little and parents are always young? I am +continually quoting it. But, unfortunately, one's children will not stay +little; they grow big, and get wills of their own, and it is quite +possible he may refuse to go."</p> + +<p>"Yes?" almost inaudibly.</p> + +<p>"But"—reddening slightly at the patently-intended application of her +next sentence—"anyone that was fond of him—anyone that liked him +<i>really</i> and—and <i>disinterestedly</i>, I mean, must see that the only +happy course for him would be to go; that it would be his salvation to +get away; they—they would not try to hinder him."</p> + +<p>"I should think that no one would do that."</p> + +<p>There is not a touch of asperity in the dove-soft voice; but there is a +shade of dignity.</p> + +<p>"When he was ill—while he was delirious" ("How dreadfully unpleasant it +is!" in an anguished internal aside)—"I could not help +hearing—gathering—drawing inferences."</p> + +<p>The ardour of the chase has vanquished her charity, and she is looking +at her victim. But, to do her justice, the success of her labours shocks +her. Can this little aged, pinched face, with its dilated eyes, so full +of woe and terror, be the same one that dimpled into riotous laughter +half an hour ago at the sight of the two dirty old men, in Jewish +gaberdines and with gingham umbrellas, kissing each other by the Mosquée +de la Pêcherie?</p> + +<p>"Of course it was all incoherent," she goes on hurriedly, snatching at +the first expression that occurs to her as likely to undo, or at least a +little modify, her work—"nothing that one could make sense of. Only +your name recurred so incessantly; it was nothing but 'Elizabeth, +Elizabeth.' I am sure"—with a remorseful if clumsy attempt to be kind, +and a most uneasy smile—"that I do not wonder at it!"</p> + +<p>In the narrow interspace between the blocks and the path—not more than +a couple of fingers wide—how the sea forces itself! and up race its +foam-fountains, throwing their spray aloft in such mighty play, as if +they would hit heaven's arch. What exhilaration in its great glad noise, +superb and battle-ready!</p> + +<p>"I cannot express how distasteful a task this is to me"—in a tone that +certainly gives no reason to doubt the truth of her statement; "but, +after all, I am his mother; he is all I have in the world, and I am sure +that you are the very last person who would wish to do him an injury."</p> + +<p>"No; I do not think that I would do him an injury."</p> + +<p>How curiously still and slow her voice is! Mrs. Byng has resolutely +averted her eyes, so that her purpose may not again be shaken by the +sight of the havoc she has wrought, and has fixed them upon some sea +gulls that are riding up and down upon the merry waves, making them, +with their buoyant motion, even more jocund than they were before.</p> + +<p>"It seems an impossible thing to say to you—a thing too bad to +apologize for—but yet I <i>must</i> say it"—in a tone of excessive +distress, yet firmness. "Under the circumstances, it would—would throw +a blight over his whole life."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know that it would; I have always known it; that is why we left +Florence."</p> + +<p>"And very good it was of you, too! Not that I am quite certain of the +judiciousness of the way in which you did it; but, however, I am sure +you meant it for the best."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I meant it for the best."</p> + +<p>The sea-gulls have risen from the billow, and are turning and wheeling +in the air. The light is catching their wings, and making them look like +whitest silver. It seems as if they were at conscious play with it, +trying experiments as to how they can best catch their bright +playfellow, and again shake it off, and yet again recapture it.</p> + +<p>"What a monster you must think me!" breaks out the elder woman +presently.</p> + +<p>Now that the impression has somehow been conveyed to her mind that her +mission is likely to be completely successful, the full brutality of the +method by which she has accomplished it bursts upon her mind.</p> + +<p>"How treacherous! luring you out here, under the pretence of +friendliness, to say such horrible things to you!"</p> + +<p>Elizabeth's narrow hands are clasped upon her knee, and her small +heart-broken, white face is looking out straight before her.</p> + +<p>"No, I do not think you a monster," she answers—"you are a kind-hearted +woman! and it must have been very, very unpleasant to you. I am quite +sorry"—with a sort of smile—"for you, having to do it; but you are his +mother. If I had been his mother, I should have done the same; at least, +I suppose so."</p> + +<p>"I am sure, if things had been different, there is no one that I should +have—I do not know when I ever saw anyone whom I took such a fancy to. +If it had not been for the disparity—I mean, if he had been less young +and unfit to take upon himself the serious responsibilities of life——"</p> + +<p>How deplorably lame even to Mrs. Byng's ears sound her tardy efforts to +place the grounds of her objection on a less cruel basis than that which +she has already made so nakedly plain to be the real one! Even the +sweet-mannered Elizabeth does not think it necessary to express +gratitude for such insulting civilities.</p> + +<p>"I do not quite understand what you wish me to do," she says, with quiet +politeness; "if you will explain to me——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I do not want to dictate to you; please do not imagine I could +think of being so impertinent; but, of course, he will be asking for +you. Since he came to himself, he has not mentioned you as yet; but of +course he will. I am expecting it every moment; probably he has not felt +up to embarking on the subject. He will ask for you—will want to see +you."</p> + +<p>"And you wish me not to see him?"</p> + +<p>Her delicate suffering mouth quivers; but she is perfectly composed.</p> + +<p>"Oh, but of course you must see him! you quite, <i>quite</i> misunderstand +me! Much chance there would be"—with a wretched stunted laugh—"of +getting him away without a sight of you! How little you know him!"</p> + +<p>Elizabeth does not dispute the fact of her want of acquaintance with +Byng's character, nor does she help his floundering parent by any +suggestion. She merely goes on listening to her with that civil white +look, while the sportive sea-mews still play at hide-and-seek with the +sun-rays on the wide blue fields of heaven.</p> + +<p>"It is dreadful that I should have to say these things to you," says +Mrs. Byng, in a voice of the strongest revolt and ire against her +destiny—"insult you in this unprovoked way; but, in point of fact, you +are the only person in the world who can convince him that—that—it is +impossible—that it cannot be. Of course he will be very urgent and +pressing, and I know how persuasive he is. Do not you suppose that I, +his own mother, know how hard it is to refuse him anything? and of +course, in his present weak state, it must be very carefully done. He +could not stand any violent contradiction. You would have to be very +gentle; dear me!"—with a fresh access of angry remorse—"as if you ever +could be anything else."</p> + +<p>This compliment also its pale object receives in silence.</p> + +<p>"You know one has always heard that there are two kinds of 'No,'" goes +on Mrs. Byng with another dwarfish laugh, which has a touch of the +hysteric in it—"a woman's 'No,' as it is called, that means 'Yes'; and +a 'No' which anyone—which even <i>he</i>—must understand to be final. If +you <i>could</i>—I dare say I am asking you an impossibility—but if you +<i>could</i> make him understand that this time it is final!"</p> + +<p>There is a silence between them. An unrulier billow than usual, yet more +masterless in its Titan play, is hurling itself with a colossal thud and +bang against the causeway; and Elizabeth waits till its clamour is +subsided before she speaks.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she answers slowly, "I understand; thank you for telling me what +you wish. I think I may promise that I shall be able to—that I shall +make him understand that it is final."</p> + +<p>A moment or two later they are on their way back to the Amirauté. The +ocean is at its glorious pastimes all around them; the hill-climbing, +shining town smiles upon them from its slope; but upon both has fallen a +blindness. The feelings of Mrs. Byng are perhaps the least enviable of +the two.</p> + +<p>They are nearly back at the beginning of the breakwater, when she stops +short. Probably when cool reflection comes, when she is removed from the +charm and pathos of Elizabeth's meek white presence, lovely and +unreproachful, she will not repent her work; but at the present moment +of impulse and remorse she feels as if the expunging of the last +half-hour would be cheaply purchased by the sacrifice of six months of +her remaining life.</p> + +<p>"I suppose it is not the least use my asking you to try and forgive +me—to make allowances for me?" she says, with unsteady-toned humility; +"oh, <i>how</i> you must hate me! If the case were reversed, <i>how</i> I should +hate you! How you will hate me all your life!"</p> + +<p>The tears are rolling down her cheeks, and in an instant Elizabeth's +hand has gone out to her. As it does so, the grotesque regret flashes +across the elder woman's mind that any future daughter-in-law of hers +will be most unlikely to be the possessor of such a hand.</p> + +<p>"Why should I hate you? you cannot"—with a heart-wrung smile—"possibly +think me more undesirable than I do myself; and even if it were not so, +I do not think it is in me to hate anyone very much."</p> + +<p>On their drive home they meet with one or two little incidents quite as +funny as the old Jews kissing each other; but this time they do not move +poor Miss Le Marchant to any laughter.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIA" id="CHAPTER_XIA"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I do remember an apothecary,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And hereabouts he dwells."<br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Two days later she is called upon to perform the task she has +undertaken. Probably she has spent those two days, and also the +appertaining nights, in bracing her mind to it, for Jim can plainly see +the marks of that struggle, though he is not aware of its existence, +graved upon her face, on the third morning after the excursion to the +Mole, when he comes in search of her. He does not find her in her +accustomed corner of the terrace, but, looking down over the balustrade, +sees her sitting below and alone on a small tree-shaded plateau that +seems to have been levelled for lawn-tennis or bowls. Probably the +giggling and chaffering of the girls on the terrace, and the respectful +but persistent importunities of the Omars and Ahmeds to buy their +colourful wares outspread on the hot flags have oppressed her spirits.</p> + +<p>Fritz has carried down for her an arm-chair, a cane table, and a Persian +rug for her feet, and she looks as if she were established for the day.</p> + +<p>Since Byng has been out of danger Elizabeth has returned to her +embroidery. She is one of those women to whom needlework is unaffectedly +dear, like that other sweet woman "who was so delicate with her needle."</p> + +<p>Before she catches sight of him he watches for a few moments her bright +bent head and flying white fingers, and is able to perceive how many +sighs she is sewing into the pattern.</p> + +<p>"What a morning!" he says, running down the steps and joining her. "No +one has any excuse for being an invalid to-day, has he?"</p> + +<p>There is no second seat, so he stands beside her, looking up over her +head at the tall trees above her, from which immense garlands of ivy are +hanging and swinging in the warm breeze. That potent ivy has killed one +tree altogether.</p> + +<p>She glances up at him mutely, knowing that he has not come merely to +tell her that the day is fine.</p> + +<p>"We can hardly keep him on his sofa; he is virtually almost well, so +well that he is quite up to seeing people. He would like—he has been +asking—to see <i>you</i>."</p> + +<p>He had thought her nearly as pale as it was possible for her to be when +he had first come upon her. He now realizes how many degrees of colour +she then had left to lose. While he speaks she has been mechanically +pulling her thread through, and as he ceases, her lifted hand stops as +if paralyzed, and remains holding her needle in the air.</p> + +<p>It has come, then. For all her two days' bracing, is she ready for it?</p> + +<p>"<i>Now?</i>"</p> + +<p>The whisper in which this monosyllable is breathed is so stamped with a +fear that borders on terror, that his one astonished thought is bow best +to reassure her.</p> + +<p>"Not if you do not feel inclined, of course—not unless you like. It can +perfectly well be put off to another time. I can tell him—there will +not be the least difficulty in making him understand—that you do not +feel up to it this morning: that you would rather have more notice."</p> + +<p>"But I would not," she says, standing up suddenly, and with trembling +hands laying her work down upon the table, and beginning from dainty +habit to pin it up in its protecting white cloth. "What good would more +notice—a year's notice—do me?"</p> + +<p>She turns away from him and fixes her unseeing eyes, glassy and dilated, +upon a poplar tree that is hanging tasselled catkins out against the +sky. Then once again she faces him, and he sees that there are cold +beads of agony upon her forehead.</p> + +<p>"Wish for me," she says huskily—"wish very hard for me, that I may get +through it—that we may both get through it—alive!"</p> + +<p>Then, motioning to him with her hand not to follow her, she walks +quickly towards the hotel.</p> + +<p>It is impossible to him to stay quiet. He wanders restlessly away, +straying he knows not whither. The mimosas are out charmingly in the +gardens, sending delicious whiffs of perfume from the soft yellow fluff +of their flowers. The pinky almond-trees are out too, but not till long +afterwards does he know it.</p> + +<p>By-and-by he finds himself strolling, unhindered by a gardener placidly +digging, through the grounds of a villa to let. Gigantic violets send +their messages to his nostrils, the big and innumerable blue blossoms +predominating over the leaves, which in England have to be so carefully +searched for them. Superabundant oranges tumble about his feet; arum +lilies, just discovering the white secret hid in their green sheaths, +stand in tall rows on either side of him; a bed of broad beans points +out the phenomenon of her February flowers to him. He sees and smells +none of them. Have his senses stolen away with his heart into Byng's +bedchamber? They must have done so, or he could not see with such +extraordinary vividness the scene enacting there. He has himself helped +to place it in such astonishing reality before himself. Does not he know +the exact position of the chair she is to occupy? Did not he place it +for her before he went to fetch her? Nor can his reason prevent his +distorted fancy from presenting the interview as one between happy and +confessed lovers. Even the recollection of her features, ghastly and +with beads of agony dewing them, cannot correct the picture of his mind +as he persistently sees it. That she meant, when he parted from her, to +renounce Byng, he has no manner of doubt. But does not he know the +pliancy of her nature? Is not he convinced that the rock on which her +life has split is her inability ever to refuse anyone anything that they +ask with sufficient urgency or with enough plausibility to persuade her +that she can do them a kindness by yielding?</p> + +<p>How much more, then, will she be incapable of resisting the importunate +passion of her own heart's chosen one, freshly risen from a bed of +death? Presently his restless feet carry him away out of the villa +grounds again. He finds himself on the Boulevard Mustapha, and sits down +on the low wall by the roadside, staring absently at a broken line of +dusky stone-pines, cutting the ardent blue of the African sky on the +hill opposite, and at an arcaded campagne throned high up among the +verdure. He knows that it belongs to an Englishman who made reels of +cotton, and the idle thought saunters across his mind how strange it is +that reels of cotton should wind anyone into such a lofty white Eden! +Can the interview be lasting all this while? Is not it yet ended? May +not his tormented fancy see the chair by Byng's sofa once again empty or +occupied by nurse or mother? Will not Mrs. Byng, will not Elizabeth +herself; have seen the unfitness of taxing the sick man's faint powers +by so extreme a strain upon them? But no sooner has this suggested idea +shed a ray of light upon his darkness than an opposing one comes and +blows it out. Has not Byng a will of his own? Will he be likely so soon +to let her go? Nay, having once recovered her, will he ever let her out +of his sight again? The thought restores him to restless action, and, +although with sedulous slowness, he begins to retrace his steps towards +the hotel. At a point about a quarter of a mile distant from it, the +lane which leads to the Villa Wilson debouches into the road, and +debouching also into the road he sees the figure of Cecilia, who, +catching sight of him, as if unable to wait for him to join her, almost +runs to meet him.</p> + +<p>"I was coming to call upon you," says she eagerly. "Oh!"—with a +laugh—"to-day I really cannot stay to think of the proprieties, and you +have not been to see us for such centuries!"</p> + +<p>"I have been nursing Byng."</p> + +<p>"Oh yes; poor man! How dreadfully ill he must have been! I was so glad +to hear he was better."</p> + +<p>There is such a flat tepidity in the tone of these expressions of +commiseration, something so different from the tender alertness of +Cecilia's former interest in their object, that Jim, roused out of his +own reflections to regard her more attentively than he has yet done, +sees that she is preoccupied by some subject quite alien to the invalid.</p> + +<p>"I have a piece of news to tell you"—with a sort of angry chuckle. +"Such a piece of news! I am sure you will be delighted at it."</p> + +<p>At her words a wonder as idle and slack as his late thought about the +reels of cotton crosses him as to what possible piece of news to be told +him by the buxom and excited person, before him could give him the +faintest pleasure. That wonder sends up his eyebrows, and throws a mild +animation into his voice.</p> + +<p>"Indeed?"</p> + +<p>"Do you like"—still chuckling—"to be told a piece of news or to guess +it?"</p> + +<p>"I like to be told it."</p> + +<p>"Well, then"—with a dramatic pause—"we are going to have a wedding in +the family!"</p> + +<p>"My dear girl!" cries he, smiling very good-naturedly, and with a +sensation that, though not violent, is the reverse of annoyance. +"Hurrah! So he has come at last! Who is he? How dark you have kept him!"</p> + +<p>Cecilia shakes her head and gives a short and rosy laugh.</p> + +<p>"Oh, it is not I! You are wide of the mark."</p> + +<p>"Your father?"—in a shocked voice.</p> + +<p>He has a confused and illogical feeling that a second marriage on the +part of Mr. Wilson would be a slight upon Amelia's memory.</p> + +<p>"<i>Father!</i>"—with an accent that plainly shows him he is still further +afield than in his first conjecture—"poor father! No, indeed; Heaven +forbid! Fancy me with a stepmother!"</p> + +<p>She pauses to give a shudder at the idea, while Jim gapes blankly at +her, wondering whether she has gone off her head.</p> + +<p>"Oh no; it is neither father nor I! No wonder you look mystified. It +is—<i>Sybilla!</i>"</p> + + +<p>"<span class="smcap">Sybilla!!!!</span>"</p> + +<p>Although Mr. Burgoyne has not got it on his conscience that he has ever +either expressed or felt anything but the most strenuous and entire +disbelief in Sybilla's maladies, yet it has never occurred to him as +possible that she should engage in any occupation nearer akin to the +ordinary avocations of life than imbibing tonics through tubes and +eating beef essences out of cups.</p> + +<p>"She is going to marry Dr. Crump!" continues Cecilia, not on the whole +dissatisfied with the effect of her torpedo. "When she told father, she +said that he had saved her life, and that the least she could do was to +dedicate the poor remainder of it to him. She tells other people that +she is marrying him because we wish it! You know that that was always +her way."</p> + +<p>"<span class="smcap">Sybilla!!</span>"</p> + +<p>"I thought that there must be something in the wind, as since the +beginning of the month she has never once wished us good-bye; and the +housemaid upset the ink-bottle over the book of prescriptions without +her ever finding it out; and the clinical thermometer has not appeared +for a week!"</p> + +<p>"<span class="smcap">Sybilla!!!</span>"</p> + +<p>"I thought I should surprise you; it gives one a disgust for the idea of +marrying altogether, does not it? I have come to the conclusion that I +do not care now if I never marry. Father and I get on quite happily +together; and when one is well off, one can really be very fairly +content in a single state; and, at all events, I am sure I do not envy +Sybilla."</p> + +<p>"Nor I Crump"—with an emphasis so intense that Cecilia bursts out into +a laugh of a more genuine character than any she has yet indulged in.</p> + +<p>"You will have to give her away!" she cries, as soon as she can again +speak distinctly. "Father will marry her, of course, and you must give +her away. I am sure she will insist upon it."</p> + +<p>"She will have to make haste, then," returns he, recovering enough from +his first stupefaction to join Cecilia in her mirth; "for I shall not be +here much longer."</p> + +<p>"You are not going away?"—raising her eyebrows, and with a tinge of +meaningness in her tone which vaguely frets him.</p> + +<p>"Why should not I go?" he asks irritably, his short and joyless +merriment quite quenched. "What is there for a man to do here? I have +stayed already much longer than I meant. I am engaged to meet a friend +at Tunis—the man with whom I went to the Himalayas three years ago; we +are going to make an excursion into the interior. I am only waiting for +some guns and things. Why should not I go?"</p> + +<p>"There is no earthly reason," replies she demurely; "only that I did not +know you had any such intention. But then, to be sure, it is so long +since I have seen you—not, I think," glancing at him for confirmation +of her statement rather too innocently, "since the lovers—ha! ha!—and +I met you and Miss Le Marchant driving on the quay."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIIA" id="CHAPTER_XIIA"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Elizabeth's feeble tap at Byng's door is instantly answered by the +nurse, who, opening it smilingly to admit her, the next moment, +evidently in accordance with directions received, passes out herself and +shuts it behind her. Elizabeth, deprived of the chaperonage of her cap +and apron, and left stranded upon the threshold, has no resource but to +cross the floor as steadily as a most trembling pair of legs will let +her.</p> + +<p>The room is a square one, two of its thick walls pierced by Moorish +windows. Drawn up to one of those windows—the one through which Jim had +caught his first glimpse of Elizabeth on the night of his arrival—is +the sick man's sofa. At the side of that sofa his visitor has, all too +soon, arrived. She had prepared a little set speech to deliver at +once—a speech which will give the keynote to the after-interview; but, +alas! every word of it has gone out of her head. Unable to articulate a +syllable, she stands beside him, and if anyone is to give the keynote, +it must be he.</p> + +<p>"This is very, <i>very</i> good of you. It seems a shame to ask you to come +here, with all this horrid paraphernalia of physic about; but I really +could not wait until they let me be moved into another room."</p> + +<p>She has not yet dared to lift her eyes to his face, in terror lest the +sight of the change in it shall overset her most unsure composure. +Already, indeed, she has greedily asked and obtained every detail of the +alteration wrought in him. She knows that his head is shaved, that his +features are sharp, and that his voice is faint; and when, as he ceases +speaking, she at last wins resolution enough to look at him, she sees +that she has been told the truth. His head is shaven, his nose is as +sharp as a pen, and his voice is faint. She has been told all this; but +what is there that she has not been told? What is his voice besides +faint?</p> + +<p>"Will not you sit down? It seems monstrous that I should be lying here +letting you wait upon yourself. Will you try that one?" pointing to the +chair which is figuring at the same moment so prominently in Jim's +tormented fancy. "I am afraid you will not find it very comfortable. I +have not tried it yet, but it looks as hard as a board."</p> + +<p>She sits down meekly as he bids her, glad to be no longer obliged to +depend upon her shaky limbs, and answers:</p> + +<p>"Thank you; it is quite comfortable."</p> + +<p>"Would not it be better if you had a cushion?"—looking all round the +room for one.</p> + +<p>His voice is courteous, tender almost, in its solicitude for her ease. +But is she asleep or awake? Can this be the same voice that poured the +frenzy of its heartrending adjurations into her ear scarce a month ago? +Can this long, cool, white saint—he looks somehow like a young saint in +his emaciation and his skull-cap—be the stammering maniac who, when +last she saw him, crashed down nigh dead at her feet, slain by three +words from her mouth?</p> + +<p>At the stupefaction engendered by these questions, her own brain seems +turning, but she feebly tries to recover herself.</p> + +<p>"I—I am so glad you are better."</p> + +<p>"Thank you so much. Yes, it <i>is</i> nice; nice to be</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">"'Not burnt with thirsting,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor with hot fingers, nor with temples bursting.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Do you remember Keats?"</p> + +<p>After all, there is something of the original Byng left, and the ghost +of his old spouting voice in which he recites the above couplet gives +her back a greater measure of composure than could almost anything else.</p> + +<p>"It is nice, only one would like to be able to jump, not 'the life to +come'—ha! ha!—but the convalescence to come. My mother is even more +impatient than I am. She has made up her mind that we are to be off in +three days, even if I am carried on board on a shutter."</p> + +<p>She can see now that he is very much embarrassed—that his fluency is +but the uneasy cover of some emotion—and the discovery enables her yet +further to regain possession of herself.</p> + +<p>"I should think," she says in her gentle voice, "that you would be very +glad to get out of this room, where—where you have suffered so much."</p> + +<p>"Well, yes; one does grow a little tired of seeing</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'The casement slowly grow a glimmering square;'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>but"—with a rather forced laugh—"at least, I have had cause to be +thankful that there is no wall-paper to count the pattern of. I have +blessed the white wall for its featureless face."</p> + +<p>She moves a little in her chair, as if to assure herself that she is +really awake. That stupefaction is beginning to numb her again—that +hazy feeling that this is not Byng at all, this polite invalid, making +such civil conversation for her; this is somebody else.</p> + +<p>"But I must not tire myself out before I have said what I want to say to +you," he continues, his embarrassment perceptibly deepening, while his +transparent hand fidgets uneasily with the border of the coverlet thrown +over him, "or"—laughing again—"I shall have that tyrant of a nurse +down upon me, and—and I do wish—I have wished so much—so +unspeakably—to see you, to speak to you."</p> + +<p>She sits immovable, listening, while a ray of something—can it be hope? +why should it be hope?—darts across her heart. After all, this may be +Byng—her Byng; this strange new manner may be only the garment in which +sickness has dressed his passion—a worn-out garment soon to drop away +from him in rags and tatters, and in which cannot she already discern +the first rent? After all, she may have need for her armour—that armour +which, so far, has seemed so pitifully needless.</p> + +<p>"I knew that it would be no use asking leave to send for you any sooner; +they would have told me I was not up to it—would have put me off with +some excuse; so I kept a 'still sough.' Do you know that I never +mentioned your name until to-day? But it has been hard work, I can tell +you; for the last two days I have scarcely been able to bear it, I have +so <i>hungered</i> to see you."</p> + +<p>Her eyelids tremble, and she instinctively puts up her hand to cover her +tell-tale mouth. Surely this is the old language. Surely there is, at +all events, a snatch of it in his last words; and again that prick of +illogical joy quickens the beats of her fainting heart, though she tries +to chide it away, asking herself why she should be in any measure glad +that the love which she has come here for no other purpose than to +renounce, still lives and stirs.</p> + +<p>"You may think I am exaggerating, but in point of fact I cannot by any +expression less strong than the gnaw of downright hunger convey the +longing I have had to see you."</p> + +<p>He pauses with a momentary failure of his still feeble powers.</p> + +<p>She catches her breath. Now is the time for her to strike in, to arrest +him before he has time to say anything more definite. Now is the time +for her to fulfil her promise, her inhuman promise, which yet never for +one instant strikes her as anything but irrevocably binding. Does he see +her intention, that he plunges, in order to anticipate it, into so +hurried a resumption of his interrupted sentence?</p> + +<p>"To see you, in order to beg—to supplicate you to forgive me for my +conduct to you."</p> + +<p>She gives an almost imperceptible start. This ending is not what she had +expected, not the one to defend herself against which she has been +fastening on her buckler and grasping her shield. The words that it +demands in answer are not those with which she has been furnishing +herself, and it is a moment or two before she can supply herself with +others. He must be referring, of course, to his last meeting with +her—that one so violently broken off by the catastrophe of his +collapse.</p> + +<p>"I do not know what I am to forgive," she says, half bewildered. "You +were not accountable for your actions. You were too ill to know what you +were doing."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you think I am alluding to that last time," cries he, precipitately +correcting her. "No, no; you are right. I was not accountable then. You +might as well have reasoned with a wild beast out of a menagerie. I was +a perfect Bedlamite then. No"—going on very rapidly, as it in desperate +anxiety to make her comprehend with the least possible delay—"what I am +asking you—asking you on my knees—to forgive me for, is my whole +conduct to you from the beginning."</p> + +<p>The two white faces are looking breathlessly into each other, and though +of late he has been tussling with death on a bed, and she has been +walking about, and plying her embroidery, and dining at a public table, +hers is far the whiter of the two. It must be the unwonted exertion of +talking so much that makes him bring out his next speech in jerks and +gasps.</p> + +<p>"I forced my acquaintance upon you at the very beginning; I watched you +like a detective; I beset you wherever you went; I pestered you with my +visits. Jim always told me that it was not the conduct of a gentleman, +but I would not believe him—not even when"—how difficult it is! he +finds it almost as hard work as his mother had done upon the Mole—"not +even when, by my importunities, I had driven you away—obliged you to +rush away almost by night from a place you liked—a place you were happy +in—to escape me. And I have no excuse to offer you—none; unless, +indeed, as I sometimes think, my mind was off its balance even then. I +express myself wretchedly!"—in a tone of deep distress—"but you will +overlook that, will not you? You will—will understand what I mean?"</p> + +<p>She makes an assenting motion with her head. At this moment she cannot +speak: she will be able to do so again directly, but she must have just +a minute or two. Yet she must not leave him for an instant in doubt that +she understands him. Oh yes, she understands him—understands that he is +apologizing for having ever loved her; that he is awkwardly trying to +draw the mantle of insanity over even the Vallombrosan wood. It is true +that he does it with every sign of discomfort and pain; and he looks +away from her, as Mrs. Byng, too, had found it pleasanter to do.</p> + +<p>"Do you remember what Schiller said when he was dying? 'Many things are +growing clearer to me.' I thought a good deal of those words as I lay +over there"—glancing towards the now neatly-arranged and empty bed. +"One night they thought it was all up with me—I heard them say so. They +did not think I was conscious, but I was; and it did strike me that I +had made a poor thing of it, and that if ever I was given the chance I +would make a new start."</p> + +<p>Again that little assenting movement of her fair head. How perfectly +comprehensible he still is! How well she understands that he is +renouncing her among the other follies of his "salad days"—college +bear-fights, music-halls, gambling clubs. Well, why should not he? Has +not she come here on purpose to renounce him? Can she quarrel with him +for having saved her the trouble?</p> + +<p>"And I thought that I could not begin better than by falling on my knees +to you. I wish I could fall on my real knees to you!"—with a momentary +expression of extreme impatience at his own bodily weakness—"and ask +you most humbly and tenderly and reverently to pardon me."</p> + +<p>She looks at him, and sees his wasted face flushing with fatigue and +worry and mental suffering. Oh, what a bitter wave of desolateness rolls +over her! But she smiles.</p> + +<p>"I still do not understand what I am to forgive you for. I suppose that +you could no more help having once thought you loved me, than you can +help"—she stops abruptly in compassion for the look of acute regret, +shame and remorse that crosses his sharp features, and, in her mercy to +him, gives a different close to her phrase from that which its beginning +had seemed to bespeak—"than you can help having been so ill."</p> + +<p>Her tone, quite unconsciously to herself is inexpressibly touching; and +Byng, weakened by illness, turns his face upon the pillow, and breaks +into violent weeping. His mother had cried too. It seems to be in the +family.</p> + +<p>She has risen—what further is there for her to stay for?—and pauses +quietly at his side till the paroxysm is past. Her standing posture +tells him that she is going, and he consequently struggles to recover +himself in some degree; but having never cultivated self-control when he +was in health, it declines to come at his enfeebled bidding now.</p> + +<p>"Forgive me! forgive me!" is all he can stammer.</p> + +<p>She looks down upon him with a strange and tender smile, in which for +the moment the selfless, pitying sweetness has swallowed up the misery.</p> + +<p>"Which am I to forgive you for—for having loved me? or for having +ceased to love me? For having been mad? or for being sane? Yes, of +course I forgive you from the very bottom of my heart! God bless you! +Make haste and get well!"</p> + +<p>She walks cheerfully to the door, and, reaching it, turns, still wearing +that smile, that he may see how perfectly friendly is her last look; but +he does not see it. He has rolled over on his face, and the whole sofa +is shaking with his sobs.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIIIA" id="CHAPTER_XIIIA"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h2> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The pity of it, Iago! The pity of it!"<br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>The Byngs are gone, having got off just within the time first suggested +by the sick man's mother. But, after all, he has to be carried on board +the <i>Eugène Perrère</i>. Since his interview with Miss Le Marchant, his +progress towards recovery has scarcely been so smooth or so fast as +before; and perhaps his mother is right to bear him away with what seems +such overhaste, even though it be on men's shoulders that he has to make +his exit. At all events, he is gone. The hotel—of which a part of the +inmates have seen him only prostrate and bleeding, and the other and +larger part have not seen him at all, but have had their curiosity +whetted by the tale of his calamitous arrival, only to have it balked by +his hurried departure—crowd into the entrance-hall, some on one +pretext, some on another, most on no pretext at all, to see him go. +There are only two of the visitors whose faces cannot be seen among the +good-naturedly curious and sympathetically pitiful group that watch the +exodus of the little party. Who shall say how those two spend the hour +of Byng's departure out of their lives? Jim has accompanied the invalid +to the quay to see the last of him; has stayed with him till the final +bell warns non-passengers off the boat; has left him with all the proper +requests and adjurations to let him know how the sick man bears the +voyage; how they get on, etc. But as Mrs. Byng stands on the upper deck +and watches the trail of churned water lengthening between her and the +dwindling high white town, she has a feeling that her old friend does +not like her as well as he did, and that it will never again be quite +the same thing between them.</p> + +<p>The Byngs are gone—have been gone a fortnight—and March is here. Over +the villa faces the begonias have broken into riotous flower, and the +snowy-blossomed fruit-trees, that have put on their snowy garments but +lately, stand out in bright fragility against the heavy green that +never, even in January, ceases to wrap itself about the lovely Moslem +town.</p> + +<p>Every day for the last fortnight, Jim, too, has been going, but he is +not yet gone. His guns have arrived ten days ago, and his friend has +expressed by post and wire his weariness of exploring the bazaars of +Tunis alone. But he is not yet gone to join that impatient friend. Why +does he still linger in a place where, as he had justly explained to +Cecilia, there is nothing for him to do? Why indeed? It is a question +that, by night and day, by the insolence of the staring moonlight which +slides in upon his restless open eyes by night, under the fires of the +great spring sun at noon, he asks himself. All the answer he can give is +that it would be hardly friendly to choose this moment, when she is so +down in the world, to leave Elizabeth.</p> + +<p>She is down in the world; there can be no mistake about that. Even her +father, who has returned from his wanderings, must be aware of this +fact. Perhaps that is the reason why he no longer snubs her as much as +he did; why he even accepts, with some semblance of graciousness, those +affectionate and watchful ministrations which she tenders him with as +gentle an assiduity as in her brighter days. But he has still no great +appetite for her society; and she, unresentfully divining it, gives up +to him, without repining, the one great solace of her melancholy—her +mother's company. If Jim were gone, the more part of her life would be +spent alone. She tells him so—tells him, with a sweet flattering smile, +how much his comradeship is to her. Has he any right to rob her of that +last prop? It is only to himself that the breathless clamberings up the +steep short cut to El Biar, deep and brambly as her own Devonshire +lanes, that the gazings in common over the pigeon-necked sea and the +amaranth hills, can do any harm. They may put a sting into his own +after-life—a sting that all the empty years that follow may be +powerless to extract; but to her they serve only as a narcotic to numb +the intensity of that ache which the cured madness of Byng has left +behind it. Some day, of course, he must leave her; he cannot pass his +whole life at her side; some day soon leave her to walk and sit and +study her Italian Grammar forlornly alone. But it must not be until she +has a little plucked up her spirits.</p> + +<p>As soon as he sees any signs of this occurring, he will quit +Algiers—quit it comfortably, with the consciousness of having done a +good-natured thing, by which nobody is the worse. This is the compromise +at which he arrives with the inward adviser—conscience, common-sense, +what you will—that is hourly admonishing him to be gone. Does Elizabeth +guess that her retention of the companion, to whom she so desolately +clings, hangs on her remaining always as crushed as the first ten days +after those cruel interviews with the Byngs, mother and son, had left +her? If she did, she would probably seek to check the first faint +revivings of cheerfulness in her inveterately gay spirit. Instead, while +her heart is yet at its sickest, she earnestly tries to foster the tiny +seeds of cheerfulness, saying to herself that it is mere selfishness in +her to inflict her dismalness upon her one friend; seeking rather to +lift his spirits, which seem scarcely less drooping than her own.</p> + +<p>Does he enter into her motive? Does not it rather strike him with a +species of shock how superficial must be the nature, how on the surface +the suffering, of one who can already begin again to take a mischievous +interest in the Widow Wadman's amours, and to mimic afresh the Cockney +twang of the French Vicomte's English governess?</p> + +<p>It is three weeks to-day since the Byngs left. The weather is fine, and +a hot sunbeam is lighting up the painful indecision of Jim's face, as he +stands in his bedroom with an open telegram in his hand, which two hours +ago was put into it. It is from his friend at Tunis, and is conceived in +terms which demonstrate that the indignation of the sender has got the +better of his economy. It contains a stringent representation of his +inability any longer to dance attendance upon Burgoyne's whims, and a +peremptory request, answer paid, to be at once informed either that he +will join him immediately, or that the idea of their joint excursion has +been entirely abandoned. He is standing holding the paper in miserable +uncertainty, torn by doubts, rent in twain by conflicting emotions, when +the noise of voices and laughter outside the house draws him to the +window.</p> + +<p>The room he has occupied since he vacated his own for Byng looks out +over the hall-door, and in front of that door a small group is +gathered—the Vicomte, his two boys, his girl, her governess, a +coal-black negro who serves as kitchenmaid to the establishment, +and—Elizabeth. They are all gathered round a tiny donkey, such a +<i>bourriquot</i> as the valiant Tartarin slew, which has evidently been +brought up for sale by its Arab master. Attached to its head gear are +two long reins, and holding these reins is Miss Le Marchant. As Jim +looks out, the <i>bourriquot</i>, taking some strange freak into its little +brown head, sets off galloping at a prodigious rate; and +Elizabeth—white gown and blonde hair flying—gallops after it. As she +is dragged at racing pace down the drive, her immoderate laughter comes +borne back on the wind to the spectator of whom she is unconscious.</p> + +<p>The latter has turned away from the window, and sat down to his +writing-table, where he is scribbling a hasty answer to the missive +which has cost him such long deliberation. It does not take a minute to +pen now that he has once made up his mind, nor can it be more than five +from the moment of the donkey's start to that when the telegram is on +its way to the Post Office in Zameth the porter's hand. The die is cast. +When this is the case after long irresolution, there must always be a +sense of relief, and perhaps, therefore, it is relief which Jim's face, +thrown down upon his arms rested on the table, expresses. Since no one +can see that hidden face, it is impossible to say. He has certainly no +wish that Elizabeth should be unhappy. Her patient white misery had +filled him with tender pity and ruth; and yet her laugh, sweet and +delicate as it was with all its excess of merriment, rings jarringly in +his ears. She is incapable of a great constancy. He had promised himself +to stay with her until her spirits were restored. Well, he has kept his +promise handsomely. He has done with her and her contradictions now. It +will be someone else's turn with her next. Whose? The Vicomte's, +perhaps.</p> + +<p>By-and-by he rouses himself. Only a part of his task is yet done. He +must tell them that he is going. As he passes the looking-glass, he sees +that his hair is roughened and erected by his late attitude. He passes a +brush hastily over it. He must not look a Bedlamite like Byng. He finds +Mr. and Mrs. Le Marchant sitting under the ficus-tree on the +terrace—the terrace which, at this hour, they have to themselves. She +is reading aloud to him paragraphs out of the Algerian paper, +translating as she goes along, since his French is about on a par with +that of most Englishmen of his standing.</p> + +<p>He is leaning back in a wicker chair, with an expression of placid +good-humour on his face. Across his knees the hotel cat—a plain and +ill-natured animal—lies, loudly purring, while he obligingly scratches +her judiciously whenever she indicates a wish for that relaxation. As +Burgoyne remembers, Mr. Le Marchant had always been on very friendly +terms with the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air. About the +little group there is such an air of content, of harmony, of +completeness in itself, that none can connect the idea of a third person +with it in anything but an interloping attitude. And yet there is a +third person whose presence must be continually infringing its happy +duality, since niche of her own in life has she none.</p> + +<p>"Are you looking for Elizabeth?" asks Elizabeth's mother, laying down +her paper as the new-comer draws near; "she has walked to Biermandreis."</p> + +<p>The intimate friendliness of her smile as she gives him this bit of +information—the matter of course taking for granted that he must be +seeking her whose society he has so wholly monopolized of late—plants a +new sting in Jim's sore heart, and robs him for the moment of the power +to make his announcement.</p> + +<p>"She has not been gone more than ten minutes"—still with that bright +look of kindly confidence that she is answering his thoughts.</p> + +<p>"I am looking for you all," he answers abruptly. "I came to tell you +that I am off to-morrow."</p> + +<p>The shaft is sped. Though he is not looking at Mrs. Le Marchant, he +knows that her face has fallen. Upon Mr. Le Marchant's, on the contrary, +an added shade of cheerfulness is visible. Mr. Le Marchant has ceased +any overt opposition to the young man's intimacy with his family; but +none the less is the young man aware that the father has acquiesced but +grudgingly in the footing on which he had found Jim on his return from +his tour.</p> + +<p>"I have had a wire from my friend in Tunis; he is becoming +dangerous"—laughing, oh, how forcedly!</p> + +<p>"You are going to Tunis?" says Mr. Le Marchant, almost cordially. "You +are quite right; it is a very interesting place. One does really see the +genuine East there, not the mongrel hotch-potch one has here."</p> + +<p>"Is not it rather late for a trip into the interior?" asks the wife. The +geniality has gone out of her tone, and the sunshine out of her face. +There is a touch of involuntary wistfulness in both.</p> + +<p>"The interior? Oh yes, of course. My dawdling"—more laughter—"has +knocked that on the head. I have let the time for that go by. We intend +to run over to Spain and see the Alhambra and the Escurial."</p> + +<p>There is a general silence. Well, it is done. Neither husband nor wife +makes any effort to alter his resolution or detain him. They do not even +put any questions to him as to his future projects. He has nothing to do +but remove himself and allow them to resume that happy little duet which +he had disturbed.</p> + +<p>"The train sets off at such an unearthly hour to-morrow morning—six +o'clock or thereabouts; it would take three days to get there if it did +not—that I must put my things together this afternoon. I shall see you +again, of course, before I go."</p> + +<p>"Oh, of course," replies Mr. Le Marchant, in the easy and comfortable +tone of one to whom it is a matter of supreme indifference whether or +not that farewell meeting ever takes place, and Mrs. Le Marchant says +nothing at all.</p> + +<p>He has adduced his necessary packings as an excuse for leaving them; +though, indeed, they neither wished for nor asked any excuse; yet +nothing is further from his intentions than to enter at once upon that +occupation. She has walked to Biermandreis. In five minutes he is +walking thither too. There are a couple of roads that lead there, and of +course he takes the wrong one—the same, that is, that she had taken, so +that, although he walks fast, yet, thanks to her start of him, he has +reached the pretty little flower-shaded French village which, with its +white church and its École Communale, looks as if it were taken to +pieces at night and put to bed in a toy-box—he has reached it, and has, +moreover, traced half his homeward way, before he overtakes her. The +path by which he returns is a rough Arab track, cut in low steps up the +hill, each step a mass of fossil-shells—whelk, and scallop and oyster +shells, whose inhabitants died—strange thought!—before Adam saw Eden's +fair light. It is a charming road, cut, in part, through the red rock, +over which the southern greenery tumbles. He has approached quite close +to her before she sees him. She is sitting on a camp-stool by the +wayside, looking vacantly before her. Her figure is rather stooped, and +her straight back bent, as if it were not worth the trouble to hold it +up. Beside her, on the ground, lie a little tin colour-box and +water-bottle and a drawing-board. He wishes, with a new pang, that he +had not come upon her so suddenly. He is afraid that this is one of the +aspects of her that will stick most pertinaciously in his memory. +Catching sight of him, her whole sad, listless face lights up.</p> + +<p>"It is you! I was sure you would come. I told them to tell you where I +had gone. I meant to sketch"—with a glance at her neglected +implements—"but"—with a sigh—"as you see, I did not."</p> + +<p>"Are you down on your luck?" he asks, sitting down by her side; "you did +not seem so"—trying to harden his heart by forcing a recollection of +her extravagant gaiety—"a little while ago, when you were prancing +after that jackass."</p> + +<p>"Is not he a darling?" cries she, hurrying up the end of her sigh to +make room for a smile of pleasure. "I want to buy him; only I am afraid +he might die of sea-sickness going home."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps"—scarcely knowing what he is saying.</p> + +<p>"I should like to buy a little cart to harness him to—such a one as I +saw just now going along the road, drawn by a tiny <i>bourriquot</i> that +might have been twin brother to mine. Some Arab children had dressed out +both him and his cart with branches of that great yellow fennel—his +long ears and his little nose peeped out so pathetically between; +another child walked after barefoot, waving a great acanthus-leaf. You +never saw anything so pretty! Yes, you must break mine in for me," +smiling again; "it will not take more than a week, I am sure."</p> + +<p>"If it did not take more than a day even, I am afraid I should have to +decline the appointment"—seizing this opening to blurt out his news. "I +am off at six o'clock to-morrow morning. I—I want to see the Escurial."</p> + +<p>She had been almost garrulous about the little donkey, and he had wished +to stop her. In that he has undoubtedly succeeded.</p> + +<p>How the asphodels cover the banks on either hand! They have come into +full flower since last he passed this way: tall branching stem, white +blossom, and pinky bud; here they are in thousands.</p> + +<p>It is a soft day, on which scents lie heavy, and their strong +odour—that is scarcely perfume, and yet has an odd, acrid charm—fills +the air.</p> + +<p>"Everything must come to an end," he says baldly.</p> + +<p>She is apparently not going to make any more effort to detain him than +had her mother. He has every right to come and go where and when he +pleases. Since Amelia died, to no human being is he accountable for his +actions, and yet there is both guilt and misery in his voice as he +utters his platitude.</p> + +<p>"It has been great good luck for me that you have stayed so long; I know +that it is out of pure kindness that you have done it, and it has made +all the difference to me. I—I am quite set up again now, thanks to you; +and—and summer is coming on, and I shall do very well—capitally!"</p> + +<p>She has detected—what is, indeed, pretty obvious—the deep distress of +his face and voice, and, in her habitual unselfishness, her one thought +is to relieve him of any self-reproachful misgiving that he is doing +aught cruel in robbing her of the support of his companionship. In her +tone is nothing but the meekest gratitude. It is her misfortune, not her +fault, that in it there is not cheerfulness too. But her "gentle +physic," instead of curing, seems to aggravate his ill.</p> + +<p>"It must come to an end some time or other!" he murmurs wretchedly, as +if to himself.</p> + +<p>"Yes!"</p> + +<p>Dead silence.</p> + +<p>Below the slight eminence where they sit, the road winds white, and upon +the opulent low green hills on its further side, what a banquet of +colour! On one steep slope the plough is driving its difficult furrows, +turning up the rich red earth, shaded with deeper claret and lighter +pink stains.</p> + +<p>Beneath, a square of stone-pines looks like a green velvet handkerchief +spread on the hillside, and over the rest of the upland eucalyptus, and +olive, and cactus hold their riot of various verdure; while, on the +tiptop of everything, against a weirdly pale-blue sky-field, a Moorish +villa lifts its white flank.</p> + +<p>How long have they both been staring dully at that fair prospect before +Elizabeth again speaks!—</p> + +<p>"You were a very good friend to me!"</p> + +<p>She had not meant that past tense as an arrow to shoot into his heart; +but it sticks there, barbed.</p> + +<p>"I do not know how."</p> + +<p>"And friends—real, good friends—should not have concealments from each +other, should they? They should tell one another about themselves?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>A pause.</p> + +<p>"I have often wished—often tried to tell you about myself; but I could +not. I never could! I can tell you to-day if you wish, if you care to +hear. Do you care?"</p> + +<p>"<i>Do I care?</i>"</p> + +<p>What a small battlefield those three words make for the anger and agony +they express to fight upon!</p> + +<p>Another longer pause.</p> + +<p>She has taken off her hat, and now passes her handkerchief over her damp +forehead.</p> + +<p>"I shall be all right when I have once begun, but it is bad to make a +start."</p> + +<p>"Do not make it! do not tell me! I adjure you not to tell me! it hurts +you too much!"</p> + +<p>"It would hurt me more to let you go without telling you. Do you +remember"—rushing desperately into her subject—"at the time you stayed +with us at the Moat, that there was a great talk among us of my having +my portrait painted?"</p> + +<p>He knits his brow in an eager straining of his memory.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I recollect."</p> + +<p>"Father was wonderfully proud of me in those days; it seems impossible +to believe it now"—with a passing look of incredulity at her own +statement—"but he was."</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes."</p> + +<p>"Do you remember all the arranging and planning as to who was to be the +artist, and that he was to come and stay in the house to paint it?"</p> + +<p>Jim has put his hand up to his forehead as if to quicken the return of +those faint and distant impressions which are coming out in stronger and +stronger colours on memory's surface.</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes; he was not an Englishman, was he? We used to laugh about +him"—adding stroke to stroke in order to convince her of the accuracy +of his recollections—"used to call him the 'distinguished foreigner.'"</p> + +<p>"Did we? Yes"—slowly—"I remember now that we did. Well"—gathering +herself up for a supreme effort, panting painfully, and turning her head +quite aside so that he may have no glimpse of her face—"he came, and he +stayed two months, and at the end of those two months I—I—ran away +with him!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIVA" id="CHAPTER_XIVA"></a>CHAPTER XIV.</h2> + + +<h3>VALE?</h3> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>One would have thought that Jim had been in some measure prepared for +the just-fallen blow, both by the overheard fragments of Mr. Greenock's +conversation with the Devonshire clergyman at Florence last year; by the +accumulated evidence of there being some blight upon Elizabeth's life; +and, lastly and chiefly, by the ravings of Byng. But there is something +so different from all these, so infinitely more dreadful, in hearing +this naked statement from her own lips, that it stuns him as much as if +he had never received any hint of that ruinous secret in the background +of her life.</p> + +<p>Having now uttered it, she stops, either to pick up her own spent +strength or to give him the opportunity for some question or comment.</p> + +<p>He makes neither.</p> + +<p>"I thought—I hoped—that you had guessed, from what Mr. Byng said. I +believed that when he was not himself——"</p> + +<p>Again she breaks off, but still no sound comes from Jim.</p> + +<p>"You understand, of course, that that was what I told him. I wanted to +tell him the rest, but that time he could not hear it, and the last time +he—he—did not care to hear it."</p> + +<p>His continued muteness must daunt her, for she here makes a longer pause +than before. Indeed, it is only the fear lest she should mean it for a +final one that enables him to force out the two husky monosyllables:</p> + +<p>"Go on."</p> + +<p>She is always most obedient, and she now obeys.</p> + +<p>"He came only two days after you left us; that was why the sight of you +was so—so painful to us at first. It was not your fault, but we could +not help mixing you up with him. You remember how we tried to avoid +you—how discourteous we were? You forgave us afterwards, but you must +have observed it."</p> + +<p>The listener makes a slight motion of assent.</p> + +<p>"He was a Hungarian, and had been recommended to father by Sir ——, +who, as you know, is always so extraordinarily kind to struggling +artists, and who thought highly of his talent, and wished to get him +commissions. He was almost starving in London; that was one great +reason, I think, why father employed him."</p> + +<p>Even at this moment the thought darts across Jim's mind that he has +never known Elizabeth miss an opportunity of implying some praise of +that father whose harshness towards herself he has so often had an +opportunity of witnessing.</p> + +<p>"He was quite young—not more than twenty-three—and he looked very ill +when he first came; indeed, he was really half starved. It has always +been the surest passport to mammy's heart to be poor and sick and down +in the world, and nothing could have been kinder than they both were to +him."</p> + +<p>"And well he repaid their kindness," says Jim, indignation at last +giving him words.</p> + +<p>She puts out her hand, as if to stop him.</p> + +<p>"Wait, wait!" she says, almost authoritatively; "do not abuse him. He +seemed very grateful to them, and they all—we all—became quite fond of +him. When he grew stronger, he turned out to be very lively and +light-hearted—almost as light-hearted as we."</p> + +<p>She pauses, pulled up by a deep sigh, at the reminiscence of that young +gaiety, then hurries on, as if afraid of his again breaking in upon her +narrative with some scathing ejaculation.</p> + +<p>"Before three weeks were over—you know how cheerful and easy-going we +were—he was quite one of us—quite as—as intimate as you were."</p> + +<p>Jim stirs uneasily, galled by the comparison.</p> + +<p>"He was a long time painting my picture—could not satisfy himself with +the likeness—and began it over again several times. At first there was +always someone in the room with us when I sat to him, but by-and-by, as +he became more and more one of us—as his presence among us grew to be a +matter of course—we were allowed often to be <i>tête-à-tête</i>."</p> + +<p>She stops to let pass two Frenchmen and a Frenchwoman of the <i>petit +bourgeois</i> class who are sauntering homewards, frisked about by two +little cheerful curs, and with armfuls of hawthorn—yes; real English +hawthorn—in their embrace. They look inquisitively, but not rudely, at +the pale couple, and now they are out of sight.</p> + +<p>"It was a very fine autumn, as you may remember, and we used to go out +sketching together. He was supposed to give us sketching lessons—the +children and me. The governess was by way of always being there, but she +was a sentimental creature, generally straying away by herself with a +poetry-book, and we were virtually alone."</p> + +<p>Jim sees how increasingly, how horribly difficult of relation is the +tale as it nears its catastrophe; but he is quite incapable of helping +her.</p> + +<p>"We fell in love with one another"—almost brusquely—"and he asked me +to marry him. What did his miserable poverty matter to us? He knew +almost as little of the practical business of life as I, and he was full +of hope and ambition. He was convinced that he had a future before him. +Perhaps he had. Who knows?"</p> + +<p>There is mixed with the hurry and shame and anguish of her tone such an +element of almost regretful compassion as she pronounces these last +words, that Jim's jealous wrath awakes. Does she, then, love him still? +In her heart for how many is there lodging at once? For Byng? For this +unknown? For how many more?</p> + +<p>"Even he, high-flown as he was, knew that it was impossible that father +could permit our marriage if we asked his consent; but what he laboured +to convince me of was, that if the thing were once done and irrevocable, +father would soon, doting as he did on me—you know he <i>did</i> dote on me, +poor father!—he would soon forgive us; and I, after awhile—oh! it was +after awhile; do not think it was at once"—with a piteous effort to +mitigate the severity of her silent judge—"and I have always all my +life been terribly easily persuaded—I gave in."</p> + +<p>Far away a dull cloud, rain-charged, is settling over the Kabyle +mountains, rubbing out their toothed ridge. Can she hold out to the end?</p> + +<p>She has not reached the worst yet.</p> + +<p>"We were soon given an opportunity. Father and mother went away for a +couple of nights upon a visit, and left us under the nominal chaperonage +of a deaf old aunt of mother's, and of the governess, who, as I have +told you, was worse than useless. You know that our railway-station was +not more than a mile from the lodge gates; we had, therefore, no +difficulty in slipping away from the others while we were all out +walking, making our way there, and getting into the little branch-line +train which caught the London express at Exeter."</p> + +<p>She has repeatedly put up her handkerchief, and passed it over her brow, +but it is useless. The cold sweat breaks out afresh and afresh.</p> + +<p>"That journey! I did not know that it was the end of my life. We both +set off laughing and saying to each other what a good joke it was. That +was at the beginning, but long and long before we reached London—it was +not till very late that we did so—I would have given all the world to +go back. I did not tell him so, because I thought it would hurt him, but +I have often thought since that perhaps he was feeling the same."</p> + +<p>Again that touch of almost tender ruth in her voice makes her auditor +writhe.</p> + +<p>"We went to an hotel. I think it must have been in some very +out-of-the-way part of the town, probably the only one he knew of, and +at first they would not take us in because we had no luggage; but they +consented at last. I heard him telling the landlady that I was his +sister. I suppose she did not believe it, as she looked very oddly at +me. I did not understand why she should; but it made me feel very +wretched—so wretched that I could scarcely swallow a mouthful of the +supper he ordered. I do not think that he had much more appetite than I; +but we tried very hard to laugh and keep up each other's spirits. They +gave me a very dismal bedroom—I can see it now"—shuddering—"and as I +had no change of clothes I lay all night outside my bed. It took a great +deal to keep me awake in those days, and, wretched as I was, I slept a +good deal. The next morning I awoke, feeling more cheerful. We should be +married in the forenoon, return home in the afternoon, to spring our +surprise upon the children and Fräulein, and be ready to receive and be +pardoned by father and mother on their return to-morrow. It had not +occurred to either of us that there would be the slightest difficulty in +pursuing this course. We had decided upon at once inquiring the name and +address of the clergyman in whose parish the hotel was—going together +to ask for an interview, and beg him to marry us at once. We had a vague +idea that a licence might be needed, but relied upon the clergyman also +to inform us where that might be got. In one respect our plans had to be +at once modified. When I came down I found that there was such a dense +fog that he would not hear of my venturing out into it, particularly, he +said, as my staying behind would entail no delay; since, when he had +obtained the licence and engaged the clergyman, he would, of course, at +once come back to fetch me to church. I gave in, though I had rather +have gone with him, and fought my way through the fog than stayed +behind, alone in that dreary sitting-room. I was there nearly all day by +myself until late in the afternoon. The fog was so thick that I could +not see a finger's length beyond the window, nor even across the room. I +had neither book nor work. I had nothing to do but walk up and down by +the flickering light of the bad gas, which was burning all day, and look +at a wretched little dead aucuba in a pot. Sometimes I went out on the +landing to see if there were any signs of his return. I had done this +for the fiftieth time, when at last I saw him through the gas and the +fog, coming up the staircase. I could not wait till he had reached me, +but called out over the banisters, 'Well? Well?' His only answer was a +sort of sign to me to go back into the room; but I did not understand it +at first. Not until I saw, coming up the stairs too, a little behind +him, the face of—of—that clergyman you saw at Certosa—our clergyman +whom we used to make fun of. Oh, why did we?"</p> + +<p>She breaks off with a low moan, but at once resumes as if she could not +trust herself to pause:</p> + +<p>"As soon as I caught sight of him I ran back; but it was too late. I +knew that he had recognised me. I do not, to this day, understand how he +came to be in that out-of-the-way place; whether it was a most +unfortunate coincidence, or whether he had seen us in the train or at +Paddington, and tracked us there. I ran back, as I have said, into the +room; but I did not really mind much his having seen me; it would all be +explained so soon, and I was too much taken up with the bitter +disappointment in store for me to give him more than a passing thought. +Of course you will understand that it was not in the power of any +clergyman to marry us, as neither of us had lived in the parish for the +requisite time beforehand, nor could we be married at a registry office, +as our names had not been entered in the registrar's book for the legal +time. I think I should have broken down altogether when I heard this if +I had not had to comfort him. He was so overwhelmed with the fear that I +should think that it was his fault—that he had not done his best. +Heaven knows I had no such hard thought of him! Although we consulted +together all that evening, and till late into the night, we could not +hit upon any expedient. He had been told vaguely that the Scotch +marriage law differed from the English, and that in Edinburgh we might +be married at once. But we had not enough money to take us there. Our +whole stock would only just buy an ordinary licence, keep us one day +more at the hotel, and take us home third class. What <i>should</i> we do? We +did not even try to laugh that evening—that last evening!"</p> + +<p>In her voice is the same echo of some pitying sorrow that had before +offended him; but his interest is now too strung up for him to notice +it.</p> + +<p>"I did not once close my eyes that night, and when I came down next +morning I had made up my mind to beg him to let me go home and ask +father to make everything right. I had such confidence that father could +set everything right. When I came into the sitting-room he was not +there. I waited for him, and after awhile the breakfast was brought up; +but still he did not come. I waited on. It seemed to me odd that, at +such a crisis, when we were both so miserable, he should be able to +oversleep himself I am afraid"—with an accent of most regretful +remorse—"that I did think hardly of him then. I looked at the clock; I +had been down an hour. I rang for the waiter, and asked him to go and +tell the gentleman this. He was so long in coming back that I lost +patience, and went out into the passage. I saw a little group of people +gathered round a door some way down it. They seemed to be whispering and +speaking excitedly, and one chambermaid was crying. In an instant I was +among them, through them, in the room. It was his bedroom. He was lying +half on, half off the bed. He had evidently not undressed all night, and +had taken off nothing but his coat. Before they could stop me—I believe +that they humanely tried—I had caught a glimpse of his face, and had +heard someone, as if at a great distance off, pronounce the word +'<i>dead</i>'! Then everything went away. I believe I crashed down like a +log, as Mr. Byng did. When next I came to myself mammy was leaning over +me. The people in the hotel had found a letter in my pocket, with my +address, and had telegraphed for her and father. They took me home. I do +not remember anything about that, but so I was told afterwards, as I was +also told that he had died of deep-seated heart-disease, aggravated by +his anxiety about me. I have never brought good-luck to anyone that had +to do with me!"</p> + +<p>She is crying quietly now. Is it her tale or her tears that have +softened Jim's heart? He no longer grudges her that tribute to the lover +of her youth.</p> + +<p>"For the first few days after I came home I did not feel anything at +all, and I saw nobody but mammy. At the end of a week she came to me, +and told me that I must pull myself together, for that my father wished +me to go with him to an agricultural meeting at Exeter, which we were +always in the habit of attending. She said that there were reports about +me in the county, which nothing but my appearing in public would +contradict She said she knew how hard it was for me, but that she knew, +too, that I would try to make the effort for their sakes. <i>For their +sakes!</i>"—in a heart-wrung voice—"was not it the least I could do, <i>for +their sakes</i>? I got up; my legs felt as if they did not belong to me. +She dressed me herself—darling mammy!—and she tied on my veil, +and—put some rouge on my cheeks! Think of mammy rouging anyone! If you +remember, we had had some charades while you were with us, and had +bought some rouge for them. And then she took me down to father, and we +went—he and I."</p> + +<p>Her breath has grown shorter, and her narrative more disjointed; but she +perseveres. Is not she near the end?</p> + +<p>"We went—and we walked about—among the shorthorns—and the prize +poultry—and the tents—father and I—and we met a great many people +whom we knew—the whole county was there—but we were too late. Our +Rector had been before us with them—and not one of them would speak to +me! Not one of them would have anything to say to me! And then we went +home. Oh, poor father!"</p> + +<p>She has covered her face with her transparent hands. The emotion that +she would not permit herself for herself has mastered her at the +recollection of that father's abasement and agony.</p> + +<p>"He was quite right—it was quite natural that he should not allow me to +live at home, after that. He said I must not blight the children's +lives—must not stand in the light of the others. So I was sent away to +live with some old friends of mammy's—two kind old ladies—with whom +she had been at school; and they were very good to me, and I lived with +them until, as Miriam and Rose were married, father thought I could not +do anyone any more harm, and he let me come home again. There! that is +all!"</p> + +<p>She stops, her tale ended, sighing with the inexpressible relief of that +lifted load. Speech from him now would be no interruption—would be +kindly, rather, and welcome. Yet he still stares blankly before him. Why +has she told him that painful tale? Is it that he may carry a more +lenient judgment of her through the rest of his life—that life to be +finally severed from hers? Or is it with some hope that that told tale +may keep him for ever beside her? She does not love him. She loves Byng. +But, as he has often told himself, she is not of the stuff of which +great constancies are made. And, since Byng has forsaken her, whom has +this pliant creature, that nature made so clinging and circumstances so +lonely, left to throw her tendrils round, except him? She does not love +him, and yet in the depth of his heart he knows that, if he wished it, +he could make her love him. Shall he wish it? Shall he stay—stay to +have those exquisite eyes, tear-washed, and yet laughing, watching for +his lightest wish; that tripping step keeping time to his up the hills +and through the valleys of life; that delicate sympathy, soaring with +his highest thoughts, and yet playing with his lightest fancies? Shall +he?</p> + +<p>Elizabeth is looking down upon the asphodels, stooping to stroke, as if +it were a sentient thing, a great plumy plant, like a sort of glorified +fennel, out of whose fluthery breast a puissant sheath rises, from which +an unfamiliar flower is pushing. What a fascination there is in this +alien vegetation, in which every shut calyx holds a delightful secret!</p> + +<p>Shall he? For himself, he believes her story implicitly, feeling, +indeed, with a shock of mixed surprise and remorse, what a past want of +faith in her is evidenced by his unspeakable relief at its being no +worse a one. But who else will believe it? And the more penetratingly +sweet, the more poignantly dear she is to him, the sharper to him will +be the agony of the eye averted from her, the suspicious whisper, or the +contemptuous smile. Is his heart stout enough, is his courage high +enough, to support and uphold her through her life's long contumely? +Dares he undertake that hard task? Dares he?</p> + +<p>Elizabeth is never one apt to take offence, or she might resent his +delay in making any observation on her ended story. Probably she divines +that whatever may be the cause of his slowness, it is certainly not want +of emotion.</p> + +<p>At length his tardy speech makes itself heard.</p> + +<p>"I do not know how—I have not words strong enough with which to thank +you for telling me."</p> + +<p>"I did not want my one friend to go away thinking more hardly of me than +he need," she answers, with a poor, small smile.</p> + +<p>This is one of the bitterest cups to which her lips have ever been set +in the course of her sad history.</p> + +<p>His next sentence is almost inaudible.</p> + +<p>"I could not well think much better of you than I have done all along."</p> + +<p>He knows, without seeing it, that her trembling hand makes a half-motion +to go out to him at those kind-sounding words, but it is drawn back +again before the action has passed much beyond the stage of a project.</p> + +<p>The wind has fallen. With how almost disagreeable a strength does the +sharp and pungent smell of the innumerable asphodels assail the +nostrils. The light grows lower. Dares he? Has he the steady selfless +valour that will be needed to fight through many years by the side of +this forlorn creature against an enemy uglier—and, oh! how much more +potent!—than any of the fierce forest creatures in contest with which +he has so often lightly perilled his life? Dares he? He has never been +lacking in self-reliance—been, perhaps, too little apt to blench at the +obstacles strewn in his life-path. Is he going to blench now? Whether it +be to his credit or his shame, the answer does not come all at once. +Dares he? The response comes at last—comes slowly, comes solemnly, yet +comes certainly:</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>He can never again laugh at Byng for his tears, for he is undoubtedly +crying himself now.</p> + +<p>"Elizabeth! Elizabeth!"—he cannot get further than that at +first—"you—you are the worst-used woman in the world! and I—I have +not the least desire to see the Escurial!"</p> + + + +<h3>THE END.</h3> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Alas!, by Rhoda Broughton + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALAS! *** + +***** This file should be named 34428-h.htm or 34428-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/4/4/2/34428/ + +Produced by Meredith Bach, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +book was produced from scanned images of public domain +material from the Google Print project.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Alas! + A Novel + +Author: Rhoda Broughton + +Release Date: November 24, 2010 [EBook #34428] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALAS! *** + + + + +Produced by Meredith Bach, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +book was produced from scanned images of public domain +material from the Google Print project.) + + + + + + + + + + ALAS! + + A Novel + + BY RHODA BROUGHTON + +AUTHOR OF 'COMETH UP AS A FLOWER,' 'RED AS A ROSE IS SHE,' 'SECOND +THOUGHTS,' 'GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!,' 'NANCY,' 'DOCTOR CUPID,' ETC. + + + _A NEW EDITION_ + + LONDON + RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON + Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen + 1891 + [_All rights reserved_] + + _TO + MRS. ANDREW SPOTTISWOODE_ + + + + +ALAS! + + + + +PART I. + +Amelia. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +"If you will allow me, I shall have the pleasure of reading aloud to you +some passages from 'Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings,' by Charles Dickens. I do +not know much about the book myself, as I have never read it. I dare say +that you know more about it than I do; but I am given to understand" +(with a glance at the page before him) "that Mrs. Lirriper was a +lodging-house-keeper, that she kept lodgings in London. She was a very +good sort of woman, I believe" (another hasty glance), "but she +sometimes had trouble with her servants. I am told that servants are +troublesome sometimes" (a slight nervous laugh, the more nervous because +it does not seem to be followed by any echo from the audience). "If you +will allow me then, as I say, and if you think it will amuse you, I will +read you a little of what she says about these troubles." + +The foregoing remarks are uttered in a loud, shy, dogged voice by James +Burgoyne to the "Oxford Women's Provident Association." His voice is +loud because, being quite unused to public reading, he does not know how +to modulate it; it is shy from the same cause of unaccustomedness; it is +dogged because he is very much displeased with his present occupation, +and has not been successful in concealing that displeasure. When a man +runs down to Oxford for a couple of nights, to see how the six years +that have passed since he turned his undergraduate back upon the old +place have treated her--runs down to a college chum unseen for the same +six years--this is certainly not the way in which he expects to spend +one of his two evenings. + +"I hope you will not mind, Jim"--ominous phrase--the college friend has +said; "but I am afraid we shall have to turn out for half an hour after +dinner. It is rather a nuisance, particularly as it is such a wet night; +but the fact is, I have promised to read to the 'Oxford Women's +Provident Association.' Ah, by-the-bye, that is new since you were +here--we had no Provident Women in your day!" + +"On the other hand, we had a great many improvident men," returns Jim +dryly. + +"Well, the fact is, my wife is on the committee, and a good deal +interested in it, and we give them a sort of entertainment once a month +through the winter terms--tea and buns, that kind of thing, sixpence a +head; they enjoy it far more than if we gave it them for nothing; and +after tea we get people to recite and read and sing to them. I am sure I +wish them joy of my reading to-night, for I do not see how I am to make +myself audible; I am as hoarse as a crow." + +"I know those Oxford colds of old," returns Burgoyne, with that +temperate compassion in his voice which we accord to our neighbours' +minor diseases. He is sorry that his friend has a cold; but he little +knows how much sorrier he will be in the course of the next hour as he +adds: "Do not distress yourself about me; I shall be quite happy in your +den with a book and a cigarette. Mrs. Brown does not object, does she? +And I dare say you will not be very long away." + +As he speaks he realizes, with a sort of pang--the pang we pay sometimes +to our dead pasts--that, though it is only three hours since he was +reunited to his once inseparable Brown, he is already looking forward +with relief to the prospect of an hour's freedom from his society--so +terribly far apart is it possible to grow in six years. But, before his +half-fledged thought has had time to do more than traverse his brain, +Brown has broken into it with the eager remonstrances of a mistaken +species of hospitality. + +"Leave you behind? Could not hear of such a thing! Of course you must +come too! It will be a new experience for you; a wholesome change. Ha! +ha! and we can talk all the way there and back; we have had no talk +worth speaking of yet." + +Again it flashes across the other's mind, with the same pensive regret +as before, that talk worth speaking of is for ever over between them; +but, seeing that further attempts at evasion will seriously hurt the +good-natured Brown, he acquiesces, with as fair a grace as he may. + +While putting on his own mackintosh, he watches, with a subdued wonder, +his friend winding himself into a huge white woollen comforter, and +stepping into a pair of goloshes (he had been rather a smart +undergraduate in his day), while outside the opened hall door the rain +is heard to swish, and the wind to bellow. + +"Had not we better have a hansom?" suggests Burgoyne, blinking, as the +slant gust sends two or three stinging drops into his eyes. + +"A hansom! nonsense!" returns the other, laughing, and with difficulty +unfurling an umbrella in the teeth of the blast. "It is all very well +for a bloated bachelor like you; but a man whose family is increasing at +the rate mine is cannot afford himself such luxuries; come along, you +are not sugar or salt." + +Burgoyne feels that at this moment he can at all events conscientiously +disclaim affinity with the first of the two. + +It is indeed a wet night, wet as the one immortalized by Browning in +"Christmas Eve and Easter Day;" and who ever brought a wet night and wet +umbrellas "wry and flapping" so piercingly home to us as he? The talk so +cheerfully promised by Burgoyne's sanguine friend is rendered absolutely +impossible by the riot of the elements. It is a good step from the +suburban villa, which is the scene of Brown's married joys, to the room +in the heart of the town where the Provident Matrons hold their +_sabbat_; and by the time that the two men have reached that room there +is, despite his mackintosh, little of Burgoyne left dry except his +speech. They are under shelter at last, however, have entered the +building, added their umbrellas to many other streaming wrecks of +whalebone huddled in a corner, and exchanged the dark blustering drench +for a flare of gas, a reek of tea, and a sultry stream of wet clothes +and humanity. The tea, indeed, is a thing of the past--all its apparatus +has been removed. The rows of chairs are all set to face the platform, +and on those chairs the Provident Women sit, smiling, if damp, with here +and there a little boy, evidently too wicked to be left at home, +comfortably wedged between a couple of matronly figures. + +The entertainment has already begun, and an undergraduate--damp, like +everyone else--is singing, in a booming bass voice, something of a +vaguely boastful nature about what he once did "In Bilboa's Bay." +Burgoyne has for the moment lost sight of his chaperon, and remains +standing near the door, looking upon the scene around him with an eye +from which philanthropy is all too criminally absent. About him are +grouped a few ladies and gentlemen--more of the former than the +latter--who are obviously about to give their services, judging by their +rolls of music and the books in their hands. His look passes over them +indifferently--he has no acquaintance among them. He had never known +many of the Oxford householders, and there is no place where a man +becomes superannuated after so short a lapse of years. + +Here are new arrivals. He turns his head mechanically as the opening +door reveals the advent of more umbrellaed and mackintoshed waterfalls. +Two men and a lady. As his eye alights on the woman, he does not +start--we Anglo-Saxons are not apt to make our slow grave bodies the +indexes of our emotions--but he is conscious of an odd and puzzling +sensation. Where has he seen that face before? + +"Bilboa's Bay" has come to an end without his perceiving it. He is +putting his memory through her paces, trying to find some niche in his +three happy Oxford years in which to place that strangely known yet +unknown figure. There is no such niche. It is not an Oxford memory at +all. What is it then? An earlier or a later one? His eyebrows are drawn +together in the effort of recollection, making him look, if possible, +crosser than before, when he is made aware of the return of Brown by +finding his arm seized, and his friend's voice--a good deal hoarser even +than when they left home--in his ear, "Jim, do you feel inclined to do a +very good-natured thing?" + +"Not in the least," replies Burgoyne promptly; "if anyone wishes to +borrow L5 from me, I should advise him to choose a moment when I am +drier about the legs." + +Burgoyne has very often stood up to and over his knees in water for +hours, watching for ducks among whistling reeds on winter mornings, and +never thought himself at all to be pitied; but he is thoroughly vexed +now at his moist trousers. Brown, however, is not so easily rebuffed. + +"I should be awfully obliged to you," he says croakily; "you would be +laying me under a very real obligation if you would----" He stops to +cough. + +"If I would what?" returns the other curtly, and looking apprehensively +at a book which Brown is expanding before his eyes. + +"If you would read instead of me." + +"I!" + +"Why, the fact is"--coughing noisily again as if to show that there is +no imposition--"I suppose the fog must have got down my throat; but I +find I cannot speak above a whisper. I should not be heard beyond the +front row; come, old man, do a good-natured thing for once in your +life." + +There is a pause; Burgoyne is not very fond of being asked to do a +good-natured thing. He can do a big one every now and then, but he is +not particularly fond of being asked to do a small one. + +"Surely there must be many people here much better suited for it than I +am," he says presently, looking uncomfortably round in search of the +little group of booked and musicked persons whom he had seen but now +standing near him, but it had melted. + +"That is just what there are not," rejoins Brown, pressing his point +with the more eagerness, as he thinks he sees signs of yielding; "we are +very short of hands to-night, and my wife has just heard that the girl +upon whom she was counting for a couple of songs is in bed with +influenza." + +"Happy girl! I wish I too was in bed with influenza," says Jim +sardonically, for he sees his fate about to overtake him. + +And so it comes to pass that, five minutes later, as described at the +opening of this chapter, he is seated on the platform with "Mrs. +Lirriper's Lodgings" before him, rows of Provident Matrons' eyes +fastened expectantly upon him, and horrid qualms of strange shyness +racing over him. + +Brown has indicated by a dog's-ear the page at which he is to begin; so +he is spared indecision on this head. But has Brown indicated the page +at which he is to stop? He is gnawed by a keen anxiety as to this point +all through his performance. It is hot upon the platform, the smell of +tea potent, and the naked gas-jets close above his head throw an ugly +yellow glare upon his book. + +Having offered his prefatory observations in the manner I have +indicated, he rushes _in media res_. "Girls, as I was beginning to +remark, are one of your first and your lasting troubles, being like your +teeth, which begin with convulsions, and never cease tormenting you from +the time you cut them till they cut you, and then you do not want to +part with them, which seems hard, but we must all succumb, or buy +artificial." (Do his ears deceive him? Is there already a slight titter? +Have the simile of the convulsions and the necessity for a _ratelier_ +already struck a chord in the matrons' breasts?) "And, even where you +get a will, nine times out of ten you get a dirty face with it, and +naturally lodgers do not like good society to be shown in with a smear +of black across the nose, or a smudgy eyebrow!" (Is he managing his +voice alright? Is he mumbling, or is he bellowing? He rather inclines to +a suspicion of the latter. Why did not they laugh at the "smudgy +eyebrow"? They ought to have done so, and he had paused to give them the +opportunity. Perhaps it is among them too familiar a phenomenon to +provoke mirth.) "Where they pick the black up is a mystery I cannot +solve, as in the case of the willingest girl that ever came into a +house, half-starved, poor thing; a girl so willing that I called her +'Willing Sophy;' down upon her knees scrubbing early and late, and ever +cheerful, but always with a black face. And I says to Sophy, 'Now, +Sophy, my good girl, have a regular day for your stoves, and do not +brush your hair with the bottoms of the saucepans, and do not meddle +with the snuffs of the candles, and it stands to reason that it cannot +be.'" (Ah! what welcome sound is this? "Willing Sophy" has produced an +undoubted giggle, which Burgoyne hears spreading and widening through +the room. Heartened by this indication, he goes on in a more emphatic +and hilarious voice:) "Yet there it was, and always on her nose, which, +turning up, and being broad at the end, seemed to boast of it, and +caused warning from a steady gentleman, an excellent lodger, with +breakfast by the week." + +There can be no mistake about it now; the giggle has changed into a +universal resonant laugh, which goes on swelling and rising, until, in +the final roar of approbation which greets the concluding paragraph, the +reader's voice is drowned. The matrons have all along been ready to be +amused; it is only that, owing to the gravity of his face and solemnity +of his manner, it was some time before they recognised that his +intention was comic. As soon as they do so, they reward that intention +with more than adequate mirth. Burgoyne has reached the second +dog's-ear, that dog's-ear which his eye has been earnestly searching for +throughout. His task then is ended. He heaves a deep sigh of relief, +and, with a reflection that, after all, he is glad he was obliging, is +preparing to shut the volume, when he feels the inevitable Brown's hand +on his shoulder, and his husky voice in his ear. + +"Capital! you got on capitally! Could not be better; but you will not +mind going on a little longer, will you? You have only read for ten +minutes. I want you to try something different this time--a little +pathos, for a change. I have marked the page. Here!" + +What is there to do but acquiesce? Burgoyne, complying, finds himself at +once in the middle of a melancholy tale of a poor young woman left +ruined and deserted in Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings, and only rescued from +suicide by the efforts of that good lady, who, however, is unable to +save her from a tragic and premature death. The reader has reached the +point at which Mrs. Lirriper has met the poor creature on her way to the +river. + +"'Mrs. Edson, I says, my dear, take care! However, did you lose your +way, and stumble in a dangerous place like this? No wonder you're lost, +I'm sure.'" (What is this sound? Is it possible that the giggle is +rising again? the giggle which he was so glad to welcome a little while +ago, but which is so disastrously out of place here. He redoubles his +efforts to put an unmistakably serious and pathetic tone into his +voice.) "She was all in a shiver, and she so continued till I laid her +on her own bed, and up to the early morning she held me by the hand and +moaned, and moaned, 'Oh, wicked, wicked, wicked!----'" + +What can the Provident Matrons be made of? They are laughing +unrestrainedly. Too late Burgoyne realizes that he had not made it +sufficiently clear that his intention is no longer comic. The idea of +his being a funny man has so firmly rooted itself in his hearers' minds, +that nothing can now dislodge it. Such being the case, he feels that the +best thing he can do is to reach the end as quickly as possible. He +begins to read very fast, which is taken for a new stroke of +facetiousness, the result of which is that the last sigh of the poor +young would-be suicide is drowned in a storm of hilarity even heartier +and more prolonged than that which greeted "Willing Sophy's" smudged +nose. In much confusion, greatly abashed by the honours so mistakenly +heaped upon him, Burgoyne hastily leaves the platform. Twenty thousand +Browns shall not keep him there! + + + + +CHAPTER II. + + "Tell me now in what hidden way is + Lady Flora the lovely Roman? + Where is Hipparchia, and where is Thais? + Neither of them the fairer woman. + Where is Echo beheld of no one, + Only heard on river and mere? + She whose beauty was more than human, + But where are the snows of yester-year?" + + +"There is no reason why we should not go home now; are you ready?" cries +Brown, bustling up to his friend, who has not waited for this question +to make straight, as the needle to the pole, for the corner where the +collected umbrellas stand in their little area of lake. + +Burgoyne would probably have laughed at the unconscious irony of this +inquiry if he had heard it; but he has not, his attention being +otherwise directed. On the same umbrella quest as himself, being helped +on with her mackintosh by one of the two men who had accompanied her, a +pepper-and-salt-haired, sturdy gentleman of an obviously unacademic cut, +is the lady whose face had flashed upon him with that puzzling sense of +unfamiliar familiarity. Since they are now in close proximity, and both +employed alike in struggling into their wraps, there is nothing more +natural than that she should turn her eyes full upon him. They are very +fine eyes, though far from young ones. Is it a trick of his imagination, +or does he see a look of half-recognition dawn in them, such as must +have been born in his own when they first alighted on her? At all +events, if there is such a look of half-recognition in her eyes, she is +determined that it shall not have a chance of becoming a whole one. +Either he is mistaken, and she has not recognised him, or she is +determined not to acknowledge the acquaintance, for she looks away again +at once, nor does she throw another glance in his direction. Indeed, it +seems to him that she hurries on her preparations with added speed, and +walks out into the night accompanied by her double escort before him. + +The weather has changed, and for the better. The rollicking wind has +lulled, the pattering rain ceased. Between the ragged, black +cloud-sheets star-points shine, and a shimmering moon shows her wet face +reflected in the puddles. Talk, which had been impossible on their way +to the meeting, is not only possible but easy now, and Brown is +evidently greatly inclined for it. Burgoyne, on the other hand, had +never felt more disinclined. It is not so much that he is out of humour +with his tiresome friend, though he is that too, as that his whole mind +is centred on making his memory give up the secret of that face that has +come back to him out of some vague cavern of his past. + +Who is the woman whom he knows, and who knows him (for on reflection he +is sure that that look of hers was one of half--of more than +half--recognition), and yet whose place in his history, whose very name, +he seeks so vainly? She does not belong to his Oxford days, as he has +already ascertained. He has learnt from Brown that she does not belong +to the Oxford of to-day, being apparently a stranger, and, with her +husband, a visitor to the Warden of ---- College, in whose company they +had arrived. He explores the succeeding years of his life. In vain; she +has no place there; in vain he dives and plunges into the sea of his +memory; he cannot fish up the pearl he seeks. He must hark back to +earlier days--his school-time, the six months he spent in Devonshire +with a coach before he came up to New. Ah! he has it--he has it at last! +just as they have reached Brown's door, while he is fumbling with his +latch-key for the keyhole, imprecating the moon for withdrawing her +shining at the very instant he most needs her, Burgoyne has come up with +the shy object of his chase. It is conjured back into his mind by the +word Devonshire. + +"I have it," he says to himself; "her hair has turned white, that was +why I did not recognise her; it used to be raven-black. But it is +she--of course it is she! To think of my not knowing her again! Of +course it is Mrs. Le Marchant." + +What a door into the distance that name has opened!--a door through +which he passes into a Devonshire garden, and romps with rose-faced +Devonshire children. The very names of those children are coming back to +him. Tom and Charles, those were the schoolboys; Rose and Miriam, +and--Elizabeth. He recalls--absurd trick of freakish memory--those +children's pets. Tom and Charles had guinea-pigs; Miriam had a white +rat; Rose--what had Rose? Rose must have had something; and Elizabeth +had a kangaroo. Elizabeth's kangaroo was short-lived, poor beast, and +died about hay-time; the guinea-pigs and the white rat have been dead +too for ages now, of course. And are Tom and Charles, and Rose and +Miriam, and bright Elizabeth dead also? Absurd! Why should they be? +Nothing more unlikely! Why, it is only ten years ago, after all. + +He is roused from his meditations by Brown's voice, to find himself in +Brown's study, where its owner is filling himself a pipe, and festally +offering him whisky-and-water. But it is only an abstracted attention +that Burgoyne lends, either to the whisky or the whisky's master; and +his answers are sometimes inattentively beside the mark, to talk, which +indeed is not without some likeness to the boasted exploits in Clement's +Inn, and the affectionate inquiries after Jane Nightwork, of a more +famous fool than he. + +It is a relief to the guest when, earlier than he had expected--a +blessing he, no doubt, owes to Mrs. Brown--his host breaks up the +seance, and he is free to retire to his own room. At once he is back in +that Devonshire garden, he is there almost all night, between sleep and +wake. It is strange that persons and circumstances banished from his +memory for ten long years should rush back with such tyrannous +insistence now. + +Such silly recollected trifles crowd back upon his mind. The day on +which Tom nearly choked himself by swallowing a barley beard; the day on +which the lop-eared rabbit littered--ah, rabbits, of course! those were +what Rose had!--the day on which Tom pushed Miriam into the moat, and +Elizabeth fell in, too, in trying to fish her out. Elizabeth, the +eldest, the almost grown-up one, embarrassed by her newly lengthened +petticoats, so harassing at cricket, in races, in climbing apple-trees. +Elizabeth was sixteen; he remembers the fact, because her birthday had +fallen two days before his own departure. He had given her a gold +thimble set with turquoises upon the occasion; it was not a surprise, +because he recalls measuring her finger for the size. He can see that +small middle finger now. Elizabeth must now be twenty-six years of age. +Where is she? What is she--maid, wife, or widow? + +And why has Mrs. Le Marchant's hair turned snow-white? Had it been +merely gray he would not have complained, though he would have deplored +the loss of the fine smooth inky sweep he remembers. She has a fair +right to be gray; Mrs. Le Marchant must be about forty-six or +forty-seven, bien sonne. But white, snow-white--the hue that one +connects with a venerable extremity of age. Can it be bleached? He has +heard of women bleaching their hair; but not Mrs. Le Marchant, not the +Mrs. Le Marchant he remembers. She would have been as incapable of +bleach as of dye. Then why is she snow-haired? Because Providence has so +willed it is the obvious answer. But somehow Burgoyne cannot bring +himself to believe that she has come fairly by that white head. + +With the morning light the might of the Devonshire memories grows +weaker; and, as the day advances, the Oxford ones resume their sway. How +can it be otherwise, when all day long he strays among the unaltered +buildings in the sweet sedate college gardens, down the familiar "High," +where, six years ago, he could not take two steps without being hailed +by a jolly fresh voice, claiming his company for some new pleasure; but +where now he walks ungreeted, where the smooth-faced boys he meets, and +who strike him as so much more boyish than his own contemporaries had +done, pass him by indifferently, unknown to the whole two thousand as he +is. He feels a sort of irrational anger with them for not recognising +him, though they have never seen him before. + +Yes, there is no place where a man is so quickly superannuated as in +Oxford. He is saying this to himself all day, is saying it still as he +strolls in the afternoon down Mesopotamia, to fill up the time before +the hour for college chapel. Yes, there is no place where men so soon +turn into ghosts. He has been knocking up against them all day at every +street-corner; they have looked out at him from every gray window in the +Quad at New--jovial, athletic young ghosts, so much painfuller to meet +than rusty, century-worn old ones. They are rather less plentiful in +Mesopotamia than elsewhere; perhaps, because in his day, as now, +Mesopotamia on Sundays was given over to the mechanic and the +perambulator. Oh, that Heaven would put it into the head of some +Chancellor of the Exchequer to lay a swingeing tax upon that +all-accursed vehicle! But not even mechanic and perambulator can hinder +Mesopotamia from being fair on a fine February day, when the beautiful +floods are out, the floods that the Thames Conservators and the Oxford +authorities have combined to put down, as they have most other beautiful +things within their reach. But they have not yet quite succeeded. +To-day, for instance, the floods are out in might. + +Burgoyne is pacing along a brown walk, like a raised causeway, with a +sheet of white water on either hand, rolling strong ripples to the bank. +Gnarled willows stand islanded in the coldly argent water. A blackbird +is flying out of the bushes, with a surprised look at finding himself +turned into a sea-bird. No sun; an even sweep of dull silver to right +and left. No sun; and yet as he looks, after days of rain, the "_grand +decorateur_," as someone happily called him, rides out in royalty on a +cleared sky-field, turning the whole drenched country into +mother-of-pearl--a sheet of opal stretched across the drowned meadows; +the distance opal too, a delicate, dainty, evanescent loveliness +snatched from the ugly brown jaws of winter. + +Burgoyne is leaning over the wooden bridge beneath which, in its normal +state, the water of the lasher rushes down impetuously; but it is now +raised to such a height that it lies level, almost flush with the +planking. He is staring across the iridescent water-plain to where, in +the poetic atmosphere of sun and mist, dome, and schools and soaring +spires stand etherealized. + +"Dear old place!" he says, under his breath, "everybody is dead; and I +am dead; and Brown is deader than anyone. I am glad that you, at least, +are still alive!" + +Are these more ghosts coming round the corner? A man and a woman ghost +strolling along, and looking about them as strangers look. When they are +within a pace or two of him the woman says something--something about +the floods--to her companion, and at the sound Burgoyne starts. + +"She did not speak last night; if she had spoken I should have known her +at once. She always had such a sweet voice." + +He raises his arms from the bridge-top, and, turning, meets them face to +face, eye to eye, and in an instant he has seen that both recognise him. +At the same instant he is aware of a simultaneous inclination on the +part of man and wife to avert their heads, and pass him without claiming +his acquaintance. Perhaps, if he had had time to reflect, he would have +allowed them to do so, but the impulse of the moment forbids it. Why +should they wish to cut him? What has he done to deserve it? Ten years +ago, they were his very good friends, and he was the familiar comrade of +their children, the daily guest at their table. What has the unavoidable +lapse of those years done to make him less fit for their company at +twenty-nine than he was at nineteen? There must be some misconception, +which a moment will set right. + +"I am afraid that you do not remember me, Mrs. Le Marchant," he says, +lifting his hat. + +This is not quite true, as he is perfectly convinced that they are as +much aware of his identity as he is of theirs. But what formula has a +man to employ in such a case? They both look back at him with a sort of +irresolution. To his astonishment, in their eyes is a velleity of +flight, but apparently she--women's minds moving more quickly than +men's--is the first to realize that flight is out of the question. + +"I am sure that you have no intention of cutting me," Jim goes on, with +a smile, seeing that she is apparently struggling with a difficulty in +utterance; "at least, you must be very much changed from what you were +ten years ago if you have. My name is----" + +"I know--I know!" she interrupts, finding speech at last--speech low and +hurried. "I remember perfectly. You are Mr. Burgoyne." + +Her confusion--she used always to be such a placid, even-mannered +woman--is so patent, born of whatever unaccountable feeling it may be, +that he now heartily wishes he had let the poor woman pass unmolested. +But such repentance is too late. He has arrested her; she is standing on +the gravel path before him, and though he feels that her extraordinary +shyness--_mauvaise honte_, whatever it may be--has infected himself, he +must make some further remark to her. Nothing better occurs to him than +the obvious one: + +"It is a long time--it is ten years since we met." + +"Yes, ten years; it must be quite ten years," she assents, evidently +making a great effort to regain composure. + +She does not feign the slightest pleasure in the meeting, and Burgoyne +feels that the one thought that occupies her mind is how she can soonest +end it. But his roused curiosity, together with the difficulty of +parting without further observation after having forced his presence +upon them, combine to prevent her succeeding. + +"And how is the Moat?" he asks, reflecting that this, at least, is a +safe question; a brick and mortar house, at all events, cannot be dead. +"How is Devonshire?" + +Apparently it is not so harmless a question as he had imagined; at +least, Mrs. Le Marchant is obviously quite incapable of answering it. +Her husband, for the first time, comes to her rescue. + +"The Moat is let," he says, in a dry voice; "we have left Devonshire a +long while--nine, nine and a half years ago." + +The Moat let! Judging by the light of Burgoyne's recollections, it would +have seemed less surprising to him to hear that Windsor Castle had been +turned into a Joint Stock Company Hotel. It is probably, then, some +money trouble that has turned Mrs. Le Marchant's hair white--snow white, +as he now sees it to be. But no; he rejects the explanation as +insufficient. She is not the woman to have taken a diminished income so +much to heart. + +Good manners forbid him to ask, "Why is the Moat let?" so all that he +says is, "Nine and a half years ago? Why, that must have been very soon +after I left Devonshire." + +He addresses his remark involuntarily rather to the wife than the +husband, but she does not answer it. Her eyes are fixed upon the bubbles +sailing so fast upon the swollen river, which is distinguishable only by +its current from the sameness of the surrounding water. A lark--there is +always a lark in Mesopotamia--a tiny, strong-throated singer, that never +seems to have to stop to take breath, fills up the silence, shouting +somewhere out of sight among the black clouds, in and out of which the +uncertain sun is plunging. Whether of a moneyed nature or not, there is +evidently something very unpleasant connected with their leaving their +native county and their immemorial home, so he had better get away from +the subject as fast as possible. + +"Anyhow," he says, with a rather nervous smile, "I hope that the world +has been treating you kindly--that things have gone well with you since +those dear old days when you were so good to me." + +There is an instant's pause--perhaps he would not have noticed it had +not his suspicions been already roused--before the husband, again taking +upon him the task of replying, answers, with a sort of laboured +carelessness: + +"Oh, yes, thanks; we do not complain. It has not been a very rosy time +for landlords lately, as you are aware." + +"And _you_?" cries the wife, striking in with a species of hurry in her +voice--a hurry due, as his instinct tells him, to the fact of her fear +of his entering into more detailed inquiries. "And _you_? We must not +forget you. Have you been well, flourishing, all this long time? Do you +still live with your----" + +She stops abruptly. It is apparent that she has entirely forgotten what +was the species of relation with whom he lived. There is a little tinge +of bitterness in his heart, though not in his tone, as he supplies the +missing word "aunt." After all, he had forgotten _her_ name; why should +not she forget his aunt? + +"With my aunt? Well, I never exactly lived with her; I made, and make my +headquarters there when I am in England, which is not very often. I have +been a rolling stone; I have rolled pretty well round the world since we +parted." + +They do not care in the least where he has rolled, nor how much nor how +little moss he has collected in the process. They are only thinking how +they can best get rid of him. But the past is strong upon him; he cannot +let them slide out of his life again for another ten--twenty years +perhaps, without finding out from them something about his five merry +playmates. His inquiry must needs be a vague one. Who dares ask +specifically after this or that man, woman, or even child, when ten +years have rolled their tides between? + +"And you are all well?" he says, with a certain wistfulness lurking in +the indifferent _banal_ phrase. "Dear me, what a jolly party we used to +be! I suppose that--that they are all out in the world now?" + +His eyes are fixed apprehensively upon the mother of those young +comrades, to whom he thus cautiously alludes. Perhaps, carefully as he +has worded his question, he may have touched some terrible raw. Her face +is turned aside, presenting only its profile to him, but she answers +almost at once: + +"Yes; we are all scattered now. Charlie is planting oranges in +Florida--he does not mind the heat; you know he always said no weather +could be too hot for him; and Tom has an ostrich farm in Australia; and +Rose has been married two years--she has a dear little baby; and Miriam +is married too; we have just come down from her wedding." + +"Miriam married!" repeats Burgoyne in a tone of wonder. "Miriam with a +husband instead of a white rat!" + +The mother laughs. It is the first time that he has heard her laugh, and +she used to laugh so often. + +"I think she likes the exchange." + +There is another little pause, again filled by the lark's crowding +notes. There are two words battering against the gate of Burgoyne's lips +for egress--two words that he dares not utter. + +"And Elizabeth?" She was the eldest. She would naturally have been +mentioned first; but neither first nor last is there any speech of her. +She must, then, be dead--dead long ago, too; for there is no trace of +mourning in her parents' dress. Elizabeth is dead--bright Elizabeth, the +beauty and the pet! Charles Lamb's tender lines come pensively back to +him-- + + "My sprightly neighbour gone before + To that unknown and silent shore, + Shall we not meet as heretofore, + Some summer morning?" + +Is it only fancy that he sees in the eye of Elizabeth's mother a dread +lest he shall ask tidings of her, as she says, hastily, and with a +smile, "Well, I am afraid we must be going; it has been very pleasant +meeting you again, but I am afraid that the Warden will be expecting +us"? + +She adds to her parting hand-shake no wish for a repetition of that +meeting, and he watches them down the Willow Walk with a sort of sadness +in his heart. + +"Elizabeth is dead! Elizabeth is undoubtedly dead!" + + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +"Do you know that Willy has been sent down again?" + +Six weeks have passed since Burgoyne's eye followed his quondam friends +down Mesopotamia, and he is not in Oxford now. He left it, indeed, +twenty-four hours after the rencounter described; left it with something +of a determination never to revisit it. This, too, in spite of the good +Brown's vociferously reiterated invitation to him to run down for +another Sunday, whenever he should feel inclined, and which he accepted +civilly, knowing that he should never feel inclined. + +At the present moment he is pacing up and down the still wintry, +north-windswept walks of a country-house garden in Shropshire, in the +company of a lady whom he has known as long as he can remember; a lady +who would have been a friend of circumstance, even if she had not been +one of choice, since her home has been in the immediate neighbourhood of +the only one he has ever had; a lady whose friendship he has tested by +letters on thin paper from New Guinea and Central Africa all about +himself; at whose feet he has laid on his return more heads, and skins, +and claws than she has well known what to do with; whose husband he +thought a very good fellow, and to whom he wrote a very nice letter on +that husband's death; lastly, concerning whose only child has been made +the communication that opens this chapter--"Do you know that Willy has +been sent down again?" + +"I did not know it; but I am very sorry now that I do know." + +"You need not be," returns she cheerfully; "he does not mind it in the +least; indeed, happily for him, most of his friends have been sent down +too." + +"What has he been doing this time? Putting the porter into the fountain? +or screwing up the Dean? or what other playful little pleasantry?" + +"You need not speak in that nasty sarcastic voice," says she, half +laughing and half vexed. "After all, you must know that young men will +be young men, or, at least, if you do not know it now, you must have +known it once." + +"If you take that tone to me," retorts Burgoyne, smiling, "I shall have +to souse your gardener in your fountain, to prove my juvenility; but +come, what has he done?" + +"Absolutely nothing, as far as I can make out," replies she, spreading +out her hands as if to emphasize the statement. + +"Do you mean to say that the authorities have sent him down _de gaiete +de coeur_, without any provocation at all?" asks Burgoyne, in a tone +out of which he is unable to keep a shade of incredulity. + +"I mean to say," replies she, nettled, "that he had a few men to supper, +and I suppose they were making a little noise; did you ever in your day +hear of an undergraduate supper where there was not noise? However, in +this case, from what he tells me, Willy was taking positively no part in +it." + +"He was sitting in a corner, with cotton-wool in his ears, reading +Aristotle," suggests Burgoyne teasingly. + +"And it seems," continued she, not deigning to notice the interruption, +"that the Proctor came in, and was very rude, and Willy was told to go +to the Dean next morning, and he either was a little late, or mistook +the hour, or some trifle of that sort; and when he did go he was told +that he was sent down. However"--with some triumph in her voice--"it did +not matter in the least--he did not mind; in fact, he was rather glad, +as he has long wanted to go to Italy in the spring." + +"To Italy? Then perhaps we shall meet; I too am going to Italy." + +"Are you?" she says. "Why should you go to Italy? There is nothing to +kill there, is there? Is not it at Naples that they go out in full +chasseur uniform to shoot tomtits?" Which speech is her revenge for his +sarcasms upon her son. + +But Burgoyne's face has taken on a rather careworn look; and her little +arrow misses its mark. + +"You see, Amelia is at Florence," he says explanatorily; "her father, +Mr. Wilson, had a clergyman's throat in the autumn, and was obliged to +give up duty, so they all went abroad. They have been abroad all the +winter; you know that I have not seen her since I came back from the +Rockies." + +They are now walking in a winding shrubbery path, whose laurels protect +them from the pinching wind. They have turned several corners, and +traversed half a quarter of a mile before either again breaks silence. +It is the lady who does so finally. + +"Jim, how long have you been engaged to Amelia?" + +There is a sigh mixed with his answer. + +"Eight years--eight years this next June; it was the second summer term +after I came up." + +"And as far as you can see, you are likely to be engaged for another +eight years?" + +"As far as I can see--yes; but then I cannot see far." + +Perhaps his companion is a fanciful woman; but she notices that this +time he does not sigh. + +"Poor Amelia!" she says, half under her breath. + +"Poor Amelia!" repeats he sharply; "why poor?--for being engaged to me? +You are not very complimentary, Mrs. Byng." + +She looks up friendlily at him. "For being engaged to you, or being only +engaged to you?--which? I leave you a choice of interpretation." + +But either Jim is too ruffled by the pity expressed in her tone towards +his betrothed, or her remarks have provoked in him a train of thought +which does not tend towards loquacity. The loud rooks, balancing +themselves on improbably small twigs above their heads, and, hoarsely +melodious, calling out their airy vernal news to each other, make for +some time the only sound that breaks the silence of the cold spring +afternoon. It is again Mrs. Byng who at last infringes it. + +"If you and Willy are both going to Italy, why should not you go +together?" + +Jim does not immediately answer; the project is sprung upon him with +such suddenness that he does not at once know whether it is agreeable to +him or the reverse. + +"You do not like the idea?" continues the mother, trying, not very +successfully, to keep out of her tone the surprise she feels at his not +having jumped at a plan so obviously to his own advantage. + +"I did not say so. I did not even think so." + + +"Willy is an ideal fellow-traveller," says she, "excepting in the matter +of punctuality; I warn you"--laughing--"that you would always have to +drag him out of bed." + +"But," suggests Jim slowly, "even supposing that I embraced your design +with the warmth which I see you think it deserves, how can you tell that +it would meet with his approbation? He has probably made up a party with +some of the other innocent victims of a corrupt University system." + +"No, he has not; the friend with whom he was to have gone has thrown him +over; at least, poor man, that is hardly the way to express it, for he +has broken his leg; but anyhow he is _hors de combat_. If you went with +Willy," she adds, after a pause, and with a rather wistful air, "I +should be sure of knowing if anything went wrong." + +"I am to dry-nurse him, in fact, only I stipulate that, if he brings you +home a Contadina daughter-in-law, or 'commits himself with a countess,' +like the commercial gentleman at Todgers's, you are not to hold me +responsible." + +And so it came to pass that a fortnight later, while April is still +young, Burgoyne, _en route_ to his Amelia, is standing at a window of +the Hotel de Genes at Genoa, noisiest of hotels, though, to be sure, +that is its only fault. He is looking out at the gay market that is held +in the piazza below--the gay market that is over and gone by nine +o'clock. + +It seems odd that so many women, so many umbrellas, so many baskets, so +many oranges and lemons--each lemon with a glossy green leaf still +adhering to its inch of stalk--so many fresh vegetables can be swept +away in so short a time. But they are; all the gay kerchiefs are fled, +and have been replaced by a row of fiacres with sad droop-headed horses, +a good hour before Byng appears--appears radiantly well washed and +apologetic. + +"How many morning chapels did you attend last term?" asks Burgoyne with +some dryness. + +"It is a vile habit," replies the other sweetly, sitting down at a +little table, and unfolding his breakfast napkin. "I do not mean going +to chapel, but being so late; however, I really am improving. I am a +quarter of an hour--twenty minutes earlier than I was yesterday, and, +thank God, we have no train to catch to-day." + +Burgoyne is rather inclined to echo the thanksgiving a little later in +the day, as they stroll with the pleasant vagueness with which one +strays about a little-known foreign town, not exactly knowing whither, +through the streets of the queenly city, with which neither of them has +much acquaintance; Byng's twenty-two years of school and college, of +cricket, and grouse, and stalking, having left not much margin for aught +else; and Burgoyne being in the case of some widely-wandered shots and +explorers, to whom the Nyanza Lake and the Australian Bush are more +familiar than Giotto's Campanile or the Lagoons. There is a +grayish-looking English sky, with now and then little sprays of rain, +and now and then flashes of warm sun. + +Neither of the young men knows much Italian, and such as they possess +they are ashamed to air before each other in asking their way, so they +wander wherever chance or fancy leads them. They look curiously into +churches, they walk down deep narrow streets, whose houses have for +three centuries been threatening to embrace each other across the strait +sky strip far, far above their heads. They glance at palace-fronts, and +wonder at the sculptured portals where fresco and fruit garland and fine +tracery speak of a time at more leisure for delicate work that has no +end but beauty, than this breathless one. Everywhere in the gardens they +see budding green, untrained roses making bowers, ripe oranges hanging +over the walls. They jostle against women, each made charming, even the +ugliest of them, by the black lace kerchief tied about her head. + +"Henry James says that an English crowd is the best-looking in the +world," says Byng, in a tone of strong dissent, following with his eyes +a little tripping figure, and with an expression of pronounced +approbation in those eyes, which gives Burgoyne a momentary twinge of +misgiving as to his chaperonship. "I should put it the other way up, and +say that they are the ugliest." + +"All crowds are ugly, and most individuals," replies Burgoyne, +misanthropically looking up from his guide-book. + +They are sauntering down the Via Garibaldi, street of palaces that +deserves an antiquer name than that of the somewhat shoddy and recent +hero who has god-fathered it. Noblest Via, down whose stately length +great towering bulks succeed each other in solid majesty on either hand; +bulks on whose high fronts, lofty-portaled, o'errun with fresco, +glorified by brush and chisel, strength and beauty take hands in +unending wedlock. Into the noblest of all, up the echoing stone stairs, +down which the feet of the masters have for ever ceased to tread, they +enter. As we all know, it has been given to the city of Genoa--lovely +queen-city meriting so great a gift--by the dying hand of its latest +possessor, the last of that high and beautiful race--if we may judge of +the dead by their pictures--who paced its floors, and went forth in +final funeral pomp through its worthy-to-be-imperial portals. + +Burgoyne and Byng are standing before the great Vandyke. The custode, +opening a shutter, and throwing wider a door, casts a brighter ray of +light for the staring Britons--several others have joined themselves to +our friends--to gape at it by. What does the stately gentleman on his +great white horse, whom Vandyke has made able to set at naught death's +effacement, think of them, as the custode slowly swings him forward on +his hinges, so that the day-beams may bring out more clearly still the +arresting charm of his serious face, his outstretched arm, and grave, +gallant bearing? Looking at him, whose heart among us is not besieged by +an ache of longing that that "young and princely" gentleman on the brave +white charger should ride down to us out of his frame, and bring back +his world with him? probably not a better world than ours, but surely, +surely a handsomer one. + +After awhile the other tourists drift away, but the two men still stand +and gaze. Into Burgoyne's mind has come a sense of disgust with the +present, a revolt against steam trams and the Cromwell Road--most +perfect symbol of that bald, unending, vulgar ugliness, which, in some +moods, must seem to everyone the dominant note of nineteenth-century +life. The light-hearted Byng, who always takes his colour from his +surroundings, is hushed into a silence that is almost reverent too. + +"What a difference there is between his Italian and his English +pictures," he says presently. "Do you remember the Marchesa Balbi, and +those divine Balbi children in the Grosvenor, last year? Oh, no! +by-the-bye, you were in America. The fog seemed to get into his brush +whenever he painted an Englishwoman, always excepting Henrietta Maria, +who was not an Englishwoman, and whom he was obviously rather in love +with." + +"Is that a piece of scandal of your own invention, or is it founded on +fact?" asks Burgoyne, rousing himself, and looking over his shoulder +towards the entrance to the next frescoed, mirrored, pictured room, +whence he hears the sound of approaching voices. In his eye is an idle +and mechanical curiosity, mixed with vexation that his short respite +from his fellow-countrymen is ended; in this case, it is +fellow-countrywomen, for the tones that are nearing are those of a +woman, a woman who is saying in a key of satisfaction, "Oh, here it is! +I thought I remembered that it was in this room." + +At the same moment the speaker, as well as the person addressed, came +into sight; and in an instant out of Burgoyne's eye has raced away the +lack-lustre curiosity, and has given way to an expression of something +beyond surprise, of something more nearly verging on consternation; and +yet, after all, there is nothing very astonishing in the fact that it is +Mrs. Le Marchant who is the woman in search of the Vandyke. There is +nothing more surprising in her being at Genoa than in his being there +himself. At that mart of nations it can never be matter for wonder to +meet anyone; but who is this to whom her observation is addressed? It is +not Mr. Le Marchant, it is not a man at all; it is a slight woman-- + + "White as a lily, and small as a wand"-- + +like Lance's sister, dressed with that neat, tight, gray-tinted +simplicity, severe yet smart, which marks the well-bred Englishwoman on +her travels. Is it one of the younger ones, who has grown up so +startlingly like her? Miriam? Rose? or is it, can it be, the dead +Elizabeth? + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +In a ripe civilization such as ours there are formulas provided to meet +the requirements of every exigency that may possibly arise; but amongst +them there is not one which teaches us how to greet a person come back +from the dead, because it is held impossible that such a contingency can +occur. Perhaps this is the reason why Jim Burgoyne, usually a docile and +obedient member of the society to which he belongs, now flies in the +face of all the precepts instilled into him by that society's code. At +the sight of Elizabeth Le Marchant entering the room, clad in a very +neat tailor gown, instead of the winding-sheet with which he had +credited her, he at first stands transfixed, staring at her with a +hardness of intensity which is allowed to us in the case of Titian's +"Bella," or Botticelli's "Spring," but has never been accounted +permissible in the case of a more living loveliness. Then, before he can +control, or even question the impulse that drives him, it has carried +him to her. + +"Elizabeth!" he says, in that sort of awed semi-whisper with which one +would salute a being plainly returned from the other side, fearing that +the fulness of a living voice might strike too strongly on his disused +ear--"is it really Elizabeth?" + +Had Burgoyne been quite sure, even now, of that fact; if he had had his +wits well about him, he would certainly not have addressed her by her +Christian name. But from the dead the small pomps and ceremonies of +earth fall off. We think of them by their naked names--must we not then +appeal to them by the same when they reappear before us? + +The girl--for she does not look much more--thus rudely and startlingly +bombarded, drops her Baedeker out of her slim-gloved hand, and with a +positive jump at the suddenness of the address, looks back +apprehensively at her interlocutor. In her eyes is, at first, only the +coldly frightened expression of one discourteously assailed by an +insolent stranger; but in a space of time as short as had served him to +note the same metamorphosis in the case of her parents, he sees the look +of half--three-quarter--whole recognition dawn in her eyes, +followed--alas! there can be no mistake about it--by the same aspiration +after flight. There is no reason why she should not recognise him again +at once. He has fallen a prey neither to hair nor fat--the two main +disguisers and disfigurers of humanity. His face is as smooth and his +figure as spare as when, ten years ago, he had given the pretty tomboy +of sixteen lessons in jumping the ha-ha. And as to her identity, no +shadow of doubt any longer lingers in his mind. + +The violence and shock of his attack have made her crimson, have matched +her cheeks with those long-withered damasks in the Moat garden, with +which they used to vie in bloomy vividness. But even yet he does not +treat her quite as if she were really and veritably living; he has not +yet got back his conventional manners. + +"I thought you were dead," he says, his voice not even yet raised to its +ordinary key, some vague awe still subduing it. + +It must be a trick of his excited imagination that makes it seem to him +as if she said under her breath, "So I am!" + +But before he has had time to do more than distrust the testimony of his +ears, Mrs. Le Marchant strikes in quickly-- + +"We cannot help what Mr. Burgoyne thinks," says she, with a constrained +laugh; "but you are not dead, are you, Elizabeth? We are neither of us +dead; on the contrary, we are very much alive. Who can help being alive +in this heavenly place? And you? When did you come? What hotel are you +at? Have you been here long? Do you make a long stay?" + +She pours out her questions with such torrent-force and rapidity, as +gives to her auditor the conviction that it is her aim to have a +monopoly of them. + +After one look of unbounded astonishment at his companion's onslaught, +Byng has withdrawn to a discreet distance. + +"You never mentioned her when I met you in Oxford," says Burgoyne, +disregarding her trivial and conventional questions, and turning his +eyes away with difficulty from his old playfellow. + +Mrs. Le Marchant laughs again, still constrainedly. + +"Probably you never asked after her." + +"I was afraid," he says solemnly; "after ten years one is afraid; and as +you did not mention her--you know you mentioned all the others--I +thought you had lost her!" + +A sort of slight shiver passes over the woman's frame. + +"No, thank God! No!" + +During the foregoing little dialogue about herself, Elizabeth has stood +with her eyes on the ground; but at the end of it she lifts them to +smile lovingly at her mother. They are very pretty eyes still, but +surely they seem to have cried a good deal; and now that the hurrying +blood has left her cheek again, Burgoyne sees that she looks more nearly +her age than he had imagined at the first glance. He has not heard her +voice yet; she has not spoken, unless that first shaken whisper--so much +more likely to be the freak of his own heated fancy--could count for +speech. He must hear her tones. Do they keep an echo of the other world, +as he still imagines that he sees a shade from it lying lingeringly +across her face? + +"Do you ever climb apple-trees now?" he asks abruptly. She starts +slightly, and again, though with a weaker red wave, her rather thin +cheeks grow tinged. + +"Did I ever climb them?" she says, with a bewildered look, and speaking +in a somewhat tremulous voice. "Yes"--slowly, as if with an effort of +memory--"I believe I did." + + +"You have forgotten all about it?" cries Jim, in an accent of absurdly +disproportioned disappointment. "Have you forgotten the kangaroo too? +have you forgotten everything?" + +Perhaps she is putting her memory to the same strain as he had done his +in the case of her mother's name on the occasion of their Oxford +meeting. At all events, she leaves the question unanswered, and the +elder woman again hurries to her help against this persistent claimant +of reminiscences. + +"You must not expect us all to have such memories as you have," she says +with a touch of friendliness in her look. + +"I must own that I too had quite forgotten the kangaroo; and so I fear +had Robert, until you reminded us of it in Mesopotamia." + +"How is Mr. Le Marchant?" inquires Jim, thus reminded to put his tardy +query--"is he with you?" + +"No, he is not very fond of being abroad; it is not"--smiling--"'dear +abroad' to him, but I think that he will very likely come out to +Florence to fetch us." + +"You are going to Florence?" cries the young man eagerly. "So am I! oh, +hurrah! then we shall often meet." + +But the touch of friendliness, whose advent he had hailed so joyfully, +has vanished out of Mrs. Le Marchant's voice, or, at least, is overlaid +with a species of stiffness, as she answers distantly, "We do not intend +to go out at all in Florence--I mean into society." + +"But I am not society," replies he, chilled, yet resolute. "I +wish"--glancing rather wistfully from one to the other--"that I _could_ +give you a little of my memory. If I could, you would see that, after +being so infinitely good to me at the Moat, you cannot expect me to meet +you as total strangers now." + +In the sense of ill-usage that fills his breast, the fact of how almost +entirely oblivious he had been of the persons before him, during the +greater part of the long interval that had parted them, has--such is +human nature--quite slipped his recollection. It is brought back to him +in some degree with a twinge by Mrs. Le Marchant saying in a relenting +tone, and with an accent of remorse, "And you have remembered us all +these years?" + +He cannot, upon reflection, conscientiously say that he has; but is yet +disingenuous enough to allow a speaking silence to imply acquiescence. + +"And you are on your way to Florence too?" continues she, mistaking the +cause of his dumbness; the tide of compunction evidently setting more +strongly towards him, in her womanly heart, at the thought of the entire +want of interest she has manifested in the case of one whose long +faithfulness to her and her family had deserved a better treatment. + +"Yes." + +His face clouds so perceptibly as he pronounces this monosyllable, that +his interlocutor inquires, with a growing kindness: + +"Not on any unpleasant errand, I hope?" + +He laughs the uneasy laugh of an Anglo-Saxon obliged to tell, or at all +events telling, some intimate detail about himself. + +"I am going to see my young woman--the girl I am engaged to." + +"Well, that is a pleasant errand, surely?" (smiling). + +"_C'est salon!_" replies Jim gloomily. "I have a piece of ill-news to +tell her;" then, with a half-shy effort to escape into generalities, +"which way do you think that ill-news read best--on paper or _viva +voce_?" + +She shivers a little. + + +"I do not know. I do not like them either way." + +Then, taking out her watch, with the evident determination to be +surprised at the lateness of the hour, she cries, "It is actually a +quarter to two! Are not you famished, Elizabeth? I am!" + +There is such apparent and imminent departure in her eye that Burgoyne +feels that there is no time to be lost. + +"Have you decided upon your hotel in Florence?" he asks precipitately. + +"We have decided against them all," is her answer. "We have taken a +little apartment--a poor little _entresol_; but it is such a poor little +one, that I should be ashamed to ask any of my friends to come and see +me there." + +She accompanies the last words, as if to take the sting out of them, +with as sweet and friendly a smile as any he remembers in the Devonshire +days. But the sting is not taken out, all the same; it lingers, pricking +and burning still, after both the tall, thin, black figure, and the +slim, little gray one have disappeared. + +The moment that this is the case, Byng rejoins his friend; a curiosity +and alert interest in his young eyes, which his companion feels no +desire to gratify. He is unable, however, to maintain the entire silence +he had intended upon the subject, since Byng, after waiting for what, to +his impatience, appears a more than decent interval, is constrained to +remark-- + +"Did I hear you tell that lady, when first you spoke to her, that she +was dead?" + +"I thought she was." + +"Had you heard it?" + +"No." + +"Did you see it in the papers?" + +"No." + +A pause. + +"I wonder why you thought she was dead." + +The other makes a rather impatient movement. + +"I had no reason--none whatever. It was an idiotic inference." + +Byng draws a long breath of satisfaction. + +"Well, at all events, I am very glad that she is not." + +Jim turns upon him with something of the expression of face worn by Mrs. +Sarah Gamp on hearing Mrs. Prig express her belief that it was not by +Mrs. Harris that her services would be required. "Why should you be glad +of that, Betsy? She is unbeknown to you except by hearing. Why should +you be glad?" + +As Byng's case is a more aggravated one than Mrs. Prig's, seeing that +Elizabeth Le Marchant is 'unbeknown' to him even by hearing, so is the +warmth, or rather coldness, with which his friend receives his remark +not inferior to that of "Sairey." + +"I do not quite see how it affects you. Why are you glad?" + +"_Why am I glad?_" replies the younger man, with a lightening eye. "For +the same reason that I am glad that Vandyke painted that +picture"--pointing to it--"or that Shakespeare wrote _As You Like It_. +The world is the richer by them all three." + +But to this poetic and flattering analogy, Jim's only answer is a surly +"Humph!" + + + + +CHAPTER V. + + "There are no more by-path meadows where you may innocently + linger, but the road lies long and straight and dusty to the + grave. You may think you had a conscience and believed in God; + but what is conscience to a wife?.... To marry is to + domesticate the Recording Angel. Once you are married, there is + nothing left for you--not even suicide--but to be good." + + +There is no particular reason why Burgoyne should not impart to his +companion what he knows--after all it is not very much--about their two +countrywomen. Upon reflection he had told himself this, and conquered a +reluctance, that he cannot account for, to mentioning their name; and to +relating the story of those shadowy idyllic two months of his life, +which form all of it that has ever come into contact with theirs. So +that by the time--some thirty-six hours later--when they reach Florence, +the younger man is in possession of as much information about the +objects of their common interest as it is in the power of the elder one +to impart. + +To neither of them, meanwhile, is any second glimpse vouchsafed of those +objects, eagerly--though with different degrees of overtness in that +eagerness--as they both look out for them among the luggage-piles and +the tweed-clad English ladies at the station. It had been the intention +of Burgoyne that he and his friend should put up at the same hotel as +that inhabited by his betrothed and her family; hut, finding that it is +full, he orders rooms at the Minerva, and in the fallen dusk of a rather +chill spring night, finds himself traversing the short distance from the +railway to that hotel. + +As he and Byng sit over their coffee after dinner in the _salle a +manger_, almost its only tenants at that late hour, the younger man +remarks matter-of-factly, as if stating a proposition almost too obvious +to be worth uttering-- + +"I suppose you are off to the Anglo-Americain now." + +"I think not," replies Jim slowly; "it is past ten, you see, and they +are early people." He adds a moment later, as if suspecting his own +excuse of insufficiency, "Mr. Wilson is rather an invalid, and there is +also an invalid or semi-invalid sister; I think that I had better not +disturb them to-night." + +Byng has never been engaged to be married, except in theory, and it is +certainly no business of his to blow his friend's flagging ardour into +flame, so he contents himself with an acquiescent observation to the +effect that the train must have been late. But at all events the next +morning finds Burgoyne paying his fiacre at the door of the +Anglo-Americain, with the confidence of a person who is certain of +finding those he seeks, a confidence justified by the result; for, +having followed a waiter across a courtyard, and heard him knock at a +door on the ground-floor, that door opens with an instantaneousness +which gives the idea of an ear having been pricked to catch the expected +rap, and the next moment, the intervening _garcon_ having withdrawn, Jim +stands face to face with his Amelia. Her features are all alight with +pleasure, but her first words are not particularly amorous. + +"Would you mind coming into the dining-room? Sybilla is in the +drawing-room already this morning. She said she was afraid it was going +to be one of her bad days, so I thought" (rather regretfully) "that +possibly she would be a little later than usual in coming down; but, on +the contrary, she is much earlier." + +It is possible that an extremely ardent love may be independent of +surroundings; may burn with as fierce a flame, when its owner or victim +is seated on a hard horsehair chair beside a dining-room table, in a +little dull hotel back room, as when the senses are courted by +softly-cushioned lounges, penetrating flower-scents, and cunningly +arranged _bric-a-brac_; but perhaps Jim's passion is not of this intense +and Spartan quality. At all events a chill steals over him as Amelia +leads the way into that small and uncheerful chamber where the Wilson +family daily banquet. He is not so lost to all sense of what England and +Amelia expect of him as not to take her in his arms and kiss her very +kindly and warmly, before they sit down on two hard chairs side by side; +and even when they have done so, he still holds her hand, and kisses it +now and then. He has a great many things to say to her, but "out of the +abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh" is not invariably true. +Sometimes that very abundance clogs the utterance, and, after a ten +months' separation, the hinges of even lovers' tongues are apt at first +to be somewhat rusty. + +"And are you really glad to see me again?" asks the woman--she is +scarcely a girl, having the doubtful advantage of being her betrothed's +senior by two years. The horsehair chairs are obviously powerless to +take the edge off her bliss; and she can scarcely command her voice as +she asks the question. + +"I decline to answer all such futile inquiries," replies he, smiling not +unkindly; but there is no tremor in his voice. "Even if I did not +discourage them on principle, I should have no time to answer them +to-day; I have so much to say to you that I do not know where to begin." + +"After ten months that is not very surprising," rejoins she, with a +stifled sigh. There is no sentimental reproach in her words or tone; but +in both lurks a note of wistfulness which gives his conscience a prick. + +"Of course not! of course not!" he rejoins hastily; "but it is not +really ten months--no, surely----" + +"Ten months, one week, two days, four hours and a half!" + +Against such exactitude of memory what appeal has he? He attempts none, +and only thinks with a faint unjust irritation that she might have +spared him the odd hours. + +"And how are things going? How are you all getting on?" he asks, +precipitating himself upon a fresh subject, since he feels prevented by +circumstances from saying anything likely to bring him much distinction +upon the old one. "Your father?" + +"His throat is better"--with an accent of hesitating filial piety, as if +there were something else about him that was not better. + +"And Sybilla?" + +"Oh, poor Sybilla! she has her bad days now and then." + +"And, like the early Christians, she resolves to have all things in +common. I expect that her family have their bad days too," says Jim +dryly. + +"Well, we do sometimes," replies Amelia with reluctant admission; "but +she really does try to control herself, poor thing; she is hardly ever +unbearable now." + +"And Cecilia?" + +"She is rather in trouble just now; I fear there is no doubt that the +man she was engaged to has thrown her over. You never saw him? Oh no! Of +course, the affair came on after you left England." + +Burgoyne's eyebrows have gone up, and his face has assumed an expression +less of surprise than admiration at this piece of news. + +"How many does that make? Four? Well, courage! There is luck in odd +numbers; perhaps she will land the fifth." + +"She will tell you about it herself," says Amelia; "she tells everybody; +she likes talking about it--it is very odd, but she does. When you throw +me over"--rubbing his hand which she holds, with shy and deprecating +caressingness, against her own cheek--"I shall tell nobody; I shall keep +my misfortune very dark." + +"When I do!" repeats he with laughing emphasis; but to his own ear both +the emphasis and the laughter sound flat. This is perhaps the cause why +he, a second time, runs away from his subject; or, more probably, he is +really in haste to get to the new one. "Meanwhile," he says, his eyes +involuntarily dropping to the carpet, as if he had rather not see the +effect of his words upon her; "meanwhile, someone has thrown me over." + +"You?" + +"Yes, me; I did not write it to you, because I do not see much use in +putting down bad news in black and white, and even with this little +delay, I am afraid," with a dry smile, "that you will have plenty of +time to enjoy it." + +He pauses for an instant, and she does not hurry him with any teasing +questions; but waits, with meek patience, till he feels inclined to go +on. + +"My aunt is going to be married." + +If he has wished that his news shall produce the effect of a torpedo, he +has no cause to complain of his want of success. His placid Amelia +vaults to her feet. + +"Married!" she repeats with a gasp. "Why, she is quite, quite old!" + +"She is sixty-five!" + +The colour has flooded all Amelia's face; the blazing colour that means +not pleasure, but consternation. It is some moments before she can frame +her next query. + +"And is he?--do you?--has she chosen wisely, I mean?" + +Jim laughs again. + +"Can one choose wisely at sixty-five? Well, whether she has or no is a +matter of opinion; she has chosen the curate of the parish, who, by +reason of his extreme juvenility, is still in deacon's orders." + +Miss Wilson's limbs are shaking so that she cannot maintain her standing +attitude. She sinks down by the dining-table again in her hard chair. It +is a very hard chair on which to receive such ill news. + +"And cannot you hinder it, cannot you dissuade her?" she asks +falteringly. + +"I shall not try; poor old woman! After all, she has a right to pursue +her own happiness in her own way, only I wish that she had made up her +mind twenty years ago; though, to be sure, how could she?"--with another +smile--"since, at that time, her bridegroom was not much more than +born." + +A dead silence supervenes--a silence of shocked stupefaction on the one +side, of rather dismal brooding on the other. At length Amelia nerves +herself to put a question upon which it seems to her, not very +incorrectly, that her whole future hangs. She does it in such a low +voice that none but very sharp ears could have caught it. Jim's ears are +so; practised as they are in listening for the stealthy tread of wild +animals, and for the indescribable sounds of mountain solitudes at +night. + +"Will it--will it--make a great difference to you?" + +Burgoyne lifts his eyes, which have been idly bent on the floor, and +looks straight and full at her across the corner of the table. + +"It will make all the difference!" he answers slowly. + +Poor Amelia is holding her handkerchief in her hand. She lifts it to her +mouth and bites a corner of it to hide the quivering of her lips and +chin. She does not wish to add to his pain by any breakdown on her own +part. But Jim divines the quivering even under the morsel of cambric, +and looks away again. + +"Her money is almost entirely in her own power," he continues, in an +unemotional voice; "and when she announced her marriage to me, she also +announced her intention of settling the whole of it upon her--her"--he +pauses a second, as if resolved to keep out of his voice the accent of +satire and bitterness that pierces through its calm--"her husband." + +Amelia has dropped both shielding hand and handkerchief into her lap. +She has forgotten her effort to conceal the blankness of her dismay. +Unless she conceals the whole of her face, indeed, the attempt would be +in vain, since each feature speaks it equally. + +"Her whole fortune?" she repeats, almost inaudibly. "_All?_" + + "What, all my pretty chickens and their dam?" + +says Jim, oppressed by her overwhelmed look into an artificial and +dreary levity, and in not particularly apt quotation. "My dear, do not +look so broken-hearted. I am not absolutely destitute; I need not become +a sandwich man. I have still got my L800 a year, my very own, which +neither man nor mouse, neither curate nor vicar, can take from me. I can +still go on rioting upon that; the question is"--his words coming more +slowly, and his tone growing graver--"have I any right to ask you to +riot on it too?" + +Her hand has gone in feverish haste out to his for answer, and her eyes, +into which the tears are welling, look with an intense dumb wistfulness +into his; but, for the moment, it remains dumb. There is something +painful to Burgoyne in that wistfulness, almost more painful than the +telling of that news which has produced it. He looks down upon the +tablecloth, and, with his disengaged hand, the one not imprisoned in his +betrothed's fond hold, draws patterns with a paper-knife accidentally +left there. + +"The one thing that I blame her for," he continues, not following up the +branch of the subject that his last speech had begun to open up, and +speaking with a composure which, to the stricken Amelia, appears to +evidence his attainment of the highest pinnacle of manly fortitude, "the +only thing I blame her for, is her having hindered my adopting any +profession. Poor old woman, it was not malice prepense, I know; she had +not seen her Jessamey then, probably had not even a prophetic instinct +of him, but as things turned out"--stifling a sigh--"it would have been +kinder to have put me in the way of earning my own living." + +Amelia's head has sunk down upon his hand--he feels her hot tears upon +it; but now that the theme has no longer reference to herself, she can +speak. She straightens herself, and there is a flash, such as he has +very seldom seen there, in her rather colourless orbs. + +"It was monstrous of her!" she cries, with the almost exaggerated +passion of a usually very self-controlled person. "After having always +told you that you were to be her heir!" + +"But _had_ she told me so?" replies Jim, passing his hand with a +perplexed air over his own face. "That is what I have been trying to +recall for the last few days. I never remember the time when I did not +believe it, so I suppose that someone must have told me so; but I could +not swear that she herself had ever put it down in black and white. +However," tossing his head back with a gesture as of one who throws off +his shoulders a useless burden, "what does that matter now? I am not her +heir, I am nobody's heir; we must look facts in the face! Amelia, +dear"--in a tone of reluctant tender affection, as of one compelled, yet +most unwilling, to give a little child, or some other soft, helpless +creature, pain--"we must look facts in the face!" There is something in +his voice that makes Amelia's heart stand still; but she attempts no +interruption. + +"It is very hard for me, dear, after all these"--he pauses a second; he +is about to say "weary years' waiting," but his conscience arrests him; +to him they have not been weary, so, after a hardly-perceptible break, +he goes on--"after all these many years' waiting, to have come to this, +is not it?" + +He had not calculated on the effect which would be produced by his +melancholy words and his caressing tone. She buries her face on his +shoulder, sobbing uncontrollably. + +"They were not long!" she murmurs brokenly. "Nothing is, nothing can be, +long to me as long as I have you, or the hope of you!" + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + +It is, perhaps, fortunate for Amelia that she cannot see the expression +of the face which looks out above her prostrate head into space, with a +blankness equal to what has been her own, a blankness streaked, as hers +was not, with remorse. He would give anything to be able to answer her +in her own key, to tell her that, as long as he can keep her, the going +or coming of any lesser good hurts him as little as the brushing past +his cheek of a summer moth or windblown feather. But when he tries to +frame a sentence of this kind, his tongue cleaves to the roof of his +mouth. He can only hold her to him in an affectionate clasp, whose +dumbness he hopes that she attributes to silencing emotion. She herself +indulges in no very prolonged manifestation of her passion. In a few +moments she is again sitting up beside him with wiped eyes, none the +handsomer, poor soul, for having cried, and listening with a deep +attention to an exposition of her lover's position and prospects, which +he is at no pains to tinge with a factitious rose colour. + +"Have you realized," he says, "that I shall never be better off than I +am now? never! _never!_ For though of course I shall try to get work, +one knows how successful that quest generally is in the case of a man +with no special aptitudes, no technical training, and who starts in the +race handicapped by being ten years too late!" + +But the dismalness of this panorama raises no answering gloom in the +young woman's face. She nods her head gently. + +"I realize it." + +"And this is what I have brought you to, after all these years' +waiting," he continues, in a tone of profound regret. "All I can offer +you at the end of them is a not particularly genteel poverty, not even a +cottage with a double coach-house!"--laughing grimly. + +"I do not want a double coach-house, nor even a single one!" replies +Amelia stoutly, and laughing too, a little, through returning tears. "Do +not you know that I had rather drive a costermonger's barrow with you +than go in a coach and six without you!" + +This is the highest flight of imagination of which Jim has ever known +his matter-of-fact Amelia guilty, and he can pay her his thanks for it +only in compunctious kisses. Perhaps it is they, perhaps it is the +thought which dictates her next hesitating speech, that bring a light +into Amelia's tear-reddened eyes. + +"If you will never be better off----" She stops. + +"Yes, dear, go on; 'if I shall never be better off'--I certainly never +shall; I feel sure that you will be able to put my earnings for the next +ten years into your eye, and see none the worse for them!" + +"If--you--will--never--be--better--off----" she repeats again, more +slowly, and breaking off at the same place. + +"Well, dear?" + +"If you will never be better off"--this time she finishes her sentence; +but it is rendered almost inaudible by the fact of her flushed face and +quivering lips being pressed against his breast--"why should we wait any +longer?" + +_Why should we wait any longer?_ To most persons, granted the usual +condition of feeling of a betrothed couple, this would seem a very +natural and legitimate deduction from the premises; but, strange to say, +it comes upon Burgoyne with the shock of a surprise. He has been +thinking vaguely of his change of fortune as a cause for unlimited +delay, perhaps for the rupture of his engagement, never as a reason for +its immediate fulfilment. + +He gives a sort of breathless gasp, which is happily too low for Amelia +with her still hidden face to hear. To be married at once! To sit down +for all time to Amelia and L800 a year! To forego for ever the thrilling +wandering life; the nights under the northern stars, the stealthy +tracking of shy forest creatures; the scarce coarse delicious food, the +cold, the fatigue, the hourly peril, that, since its probable loss is +ever in sight, make life so sweetly worth having--all, in short, that +goes to make up so many an Englishman's ideal of felicity; that has +certainly hitherto gone to make up Jim's. To renounce it all! There is +no doubt that the bitterness of this thought comes first; but presently, +supplanting it, chasing it away, there follows another, a +self-reproachful light flashing over his past eight years, showing him +his own selfishness colossal and complete for the first time. In a +paroxysm of remorse, he has lifted Amelia's face, and, framing it with +his hands, looks searchingly into it. + + +"I believe," he says in a shaken voice, "that you would have married me +eight years ago, on my pittance, if I had asked you!" + +No "Yes" was ever written in larger print than that which he read in her +patient pale eyes. Even at this instant there darts across him a wish +that they were not quite so pale, but he detests himself for it. + +"And I never suspected it!" he cries compunctiously. "I give you my word +of honour, I never suspected it! I thought you looked upon my poverty in +as prohibitory a light as I did myself." + +"I do not call it such great poverty," replies Amelia, her practical +mind resuming its habitual sway over her emotions. "Of course, it is an +income that would require a little management; but if we cut our coat +according to our cloth, and did not want to move about too much, we +might live either in a not very fashionable part of London, or in some +cheap district in the country very comfortably." + +Despite his remorse, a cold shiver runs down Burgoyne's spine at the +picture that rises, conjured up with too much distinctness by her words, +before his mind's eyes; the picture of a snug Bayswater villa, with a +picturesque parlour-maid, or the alternative cottage in some dreary +Wiltshire or Dorsetshire village, with a shrubbery of three aucuba +bushes, and a kitchen-garden of half an acre. It may be that, her frame +being in such close proximity to his, she feels the influence of his +shiver, and that it suggests her next sentence, which is in a less +sanguine key. + +"But it would not be fair; it would be asking you to give up too much." + +The meek abnegation of her rather worn voice brings his remorse +uppermost again on the revolving wheel of his feelings. + +"Is not it my turn to give up something?" he asks tenderly; "and +besides, it is time for me to settle! I am--I am tired of wandering!" + +As this atrocious lie passes his lips, he catches his breath. Tired of +the Sierras! Tired of the bivouacs among the dazzling snow! Tired of the +august silence of the ever-lasting hills! Heaven forgive him for saying +so! Perhaps there is no great air of veracity in his assertion, for she +looks at him distrustfully; so distrustfully that he reshapes his +phrase: "At least, if I am not, I ought to be!" + +But still she gazes at him with a wistful and doubting intentness. + +"If I could only believe that that was true!" + +"It is true," replies he, evading her look; "at least, true enough for +all working purposes; we all know that life is a series of compromises, +a balancing of gain and loss. I shall lose something, I do not deny +that, but I gain more--I gain _you_!" + +"That is such a mighty gain, is it not?" she says with a melancholy +smile, as that intuition of the truth which sometimes comes to unloved +or tepidly loved women flashes upon her. + +"A matter of taste--a mere matter of taste!" rejoins he hurriedly; aware +of the unreal ring in his own words, and trying, with all his might, to +feel as well as speak light-heartedly. + +She shakes her head in a way which tells him how poorly he has +succeeded. In a desperate if not very well-judged attempt to convince +her of his sincerity, his next speech is uttered. + +"Why should not we be married at once? to-morrow? the day after +to-morrow? at the Consulate--of course there _is_ a Consulate--or the +English church; I suppose there are half a dozen English churches. Why +not? We have nothing to wait for, and we are both of age!" + +He has had no unkindly intention in the last words, but the moment that +these are out of his mouth, a glance at Amelia's unblooming face and +unyouthful figure tell him that they were not happily chosen. At the +first instant that the suggestion of an immediate marriage reaches the +hearer's brain, it sends a dart of joy over her features. To be married +at once! To put an end for ever to the interminable waiting, to enter at +last--at last upon the possession of the so long deferred Canaan. But in +a second, that first bright flash is chased away, and gives place to a +look of almost humiliation. + +"You must be making fun of me, to suggest such a thing!" she says in a +wounded voice; "you know how wildly impossible it would be that I should +leave them all--my father--Sybilla--without any preparation." + +"Without any preparation!" replies Jim, raising his eyebrows. "Have not +you been preparing them for the last eight years?" + +He feels a vague unjust irritation with her for opposing his +proposition, though deep down in his heart he knows that he would have +felt a much greater annoyance had she eagerly closed with it. As she +does not answer a question, which the moment that it is uttered he feels +to have been rather brutal, he goes on, against his will, in the same +sarcastic key: + +"I am afraid that you will have to leave them all some day; I am afraid +that our Bayswater mansion--by-the-bye, I am sure it will not be a +mansion, for I am sure it will not have a back-door--will not be likely +to contain all. Your father--Sybilla--Sybilla and her physic bottles +take up a good deal of room, do not they?" + +It is fortunate for Amelia that she is too preoccupied by the thought of +her own next speech to take in the full acerbity of the last remark. + +"If you would consent to wait till we get home--father does not mean to +stay in Italy beyond the end of next month--we might be married in June; +that" (with a pink flush of happiness) "would not be so long to wait." + +In a second a sum of the simplest description executes itself in +Burgoyne's head. It is now the second week of April; they are to be +married in June, he has then eight weeks left. It shocks himself to find +that this is the way in which he puts it. All the overt action that he +permits himself, however, is to say with a shrug: + +"As you will, then, as you will!" adding, since he feels that there is +something discourteous even to unchivalry in so bald an acquiescence in +his prospective bliss, "Of course, dear, the sooner I get you the better +for me!" + +No lover could have been overheard giving utterance to a more proper or +suitable sentiment; so that it is lucky that this is just the moment +that Cecilia chooses for entering. + +"Do not be afraid," she says, with a laugh. "I will not stay a minute, +but I just wanted to say 'How do you do?' How well you are looking! and +how young!"--with an involuntary glance of comparison from him to her +sister; a glance of which they are both rather painfully conscious. +"Ah!" (sighing) "with all your Rocky Mountain experiences, it is evident +that you have been having an easier time than we have!" + +"Are you alluding to Sybilla?" asks Jim gravely. "I have no doubt, from +what I know of her powers in that line, that she has been extremely +trying." + +"Yes, partly," replies the girl doubtfully; "but I have had troubles of +my own too. I dare say that Amelia has told you, or probably" (with a +second and heavier sigh) "you have been more pleasantly employed." + +"Amelia did hint at some disaster," replies Jim, struggling to conceal +the rather grim smile which is curving his mouth, a feat the more +difficult since he has no moustache to aid him; "but I have been waiting +to hear all the details from yourself." + +"I know that you are apt to think I fancy things," says Cecilia, sitting +down on a third hard chair, "but there could be no fancy in this case; I +am sure I was as much engaged as any girl ever was. I had chosen the +drawing-room paper and bought the dining-room grate!" + +"That is further than we ever got, is not it, Amelia?" says Jim, +breaking, at the relation of this prosaic fact, into the laugh he has +been with difficulty swallowing; "but, Cis, if I were you, I should keep +the grate; one does not know how soon its services may be required +again!" + +"It is all very well for you to joke," returns Cecilia, with an offended +air; "it may be play to you, but it is----" + +"Not death, not quite death to you!" interrupts Burgoyne, glancing with +an expressive smile at her buxom outline. "I think you will live to +fight another day, will not you? But I really am extremely sorry; tell +me all about it." + +"He was perfectly right when we left England," says Cecilia, mollified +at once, and apparently relieved by the invitation to unbosom herself of +her woes; "nobody could have been more so; he came to see us off at +Folkestone, and the tears were in his eyes; they were really, it was not +my imagination, was it, Amelia? And at first he wrote all right, and +said all the usual things; but then his letters gradually grew fewer and +fewer, and after I had written and telegraphed a great many times--I do +not know how many times I did not telegraph to ask whether he was ill, +and you know how expensive foreign telegrams are--he sent me a few +lines, oh, such cruel lines, were not they, Amelia? to say that, on +reflection, he feared that the feeling he had for me was not such as to +justify his entering on so sacred an engagement as marriage with me; but +he ought to have thought of that before, ought not he?" + +"Undoubtedly!" + +"I will never engage myself to a clergyman again," says Cecilia +pensively. + +Burgoyne's thoughts have strayed at the mention of the cloth of his +sister-in-law elect's truant admirer, to that member of the same +profession who has lately robbed him of his heritage, and he replies +with a good deal of feeling: + +"They do play one dirty turns now and then, do not they? Yes, Cis, stick +to laymen for the future!" + +Cecilia receives this counsel with a melancholy sigh, fixing her large +eyes on the carpet, but presently resumes the conversation in a livelier +key. + +"Let us talk about something pleasanter," she says. "Had you a good +journey? Do you like your travelling companion? Why did not you bring +him with you? Is he nice?" + +"At all events, he is not a clergyman," replies Jim, with a rather +malicious smile; "but no, my dear, do not let your thoughts turn in that +direction! You must look at him as poor women look at diamonds!" + +"I am sure I do not know what you mean!" replies Cecilia, reddening. "I +have not the slightest wish to look at him! I am not in spirits to +'look,' as you call it, at anyone!" + +A moment later, she adds, with a suspicion of malice in her tone: + +"We are certainly an unlucky family in our loves! I, heartlessly thrown +over, and Amelia engaged for eight years!" + +Burgoyne smiles. "Amelia is not going to be engaged any longer," he +says, putting his arm round his betrothed. "Amelia is going to be +married at once!" + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + + +It would seem natural that, after so long a separation, Burgoyne should +dine and spend the evening with his betrothed; but such is not the case. +For this, however, he is not to blame; he is quite prepared to stay with +her until she turns him out. Had he not better school himself to +domestic habits, since he is so soon to assume them for life? But in +consideration for Sybilla he is dismissed undined. It is not that she +ever shares the family dinner at their table _a part_ in the _salle a +manger_, but the thought of their entertaining a guest with a +conviviality far greater in her imagination than would be the case in +reality, while she herself lies lonely on her couch of suffering, preys +upon her spirits so much that her family have to abandon the idea. So, +towards sunset, Jim is dismissed. He has no opportunity for any parting +endearments to his lady-love, as the whole family are in the room, and +it is Cecilia, not Amelia, who volunteers to walk across the hotel +courtyard with him, for the advantage of a last word. What that last +word is he is not slow to learn. + +"You will take us some excursions, will not you?" she says, with a +persuasive air, putting her arm through his. "Father is so +unenterprising, we have really seen scarcely anything; but you will take +us some excursions now, will not you?" + +"Are you sure that your spirits are equal to them?" inquires Burgoyne +unkindly. + +"I do not know about that, I am sure," replies she, growing pink at his +tone; "but one must make an exertion sometime, and I think a little +distraction would do me good, and so I am sure it would to poor Amelia!" + +"Poor Amelia will shortly have the distraction of being married," +rejoins the young man, who feels as if he could not repeat the statement +of this fact too often to himself and others. + +"And I think it would be only civil," continues Cecilia persistently, +"in fact, I do not see how you could avoid it, if you invited your +friend to join us." + +But Jim escapes without having committed himself to this promise, and +wanders about the town in the lovely, lowering light; finds himself on +the Lung Arno, strolling along with the leisurely loiterers, among whom, +for every two soft Tuscan voices, there is a loud metallic Anglo-Saxon +one. He watches the carriages rolling back from their drive on the +Cascine; the river falling over the weir; the river yellow as Tiber +yesterday, and to day shot with blue and green and silver, as it tumbles +with a pleasant noise. The houses on either side of the Arno, the domes +and roofs, are all clothed in a strange serenity of yellow light; a +golden air so transparent and line and crystal clear, so free from the +soft blur of mist--lovely too--through which we see objects in our wet +green home, that Jim feels as if he could stretch out his hand and touch +the hill that backs gold towers and bridges, and see whether it really +is made out of one whole amethyst, as it looks. The beauty of the world +has always been very much to Burgoyne, though hitherto it has been +chiefly in the austerity of her high and desert places that he has bowed +the knee before the Universal Mother. This little gold evening city, +sunset clad in the colours of the New Jerusalem, lifting her heavenly +campanile to as heavenly a sky, is to him a new and wonderful thing. Her +loveliness sinks into his soul, and with it a companion sadness as deep. +From henceforth the sight of earth's fair shows will be, for the most +part, forbidden him. He has always loved to look and adore in silence +and alone; henceforth he will never have the right to be alone; +henceforth he will never have the right to go anywhere without his wife. +Strange and terrible word to which he tries in vain to accustom his +mental ears; and, thanks to the narrowness of their means, neither of +them will be able to stir from the strait precincts of their pinched +home. + +He comes back to his hotel, through the Piazza of the Duomo. All the +infinite richness of cupola and arch, high up, are still wrapped in the +fiery rose cloak of sunset, while below the body of the great church, +with all its marbles and traceries and carved wonders, is clad in the +sobriety of twilight. + +On reaching the Minerva, he finds that Byng has not yet returned, or +rather that he has been in and gone out again. He waits dinner +half-an-hour for him, and then dines without him; dines in solitude, +since it is not till his cup of coffee is before him, and his cigarette +between his lips, that his young friend appears. It is evidently no +unpleasant errand that has detained him, for he arrives beaming, and too +excited even to perceive the _menu_ which a waiter offers him. + +"They have arrived!" he cries. Oddly enough it never occurs to Burgoyne +to inquire who "they" may be; it seems as much a matter-of-course to him +as to the handsome pink and white boy before him, that the pronoun must +relate to Elizabeth Le Marchant and her mother. + +His only answer, however, is an "Oh!" whose tone is rather more eagerly +interested than he could have wished. + +"I thought that they could not stay more than another day in Genoa," +continues Byng, at length becoming aware of the _menu_ at his elbow; but +only to wave it impatiently away. "So I thought I would just run down to +the station to meet the evening train, the one we came by last night; +however, it must have been more punctual than yesterday, for before I +reached the station, I met them; I mean they passed me in a fiacre. I +only caught a glimpse of her face, but I saw her hand; it was lying on +the carriage door like a snow-flake." + +"Like my grandmother!" cries Burgoyne in a rage, for which he cannot +quite account to himself, at this ingenious and novel simile. + +Byng laughs; the laugh of a thoroughly sweet-natured person, who, in +addition, has some special cause for good-humour. + +"I do not know what colour your grandmother was; but she must have been +very unlike most people's if she was like a snow-flake." + +Jim's cross mouth unbends into a reluctant smile. It is not the first +time that he has discovered how useless, and also impossible, it is to +be out of humour with Byng. + +"I had a good mind to tell my fiacre man to follow them," continued +Byng, in an excited voice; "but, in the first place, I did not know how +to say it--really, Jim, we must get up a little of the lingo--and, in +the second place, I thought it would perhaps be rather too much in the +private detective line." + +"I think it would have been extremely ungentlemanlike!" rejoins Jim +severely. + +Byng reddens; but still without losing his temper. + +"That is coming it rather strong, is not it? but anyhow, I did not do +it." And then, by tacit agreement, they both drop the subject. + +During the next three or four days it is not named between them, nor +indeed do they see much of each other. Burgoyne spends the greater part +of his days with Amelia. Whatever cause for the accusation he may have +given during the previous eight years, nobody can say that he neglects +her now. He passes long hours at her side, on the same hard chair that +had supported him on their first interview, in the little dismal +dining-room; going into calculations of house-rent and taxes, drawing up +lists of necessary furniture. He even makes a bid for Cecilia's +drawing-room grate; but that young lady, whose forecasting mind can look +beyond present grief to future sunshine, refuses to part with it. The +lovers are not always, however, studying Maple's and Oetzmann's lists. +Sometimes Jim varies the diversion by taking his future wife to +picture-galleries and churches, to the Uffizi, the Accademia, San +Lorenzo. It is doubtful whether Amelia enjoys these excursions as much +as she does the selection of bedsteads and saucepans, her pleasure being +in some degree marred by a feverish anxiety to say what she thinks her +lover expects of her as they stand before each immortal canvas. In her +heart she thinks the great statues in the Medici Chapel frightful, a +heresy in which she is kept in countenance by no less a light than +George Eliot, who in one of her letters dares to say of them, "they +remained to us as affected and exaggerated in the original, as in copies +and casts." To Amelia many of the frescoes appear lamentably washed out, +nor are her efforts to hide these sentiments attended with any +conspicuous success, since nothing is more hopeless than for one utterly +destitute of a feeling for works of art to feign it, without having the +imposture at once detected. + +Burgoyne's mind during these expeditions is a battle-ground for pity and +rage; pity at the pathos of his poor love's endeavours; rage at their +glaring failure. Cecilia sometimes accompanies the lovers, but this does +not make matters much better. Cecilia devotes but a very cursory notice +to the pictures; her attention being almost wholly centred on the +visitors, and on finding resemblances for them among the inhabitants of +her own village at home, for the accuracy of which she appeals at every +moment to her sister. Every day she asks Burgoyne to fulfil his +promise--a promise which he as punctually assures her that he never +made--to introduce his friend to her. He has a strangely strong +reluctance to comply with this simple request, which yet, he knows, will +have to be complied with some day. When Amelia is his wife, Byng will +have to know Cecilia, for she will probably spend a great deal of her +time with them--make their house a second home, in fact. + +And meanwhile Jim is keenly, and for some reason sorely, conscious of +the fact that, during the hours in which he is stooping his weary head +over catalogues of fenders and fire-irons, carving-knives and +fish-slices, blankets and ticking, Byng is searching Florence through +her length and breadth for their two countrywomen. It is not indeed +necessary to credit his friend with any special quest to account for his +wanderings through the "adorable little city," as Henry James most truly +calls it, since he is a young man of a wide and alert curiosity, with a +large appetite for pleasure both intellectual and the reverse. Jim, +whose acquaintance with him has chiefly been with his rowdy +undergraduate side, bear-fighting, and proctor-defying, is astonished at +his almost tremulous appreciation of the Ghirlandajos, the Lorenzo di +Credis, the Giottos, that in a hundred chapels, from a hundred walls, +shine down in their mixed glory of naive piety and blinding colour upon +him. + +One day the elder man is sitting in his bedroom with a despatch-box and +a sheet of paper before him. He is embarked upon a dreary calculation as +to what his guns will fetch. He has made up his mind to sell them. Of +what further use can they be to him? He will not be allowed to shoot at +the Bayswater omnibuses, which will be the only game henceforth within +his reach. While he is thus employed upon an occupation akin to, and +about as cheerful as, that of Rawdon Crawley before Waterloo, Byng +enters. + +"You look as if you had a headache, old chap," he says, sitting down +upon his friend's bed. + +"If you had been going through as many kitchen-ranges as I have this +morning, perhaps you would have a headache," replies Jim gravely. "You +know that I am going to be married as soon as I get home." + +Byng nods; and Burgoyne, while inwardly blessing the tact that spares +him any congratulations, takes himself to task for having made the +announcement so lugubriously as to render felicitation obviously +inapplicable. + +"When are you going to introduce me to Miss Wilson?" asks Byng +presently. "If you shirk it much longer, I shall think that you are +ashamed of me." + +Jim glances affectionately, yet not quite comfortably, at his young +friend, and the thought dashes across his mind that, in his last remark, +the latter has put the saddle on the wrong horse. + +"You have so large an acquaintance in Florence already," he says, with +some stiffness, "that I did not know that you would care to add to it." + +"One cannot have too much of a good thing," replies the other joyously. +"You know I love my fellow-creatures; and in this case," he adds +civilly, "I do care very much." + +Burgoyne's eyes are bent on the paper before him, which contains the +melancholy enumeration of his firearms--"A 500 double-barrelled express, +by Henry, of Edinburgh; a 450 single-barrelled ditto, by same maker," +etc., etc.--as he says slowly: + +"I shall be very happy." + +His acceptance of the proposition can hardly be called eager; but of +this Byng appears unawares. + +"When shall it be, then? To-day--this afternoon?" + +"No-o-o; not to-day, I think. It has been arranged that we are to go to +San Miniato--Amelia, her sister, and I." + +"Three of you?" cries Byng, raising his eyebrows. "Then why not four? +Why may not I come too?" + +There being, in point of fact, no reason why he should not, and +Cecilia's morning prayer being still ringing in her future +brother-in-law's ears, he gives a dull and lagging assent; so that at +about three o'clock the two men present themselves at the door of the +Wilsons' apartment at the Anglo-Americain Hotel. That Sybilla is not +expecting visitors is evident by the fact that, at the moment of their +entrance, she is taking her own temperature--a very favourite relaxation +of hers--with a clinical thermometer. She removes the instrument from +her mouth without indecent haste, and holds out a languid white hand to +Byng. + +"So you are going off on a long afternoon's pleasuring?" she says, with +a pathetic smile. "I am so glad that neither of my sisters is going to +stay at home with me. We invalids must guard against growing selfish, +though I think that is perhaps more the danger with _malades +imaginaires_; we real ones have learnt our lesson of suffering better, I +hope." + +"You do not look so very ill," replies Byng, in his sympathetic voice, +letting his eyes rest caressingly on the prostrate figure, which has yet +no smallest sign of emaciation about it. + +"Ah, that is because of my colour," replies Sybilla, with an animation +slightly tinged with resentment. "You, too, fall into that common error. +My London doctor tells me that there is no such unerring indication of +radical delicacy of constitution as a fixed pink colour like mine; the +more feverish I am, the deeper it grows. It is very hard"--smiling again +sadly--"for one gets no pity!" + +"Where is Cecilia?" cries Jim brusquely, and fidgeting in his chair. +"Why is not she ready?" + +As he speaks, the young lady in question enters--so obviously arrayed +for conquest, in so patently new a hat, and such immaculate pale gloves, +that across Burgoyne's mind there flashes, in vexed mirth, the +recollection of the immortal caution addressed by Major O'Dowd to his +friend and comrade, "Moind your oi, Dob, my boy!" Would he not do well +to repeat it to his friend? + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + +They are off now, there being nothing further to retard them, leaving +Sybilla _tete-a-tete_ with her thermometer. They are off, sociably +packed in one fiacre-- + + "Four precious souls, and all agog + To dash thro' thick and thin." + +Not, indeed, that there is much dash about the Florentine +cab-horses--saddest among God's many sad creatures--with not a sound leg +among them, with staring coats and starting ribs, and poor broken knees; +and with their sadness emphasized by the feathers stuck in their tired +heads, as if to mock their wretchedness by a sort of melancholy +smartness! Sad as they are, it must be owned that they are the only sad +things in the cheerful Florentine streets, where no one seems over-busy, +where, out of the deep-eaved, green-shuttered houses, people lean, +talking to acquaintances on the shadowed pavement below. All the narrow +thorough-fares are full of bustling life; but there is no haggard +squalor apparently, no dreadful gin-palace gaiety. It does not follow +here that a man must be drunk because he sings. And down the strait, +colourful streets one looks--down a vista of houses diversely tall, each +with its cream-yellow face and its green shutters, varied here and there +by the towering bulk of some giant-blocked mountain-palace, through +whose grim, barred windows a woman peeps, or a little dog shows his +pointed nose--looks to where, in dwindling perspective, the view is +closed by a narrow picture of lucent purple hill, Fiesole or +Bellosguardo--names to which the tongue cleaves lovingly. Through the +gay streets, over bridge and blue Arno, our travellers go; their driver +cracking a prodigious whip, and with a tiny red dog, absurdly shaven, +and with nothing but a small woolly head and tail left of the original +design, seated gravely beside him. Away they go, pleasuring; but +pleasure and pleasuring are not always identical. + +Burgoyne sits opposite Amelia; and as for Cecilia, it is to be supposed +that her heartache is for the moment dulled, since the same carriage-rug +covers her knees and those of Byng. Burgoyne does not look at Amelia; +nor, though his eyes are fixed upon the passing objects, does he at +first see aught of them. His vision is turned inwards, and to his own +soul he is mechanically repeating in dismal recitative, "A +double-barrelled, central fire, breech-loading gun, by Lancaster; made +strong enough at the breech to shoot a spherical bullet." + +As for Amelia, her features are not of a build to express any emotion +with much brilliancy; but over them lies a deep and brooding content. +Amelia has not had much undiluted happiness in her life, but she is +exceedingly happy to-day. She is even strangely free from the carking +fear which usually assails her, of praising mistakenly, of being +enthusiastic in the wrong places, and passing over the right ones +unnoticed. If she keep to a vague generality of handsome adjectives, she +will surely do well enough, and, on this high holiday that her heart is +holding, he cannot be cross to her. + +As to Byng, he is emphatically of the school of divinity taught by Tommy +Moore, nor was he ever known, when lacking "the lips that he loved," to +fail to make love to "the lips that are near." His taste is too good for +him to have chosen Cecilia as a companion; but, since fate has allotted +her to him for the afternoon, he finds no difficulty in making the best +of her. Nor, to do her justice, is she destitute of charms of a certain +kind, though her face has the inevitable air of commonness incident upon +a very short nose and a very long upper lip. But she has a good deal of +bloom, and of crisp, showy-coloured hair, and a very considerable +eye-power. Byng's attachment to the fair sex being of far too stout a +quality to be blunted by such trifles as an inch too much or too little +of nose or lip, he also, like Amelia, is thoroughly prepared to enjoy +himself. + +Up the turning Via Galileo they climb, to the Basilica at the +top--stock-drive of all tourists--hackneyed as only Yankeedom and +Cockneydom, rushing hand in hand through all earth's sacredness, can +hackney. But even hackneying is powerless to take off the freshness to +the eye that sees it for the first time, of that view when he beholds +the Lily City lying close at his feet, so close that it seems he could +throw a stone into her Arno. + +They have left their fiacre, and, as naturally happens in a _partie +carree_--more especially when one couple are betrothed lovers--have +broken into pairs. Burgoyne leans pensively on the terrace parapet, and +his sombre eyes rest on the band of sister hills, joining hands in +perpetual watch round valley and town; hills over which, in this late +spring, there is more a promise than a performance of that green and +many-coloured wealth of verdure and blossom that one associates with +Firenze's fair name. But it is a promise that is plainly on the verge of +a bounteous fulfilment. Then his look drops slowly to the city herself. +In what a little space comparatively does the Florence that is immortal +lie! The Duomo, the lily Campanile "made up of dew and sunshine," the +Baptistery, Santa Croce, the Palazzo Vecchio; he could compass them in a +ten minutes' walk. And around this small nucleus of the undying dead and +their work, what a nation of gleaming villas of the polyglot living--a +nation of every tongue, and people, and language! All over the hills is +the sheen of white walls, the verdure of tended gardens; they stretch +away almost to where the Apennines raise their cold white fronts against +the sky. + +He rouses himself to remember that Amelia is beside him, and that he +ought to say something to her. So he makes a rather _banal_ observation +upon the smallness of the _enceinte_ that encloses so much loveliness. + +"Yes, is not it tiny?" replies she, with the eager pleasure of having a +remark made to her which she cannot go wrong in answering. "Think of +London! Why, the whole thing is not as big as South Kensington or +Bayswater!" + +He shudders. Must the accursed suburb pursue him even here? + +"Let us go into the church," he says, in a tone that a little dulls his +companion's buoyancy. + +She follows him crestfallenly, asking herself whether she has answered +amiss here also. She does not trust herself to any comment upon the +interior. + +Byng and Cecilia are standing before the high altar, from over which a +mosaic Madonna stiffly beams upon them; and as the other couple approach +them, Burgoyne hears the words "drawing-room grate" issue from his +future sister-in-law's lips. + +"Bravo, Cis!" he says in a dry aside; "you are getting on nicely! I did +not think that you would have reached the drawing-room grate till +to-morrow." + +To avoid intruding further on her delicate confidences, and also to +escape from two Americans, who are nasally twanging Hare and Horner at +each other, varied by trips into Baedeker, he passes into a side chapel +made famous by one of the loveliest tombs that ever feigned to simulate +in marble death's ugliness. The Yankee voices are high and shrill, but +they had need to be higher and shriller still before they could break +the slumber of him whose resting-place Jim has invaded in his flight +from Cecilia and New York. Was ever rest so beautiful as this of the +young sleeper? A priest he was, nay cardinal, and youthful and lovely +and chaste! and now in how divine a slumber is he lapt! But how should +that four hundred years' slumber not be divine, watched by such a gentle +Mary-mother as is watching his; smiling as if to tell him that he does +well to sleep, that sleep is better than waking, that death is better +than life! There is a sunken look about his fair eyelids, as if he had +gone through suffering to his rest; and his reposeful hands are thin; +but below him, as he lies in his spotless marble tranquillity, upon his +sarcophagus, the rose garlands wave in lovely frieze, and the riotous +horses rear and plunge in fulness of life. + +Burgoyne has not perceived that Amelia did not follow him. She has, in +point of fact, remained in the body of the church, immersed in her +guide-book, steadily working through the marble screen and pulpit, and +still five good minutes off the side chapel, in which her lover stands +in so deeply brown a study, that he is not aware of the intrusion upon +his solitude of two women, until he is roused with a leap by the voice +of one of them addressing--not him, of whose presence she is obviously +as unaware as was he of hers, until this moment--but her companion. + +"Oh, mother! am I not a fool, at my age, too? but I cannot help it, it +makes me cry so!" + +Burgoyne does not need the evidence of his eyes. His ears and his +startled heart have enough assured him whose are the tears called forth +by that indeed most touching effigy at which he himself has been so +pensively staring. + +The mother's answer is inaudible; and then again comes the voice of +Elizabeth Le Marchant, tearful and vibrating. + +"You know I have seen so few beautiful things in my life, I shall get +used to them presently; it is only sheer happiness that makes me----" + +She stops abruptly, having evidently discovered for herself, or been +made aware by her mother of his vicinity; and even if she had not done +so, he feels that he must lose no time in announcing himself. + +"Florence is a place that does make one often choky," he says, eagerly +taking the hand which she hesitatingly, and with some confusion, offers +him. + +It is not quite true; Florence has never made him feel choky; and, if he +is experiencing that sensation now, it is certainly not the dead +cardinal of Portugal who is giving it to him. + +"I am a fool, a perfect fool!" replies Elizabeth, hastily and +shamefacedly wiping away her tears. + +To give her time to recover herself, and also because he has not yet +greeted the girl's mother, Jim turns to her. + +"Did not I tell you that we should meet here?" + +There is such undisguised joy and triumph in his tone, that perhaps Mrs. +Le Marchant has not the heart to dash his elation; at all events, he is +conscious in her tone of a less resolute determination to keep him at +arm's-length, than on their two last meetings. + +"I do not think that I contradicted you," she answers, smiling. + +He may steal another look at Elizabeth now. She is not crying any +longer. Indeed, despite the real moisture on her cheeks, she strikes him +as looking happier than at their last meeting; and though the interval +between now and then is too short for any such alteration to have taken +place in reality, yet he cannot help imagining that the hollows in those +very cheeks are less deep than when they stood together before the great +Vandyke in the Brignoli Sala Palace. + +"And the _entresol_? is it all your fancy painted it?" he asks quickly, +feeling a sort of panic fear, that if he stops putting questions for one +minute they will slip out of his grasp again, as they did in the Genoese +Palace. + +Elizabeth's face breaks into a soft bright smile. She has a dimple in +one cheek and not in the other. She must have had it ten years ago; how +comes he to have forgotten so sweet and strange a peculiarity? + +"It is delightful--perfectly delightful!" + +"Large enough to receive your friends in, after all?" + +But the moment that the words are out of his mouth, he perceives that he +has made a false step, and is somehow treading dangerous ground. +Elizabeth's smile goes out, like a light blown into nothingness by a +sudden wind. + +"We have not many friends," she murmurs; "we--we are not going out at +all." + +He hastens to change his cue. + +"Byng and I are at the Minerva," he says, beginning to talk very fast; +"I wonder if, by any chance, you are in our neighbourhood; have I +forgotten, or did you never tell me where the _entresol_ lies? Where is +it, by-the-bye?" + +Ensnared by the wily and brazen suddenness of this demand, Miss Le +Marchant has evidently no evasion ready, and, after an almost +imperceptible pause of hesitation, answers: + +"We are at 12 bis, Piazza d'Azeglio." + +She is looking doubtfully and half uneasily in his face, as she gives +this answer, but he has scarcely time for a flash of self-congratulation +at having obtained the information, which he had never realized the +eagerness of his desire for until this moment, before he becomes aware +that his interlocutor's eyes are no longer meeting his, but have +wandered to some object over his shoulder. What that object is he is not +long left in doubt. Whether it is a genuine accident, or one of those +spurious ones, of which those who profit by them are the artificers, Jim +does not know; and, as he is at the time, and will be when he thinks of +the circumstance to the end of his life, too angry to question Byng on +the subject, it is pretty certain that he never _will_ know; but so it +is that at this moment the voice of his _protege_ breaks upon his ear: + +"You are not going to give us the slip like this, old chap--oh! I beg +your pardon!" + +But begging pardon ever so sweetly does not alter the fact that he has +rushed, like a bull in a china shop, into the middle of the dialogue. +All four look at each other for a second; then, since there is no help +for it, Jim presents his disciple, and the next moment the latter has +slid into talk with Elizabeth, and she is responding with an ease and +freedom from embarrassment such as had never marked her sparse and +hardly won utterances to the elder man. + +Byng has the advantage of him, as he somewhat bitterly thinks. Byng has +no connection with "old times;" those poor old times which she and her +mother have so unaccountably taken _en grippe_. He seems suddenly +relegated, as by some natural affinity, to the mother. On their two last +meetings the eagerness to converse has been all on his side; yet now he +has nothing to say to her. It is she who addresses him. + +"I hope that you found your young lady flourishing," she says civilly. + +He gives a slight inward start, though--as he is thankful to feel--his +body is quiet. "His young lady!" Yes, of course he has a young lady! Has +there been any danger during the last five minutes of his forgetting +that fact? and has Mrs. Le Marchant done him an unnecessary service in +recalling it? + +"Oh, yes, thanks, she is all right!" + +"Is she still in Florence?" + +"Yes, she is here; by-the-bye"--looking round with a sudden sense that +he ought to have missed her--"what has become of her? Oh, here she is!" + +For even while the words are on his lips, Amelia and Cecilia come into +sight. Amelia with a shut Baedeker, and the serene look of an easy +conscience and a thoroughly performed duty on her amiable face; Cecilia +with a something of search and disquiet in her large rolling eye, which +would have made him laugh at another time. + +A sudden instinct, with which his will has nothing to do, makes him +flash a look back at Mrs. Le Marchant, as if to gauge the effect +produced upon her by his betrothed; and, following her glance, he finds +that it is resting on Cecilia. She thinks that he is engaged to Cecilia. +The mistake is intolerable to him, and yet a second's reflection tells +him that it is a natural one. In a second he sees his Amelia as she +presents herself to a strange eye. Miss Wilson is only thirty-one, but +upon her has already come that set solid look of middle age, which +overtakes some women before they are well over the borders of youth, and +which other women manage to stave off till they are within near hail of +forty. Yes; the mistake is quite a natural one. Most people would +suppose that the showy Cecilia, still fairly youthful, and with so many +obvious and well-produced "points," must be his choice; and yet, as I +have said, the idea that anyone should credit him with her ownership is +intolerable to him. + +"Here she is!" he cries precipitately. "The one to the right side, the +other is her sister; may I--may I present them to you?" + +Perhaps it is his irritated fancy that dictates the idea, but it seems +to him as if he detected a sort of surprise in Mrs. Le Marchant's face, +when he effects the introduction he has proposed, and to which she +accedes courteously, after a pause of hesitation about as long as had +followed his inquiry of Elizabeth as to their address. + +Five minutes later they have all sauntered out again on the terrace, and +Burgoyne is again leaning on the wall; but this time he has no fear of +hearing of Bayswater, for it is Elizabeth who is beside him. Since last +he looked at it half an hour ago, a sort of glorification has passed +over the divine view. Down where the river twists through the plain +country, there is a light, dainty mist, but the mountains have put on +their fullest glory. They are not green, or brown, or purple, or blue; +but clad in that ineffable raiment woven by the sun, that defies our +weak vocabulary to provide it with a name. A little snow-chain lies on +the sun-warmed neck of Morello, and along the tops of the further +Apennines, right against the acute blue of the heavens, lies a line of +snow, that looks like a fleece-soft cloud resting from its journeyings +on their crests; but it is no cloud, nor is there any speck upon the +gigantic complete arch that over-vaults town and valley and radiant +mountains. In the folds of these last, the shadows slumber; but over all +the city is the great gold glory of spring. The one thing in Florence +that frowns among so many smiles is the scowling Pitti, and that, from +here, is invisible. Nearer to him, against the azure, stand the solemn +flame-shaped cypresses arow, and beside them--as unlike as life to +death--a band of quivering poplars, a sort of transparent gold-green in +their young spring livery. The air is so clear that one can go nigh to +counting the marbles on the Duomo walls. In a more transparent amber +light, fuller of joy and gaiety, cannot the saved be dancing around, as +in Fra Angelico's divine picture? cannot they be walking in the New +Jerusalem of St. John's great dream? Only in the New Jerusalem there are +no galled and trembling-kneed fiacre horses. + +Elizabeth is sitting on the wall, her light figure--is it possible that +it has been in the world only four years less than Amelia's solid +one?--half-supported by one small gray hand outspread on the stone; her +little fine features all tremulous with emotion, and half a tear +gathered again in each sweet eye. As Jim looks at her, a sort of cold +covetous gripe pinches his heart. + +"What a woman with whom to look at all earth's loveliness--with whom to +converse without speech!" + +Even as he so thinks, she turns her head towards him, and, drawing in +her breath with a long low sigh, says: + +"Oh, how glad I am I did not die before to-day!" + +Her eyes are turned towards him, and yet, as once before, he realizes +that it is not to him that either her look or her thoughts are directed. +Both are aimed at an object over his shoulder, and, as before, that +object is Byng. Byng, too, has been gazing at the view. There are tears +in Byng's eyes also. Stevenson says that some women like a man who +cries. Byng cries easily and genuinely, and enjoys it; and, as he is a +remarkably fine young man, there is something piquant in the contrast +between his wet blue orbs and his shoulders. + +As Burgoyne rolls home that afternoon in his fiacre, as before, placed +opposite Amelia, his mental vision is no longer fixed upon a +"double-barrelled, central fire, breech-loading gun;" it is fixed with a +teasing tenacity upon the figure of a smallish woman, perennially +looking, through brilliant tears, over his shoulder at somebody else. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + + +"Was it 12, or 12 bis, Piazza d'Azeglio?" + +There are no tears in Byng's eyes as he asks this question next +morning--asks it of his friend, as the latter sits in the Fumoir, with +an English paper in his hands, and a good cigar between his clean-shaven +lips. It has struck him several times lately that he will have to give +up good cigars, and take to a churchwarden pipe and shag instead. But, +so far, the churchwarden and the shag remain in the future. + +"12, or 12 bis, Piazza d'Azeglio?" inquires Byng. + +"Was _what_ 12 or 12 bis?" replies his friend, with a somewhat obviously +intentional obtuseness; but Byng is far too thoroughly healthy and happy +a young animal this morning to take offence easily. + +"I mean Miss Le Marchant's address," he answers, explaining as amiably +as if he had not been perfectly aware that it was only "cussedness" that +had dictated the query. + +There is a slight pause. Burgoyne would like to answer that he does not +remember--would like still more to answer that he does not see what +business it can be of Byng's; but, since he is not destitute of +common-sense, a second's reflection shows him that he has no good reason +for either the lie or the incivility, so he replies, pretty calmly, with +his eyes still on his leading article: + +"I believe Miss Le Marchant said 12 bis." + +Having obtained the information he wanted, and finding his companion not +conversationally disposed, Byng is moving away again, when he is +arrested by Jim's voice, adding to the intelligence he has just given +the monosyllable: + +"Why?" + +"Why what?" asks Byng, returning readily, and laughingly mimicking the +intentional obtuseness so lately practised on himself by the other. + +"Why did you ask?" + +"I am thinking of paying my respects there this afternoon, and I did not +want to ring at the wrong bell." + +A short silence. Jim's head is partly hidden by his _Galignani_. + +"Did Miss or Mrs. Le Marchant ask you to call?" + +Byng laughs. + +"Both of them are as innocent of it as the babe unborn!" + + +"You asked yourself then?" (in a snubbing voice). + +Byng nods. + +"And she said yes?" + +The plural pronoun has dropped out of sight, but neither of them +perceives it. The younger man shakes his sleek head. Jim lays down his +paper with an air of decision. + +"If she did not say 'Yes'--if she said 'No,'" he begins, with an accent +of severity, "I fail to understand----" + +"She did not say 'No,'" interrupts Byng, still half laughing, and yet +reddening as well. "She began to say it; but I suppose that I looked so +broken-hearted--I am sure I felt it--that she stopped." + +As Jim makes no rejoinder, he continues by-and-by: + +"After all, she can but send me away. One is always being sent away" +(Jim wishes he could think this truer than he does); "but now and again +one is not sent, and those are the times that pay for the others! I'll +risk it." + +There is a hopeful ring in his voice as he ends, and again a pause +comes, broken a third time by the younger man. + +"Come now, Jim"--looking with a straight and disarming good humour into +his friend's overcast countenance--"speak up! Do you know of any cause +or impediment why I should not?" + +Thus handsomely and fairly appealed to, Burgoyne, who is by nature a +just man, begins to put his conscience through her paces as to the real +source of his dislike to the idea of his companion's taking advantage of +that introduction which he himself has been the means--however +unwillingly--of procuring for him. It is true that Byng's mother had +adjured him, with tears in her eyes, to preserve her boy from +undesirable acquaintances; but can he, Burgoyne, honestly say that he +looks upon Elizabeth Le Marchant as an undesirable acquaintance for +anyone? The result of his investigations is the discovery of how +infinitesimal a share in his motives regard for his young friend's +welfare has had. The discovery is no sooner made than he acts upon it. + +"My dear boy," he says--and to his credit says it heartily--"I see no +earthly reason why you should not go; you could not make nicer friends." + +"Then why will not you come too?" asks Byng, with boyish generosity. + +The other shakes his head. "They had much rather I stayed away; they +have taken me _en grippe_." + +"Pooh! Nonsense! You fancy it." + +"I think not"--speaking slowly and thoughtfully--"I am not a fanciful +person, nor apt to imagine that my acquaintances bother their heads +about me one way or another; but when people try their best, in the +first instance, to avoid recognising you at all, and on every subsequent +occasion endeavour to disappear as soon as you come in sight, it is not +a very forced assumption that they are not exactly greedy for your +society." + +This reasoning is so close that Byng is for the moment silenced; and it +is the other who shortly resumes: + +"I think it is because I remind them of the past; they have evidently +some unpleasant association of ideas with that past. I wonder what it +is." + +The latter clause is addressed more to himself than to Byng. + +"Perhaps some of them have died, or come to grief, and they are afraid +of your asking after them," suggests the younger man. + +"On the contrary--they are all--one more flourishing than another." + +"Well, I would give them one more trial, anyhow; I am sure they would +come round. Give them time, and I am sure they would come round!" cries +Byng sanguinely; adding, "What could have been pleasanter than Mrs. Le +Marchant's manner when you presented her to Miss Wilson?" + +The mention of Miss Wilson recalls to Jim the extremely unpleasant +moment of that presentation, thus brought back to him--the moment when +Amelia had looked so middle-aged, and Cecilia so flashy; recalls to him +also the conviction that has been growing upon him since yesterday, of +the more than wisdom, the absolute imperative duty on his part, of +avoiding a repetition of that comparison which had forced itself upon +his notice in the church of San Miniato. + +"You had better come," persists Byng still, like a magnanimous child, +holding out half his cake to his friend; whether, like the same child, +with a semi-hope that it may be refused, or whether, on the other hand, +it may have crossed his mind that, where there are two visitees, the +chances of a _tete-a-tete_ are improved by there being also two +visitors. + +"My dear boy," returns Jim, this time with a testiness handsomely +streaked with irony, "you are really too obliging; but, even if I wished +it--which I do not--or even if _they_ wished it--which they do _not_--it +is in this case quite impossible, as I am engaged to go shopping with +Amelia." + +Probably the blow is not a knockdown one to Byng; at all events, he +bears the rebuff with his habitual healthy good temper, and goes off to +put on a smarter tie. Burgoyne, thinking no such improvement in his +toilette necessary, strolls away to the Anglo-Americain. It is true that +he has covenanted to escort Amelia to the shop for Cantagalli ware, +though there is no particular reason why, had he so wished it, the +purchase of the dinner-service that is to grace their Bayswater symposia +might not have been deferred for twenty-four hours; and indeed, as +things turn out, it has to be so deferred. + +As he opens the door of the Wilson sitting-room his future father-in-law +brushes past him, with evident signs of discomposure all over his +clerical figure and spectacled face; and, on entering, he finds equal, +if not superior, marks of upset equanimity on the countenances of the +three women that are the room's occupants. Over the wood fire--Sybilla +alternately roasts and freezes her family, and this is one of her +roasting days--Cecilia is stooping, in evident search for some object +that has been committed, or tried to be committed, to the flames. The +other two are looking on with an air of vexed interest. Sybilla is the +first to address him. + +"You have appeared at a not very happy moment," she says, with a sigh; +"we have been having a family breeze; it has sent my temperature up +nicely! It is 100, 100, Point 2." + +The mention of Sybilla's temperature is always enough to put Jim in a +rage. It is therefore in no very feeling tone that he returns: + +"If it were 1,000, Point 99, I should not be surprised, in this +atmosphere! Good Heavens, Cis, are not you hot enough already?" + +The young lady thus apostrophised rises, with some precipitation, and +with a very heated complexion, from her knees, holding in her hand, +however, the object of her quest--a rather charred small parcel, done up +in white paper, and with a fragment of white ribbon still adhering here +and there to it. + +"Father behaves so childishly," she says, with irritated undutifulness. + +"You must own that it was enough to provoke him," strikes in Amelia's +mild voice. + +"What was enough to provoke him? How has he shown his childishness? For +Heaven's sake, some of you explain!" cries Jim impatiently, looking from +one to the other. + +But with this request none of the three appears in any hurry to comply. +There is a distinct pause before Cecilia, seeing neither of her seniors +shows any signs of relieving her of the burden of explanation, takes +that burden upon herself. + +"The fact is," she says, setting her little rescued packet on the table +beside her, and beginning to fan herself, "that Mr. Dashwood, the man to +whom I was engaged, has chosen to marry. I am sure"--with a shrug--"no +one has the least desire to deny his perfect right to do so; and this +morning there arrived by post a bit of his wedding-cake! I suppose he +meant it civilly; but father chose to take it as an insult to himself, +and though it was addressed to me, he threw it into the fire. I am very +fond of wedding-cake; so, as soon as father's back was turned, I fished +it out again!" + +Jim laughs, with more vigour perhaps than heartfelt amusement. + +"Bravo, Cis! You are a real philosopher! We might all learn a lesson +from you." + +"What have you done with your nice friend?" asked Sybilla languidly. +"Amelia, dear, this _couvre-pied_ is slipping off me again. What a +sympathetic voice he has! I am sure he has been a great deal with sick +people." + +"I left him putting on his best tie to go out calling. No, calm +yourself, Cecilia, not on you; it is not your turn to-day." + +"Whose turn is it then?" asks the girl, with an interest not at all +blunted by the mortifying incident of the cake, which, indeed, she has +begun to nibble with apparent relish. + +Jim hesitates a second--a second during which it strikes him with a +shock that he already finds a difficulty in pronouncing Elizabeth Le +Marchant's name. He manages to evade the necessity even now by a +circumlocution. + +"I believe it is the Piazza d'Azeglio upon which that luminary is to +shine." + +"Is he going to see that lovely creature to whom you introduced me +yesterday?" cries Amelia, with good-natured enthusiasm. "I heard her +telling him that she lived in the Piazza d'Azeglio. Oh, Jim, how pretty +she is! One ought to pay for being allowed to look at her." + +Many women, whose plainness is incontestable, are able to be just to +their better favoured sisters; but Amelia is more than just--she is +lavishly generous. + +Burgoyne rewards her with an affectionate look--a look such as would +make her swear that, beside Miss Le Marchant, as beside Dumain's fair +love, + + "Juno but an Ethiop were!" + +"She looks as if she had had a history; that always improves a woman's +appearance," says Cecilia pensively, holding a fragment of the fateful +cake suspended in air, and regarding it with a melancholy eye. "Has +she?" + +"I never asked her." + +"Why did not you go too?" inquires Amelia, judiciously striking in, as +is her habit, as often as she perceives that her younger sister is +beginning to get too obviously upon her own _fiance's_ nerves; a +catastrophe which something in the tone of his last remark tells +her--though she does not quite understand why it should--is imminent. +"They are old friends of yours, are not they? They may be hurt if they +find that a perfect stranger like Mr. Byng is in a greater hurry to +visit them than you are." + +Before Burgoyne's mental vision rises a picture of Elizabeth's heavenly +eye wandering indifferently over the dear old friend's shoulder to find +its home in that of the perfect stranger. But he says kindly, and even +playfully: + +"Why did not I go too? Because I was under the impression that I was +engaged to go with another lovely being to choose crockery, was I not? +Am I not?" + +Amelia's answer is conveyed by a series of nods and winks executed +behind her sisters' backs, which he presently understands to imply that +she desires a private interview. It is not immediately that he grasps +what she is driving at, since dumb-show is often puzzling to the person +at whom it is aimed, though clear as day to the dumb-shower. As soon, +however, as he masters what her wish is, he hastens to comply with it; +and five minutes later finds them _tete-a-tete_ in the hideous little +dining-room which had been the scene of their reunion, and of many +after-meetings. + +"I could not say so, of course, before _her_," remarks Miss Wilson, as +soon as they are out of earshot, "or she might have insisted upon my +going. She is very unselfish sometimes; but the fact is, I do not think +I ought to leave Sybilla again to-day. You see, she was alone the whole +of yesterday afternoon; and when we came back we found her in a very low +way. She had been reading her book of prescriptions--you know the book; +all the prescriptions which she has had for the last ten years bound up +together--and we rather dread her bringing it out, as she always fancies +that she is going to have the disease prescribed for." + +"Humph!" + +"And, after all, happiness ought not to make one selfish, ought it?" +says Amelia, with a gentle sigh of abnegation, as she ruffles her +pale-haired head against his coat-sleeve. "I have so much of you +now--oh, so much!--not to speak of----" + +"Cecilia, of course, is incapacitated by grief?" interrupts Jim +brusquely. "She will be going up and down upon the mountains like +another unfortunate fair one. But your father? He will be at home, will +he not?" + +"Yes, he will be at home," replies Amelia, slowly and doubtfully, as if +not finding a very satisfactory solution in this suggested arrangement; +"but, as you know, it never answers to leave father and Sybilla alone +together for long. You see, he does not believe that there is anything +the matter with her; he thinks that she is as well as you or I" (a gush +of warm feeling towards his father-in-law rushes over Jim's heart); "and +though he tries to prevent himself from showing it to her, yet I am +afraid, poor dear, that he is not very successful." + +Jim laughs. + +"And to-day," continues Amelia, "he is naturally a good deal upset about +Cecilia and that wedding-cake; it _was_ very impertinent to send it--was +not it?--though she does not seem to see it. I hope"--with a wistful +smile, and a repetition of the fond friction of her head against his +sleeve--"that when _you_ throw _me_ over----" + +This is a hypothesis, suggested with perhaps unwise frequency by poor +Miss Wilson, which never fails to exasperate Jim. + +"If we are going to talk nonsense," he breaks in brusquely, and with no +attempt to return or reward her caressing gesture, "I may as well go." + +"Go to the Piazza d'Azeglio," says she coaxingly, her spirits raised by +the harshness of tone of his interruption of her speech, and half +persuading herself that it owes its birth to the supposition being too +painful to be faced by him. + +He looks at her strangely for a moment, then--"Why do you wish me to go +to the Piazza d'Azeglio?" he asks, in a tone that is no longer overtly +cross, only constrained and odd. "Why are you driving me there?" + +"Because I think you would like it," she answers; "because"--taking his +hand and passing her lips, which he feels to be trembling a little, very +gently over the back of it--"because all through your life I want you to +have exactly what you like, always." + +He draws his hand away; not unkindly, but as if shocked at the humility +of her action. + +"That is so likely," he says mournfully. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + + +There is no particular mirth in Burgoyne's mind as he mounts the stone +stairs of the house which announces itself as 12 bis, in the commonplace +new square of the Piazza d'Azeglio. But yet it is evident that, if he +wishes to be in tune with the mood of the family to whom he is going to +pay his respects, he must be not only mirthful, but musical. As the door +of the _entresol_, to which he is directed by the porter, opens in +answer to his ring, bursts of laughter, among which he can plainly +detect the voice of Byng, assail his ear, mingled with music, or rather +noise of a sort, but what sort his ear, without fuller evidence than is +yet before it, is unable to decide. The person who has admitted him is +an elderly Englishwoman, whose features at once strike him as +familiar--so familiar that it needs scarcely one reaching back of +memory's hand to capture the fact of her having filled the office of +nurse at the Moat, at the period when the nursery there had been the +scene of those frantic romps in which he himself had taken a prominent +part, and in which Elizabeth had been to him by turns so able a second, +or so vigorous an adversary. He would like to claim acquaintance with +her, and, perhaps, if she had made any difficulty as to admitting him, +might have screwed up his courage to do so; but as she lets him in +without delay or hesitation, he follows her in silence along the passage +of a by no means imposing little _entresol_--they are not so well off as +they used to be, is his passing thought--is ushered into a small +sitting-room, and, entering behind his own name, which has been +completely drowned by the din issuing from within, has time, before the +consciousness of his own appearance has disturbed it, to take in the +details of a group which his entry naturally breaks up. Set slantwise +across one angle of the room is an open cottage-piano, and beside it +stands Elizabeth, her elbow resting on the top, and all her pensive face +convulsed with helpless laughter. Upon the music-stool is seated a large +collie dog, supported from behind in an upright position by Byng. Before +him is a score of music, from which he is obviously supposed to be +playing, as indeed he is doing in a sense--that is to say, he is +bringing down first one large paw and then another heavily on the keys, +accompanying each crash with a short howl to express the agony inflicted +upon his nerves by his own performance. The scene is so entirely +different a one from what he had expected: the immoderately laughing +Elizabeth has so much more kinship with the sweet hoyden of the Moat +than with the pale woman with a history of his two last meetings, that +for a second or two Burgoyne stands in the doorway as if stunned. It is +not till Mrs. Le Marchant, coming out of an inner room, advances to +greet him, that he recovers himself. + +"How do you do?" she says, smiling, and with less constraint than he has +of late learnt to expect. "Are you fond of music?" (putting, as she +speaks, her hands up to her ears). "I hope so! Did you ever hear such a +shocking noise?" + +"I do not know which I admire most, the vocal or the instrumental part +of the performance," replies he, laughing; but even as he speaks both +cease. + +Elizabeth lifts her elbow from the piano, and Byng removes his hands +from under the dog's arms, who at once, joyful and released, jumps down, +upsetting his music-stool with the impetus of his descent, and yet +immediately, with all a dog's real good-heartedness, begins to swing a +handsome tail, to show that he bears no real malice for the odious +practical joke that has been played upon him. The clamorous fall of dog +and music-stool reveals an object which had been hidden behind both, in +the shape of a little boy, in whose behalf, as it darts across Jim's +mind, the eccentric concert, for which he has come in, must have been +got up. + +"Oh, _do_ go on!" cries the child shrilly. "Oh, _do_ make him do it +again! Oh, why do you stop?" + +And indeed through the whole of the ensuing conversation this cry recurs +at short intervals with the iteration of a guinea-hen. But none of the +three performers seems disposed to comply with this request. Two of them +sit down decorously on chairs, and the third throws himself upon the +floor panting, showing a fine red tongue, and dragging himself +luxuriously along on his stomach to show his relief at his _corvee_ +being ended. The child has followed Elizabeth, and now stands beside +her, tiresomely pulling at her white hands. + +"Bertie has come to spend the day with us," she says, looking +explanatorily up at Jim, but speaking with a formality very different, +as he feels, from the exuberant ease and mirth that had marked her +intercourse with Byng. + +Jim had already had a flash of speculation about the child, as to +whether he might be a late-come little brother, arrived on the scene at +a period subsequent to his own connection with the family; since plainly +the span of his small life did not stretch to a decade. + +"Bertie is a new friend," he says kindly. "I do not know Bertie." + +"His mother, Mrs. Roche, is a cousin of ours; she has a villa on +Bellosguardo. Perhaps you know her?" + +"I am going to a party at her house on Wednesday," cries Jim, in a tone +of eager pleasure at the discovery of this fresh link, and of the vista +of probable meetings which it opens up. "I shall meet you there?" + +Elizabeth turns her head slightly aside and shakes it as slightly. + +"No?" + +"We are not going out." + +The formula implies mourning, and yet the clothes both of Elizabeth and +her mother are unmistakably coloured ones, and give no indication of an +even moderately recent loss. But it is so clear that Miss Le Marchant +means to add no explanation that he has to change the subject. + +"Though Bertie is not an old friend," he says, smiling, "yet I have come +across one here to-day--she opened the door to me; I should have liked +to shake hands with her, only she looked so haughty--she never used to +look haughty at the Moat." + +"Do you mean nurse?" she asks. + +"Yes, I knew her in an instant; she is not in the least changed, less +even"--hesitating a little, as if doubtful whether the stiffness of +their new relations warranted a personality--"less even than you." + +She snatches a hasty look at him, a look upon which he sees, to his +surprise, imprinted a character of almost fear. + +"You must be laughing at me," she says, in a voice in which he detects +an undoubted tremor; "I am very much changed." + +There is such obvious apprehension in her whole manner, that his one +thought--after a first flash of astonishment--is to reassure her. + +"Of course I was only speaking of externals," he says quickly; "ten +years could hardly be expected to leave any of us quite where we were as +to our inner selves;" then, seeing her still look flurried, and becoming +himself nervous, he adds, rather stupidly, the hackneyed Swinburnian +couplet-- + + "'Time turns the old days to derision, + Our loves into corpses or wives!' + +though I never could see that that was quite a necessary alternative!" + +Ere the words are out of his mouth she has risen with precipitation, and +begun hurriedly to re-arrange the branches of lilac in a scaldino on the +table near her. She is apparently so awkward about it that one odorous +white bough falls out on the floor. Before Jim can stoop to pick it up, +Byng has rushed to the rescue. In eagerly thanking him, in receiving it +back from him, and accepting his services in replacing it among its +perfumed brothers, the girl, perhaps involuntarily, turns her back upon +her former interlocutor, who sits for a moment staring rather blankly at +her, and wondering what sting there could have lurked in his apparently +harmless words to drive her away so abruptly. Whatever may have driven +her away, there is certainly no doubt as to her being gone. Nor as Jim +sees her moving about the room, followed by Byng, and showing him her +treasures--the little wild red and yellow tulips she plucked in the +field this morning; the chicken-skin box she bought at Ciampolini's +yesterday, and mixing all that she shows with her delicate light +laughter--can he buoy himself up with any reasonable hope of her ever, +with her own good will, returning. He must be looking more blank than he +is conscious of, for Mrs. Le Marchant's voice sounds quite apologetic in +his ears, when, having been, like himself, deserted by her companion, +she takes a seat near him. + +"Elizabeth is so proud of her bargains," she says, glancing with a +lenient smile towards her daughter; "she must show them to everybody." + +"She never offered to show them to me," replies Jim, rather morosely; +then, becoming aware of the almost puerile jealousy evidenced by his +last remark, he adds: + +"I am afraid I said something that annoyed Miss Le Marchant; I cannot +think what it could have been. I told her how wonderfully little changed +I thought her in the last ten years; but it could not have been that, +could it?" + +The mother's eye is still following her child, and, if it were not an +absurd assumption, Burgoyne could have fancied that there was a sudden +moisture in it. + +"She is very sensitive," Mrs. Le Marchant answers slowly; "perhaps it +would be safer not to say anything about herself to her." + +"Perhaps it would be safer," rejoins Jim, with some ill-humour, "if you +were to draw up a list of subjects for me to avoid; I have no wish to +play the part of bull in a china shop; and yet I seem to be always doing +it; imprimis" (striking the forefinger of his left hand with the right), +"imprimis the Moat." + +He pauses, as if expecting a disclaimer, but none such comes--"The past +generally" (moving on to the second finger and again halting; but with +no more result than before). "Yourselves" (reaching the third finger). +Still that silence, which, if it mean anything, must mean assent. He +looks impatiently in her face, to seek the response which her lips +refuse him. + +"On your own showing," she says gently, though in a rather troubled +voice, "you have the whole field of the present and the future left you; +are not they wide enough for you?" + +His brows draw together into a painful frown. + +"Perhaps I have as little cause to be fond of them as you have of the +past." + +It is a random shot, a bow drawn at a venture; but it could not have hit +more true apparently had it been levelled with the nicest aim. + +As her daughter had done before her, Mrs. Le Marchant rises hastily, and +leaves him--leaves him to reflect ironically upon how wisely Amelia had +acted in insisting upon his visiting these "dear old friends," upon whom +the effect of his conversation is so obviously exhilarating. + +"I wish I had not come; I wish it was time to go home!" + +The small fractious voice that wails the two preceding sentences seems +to be Jim's own mouthpiece. It is, in point of fact, the voice of +Bertie, who, tired of uttering his unregarded request for the repetition +of the concert which had filled him with such delight, has of late been +trying the effect of his unassisted powers to bring about the desired +consummation, by putting his arms as far as he can round the dog's body, +and endeavouring to lug him towards the music-stool. The collie has been +enduring this treatment for five minutes--enduring it with an expression +of magnanimous patience, which seems to say, that, though it is +undoubtedly an unpleasant experience, yet, as it is inflicted upon him +by one of his own family, he must of course put up with it, when +Elizabeth goes to the rescue. Elizabeth goes alone, since Byng is held +in converse by her mother at the other side of the room. Verbal +persuasions having entirely failed, she tries to loosen the child's +arms; but his grasp, though puny, is obstinate, and the only perceptible +result of her endeavours is the utterance by her young friend of the two +polite aspirations above recorded. + +"He does not want to sing any more to-day," Jim hears her saying in her +gentle voice; "you really are hurting him; he is too polite to say so; +but you are squeezing him so tight that you really _are_ hurting him. +Why now" (with a little accent of pain), "you are hurting _me_." + +Jim has been looking with a lack-lustre eye out of the open window at +the young plane trees exchanging their frowsy buds for infant leaves; at +the one Judas tree pranking in its purple blossoms in the Piazza; but at +that low complaint he makes one step across the room, and, whipping off +Master Bertie alike from long-enduring dog and plaintive woman, stoops +over the latter as she sits upon the floor, passing one hand over the +other, upon which the child's angry fingers, transferred from his first +victim, have left rosy prints of pain. + +"I wish I had not come; I wish it was time to go home!" whimpers the +little boy. + +"Since he is so anxious to go home, I will take him, if you like," says +Jim in a stiff voice; "I must be going myself." + +She looks up at him from her lowly posture, a charming, half-apologetic, +wholly peace-making smile fleeting across her small face, while she +still chafes her hand--that little pinched hand which makes him feel so +ridiculously tender. + +"Are you, too, sorry that you came?" she asks. + +The question takes him by surprise. He is not prepared for so friendly +and almost intimate a sequel to her short, shy answers, and her abrupt +quitting of him. He hesitates how to answer it; and as he hesitates, she +rises and stands beside him. It is not easy for a grown person to rise +gracefully from a seat on the floor. Jim catches himself thinking with +what a roll and a flounder Cecilia would have executed the same +manoeuvre; but Elizabeth, supple and light, rises as smoothly as an +exhalation from a summer meadow. + +"If I was rude to you just now," she says, rather tremulously; "if I am +ever rude to you in the future, I hope you will understand--I hope you +will put it down to the fact that I--I--am very ignorant of--that I know +very little of the world." + + * * * * * + +The two men are gone; so is the child; so is the dog; and Elizabeth is +shutting up the piano and removing the score. + +"What a noise we made!" she says, smiling at the recollection. + +"If you make such a shocking noise again, the signora and the other +lodgers will infallibly interfere." + +Mrs. Le Marchant has followed her daughter, and now throws one arm about +her slight neck, with a gesture of passionate affection. + +"If you knew," she says, in a voice of deep and happy agitation, "what +it was to me to hear you laugh as you did to-day!" + +"I have a good many arrears in that way to make up, have not I, mammy? +And so have you too," answers the younger woman, laying her sleek head +down caressingly on her mother's shoulder; then, in a changed and +restless voice: "Oh, if we could stop that man talking about the Moat! +Why does he go on hammering about it?" + +"Why indeed?" replies Mrs. Le Marchant with a shrug. "Men are so +thick-skinned; but it is rather touching, his having remembered us all +these years, is not it? For my part, I had almost entirely forgotten his +existence--had not you?" + +"Absolutely!" replies Elizabeth, with emphasis; "and if he will only let +me, I am more than willing to forget it over again. Oh, mammy" (turning +her face round, and burying it on her mother's breast), "why can't we +forget everything? begin everything afresh from now--this delightful +_now_?" + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + + +A reconciliation is seldom effected without some price being paid for +it. Jim's with Elizabeth, if it can be called such, is bought at the +cost of a small sacrifice of principle on his part. No later than this +morning he had laid it down as a Median rule that he should avoid +opportunities of finding himself in Miss Le Marchant's company; and yet, +not only has he spent the major part of the afternoon in her society, +but, as he walks away from her door, he finds that he has engaged +himself to help Byng, on no distant day, in doing the honours of the +Certosa Monastery to her and her mother. On reflection, he cannot quite +explain to himself how the arrangement has come about. The proposal +certainly did not originate with him, and still less with the two ladies +so strangely shy of all society. The three have somehow been swept into +it by Byng, who, either with the noblest altruism, or because he feels +justly confident that he has no cause for jealousy of his friend (Jim's +cynical reflection is that the latter is the much more probable reason), +has insisted on drawing him into the project. + +Jim Burgoyne is not a man whom, as a rule, it is easy either to wile or +cudgel into any course that does not recommend itself to his own +judgment or taste--a fact of which he himself is perfectly aware, and +which makes him remorsefully acknowledge that there must indeed have +been a traitor in the citadel of his own heart before he could have so +weakly yielded at the first push to what his reason sincerely +disapproves. But yet it is not true that remorse is the leading feature +of his thoughts, as he walks silently beside his friend down the Via di +Servi. It ought to be, perhaps; but it is not. The picture that holds +the foreground of his memory is that of Elizabeth sitting on the floor, +and sending him peace-offerings from her pathetic eyes and across her +sensitive lips. It was very sweet of her to think it necessary to make +him amends at all for her trifling incivility, and nothing could be +sweeter than the manner of it. How gladly would he buy some little +rudeness from her every day at such a price! But yet, as he thinks it +over, the manner of it, the ground on which she rested her excuse, is +surely a strange one. That she should attribute her light lapse from +courtesy to want of knowledge of the world comes strangely from the +mouth of a woman of six-and-twenty. If it be true--and there was a naive +veracity in lip and eye as she spoke--how is it to be accounted for? Has +her mind, has her experience of life, remained absolutely stationary +during the last ten years? Her tell-tale face, over which some pensive +story is so plainly written, forbids the inference. It is no business of +his, of course. Amelia, thank Heaven! has no story; but, oh! if someone +would tell him what that history is! And yet, three days later, he +voluntarily puts away from himself the opportunity of hearing it. + +During those three days he sees no more of her. He does not again seek +her out, and accident does not throw her in his way. He buys his +Cantagalli dinner-service in company with Amelia; chooses the +soup-tureen out of which he is to ladle mutton broth for the inhabitants +of Westbourne Grove; he tastes of the wedding-cake that has cost Cecilia +so dear, and he avoids Byng. On the third day he can no longer avoid +him, since he is to occupy, as on the San Miniato occasion, the fourth +seat in the fiacre which conveys himself and the Misses Wilson to the +garden-party at the villa in Bellosguardo inhabited by Mrs. Roche, the +mother of the amiable Bertie. The Wilsons' acquaintances in Florence are +few, and, as far as Burgoyne has at present had the opportunity of +judging, evil. It is, therefore, with a proportionate elation that +Cecilia dresses for a party at which she will meet the bulk, or at least +the cream, of the English society. It is to Byng's good nature that she +and her sister owe the introduction to a hostess whose acquaintance is +already too large to make her eager for any causeless addition to it; +but whose hand has been forced by Byng, in the mistaken idea that he is +doing a service to his friend Jim. + +They are late in setting off, as Amelia is delayed by the necessity of +soothing Sybilla, who has been reduced to bitter tears by a +_tete-a-tete_ with her father, in which that well-intentioned but +incautious gentleman has been betrayed into suggesting to her that she +may possibly be suffering from biliousness. The administering of +bromide, to calm her nerves under such a shock; the reiterated +assurances that every member of the family except its head realizes the +monstrosity of the suggestion, take up so much time that Amelia herself +has to reduce to a minimum the moments allotted to her own toilette. She +has cried a little with Sybilla, for company partly, and partly out of +weariness of spirit. That and hurry have swollen her eyelids, and +painted her cheeks with a hard, tired red, so that it is an even more +homespun figure and a homelier face than usual, that seat themselves +opposite Burgoyne, when at length they get under weigh. + +He, Burgoyne, has been impatient of the delay, impatient to set off and +to arrive; yet he would be puzzled to say why. He knows, on no less +authority than her own word, that he shall not meet Elizabeth; and yet +the mere feeling that the mistress of the house to which he is going is +of the same blood as she; that he shall see the rude, spoilt child, +whose ill-tempered pinch made her utter that low cry of pain, suffice to +give a tartness to his tone, as he inquires the cause of her lagging, of +the panting, flushed, apologetic Amelia. Byng and Cecilia have been +sitting waiting for some time in the _salon_, from which Sybilla has +removed her prostrate figure and tear-stained face; but they have been +entertaining each other so well--she in paying him a series of marked +attentions, and he in civilly and pleasantly accepting them--that the +half-hour has not seemed long to either. But the party, in motion at +last, has passed the Roman Gate, and is climbing up and up between the +high walls, each step giving it a greater vantage ground over the Flower +City, before Burgoyne recovers his equanimity. + +The spring comes on apace. In the gardens above their heads laurestinus +bushes, with all their flowers out (as they are never seen in England, +where always the east wind nips half the little round buds before they +can expand into blossom), stand in white and green; rosemary trees, +covered with gray bloom, hang down; and against the azure of the high +heaven purple irides stand up arow. It is one of those days on which one +can with bodily eyes see the Great Mother at her quickening work; can +see her flushing the apple-boughs, unfolding the fig-leaves, and driving +the lusty green blood through the sappy vines. And in the slow creeping +of the fiacre up the twisting white road, each turn lays the divine +Tuscan city before them in some new aspect of arresting loveliness. + +At Florence, one is like Balaam with the Israelites. One is taken to see +her from one point after another, each point seeming fairer than the +last; but the likeness ends there, for no wish to curse the sweet town +could ever arise in even the morosest heart. The hills have put on their +summer look of dreamy warmth and distance. Before they have reached the +hilltop the boon Italian air has kissed most of the creases out of Jim's +temper, and the brick-red from Amelia's cheek-bones. He looks +remorsefully from the triumphant beauty around, into the poor, fond face +opposite to him--looks at her with a sort of compassion for being so +unlovely, mixed with a compunctious admiration and tenderness for her +gentle qualities. He may touch her hand without fear of observation, so +wholly is Byng enveloped in the mantle of Cecilia's voluble tenderness. + +"Have you forgiven me?" he asks, smiling; "I will make any apologies, +eat any dirt, say anything, short of allowing that Sybilla is not +bilious." + +They have reached the villa, and turned out of the dusty highway into a +great cool courtyard, that has a Moorish look, with its high arches, +over which the Banksia roses tumble in cascades of yellow and white. It +seems wrong that the voices which come from the tea-tables under the +Loggia should be chattering English or Yankee, instead of cooing that +"sweet bastard Latin" that better suits place and day. + +The hostess shakes hands absently with Burgoyne, offers his fair charges +iced coffee, and then, having discharged her conscience towards them, +draws Byng away for an intimate chat. From her hands he passes into +those of several other willing matrons and maids, and it seems likely +that the party who brought him will see him no more. Amelia, unused to, +and unexpectant of attention, is perfectly content to sit silent, +sipping her cold coffee; but Cecilia is champing her bit in a way which +frightens her future brother-in-law so much that he cowardly takes the +opportunity of her looking in another direction to lure his docile +_fiancee_ on to the broad terrace, whence all the young green glory of +the Arno's plain, and the empurpled slopes and dreamful breast of +Morello, are to be seen by the looker's beauty-drunk eye. Upon this +terrace many people are walking and sitting in twos and threes, and in +one of the little groups Amelia presently discovers a female +acquaintance, who at once fastens upon her, and happening to be +afflicted with a relative visited by a disorder of something the same +nature as Sybilla's, subjects her to a searching and exhaustive +catechism as to the nature of her sister's symptoms. Sybilla's symptoms, +whether at first or second hand, have invariably the property of driving +Jim into desert places; and, in the present instance, seeing no +likelihood of an end to the relation of them, he turns impatiently away, +and, without much thought of where he is going, follows a steep downward +path that ends in a descent of old stone steps, between whose crevices +green plants and little hawkweed blow-balls flourish undisturbed, to a +large square well, framed by a low broad parapet, with flower-beds set +around it, and the whole closed in by rugged stone walls. No one +apparently has had the same impulse as he, for, at first, he has the +cool solitude to himself. He sits down on the parapet of the still well, +and drops in pebbles to see how deep the water is; and anon lifts his +idle look to the empty niches in the crumbling wall--niches where once +wood-god, or water-nymph, or rural Pan stood in stone, now empty and +forsaken. Out of the wall two ilexes grow, and lift themselves against +the sapphire arch, which yet is no sapphire, nor of any name that +belongs to cold stone; a blue by which all other blues are but feeble +colourless ghosts of that divinest tint. + +He is roused from the vague reverie into which the cool silence and the +brooding beauty around have lulled him, by the sound of approaching +voices. He is not to have his well any longer to himself. He looks up +with that scarcely latent hostility in his eye with which one regards +the sudden intruder into a railway carriage, when--counting on keeping +it to one's self for a long night journey--one has diffused limbs and +parcels over its whole area. The owners of the voices, having descended, +as he had done, the age-worn steps, come into sight. They are both men, +and one of them he recognises at once as a Mr. Greenock, a well-known +stock figure in Florentine society, a mature bachelor diner-out, a not +ill-natured retailer of news, collector of _bons-mots_, and harmless +appendage of pretty women. Of the other, at whom he scarcely glances, +all he grasps is the fact that he is dressed in clerical attire, and +that the first words audible of his speech, as he comes within hearing, +is the name of an English county--Devonshire. The answer comes in a tone +of keen interest: + +"Ah, I thought there must be a screw loose!" + +As the new arrivals become aware of the presence of a third person, they +pause in their talk; but presently, Mr. Greenock having recognised Jim +and greeted him with a friendly nod and a trivial remark upon the +splendour of the day, they resume their interrupted theme, standing +together a few yards distant from him on the walk--resume it in a rather +lower but still perfectly audible key. + +"I thought there must be some reason for their shutting themselves up so +resolutely," continues Mr. Greenock in the gratified tone of one who has +at length solved a long-puzzling riddle. "I thought that there must be a +screw loose, in fact; but are you quite sure of it?" + +The other gives a sigh and a shrug. + +"Unfortunately there can be no doubt on that head; the whole lamentable +occurrence took place under my own eyes; the Moat is in my parish." + +"Devonshire!" "A screw loose!" "The Moat!" Burgoyne is still sitting on +the well-brim; but he no longer sees the lapis vault above, nor the +placid dark water below. A sort of horrible mist is swimming before his +eyes; it is of Elizabeth Le Marchant that they are speaking. Through +that mist he snatches a scared look at the speaker; at him whom but two +minutes ago he had glanced at with such a cursory carelessness. Does he +recognise him? Alas! yes. Though changed by the acquisition of a bald +head and a grizzled beard, he sees him at once to be the man who, at the +time of his own acquaintance with the Le Marchant family, had filled the +office of vicar of their parish; under whom he had sat on several drowsy +summer Sunday mornings, trembling at the boys' perilous antics in the +great curtained pew, and laughing inwardly at Elizabeth's +mirth-struggling efforts to control them. + +"And you say that they never held up their heads again afterwards?" +pursues Mr. Greenock in a tone of good-natured compassion, that is yet +largely tinged with gratified curiosity. + +"They left the neighbourhood at once," returns the clergyman. "Dear me, +how time flies! it must be ten years ago now, and I never saw them again +until I met the unhappy girl and her mother yesterday, driving in the +Via Tornabuoni; but"--lowering his voice a little more--"you will +understand that this is strictly _entre nous_; that it must not go any +further." + +"What do you think I am made of?" cries Mr. Greenock in a burst of +generous indignation; "but"--stepping a pace or two nearer to his +interlocutor--"I am not quite sure that I have got the details of the +story right; would you mind just running it over to me again?" + +Jim has been sitting in such a stunned stillness that it is perhaps no +wonder that they have forgotten his neighbourhood. At all events, the +clergyman is evidently about to comply with his companion's request and +recapitulate the tale. If Jim preserves his motionless attitude but five +minutes longer, he will be put into possession of that story whose +existence he has already heavily conjectured, and the imagining of which +has made him often, within the last week or two, turn with nausea from +his food, and toss restlessly upon his bed. Without any trouble on his +part, without any possible blame attaching to him, he will learn the +poor soul's secret. Never! If the devil wish to tempt him with a +prospect of success, it must be with a less unhandsome bait. Almost +before the two startled scandalmongers have recalled the fact of his +existence by the abrupt noise of his departure, he is half-way back to +the terrace, that mist still before his eyes, and a singing in his ears. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + + "A merry going out bringeth often a mournful return home; and a + joyful evening makes many times a sad morning." + + +The return drive, as it is quicker, being all downhill, so is it a more +silent one than that to the villa had been. Byng, indeed, is as gaily +willing to be fondled by Cecilia as he was on his way up; but there is a +mixture of maidenly reserve and sub-tender reproach in her manner which +makes their relations somewhat strained. The afternoon's pleasuring has +had a jading effect upon Amelia's spirits, as, after having been sucked +dry on the subject of Sybilla's maladies, and afterwards at once shaken +off, by her female acquaintance, she has not been fortunate enough to +meet with anyone else to exchange talk with, and has sat in disconsolate +yet patient loneliness on a stone bench, afraid to stir from the spot +where he had left her, lest she might miss her lover, of whom, however, +she has unaccountably seen nothing, until when the Angelus is ringing, +and the shadows spreading, he has come to give her curt notice, with +half-averted face, that the fiacre is at the door. In point of fact, he +has been too conscious of the disorder of his features to dare to expose +them sooner than he can help to her fond scrutiny. He would give +anything to be able to sit beside, instead of opposite to her during +their drive home, as a profile is a much less tell-tale and more +governable thing than a full face; and he is painfully conscious that as +often as she imagines she can do it without being detected by him, she +is stealing looks of inquiring anxiety at him. He tries to put her off +the scent by spasmodic comments upon the entertainment that they have +just quitted; and she does her best to keep up the ball of conversation, +since she sees that it is his wish. But in vain. Each forced remark +falls still-born, leading to nothing. It is Cecilia who at last succeeds +in giving a fillip to the languid talk. + +"I did not know that Mrs. Roche was a cousin of your beauty, Miss Le +Marchant," she says suddenly, growing tired of her pensive attitude, and +addressing herself to Jim. + +He starts guiltily. "Did not you?" + +He must look odd; for even Cecilia's large and preoccupied cow eyes rest +upon him with an expression of surprise. + +"I wonder why she was not there to-day." + +It is not exactly a question, yet her great shallow orbs do not seem to +be going to leave his face until he makes some response. He forces +himself to do so. + +"I understood Miss Le Marchant to say that they are not going out just +now." + +"And why are not they, pray?" inquires Cecilia, in an injured voice, as +if the retirement from the world of the two ladies in question were a +personal injury to herself; "they are not in mourning, all their gowns +are coloured ones, and they do not look as if they had bad +health--perhaps, however" (after a moment's thoughtful attempt to find a +solution)--"perhaps, however, they may have something--one never +knows--people have such unexpected diseases nowadays--hysteria, perhaps, +or fits." + +At this ingenious suggestion Jim is conscious of a writhing motion +passing over the stalwart form of Byng beside him. In his own brain, if +there is room for anything but the desire to evade Amelia's eyes, is a +dim sense of relief at a suggestion so grotesquely wide of the mark as +that made by the younger Miss Wilson. In perfect innocence of the effect +produced upon her companions by her bright hypothesis, Cecilia goes on +to remind her sister of the parallel case of a very handsome girl whom +they had once reckoned among their acquaintance, and who was +periodically being found by her family with her head under the fender. +But Amelia rises but faintly to the reminiscence, and the remainder of +the drive is accomplished in a general silence. + +The next day is the one which had been fixed upon for the expedition to +Certosa. It was only with a very large admixture of wormwood in his +prospective pleasure that Jim had ever looked forward to this party, but +now he anticipates it with absolute dread. How can he face Elizabeth and +her mother, with that ominous phrase of the "screw loose" still ringing +in his ears? He feels a traitor towards them, in that he has, however +unwillingly, overheard it. To add to his mental uneasiness is the fact +of his having as yet not broken to Amelia his intentions with regard to +the disposal of his afternoon. Amelia's eyes have for years had the +habit of covertly watching him to read his wishes almost before they +rose; but in their gaze yesterday he had, unless misled by his guilty +conscience, detected a new quality, a quality of alarm and +enlightenment. He will get over the communication of his piece of news +as early in the day as may be; so, having finished breakfast before Byng +has put in his, as usual, tardy appearance, he takes his hasty way to +the Anglo-Americain. He finds the family there in a more placid frame of +mind than that which they had presented on one or two of his recent +visits. Sybilla is expecting her doctor, on which occasions she always +likes to have a more lacy coverlet than usual thrown over her languid +feet; a greater efflorescence of pink ribbons about her thin throat, and +a disposition of pots of lilies about her wan head. Amelia, active and +long-suffering as usual, is moving about in patient execution of her +vain and tiresome whimsies. Cecilia sits tranquilly in the window, +knitting an elaborate pair of men's woollen gloves, not indeed--to do +her justice--for anyone in particular, but with a wise forethought for +the accidents and possibilities of life. Since, on this occasion, his +sweetheart shows no inclination to draw him away into the dining-room +for a _tete-a-tete_, Jim has to take the bull by the horns, and rush +into his subject in a more public manner than he had intended. But the +one desire to get it over outbalances all minor considerations. + +"Amelia," he begins suddenly, and even to himself his voice sounds +discourteous and abrupt, "shall you want me this afternoon?" + +The moment that the words are out of his mouth it strikes him that the +form into which he has thrown his question is more than necessarily +untender. She stops in the patting of Sybilla's smart pillows, and +perhaps there is something a little abrupt too in her monosyllabic +"Why?" + +"Because," standing before the fireplace, with his back to the three +women, and throwing the words over his shoulder, "because, if you do +not, Byng and I were thinking of going to Certosa." + +There is a pause. He hears that Cecilia's needles have stopped clicking; +her work has dropped into her lap. In another moment she will have +proposed to come too. "With the Le Marchants," he goes on, shooting out +the fateful words like bullets; "a _partie carree_." + +Still silence behind him. He cannot go on staring for ever at the +billets of wood of the unlit fire. He has to turn round and face his +companions. The only one of them whose pleasure or displeasure in his +announcement he at all heeds--Amelia--is stooping over Sybilla, +rearranging in a high, picturesque tier behind the invalid's long back, +three cushions, and her face is almost entirely hidden from him by her +attitude. + +"Of course if it is in the least inconvenient, if you have made any +other plans for me--if, in fact, you want me," he continues in a tone +that is at once apologetic and dogged. + +"But I do not," cries she, answering at last, and with a distinct laugh +in her voice, a laugh into whose quality he is not anxious too curiously +to inquire. "You must not be so conceited as to think that I always want +you! In point of fact, you could not have hit upon a day that suited me +better. I am really rather 'throng' to-day, as they say in Yorkshire. I +have quite a hundred things to do, and father wants me to help him to +correct the proofs of his sermon, the sermon he preached at Mr. Moffat's +church on the Holy Innocents' Day. He has been asked to publish it--is +not that flattering? Poor father, I believe he will end by being a +popular preacher--in fact" (laughing again), "the whole family is going +up in the world!" + +There is such a forced mirth in her tone that Jim feels much more +guiltily uncomfortable than if she had treated him to hysterics or +sulks. Nor does his satisfaction with himself increase, when, upon his +rising to depart, she runs out of the room after him, to say to him, +while her homely face twitches against her will, how much she hopes that +he will enjoy himself; how perfectly happy she shall be without him; and +how eagerly she shall look forward to hearing all about it from him +to-morrow. "It will be almost better than going to Certosa herself," she +ends. + +But against the unnatural altitude of this last flight of abnegation +nature revolts, and, becoming conscious of a break in her voice, she +hastily retreats and gets back into the _salon_, in time to see Cecilia +shaking her elaborate head, and to hear her remarking with slow +emphasis, "Mark my words! There is something odd about those people, and +it is not hysteria!" + +With spirits sensibly worsened by his interview, Burgoyne returns to the +Minerva, and, mounting to Byng's bedroom, finds that young gentleman +stretched upon his bed, gloom in his usually jocund eye, and an open +letter lying on the floor beside him. But Jim is far too preoccupied to +notice anybody's gloom but his own. + +"I came to ask at what hour we are to set off this afternoon?" he says +with a sort of flat moroseness in his tone. + +"_We_, indeed!" rejoins the other with a groan, and rolling over with a +sort of petulance on the bed, dishevelling the neatly-smoothed pillow by +burrowing his ruffled head in it--"we!" + +There is such a heart-rent woe in the accent with which the last +monosyllable is pronounced that for a moment Burgoyne has no other idea +but that his young friend, too, has become aware of the "screw loose," +has heard, perhaps in detail, that story from before whose ominous +opening he himself had fled. The thought sends his heart into his +throat, so as to render him incapable of asking an explanation of the +other's affliction. + +"We!" repeats Byng for the third time, and very indistinctly, as he is +now lying entirely on his face. + +"Why do you go on saying '_we_' in that idiotic way?" asks Jim at last, +recovering his voice--recovering it only to employ it in imitating the +younger man's accents, in a manner which displays more exasperation than +natural talent for mimicry. It is not a politely-worded inquiry, but it +has the desired result of acting as a tonic on him at whom it is aimed, +making him not only roll over once again, but actually sit up. + +"Why do I say _we_?" repeats he, his young eyes looking lamentably out +from under the fall of his tumbled hair--"because it is not _we_! it is +_you_! You lucky dog, you will have her all to yourself!" + +Jim heaves an inaudible sigh of relief. Whatever may be the cause of his +companion's enigmatical conduct, it is evidently not what he had feared. +There is, however, no evidence of relief or any other mild quality in +his next remark. + +"If you would talk less like an ass, I should have a better chance of +knowing what you are driving at!" + +The query seems only to renew and deepen the other's tribulation. He +falls back into his former attitude. + +"You will hold the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand!" he groans. "No, +do not go" (with a sudden and startling change of tone, springing off +the bed, as he becomes aware that his friend is making for the door, +unable to bear those rhapsodies, whose full distastefulness to their +hearer the utterer little conjectures). "I'll tell you! I'll explain. +Why are you in such a deuce of a hurry? I cannot go to Certosa because I +have just heard from my mother that she is to arrive to-day. She will be +here in another hour." + +Jim's fingers are already on the door handle, but this piece of news +arrests him. + +"Your mother? I did not know that she was coming abroad." + +"No more did I!" + +"It must have been a very sudden thought!" + +"Very!" + +"What a delightful surprise for you!" + +"Delightful!" There is so ludicrous a discrepancy between the adjective +and the accent with which it is rendered that Jim bursts into a bitter +laugh. + +"She would be flattered if she could see your elation at the prospect of +meeting her!" + +Byng's blood rushes up under his clear smooth skin at his friend's jeer, +but he answers, with some dignity: + +"I do not think you have any right to imply that I am not always glad to +see my mother; I do not deny that, if it had been equally convenient to +her, I had rather she should have come twenty-four hours later." + +Jim feels ashamed of himself, though, being an Anglo-Saxon, he has far +too much false shame to confess it directly, and what he means for an +_amende_, when it comes, is of an oblique nature. + +"I think far the best plan will be to put off the excursion altogether; +I am sure that I am not particularly keen about it." + +The indignant red has rapidly died out of Byng's face; his placability +being only to be surpassed by his slowness to take offence. + +"Is it possible?" he asks in a tone of stupefaction; then, with a sudden +tardy recollection of the rosy fetters in which his friend is held by +another lady, he adds--"But, of course, you are not--I was forgetting!" + +Jim winces. + +"As it is your party, you had better send up a note at once to the +Piazza d'Azeglio." + +"No, do not let us both throw them over!" cries Byng eagerly. "Heaven +knows it was hard enough to persuade them to accept in the first +instance. If you go we shall at all events keep our communications open; +and you--you will say something to her for me?" + +"What kind of something?" inquires the older man carpingly. "Am I to +tell her only what a fine fellow you are in general, or anything more +circumstantial?" + +"Tell her----" begins Byng in a rapt voice; but apparently the sight of +his companion, who has somewhat ostentatiously pulled out a note-book +and pencil, and assumed the patient air of one about to write to +dictation, dries the stream of his young eloquence; "tell +her--_nothing_." + + "'Nothing speaks our grief like to speak nothing!'" + +replies Jim, leaving the room with this quotation on his lips, rather +hastily, for fear lest the other should change his mind. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + + +It is five o'clock, the hour fixed for the expedition to Certosa, and in +the _entresol_ of 12 bis, Piazza d'Azeglio, Mrs. and Miss Le Marchant +are sitting--hatted, gloved, and _en-tout-cas-ed_--in expectation of the +arrival of their double escort. Elizabeth's afternoon has, so far, not +been a lazy one, as her little cousin Bertie and his dog have again been +good enough to pay her a lengthy visit, and the former has insisted upon +a repetition of the musical performance of the other day, though with +truncated rites. Without the powerful aid of Byng, Elizabeth has found +it a task considerably beyond her strength to hold a large collie, +poised on his hind-legs, on a music-stool. He has jumped down +repeatedly, and now lies on his back--an attitude in which experience +has taught him he is less attackable than in any other--sawing the air +with his fore-paws, and lifting his lip in a deprecating grin. + +"Where is Mr. Byng?" cries Bertie fretfully, baulked in his efforts to +make his wily victim resume the perpendicular. "I want Mr. Byng! Why +does not Mr. Byng come?" + +"Perhaps if you went to the window," suggests Mrs. Le Marchant, in that +patiently coaxing voice in which we are wont to address a tiresome child +on a visit, instead of the buffet which we should bestow upon it were it +resident--"perhaps if you went to the window and looked out, you would +see him coming round the corner of the Piazza." + +The suggestion is at once accepted, and the child, balancing his fidgety +body on a chair, and craning his neck over the window-ledge, is shouting +shrill pieces of information as to the passers-by to his friends within +the room. Presently he shrieks out in triumph: + +"I see him! He is just coming into sight! He is walking so fast! No!"--a +moment later, with a changed and disgusted note, as a nearer view +corrects the first impression--"it is not he at all! It is only the +other one!" + +"_Only the other one!_" It is quite impossible that the sound of the +child's voice can reach down to the open portal of No. 12 bis, at which +Jim has now arrived, and it is also certain that neither of the ladies +whom he has come to visit is likely to word her surprise at his having +arrived alone with the frank brutality which is confined to the +utterances of infancy; and yet Jim, as he presents himself, announced by +Annunziata, the hard-featured possessor of a lovely name, is quite as +conscious, as if he had overheard the boy's slighting remark, of being +"only the other one!" + +Before he can begin his apologies, the eager little boy has run up to +him. + +"Where is Mr. Byng? I want Mr. Byng! Why has not he come? Elizabeth +wants Mr. Byng!" + +At this last clause Burgoyne is conscious of a dark, hot flush rising to +his face, and, partly to hide it, partly to avoid seeing what the effect +of his communication may be upon her for whom it is meant, he stoops +over the child, addressing his answer to him: + +"Mr. Byng is very sorry, very sorry indeed, but he cannot come." + +"Cannot come! Why cannot he come?" + +"Because he has gone to meet his mammy," replies Jim, trying to speak in +a light and playful voice; "she is to arrive unexpectedly in Florence +to-day; no good boy would leave his mammy when she had come all the way +from England to see him, would he?" + +But to this fustian and copy-book generality the young gentleman +addressed is too angry to reply. + +"It is a great disappointment to Byng; he bid me tell you what a great +disappointment it is to him!" says Jim, turning to the two ladies, and +looking apologetically from one to the other. + +Elizabeth's head is averted; but on her mother's features he sees, or +fancies he sees, slight evidences of a feeling not unlike relief. + +"It is not of the least consequence," she says cheerfully; "we can go +any other day just as well." + +Burgoyne's heart sinks. In these last sentences he too surely traces +signs of the evasive and would-be-retrograde nature which has all along +characterized Mrs. Le Marchant's relations with him. It has seemed to +him that he has been looking forward to the expedition with sensations +of almost unmixed dread, and yet, now that he seems to be going to be +delivered from it, what he experiences certainly does not come under the +head of elation. + +"You wish to give up the excursion?" he asks, in a tone which he +honestly tries to make as neutral and colourless as he can. + +"Well, I thought so--we thought so, did not we, Elizabeth?" + +The person thus addressed lifts her head, and all over her features he, +eagerly scanning them, sees written a warm acquiescence in her motherly +decision, an acquiescence which, as her eyes meet his--his, in which his +disappointment is written a good deal more plainly than he is +aware--changes slowly and sweetly into indecision. + +"I do not know," she answers, her gentle look clouded a little, and yet +kindly interrogating his; "if Mr. Burgoyne is willing to burden himself +with us; and Bertie must play at being a grown-up gentleman, and help to +take care of us! Bertie, will you play at being a grown-up gentleman?" + +To this proposition Bertie assents warmly, and begins thrasonically to +recount to inattentive ears the high and singular deeds with which he +will celebrate his arrival at maturity. But, as Mrs. Le Marchant puts a +strenuous veto upon his adoption as escort, and as his nurse appears at +the same juncture to fetch him, he and his dog are presently removed; +and the other three set off without him. + +Burgoyne has chartered a fiacre, with a horse as little lame as is ever +to be found in Florence, and in this vehicle they are presently rolling +along. None of them are in very exuberant spirits. Burgoyne is as well +aware as if her sensitive lips had put the fact into words, that for +Elizabeth the pleasure of the outing has evaporated with the absence of +Byng, and that it is only the soft-hearted shrinking of a sweet nature +from inflicting mortification on a fellow-creature that has set her +opposite to him in her white gown. He has never seen her dressed in +white before, and says to himself that it was for Byng's sake that she +has made herself so summer-fine. But even if it be so, it is not Byng +who is profiting by it. It is for him, not Byng, that the large Italian +light is glorifying its thin fabric. Lily-pure, snow-clean she looks, +sitting under her sunshade; and he sits over against her in a stupid +silence. It seems to him as if his only safety were in silence, as if, +did he speak at all, he must put into brutal words the brutal questions +that are dinging in his head, that seem knocking for utterance against +the gate of his set teeth. + +"What is the 'screw loose'? How is she an 'unfortunate girl'? Why have +they 'never held up their heads since'? Since what?" He looks, in a +fierce perplexity, from one to the other of those delicately poised +heads, held aloft with such modest dignity. Surely it is beyond the +bounds of possibility that any heavily hideous shame or leaden disgrace +can ever have weighed upon them! Probably the intensity of his thought +has given an intensity to his look, of which he is unaware; for he +presently finds the soft veiled voice of Elizabeth--Elizabeth who has +hitherto been as mute as himself--addressing him: + +"How very grave you look! I wonder what you are thinking of?" + +The question, striking in so strangely pat, brings him back with a +start. For a second an almost overpowering temptation assails him to +tell her what is the object of his thought, to answer her with that +whole and naked truth which we can so seldom employ in our intercourse +with our fellow-men. But one glance at her innocent face, which has a +vague trouble in it, chases the lunatic impulse, though he dallies with +the temptation to the extent of saying: + +"Would you really like to know? Do you really wish me to tell you?" + +He looks at her penetratingly as he puts the question. Before either his +eyes or his manner she shrinks. + +"Oh, no--no!" she cries with tremulous haste, "of course not! I was only +joking. What business have I with your thoughts? I never wish to know +people's thoughts; if their looks and words are kind, that is all that +concerns me!" + +He relapses into silence; but her words, and still more the agitated +manner in which they are pronounced, make a vague yet definite addition +to the disquiet of his soul. + +By setting off at so judiciously late an hour as five o'clock, they have +avoided the greater part of the flood of tourists which daily sets +towards Certosa, and which they meet, tightly packed in crowded +vehicles, sweeping Florence-wards in a choking cloud of white dust; so +that on reaching the Certosa Monastery, sitting so grandly on its +hilltop, they have the satisfaction of finding that it is temporarily +all their own--all their own but for the few white-frocked figures and +tonsured heads which an economico-democratic Government has left to hint +what in its palmy days was the state of that which is now only a +Government museum. + +A burly monk receives them. He does not look at all a prey to the +pensive sorrow one would expect at the desecration of his holy things +and the dispersion of his fraternity. Probably, in his slow peasant mind +there is room for nothing but self-congratulation at his being one of +the few--only fifteen in all--left to end their days in the old home. He +leads them stolidly through chapels and refectory--the now too roomy +refectory, where the poor remnant of Carthusians dine together only on +Sundays--through meagrely furnished cells, in one of which he +matter-of-factly lets down the front flap of a cupboard to show what +forms his daily dining-table except on the happy Sunday, to which he +must look forward so warmly. + +"Must not he love Sunday!" cries Elizabeth, with sparkling eyes. "Do not +you long to know what they have for dinner on Sundays? Do you think he +would mind telling us?" + +Elizabeth's spirits are going up like quicksilver. It is evident, +despite the delicate melancholy of her face, that she is naturally of an +extremely joyous and enjoying nature, and gifted with a freshness of +sensation which belongs ordinarily rather to the green age at which Jim +first remembers her, than to the mature one which he knows for a +certainty that she has now reached. She is filled with such a lively and +surprised delight at all the little details of arrangement of the +monastic life that he is at last impelled to say to her, something +wonderingly: + +"But you must have seen hundreds of monasteries before?" + +"Not one." + +"But there are, or were, such swarms of them all over Italy." + +"I dare say. I was never in Italy before." + +"Not really?" + +She lifts up her hand, and waves it at him with an air of hasty +deprecation of further question, growing suddenly grave. + +"Don't ask me whether I have been here or there, or whether I have done +this or that. I have never been anywhere or done anything." + +Her desire for a cessation of all inquiries as to her doings is +obviously so earnest that Jim of course complies with it. Once or twice +before he has been struck by her strange want of acquaintance with facts +and phenomena, which would have come as a matter of course within the +range of observation of every woman of her age and station. Against his +will, a horrid recollection flashes upon him of a novel he had once +read, in which the hero exhibits a singular ignorance of any events or +incidents that had occurred within the ten years preceding the opening +of the story--an ignorance which towards the end of the third volume was +accounted for by its transpiring that he has spent the intervening +period in a convict prison! He drives the grotesque and monstrous idea +with scourges out of his mind; but it recurs, and recurs to be displaced +by another hardly less painful, if in some degree more probable. Can it +be possible that the crushing blow which has fallen upon the Le Marchant +family, and upon Elizabeth in particular, whitening the mother's hair, +and giving that tear-washed look to the daughter's sweet eyes--can it be +possible that that heavy stroke was insanity? Can Elizabeth have been +out of her mind? Can she have spent in confinement any of that past, +from all allusion to which she shies away with a sensitiveness more +shrinking than that of + + "The tender horns of cockled snails"? + +He is so much absorbed in his tormenting speculations about her that for +the moment he forgets her bodily presence; and it is only her voice, her +soft sane voice, that brings him back to a consciousness of it. They +have been led into a _salon_, in which, as their guide tells them, the +confraternity used to receive any "personage" that came to visit them. +Alas, no personage ever visits the poor frocked remnant now! It is a +charming lightsome room, that gives one no monastic idea, with pretty +airy fancies of flower-wreaths and arabesques, and dainty dancing +figures painted on wall and ceiling and doors. One of these latter is +half open, and through it comes an exquisite sudden view of the hills, +with their sharp-cut shadows and their sunlit slopes; of shining +Florence at their feet, of the laugh of young verdure, and the wedded +gloom and glory of cypress and poplar filling the foreground. Upon +Elizabeth's small face, turned suddenly towards him, seems reflected +some of the ineffable radiance of the Tuscan light. + +"When next I dream of heaven," she says, in her tender, vibrating voice, +"it will be like this. Do you ever dream of heaven? I often do, and I +always wake crying because it is not true; but"--with a joyful change of +key--"I will not cry any more without better cause. Since I came here I +have found earth beautiful and delightful enough for me!" + +He looks back at her, hardly hearing her words, but chiding himself +fiercely for the disloyal thought which he has entertained, however +unwillingly; the thought that the foul fiend of madness could ever, even +temporarily, have defiled the temple of those eyes whence reason and +feeling, so sweetly wedded, are shining out upon him, unworthy as he is +of their rays. + +"Since you came here?" he repeats in a sort of dreamy interrogation; +"only since you came here?" + +"You must not take me up so sharply!" she cries in a voice of playful +remonstrance, in which there is a lilt of young gaiety. "I warn you that +I will not be taken up so sharply! I did not say, '_only_ since I came +here!' I said, 'Since I came here!'" + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + + +Presently they pass into the still, cloistered garden, in whose unmown +grass-squares gray-blue flowers are blowing, beside whose walks pale +pink peonies are flushing, and round whose well the grave rosemary +bushes are set. Through the whole place is an atmosphere of deep peace, +of silence, leisure, dignity. It is virtually a _tete-a-tete_, as their +tonsured guide, seeing their evident harmlessness, has left them to +their own devices; and Mrs. Le Marchant has sat down to rest upon a +camp-stool which Elizabeth has been carrying ever since they left the +carriage. It has fidgeted Jim to see her burdened with it; for let a man +be ever so little in love with a woman, his tendency always is to think +her as brittle as spun glass, to believe that any weight, however light, +will bruise her arm--any pebble, however tiny, wound her tender foot. He +has offered to relieve her of it, but she has refused--playfully at +first--telling him she is sure that he will lose it; and afterwards, +when he insists, more gravely, though with gentle gratitude, saying that +it would never do for her to get into the habit of being waited upon, +and that she always carries mammy's things. It is perhaps absurd that a +woman of six-and-twenty should speak of her mother as "mammy," yet the +homely and childish abbreviation seems to him to come "most fair and +featously" from her lips. + +They stay a long time in the sun-kissed garden, considering that there +is after all not very much to see there. But Elizabeth's light steps, +that to-day seem set to some innocent dancing-tune, are loath to leave +it; she must smell the great new peonies, monthly-rose-coloured, faintly +perfumed; she must steal a sprig of rosemary "to put into her coffin +when she dies," at which he catches his breath, shuddering; she must +peep into the well. He insists on her holding his hand for safety as she +leans over to do so; her little fingers grip his tight as she cranes her +neck and bends her lissom body. But what a small handful they are, +compared to those other fingers--those kind, useful, but undoubtedly +solid fingers--which he has held perfunctorily through many a +matter-of-fact hour. By-and-by they stray away together out of the +bounteous air of the hilltop into a semi-underground church, to see the +fifteenth and sixteenth century monuments, which look as fresh as if +their marble had left its home in Carrara but yesterday. They stand +looking down at those three kin who lie side by side before the high +altar, each with head dropped a little sideways on the shoulder, as if +overcome by sudden sleep. They step on into the side chapel, where that +yet nobler mitred figure, fashioned by Donatello's hand, stretches his +prone length above his border of fruit and flowers, among which lies a +carved skull, through whose empty eye-holes--strange and grisly fancy +contrasting with so much beauty--a mocking ribbon runs. Elizabeth is +perfectly silent the whole time, but no flood of talk could make Jim +half so conscious of her presence, palpitating with sympathy and +feeling, could give half the confidence he enjoys that she will +introduce no allusion to either Kensal Green or Woking, as it is but too +probable that the excellent companion of most of his Florentine rambles +would have done. + +Elizabeth has been perfectly silent, yet at last she speaks. It is in +the Chapter House, where, as most of us have done, they have suddenly +come upon another tomb, the tomb of one lying full-length on the +pavement before the altar, with no separating edge of marble or +wrought-iron railing to keep him from the foot of the passer-by. He lies +there, portrayed with such an extraordinary vividness of life about his +prostrate figure and his severe, powerful face, that one feels inclined +to speak low, lest he should lift his white lids and look rebuke at us. +In the lines about his mouth there is a hint of sardonic mirth. Is +he--hearing our foolish chatter--touched with a grave contemptuous +amusement at it? Or is he keeping in his sleep the memory of some four +hundred years old jest? Elizabeth has involuntarily crept close to +Burgoyne's side, with the gesture of a frightened child. + +"Are you sure that he did not stir?" she asks tremulously under her +breath. Her next thought is that her mother must see him too, this +wonderful living dead man, and they presently set forth to return to the +garden to fetch her. But apparently she has grown tired of waiting for +them, for, as they enter the cloistered _enceinte_, they see her +advancing to meet them. + +"I would not be left alone with him at night for the wealth of the +Indies," Elizabeth is saying, with a half-nervous laugh. "Oh, mammy, you +would never have forgiven me if I had let you go without seeing him! +Why, what is this?"--with a sudden change of key--"what has happened?" +For as they draw near to Mrs. Le Marchant they see that her walk is a +staggering one, and that the usually healthy, clear pallor of her face +is exchanged for a livid whiteness. "What is it, darling?" cries +Elizabeth in an accent of terror. "Oh, Jim, she is going to faint!" In +the agitation of the moment she has unconsciously returned to the +familiar address which she used always to employ towards him in their +boy-and-girl days. "Put your arm round her on that side, I can hold her +up on this. Let us get her back to the camp-stool." + +A camp-stool is neither an easy nor a luxurious seat upon which to +deposit a half-swooning woman, but the joint exertions of her daughter +and of Burgoyne presently succeed in replacing her on her rickety +resting-place; their arms interlace each other behind her back, and +their anxious eyes look interrogation at one another above her head, +half dropped on Elizabeth's slight shoulder. + +"Does she often faint? Is she apt to do it?" asks Jim, in a whisper. + +"Never--never!" replies the girl in a heart-rent voice, raining kisses +on her mother's white face. "Oh, darling, darling, what has happened to +you?" + +Perhaps it is through the vivifying rain of those warm kisses, but a +little colour is certainly beginning to steal back into the elder +woman's cheek, and she draws a long breath. + +"Oh, if she could have a glass of water!" cries Elizabeth, greedily +verifying these slight signs of returning consciousness. "Get her a +glass of water! Oh, please get her a glass of water--quick! quick!" + +Burgoyne complies, though it is not without reluctant misgivings that he +withdraws the efficacious support of his own solid arm, and leaves +Elizabeth's poor little limb to bear the whole weight of her mother's +inert body. + +Their guide has, as before mentioned, disappeared; and Jim has not the +slightest idea in which direction to seek him. It is five good minutes +before he discovers him, standing near the door of the monastery, in +conversation with a visitor who is apparently just in the act of +departure. The stranger is in clerical dress; and, as he turns to nod +farewell to the monk, Jim recognises in his features those of the +Devonshire clergyman, whom he had last seen, and so unwillingly heard, +by the well-brim of the Bellosguardo villa. In a second a light has +flashed into his mind. Mrs. Le Marchant, too, has seen that +stranger--has seen him for the first time for ten years, since it is +evident that the recognition of mother and daughter in the Via +Tornabuoni, to which the Moat's late rector had referred, could not have +been reciprocal. It is to the fact of her having been brought suddenly +and unpreparedly face to face with that mysterious past, which seems to +be always blocking his own path to her friendship, that is to be +attributed the poor woman's collapse. A rush of puzzled compassion flows +over him as he realizes the fact, and his one impatient wish is to +return with all the speed he may to the forlorn couple he has left, to +reassure them as to the removal (even though it may only be a temporary +one) out of their path of the object of their unexplained terror. Will +the mother have imparted to her child the cause of her fainting, or will +she have tried to keep it from her? + +The first glimpse he gets when, having at length procured the desired +glass of water, he comes into sight of them, answers the question for +him. Mrs. Le Marchant is evidently partially recovered. She is sitting +up, no longer supported by her daughter's arm, and that daughter is +lying on her knees, with her head buried in her mother's lap. As he +nears them, he sees the elder woman hurriedly pressing her daughter's +arm to warn her of his approach, and Elizabeth obediently lifts her +face. But such a face! He can scarcely believe it is the same that laid +itself--hardly less bloomily fair than they--against the faint peony +buds half an hour ago; a face out of which the innocent glad shining has +been blown by some gust of brutal wind--scared, blanched, miserable. + +"Oh, yes, I am better, much better--quite well, in fact," says Mrs. Le +Marchant, pushing away the offered glass, and speaking with a ghastly +shadow of her former even cheerfulness. "Give it to Elizabeth, she needs +it more than I do! You see, I gave her a terrible fright!" + +He silently holds out the water to Elizabeth, and she, without +attempting to take the tumbler into her own trembling hand, drinks. He +looks with impotent pity from the bent blonde head to the prematurely +snow-white one. How can he word his reassurance to them without +appearing to thrust himself with officious insolence into their +confidence? It seems to himself that he solves the problem very +clumsily. + +"I am afraid you must have thought me but slow," he says, feeling that +he is dragging in the piece of information he is anxious to give them +with an awkward head-and-shoulder-ness: "but at first I couldn't find +our monk, and when I did, he was engaged--he was talking to a visitor--a +clergyman." + +He pauses, conscious that at the last word a tremulous shiver has passed +over the kneeling figure. + +"Yes, a clergyman," he goes on with nervous haste, hurrying to put them +out of their pain; "an elderly, gray-haired, English clergyman, who was +just in the act of going away; indeed, before I left, he had gone. I saw +him drive off!" + +Ere he has finished his sentence, he is seized by the apprehension that +there must appear to his listeners something suspicious in the laboured +details into which he is entering; presupposing, as they do, that he is +aware of there being for them an interest attaching to the fact of the +stranger's departure. And indeed, as he speaks, he is conscious that +Mrs. Le Marchant's frightened eyes, which have been taking surreptitious +trips round the peaceful garden, now come home with a no less alarmed +look to his face. + +"Was he--was he--an acquaintance of yours?" she asks, with an attempt at +a laugh--"this clergyman, I think you said he was--that you noticed him +so particularly?" + +"An acquaintance?" repeats Jim doubtfully; "what is an acquaintance? a +man whom one knew very little, and disliked a good deal, ten years ago; +and who passes one by without a gleam of recognition now--is that an +acquaintance?" + +Elizabeth's hat has fallen on the ground, and hitherto she has seemed +unconscious of the evening sunbeams smiting her uncovered head; now she +stoops and picks it up. + +"And you did not make yourself known to him then?" continues Mrs. Le +Marchant, still with that painful effort at lightness of tone. "You let +him drive off without telling him who you were? or asking him where he +was staying? or how long his visit to Florence is to last? or--or +anything?" + +Jim's eyes are fixed on her as she speaks with a compassionate +steadiness, under which hers quail waveringly. Is it possible that she +can imagine that she is deceiving him by this miserable pretence of +indifference? + +"I have no doubt that I shall be able to find out if you wish to know," +he answers gravely; "for I think he must be as much an acquaintance of +yours as of mine, since it was only at the Moat that I ever met him." + +He had thought that Mrs. Le Marchant was already as colourless as a +woman could be; but as he speaks, he sees her face take on a new degree +of pallor. She struggles unsteadily to her feet. + +"It is--it is getting late!" she says indistinctly; "we--ought--to +be--going home!" + +Even as she speaks she makes an uncertain step forward, but it is so +uncertain that he catches her by the arm. + +"You are not fit to move yet," he says with kind imperativeness; "rest +five minutes longer; it is not late, really--the sun is quite high +still." + +Convinced, either by the young man's eloquence, or, as is more likely, +by the shaking of her own limbs, Mrs. Le Marchant sits down again. +Elizabeth has risen to her feet, and now stands beside her mother. She +has said nothing, but he can see her trembling from head to heel. He +hears her voice now addressing him, but in so subdued a key that her +words are almost lost in the low blowing of the faint south wind that is +fondling the blades of the unshorn grass. + +"Did you say that he was gone? Are you sure of it?" + +"Yes, yes, quite sure! I saw him go." + +"Did you--did you happen to hear where he was staying?" + +"No, but"--with the greatest eagerness--"I can easily find out; nothing +can be simpler." + +Elizabeth is standing quite close to him, so close that he can see her +poor little heart leaping under the thin white gown, whose simple finery +had piqued him earlier in the day. She has apparently, in her new +terror, forgotten that there is any cause for concealing from him the +occasion of it. She turns instinctively to him, as a hurt child to the +nearest bystander. It seems to him the most natural thing in the world +that she should. They are both recalled to themselves by her mother's +voice. + +"You must think that we have lost our wits," she says with a sickly +smile; "but even if we have, I do not know what right we have to impose +upon a--a comparative stranger like you, the task of helping us to +gratify our--our idle curiosity." + +"But I am not a comparative stranger!" cries Jim vehemently; by this +time--he does not know how--he is holding a hand of each of the +trembling women in his. "I am not a stranger at all! I am a friend! Why +will not you treat me as one? Why will not you let me help you?" + +He glances with pitying, affectionate eagerness from one to other of the +woebegone faces on either side of him. The tears have come in sudden +flood to the elder woman, and are pouring over her white cheeks, +stopping the passage of her voice; but Elizabeth's fair eyes are +drearily dry, and speech comes clear and hopeless from her. + +"You are very good to us!" she says, giving the hand that holds hers a +little pressure, which he feels to be as cold as it is grateful; "at +least, I see that you want to be very good to us if we would let you; +but as to helping us"--with a slight despairing shrug--"no one can do +that; no one but God, and sometimes"--drawing a long, half-sobbing +breath--"I think that it would pass even His power." + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + + +There are few things more difficult than when one's mind is full of the +interests, cares, and sorrows of one set of friends, to have to empty it +suddenly of them, and refill it as suddenly with the entirely different, +and perhaps discrepant interests, cares, and sorrows of an altogether +alien set. + +Seldom in the course of their old and tried friendship has Jim Burgoyne +felt less disposed for the company and conversation of his valued ally, +Mrs. Byng, than when he knocks at the door of her sitting-room on the +morning following the excursion to Certosa. He cannot talk to her about +the Le Marchants, seeing that she has never even heard of their +existence; and if out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh, +his talk upon any other topic must be scant and jejune indeed. The only +cheerful side which his prospective visit turns to him is, that if he +were not with Mrs. Byng, he would be with Amelia; and that the +friendlily indifferent eyes of the former will, at all events, be less +likely than the hungrily loving ones of the latter to detect that he has +not slept a wink, and that he has not the remotest idea what he is +talking about. If he were to follow his inclination, he would be +bestowing his company this morning upon neither friend nor sweetheart, +but would be ransacking Florence for the piece of information he had +yesterday promised those two woebegone women to procure for them. Even +into the very midst of his heartfelt sore compassion for them, there +pierces a shamed unwilling flash of elation at the thought of what a +stride to intimacy his being entrusted with this commission implies, of +what an opening to indefinitely numerous future visits it affords. His +determination to conduct the search is at present a good deal more +clearly defined than the method in which that search is to be effected. +He can consult _Galignani_ as to the names and whereabouts of new +arrivals; but they could do that much for themselves. He could examine +the visitors' books of the different hotels; but Florence, though a +little city, is rich in hostelries, and this course would take time. He +could consult Mr. Greenock, the head and fount of all Florentine gossip, +and who, since he had seen him in conversation with the object of his +inquiries, would probably be able to satisfy them; but his acquaintance +with the good-natured newsmonger is not sufficiently intimate for him to +be able to pay him a morning visit with any air of probability of having +been impelled thereto by a desire for his company; and, moreover, he +shrinks with a morbid fear from any action which may lead, however +obliquely, to his being himself apprised of the terrible secret +which--it is no longer mere matter of conjecture--lies couched somewhere +in those two poor creatures' past. + +And meanwhile he knocks at Mrs. Byng's door, and is quickly bidden enter +by a cheerful English voice, the welcoming alacrity of whose tones +shames his own want of pleasure in the meeting. But he is too +unfortunately honest to express a joy he does not experience, and only +says, with a slight accent of reproach as he takes her ready hand, +heartily held out: + +"You should not spring these surprises upon us." + +She laughs a little guiltily. + +"It--it was a sudden thought; you see I--I had never seen Perugia." + +He laughs too. "Poor Perugia! I think it would have blushed unseen for a +good many more years if you had not begun to doubt the efficiency of my +chaperonage. Confess! you have come to look after the precious baby-boy, +have not you?" + +His tone is, as he himself feels, not quite a pleasant one; but the +mother is scarcely more prone to take offence than the son; and she +answers with an amiably hasty disclaimer: + +"It was not that I felt the least want of confidence in you--you must +not think that; but--but I had one of my presentiments! you know that I +am always a little superstitious; and three nights running an owl came +and hooted quite close under my window!" + +"As long as I have known your wood, it has had owls; and as long as I +have known them, they have hooted." + +"In the wood, yes, of course, and I like to hear them; but this one was +close under my window." + +Jim's only answer is to lift his hands and shoulders in protest against +his friend's weak-mindedness. + +"I had quite made up my mind that something had happened," continues +she, not much abashed by his scorn; "and it was the greatest relief when +I first caught sight of him at the station yesterday, looking just as +usual, a little thinner perhaps--does not he strike you as a little +thin? Has he been weighed lately? He gives me the idea of having lost a +pound or two since I last saw him. Is there a weighing-machine in the +hotel?" + +"It will be very easy to ascertain." + +"And how is Amelia?"--her cheerful eyes resting in friendly and +half-inquisitive interest on his sombre face. + +"Amelia is very well, thank you." + +"Amelia Wilson still?" + +"Yes." + +"For how long?"--laughing--"another ten years, I suppose?" + +"For three months, I believe; we are to be married as soon as they +return to England." + +"You do not say so?"--with an accent of lively and delighted +incredulity--"hurrah! poor Amelia! '_Tout vient a point a qui sait +attendre_;' and she has _su attendre_ with a vengeance, has not she?" + +"She is not going to _attendre_ any more," replies Jim dryly. + +"Then I shall have to give you a present, I suppose!" cries Mrs. Byng, +still with that delighted accent. "Something useful, I have no doubt. I +feel sure that Amelia would like something useful; why should not we +choose it to-day? Florence is an ideal place for buying presents; do you +think that Amelia would spare you to me for a whole morning?" + +Jim hesitates. It is not that he has any doubt as to Amelia's cheerful +renunciation of any portion of his time that he may see fit to abstract +from her; but the occupation suggested--that of squiring Mrs. Byng--is +not that to which he had purposed devoting his forenoon. She sees his +unreadiness to answer, and attributes it to a wrong cause. + +"Amelia will not?" cries she in a tone of surprise and disappointment. +"Well, I could not have believed it of her! Not even if you told her +that it is on purpose to buy her a present?" + +Jim breaks into an unavoidable smile. "How frightfully quickly your mind +moves! It leaps like a kangaroo! I never said that she would not resign +the precious boon of my society; on the contrary, I am sure that nothing +would give her greater pleasure, but--but--what will Willy say to my +monopolizing you?" + +At the excessive disingenuousness of this speech his conscience gives +him a severe prick, recalling to his mind the attitude of prostrate +affliction--stretched face downwards on his bed--in which his young +friend had received the news of his parent's prospective approach. A +light cloud passes over that parent's sunny face. + +"Willy has an engagement this morning," she answers more slowly, and +with less radiance than has hitherto marked her utterances; "nothing +could be sweeter and dearer than he was, and he is going to take me +somewhere this afternoon--to Fiesole or Petraia, or somewhere else +delightful; but this morning he has an engagement. He did not tell me +what it was, and I did not like to tease him with questions. You"--with +a rather wistful glance of interrogation at her companion--"do not +happen to know what it is?" + +Jim shakes his head, while a rather deeper shade than habitually lies +upon it settles on his careworn forehead. It is perfectly true that he +knows nothing of young Byng's engagement, but yet he has a shrewd +suspicion to what quarter of the town that engagement will lead him. + +"So that I rather counted upon you," continues Mrs. Byng, turning with a +somewhat crestfallen air to the window. + +"And you did not count in vain," replies Burgoyne, with a sort of forced +gallantry. It has flashed upon him that he will have to consent under +penalty of giving a detailed account of the reasons for his inability, +and that therefore he had better make a virtue of necessity, and do it +with a good grace. After all, the deferring for a couple of hours of his +researches cannot be of any great consequence to the persons in whose +behalf those researches are set on foot. To a suspicious ear there might +be something dubious in the sudden and galvanized alacrity of his +assent; but not a shadow of doubt crosses Mrs. Byng's mind as to her old +and tried ally being as pleased to avail himself of an opportunity for +enjoying her society as he has always showed himself during the twenty +years and more of their acquaintance. + +Protected by this happy misconception, she sets off, all smiles, though +at the outset of the expedition she finds that she has to modify her +project; and that Burgoyne shows himself restive as to _bric-a-brac_ +shops, and declines peremptorily to be any party to buying himself a +wedding present. He puts his objection upon the semi-jocose ground that +he shall be unable to avoid overhearing the price of her intended gift, +and that his modesty could not stand the strain of helping her to haggle +over it. Perhaps, however, deep in his heart is an unconscious feeling +that to receive nuptial offerings gives an almost greater body and +certainty to his on-striding fate than even the buying of +dinner-services and saucepans. So they go to the Accademia delle Belli +Arti instead, it having occurred to Jim that in a picture-gallery there +will be less opportunity for conversation, less opening for interested +inquiries on his companion's part as to Amelia and the minutiae of his +future life with her, than there would be in the green walks of the +Cascine, or on the slopes of Fiesole. + +To Mrs. Byng, who is of almost as enjoying a nature as her son, and +whose spirits have been raised to a pitch even higher than their usual +one, by the disproof of her presentiments, it is all one where she goes, +so that she is taken somewhere, to see something. They stare up at the +big young David, and stand before Fra Angelico's ineffably happy +Paradiso, which yet brings the tears to the looker's eyes, perhaps out +of sheer envy of the little blissful saints dancing and frolicking so +gaily, or pacing so softly in the assured joy of the heavenly country. +They look at Botticelli's "Spring," fantastic wanton, with her +wildly-flowered gown, and her lapful of roses. The room in which she and +her joyous mates stand, with their odd smiles, is one of the smaller of +the gallery. It is rather a narrow one, and has an open window, giving +upon a little court, where, in a neglected garden-close, wallflowers are +growing, and sending in their familiar perfume. The sweet Francia saints +in the picture hung on the wall directly opposite, and the rapt Madonna, +must surely smell them. If they do not, it must be because a young +couple, he and she, who are leaning out in their eagerness to enjoy it, +have intercepted all the homely fragrance. Jim's eyes are still on the +"Spring," and he is thinking half absently how little kinship she has +with the goitred green women, whom his nineteenth-century disciples +present to the confiding British public as representatives of Sandro +Botticelli's manner, when his attention is diverted by hearing the voice +of Mrs. Byng at his elbow addressing him in an excited tone: + +"Why, there's Willy! Do not you see? There! leaning out of that window, +and who--who is the lady whom he has with him?" + +Jim looks quickly in the direction indicated, and at once recognises a +slender gray figure which to-day has not assumed its white holiday gown. +Elizabeth, whom he had been pitifully picturing lying heart-struck on a +sofa in the seclusion of her own little _entresol_, probably with +lowered blinds and tear-smarting eyes, is leaning on the window-ledge +with her back to the pictures--she whom he had always credited with so +delicate a sensibility for Art, with her back to the pictures, as if the +live picture which Byng's eager face presents to her pleases her better. +A sense of indignation at having been tricked out of his compassion--who +had ever seemed to need it less than the suave little figure about whose +blonde head a Tuscan sunbeam, stolen through the easement, is amorously +playing?--makes him forget to answer the question addressed to him, +until it is repeated in a still more urgent key. + +"Who _is_ she? Who _can_ she be? Have not you an idea? He has not seen +us! Had not we better creep quietly away? Most likely he would rather +not meet me; I could not bear to make him look foolish!" + +The suggestion that there can be anything calculated to put Willy to the +blush in being discovered in conversation with Miss Le Marchant has the +effect of giving Burgoyne rapidly back his power of speech. + +"What nonsense!" he cries almost rudely; "I wish you would not let your +imagination run away with you so, and of course I know who she is; she +is an--an acquaintance of mine. I--I presented Willy to her; she is Miss +Le Marchant." + +"Miss Le Who?" repeats the mother eagerly, catching the name +imperfectly, as we usually do a name that is unfamiliar to us, proving +how much of imagination and memory must go to eke out all our +hearing--"an acquaintance of yours, is she? Oh, then, of course" +(drawing a long breath of relief), "she is all right." + +"All right!" echoes Jim, with an unconscious snappishness of tone, +greater than he would have employed in defence of the reputation of any +other lady of his acquaintance, probably because, ever since the day +when he stood an unwilling eaves-dropper by that well on Bellosguardo, a +hideous low voice has been whispering to his own sick heart that perhaps +she is not "all right!" "All right! of course she is all right." + +"But she is lovely!" cries Mrs. Byng, not paying much heed to the testy +emphasis of her companion's asseveration, and continuing to stare at the +unwitting girl; "what a dear little face! but," the alarm returning +again into her voice, "is it possible that she is here alone with him? +If so, of course she is American. Oh! do not say that she is American." + +"Of course she is not," answers Burgoyne, half laughing at the plaintive +intensity of this last appeal; "of course she is all that there is of +most English, and there is her mother, as large as life, within a yard +and a half of her; there, do not you see? looking at the Ghirlandajo." + +Mrs. Byng removes her eyes from the daughter, and fixes them with a +scarcely less degree of interest upon the then indicated parent. + +"So that is the mother, is it? a very nice-looking woman, and what +beautiful white hair! Mrs. Le----what did you say their name was? Ah! +Willy has seen us, poor boy!"--laughing--"how guilty he looks! here he +comes!" + +And in point of fact the young man, having given a very indubitable +start and said something hurried to his companion, is seen advancing +quasi-carelessly to meet the two persons, the object of whose +observation he has for some minutes so unconsciously been. + +"Is not this a coincidence?" cries Mrs. Byng, with a rather +nervously-playful accent; "it _is_ a coincidence, though it may not look +like one! But do not be afraid; we know our places, we are not going to +offer to join you!" + +"What should I be afraid of?" replies the young man, the colour--always +as ready as a school miss's to put him to shame--mantling in his +handsome smooth cheeks. "I am like the Spanish hidalgo, who never knew +what fear was till he snuffed a candle with his fingers. So you and Jim +are having a happy day among the pictures. Do not you like 'Spring'? I +love her, though I am sure she was a real baggage!" + +But this ingenious attempt to divert the current of his parents' ideas +into another channel is scarcely so successful as it deserves. + +"Will not you introduce me to her?" she asks eagerly, and not heeding, +evidently not even hearing, the empty question contained in the last +half of his speech; "does she know that I am your mother? Will not you +introduce me to her?" + +It seems a simple and natural request enough, and yet the young man +perceptibly hesitates. He even tries to turn it off by a clumsy and +entirely pointless jest. + +"Introduce you to her? to whom? to 'Spring'? I am really afraid that my +acquaintance with her scarcely justifies such a liberty!" + +A look of surprise and of natural annoyance clouds the cheerful +eagerness of Mrs. Byng's face. + +"Is that a joke, dear?" she asks, with a rather vexed smile; "it is not +a very good one, is it? Well, Jim, I must apply to you then; _you_ can +have no objection to presenting me to your friends?" + +"Of course not, of course not," replies he, with a stammering +unreadiness, which contrasts somewhat ludicrously with the acquiescence +conveyed by his words, "I shall be delighted, only----" + +"Only what? Ah, here they come! they save us the trouble of going after +them." + +As she speaks, indeed, Mrs. Le Marchant and Elizabeth are seen nearing +the little group; but it is soon apparent that this movement on their +part is by no means owing to any wish or even willingness to make Mrs. +Byng's acquaintance. It is indeed solely due to there being no egress +from the room at that end of it where they have been standing, so that, +if they wish to leave it, they must necessarily retrace their steps and +pass the three persons who are so busily discussing them. They do this +so quickly and with so resolute an air of not wishing to be delayed in +their exit, bestowing a couple of such smileless and formal bows upon +the two men, that it would have needed a much more determined +obstruction than either of those gentlemen is prepared to offer to +arrest their progress. In a moment they are through the doorway and out +of sight. Mrs. Byng looks after them, with her mouth open. + +"They--they--are obliged to go home, they--they are in a great hurry!" +says the younger man, observing the displeased astonishment expressed by +his mother's countenance, and with a lame effort at explanation. + +"So they seemed when first we caught sight of them," retorts she dryly. + +"They--they are not going out at all at present, they--they do not wish +to make any fresh acquaintance: oh, by-the-bye, I forgot something I had +to say to--I will be back in a moment!" + +So saying, he shoots off in pursuit of the retreated figures, and Mrs. +Byng and her escort are again left _tete-a-tete_. + +"Are you quite sure that she is all right?" asks the lady, looking at +Jim with a penetrating glance that he does not enjoy; "because, if so, +why was she so determined not to know me?" + +"How can I tell?" answers he testily. "Perhaps--who knows?"--laughing +unmirthfully--"perhaps she was not sure that _you_ were all right!" + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + + "Tous les hommes se haissent naturellement. Je mets en fait que + s'ils savaient exactement ce qu'ils disent, les uns des autres, + il n'y aurait pas quatre amis dans le monde." + + + +Although Mrs. Byng always speaks of Miss Wilson as "Amelia," and is +acquainted with every detail of that young lady's uneventful +history--thanks to a long series of direct and interested questions, +addressed through a considerable number of years, to her friend Jim, as +to his betrothed--she has no personal acquaintance with the latter. She +is so determined, however, to repair this omission, now that so highly +favourable an opportunity is presented as their common stay in the same +small city, that Jim is powerless to hinder her from arranging a joint +expedition of the two parties--herself and her son on the one side, and +Jim with his future wife and sister-in-law on the other, to Careggi, on +the afternoon of the same day as he had witnessed her abortive attempt +to add Elizabeth Le Marchant and her mother to the list of her +acquaintances. + +Amelia, is, for a wonder, free from home claims, Sybilla being more than +usually bright, a kind friend having lately provided her with a number +of the _Lancet_, containing a detailed account of an operation, which it +seems not over-sanguine to expect she may herself be able to undergo. We +all have our Blue Roses, and to "undergo operation," as she technically +phrases it, is Sybilla Wilson's Blue Rose. Cecilia is likewise +disengaged. The latter circumstance is matter for not unmixed rejoicing +to Jim, Cecilia's future connection with himself being too close for him +to relish the thought of her somewhat pronounced wooing of Byng being +exposed in all its _naivete_ to the clear if good-humoured eyes of +Byng's mother. But in this he wrongs Cecilia. The garden-party at the +villa on Bellosguardo had proved to her that the fruit is hung too high +for her fingers to reach, and that philosophy, which had enabled her +genuinely to relish the wedding-cake of the man who had jilted her, now +teaches her to lay to heart the sarcastic advice offered her by Jim, to +look at the young man as poor women look at diamonds. Beyond one or two +trifling gallantries, for which no one can judge her harshly, she leaves +him alone, even though out of good-nature, and from inveterate force of +habit, he gives her several openings to make love to him. + +The day is one of even Italy's best, an air as soft as feathers, and +full of April odours--a bright gay sun. The vines are rushing into leaf; +they that ten days ago looked such hopeless sticks; little juicy leaves +uncurling and spreading on each, and the mulberry trees, round which +they twine, are rushing out too, at the triumphant call of the spring. + +The party being of the unmanageable number five, has to be divided +between two fiacres, whereof Mrs. Byng, in pursuance of her +determination to know Amelia, insists upon occupying the first in +_tete-a-tete_ with Miss Wilson, while Cecilia and the two men fill the +other. The latter makes but a silent load. Byng is, for him, out of +spirits, and finding that Cecilia has virtually abandoned her suit, is +glad to lapse into his own reflections. His example is followed by Jim, +whose temper is ruffled by being again obliged to defer the quest he is +still feverishly anxious to pursue, despite the shock of the morning's +meeting at the Accademia. + +They reach the villa, and leave their vehicles, glad to think that two +of the perennially tired Florentine cab-horses will have a pause of +rest, and, having shaken off a tiresome would-be _laquais de place_, +desirous to embitter for them the sweet day and place, they stray at +will through the garden among the clipped laurels, the cypresses, the +gorgeous red rhododendrons, while beds of mignonette send forth such a +steady wave of poignant sweetness as makes the sense ache with ecstasy +of pleasure; and over the conservatory hangs a wistaria so old, so +magnificent, with such a Niagara of giant flower bunches, as takes an +English breath away. They go over the villa itself, pass through the +room, and by the bed where Lorenzo, with the grotesque grim face, +Lorenzo the Magnificent, gave his last sigh. It would make Death even +more difficult to face than he is already, if one thought one should +have to meet him under such a catafalque. + +As they issue out again from the house's shadow into the sun-drenched +garden, Mrs. Byng joins Burgoyne, who is walking a little apart. + +"I like Amelia," she says confidentially, "such a nice _pillowy_ sort of +woman; not too clever, and oh, Jim, poor soul, how fond she is of you!" + +It must always be pleasant to hear that the one absolutely good thing +which this life has to offer is lavishly heaped upon us by the person +with whom we are to pass that life; and perhaps pleasure is the emotion +evidenced by the silent writhe with which Jim receives this piece of +information. + +"Not, of course, that she told me so in so many words," continues his +friend, perceiving that her speech is received in a silence that may +mean disapproval of any intrusion into the sanctuary of his affections; +"but one can see with half an eye: poor Amelia, she beamed all over when +I said one or two little civil things about you! She worships the very +ground you tread on!" + +He writhes again. "I hope that that is one of your figures of speech," +he answers constrainedly. + +The not unnatural result of the tone in which he utters this sentence, +no less than the words themselves, is to quench the fire of Mrs. Byng's +benevolent eulogies; and, as she cannot at once hit upon another topic, +and is by no means sure that her countenance does not betray the rather +snubbed dismay produced by the reception of her amenities, she is not +sorry when Jim presently leaves her. Being, however, of a very sanguine +disposition, and seeing him a little later sitting peacefully on a +garden-seat beside his _fiancee_, she hopes that her words, though not +very handsomely received at the time, may bear fruit later for Amelia's +benefit. "And he always was very undemonstrative," she adds to herself +consolatorily. "Nobody would have guessed that he was delighted to see +me this morning; and yet, of course, he was." + +The sun is growing visibly lower, and the Ave Maria comes ringing +solemnly from the city. The seat to which Jim has somewhat remorsefully +led his lady-love is a stone bench, shaded by a honeysuckle bower, close +to a fountain. The fountain is not playing now; but round about it first +a marten wheels, dipping in the water the end of her fleet wings; then a +little bat prematurely flits, for it is still broad daylight. Broad +indeed and bounteous is the daylight of Italy. Around them is the lush +unmown grass; full of homely field-flowers, buttercups, catch-flies, +daisies, ragged robins, while from some bush near by a nightingale is +pouring out all the infinite variety of her ravishing song. She says so +many different things that one never can feel sure that one has heard +all that she has to say. Jim leans back listening, with his hands behind +his head, steeped in a half-voluptuous sadness. He is oppressed by the +thought of Amelia's great love. Is the nightingale's splendid eloquence +really the voice of the poor dumb passion beside him, lent to Amelia to +plead her cause? The high-flown poetry of the idea fills his heart with +an imaginative yearning kindness towards her. He is in the act of +turning to face her, with a more lover-like speech on his lips than has +hovered there for years, when Amelia herself anticipates him. + +"And to think that it is only April!" she says, with an air of prosaic +astonishment. "Last April we had four inches of snow on the front drive. +It was when Cecilia had the mumps." + +"When Cecilia had the mumps?" repeats Burgoyne in a rather dazed voice. +"I did not know that Cecilia had ever had the mumps." + +This is the form into which are frozen the love-words that the +nightingale and the perfume of the Tuscan flowers and the Ave Maria had +so nearly brought to his tongue. Had Amelia known what an unwonted burst +of tenderness her unlucky reminiscence had choked, she would have +regretted it probably with a good deal deeper bitterness than would many +a woman with a happier gift of utterance. But she is blessedly ignorant +of what Cecilia's mumps have robbed her, and presently again strikes +athwart the nightingale's song with the placid remark: + +"I like your friend very much; I think that she is a very nice woman." + +This time Burgoyne has no difficulty in responding immediately. Miss +Wilson's first speech had so effectually chased his dreams that he can +now reply with commonplace kindliness: + +"She has just been button-holing me to make the same confidence about +you." + +"And she is so fond of you," continues Amelia. + +He laughs. + +"She has just confided to me that so are you;" then, with a hurried +change of tone, in dread lest the last speech shall call out some +expression of the mute pent passion always lurking in her patient eyes, +he adds lightly, "I seem to be very generally beloved!" + +What effect the flat fatuity, as it seems to Jim himself, of this last +observation has upon Amelia, does not appear, since she receives it in +silence; and again the Ave Maria and the bird divide between them the +province of sound. + +As the great sun droops, the honeysuckle above their heads seems to give +out more generously its strong clean sweetness. The rest of the party +have drifted away out of sight and hearing; but by-and-by their voices +are again heard and their returning forms seen. As they draw near, it +appears that their original number of three has been augmented by the +addition of two men; and a still nearer approach reveals who the two men +are. Mrs. Byng leads the way, talking animatedly to Mr. Greenock, who is +evidently an old acquaintance. Byng trails after them by himself, and +the rear is brought up by Cecilia and a portly clerically-dressed +figure, whom Jim at once recognises as the Devonshire clergyman, his +failure in obtaining information about whom has embittered and fidgeted +his whole day. Here then is the opportunity he has sought brought to his +very hand. And yet his first feeling, as he sees the complacent priestly +face, and the deliberate black legs pacing beside Cecilia, is one of +dismay. There is nothing unlikely in the supposition that he may have +been presented to her at the garden-party at the Bellosguardo villa; and +yet he now realizes with a shock of surprise that they are acquainted, +and, if acquainted, then at liberty to converse upon whatever subject +may best recommend itself to them. He is absolutely powerless to put any +check upon their talk, and yet at this very moment he may be narrating +to her that story which his own loyalty had forbidden him to overhear. +The first couple has passed, so absorbed in eager question and answer +that they do not even see Burgoyne and his betrothed. Mrs. Byng left +London only three days ago, and Mr. Greenock might return thither at any +moment that he chooses; and yet they are talking of it with a wistful +fondness that might have beseemed Dante questioning some chance wayfarer +to Ravenna as to the prosperity of his Florence. The second pair's +voices are lower pitched, and their topics therefore less easy to +ascertain; yet by Cecilia's gratified and even hopeful air they are +evidently agreeable ones. But though agreeable, there is no evidence of +their being, by their riveting ear and eye, of the nature he dreads. +They also are so absorbed in each other as to have no attention to spare +for the quiet silent persons sitting on the stone bench. + +Amelia looks after them with a benevolent smile. Her sense of humour is +neither keen nor quick, but there is a touch of very mild sarcasm in her +voice, as she says, watching her sister's retreating figure: + +"Cecilia has found a new friend, a clergyman again; do you know what his +name is?" + +"I believe it is Burton or Bruton, or something of the sort," replies +Jim reluctantly, feeling as if even in admitting knowledge of the +stranger's surname he were letting out a dangerous secret. "I should +have thought that she had had enough of the Church," he adds with a very +much more pronounced accent of satire than Miss Wilson's. "She has not +taken my advice of sticking to the laity. Shall we--shall we follow +them?" + +This last suggestion is the result of a vague, uneasy feeling that, by +keeping within earshot, he may exercise some check upon their +conversation. + +"Why should we?" replies Amelia, for once in her life running counter to +a proposition of her lover's, and turning her meek eyes affectionately +upon him; "we are so well here, are not we? and"--laughing--"we should +spoil sport." + +As Jim can allege no adequate reason for pursuing Cecilia and her latest +spoil, he has unwillingly to acquiesce, and to content himself with +following them with his eyes, to gain what reassurance he can from the +expression of their backs. But the peaceful if melancholy restfulness +that had marked the first part of his abode on the stone seat is gone, +past recall. He moves his feet fidgetily on the gravel; he gets up, and +throws pebbles into the fountain; he snubs an officious little Italian +boy who brings Amelia a small handful of flowers plucked out of the +emerald grass. + +Amelia does not share her lover's uneasiness, as indeed why should she? +She puts the expected tip into the young Tuscan's dirty brown hand, and +leans her head enjoyingly on the back of the stone seat. + +"I think I like to come to these sort of places with you even better +than to picture-galleries," she says with an intonation of extreme +content. + +"Do you, dear?" replies he absently, with his uneasy eyes still +searching the spot at which Cecilia and her escort had disappeared. "Of +course you are quite right: 'God made the country, and man made the----' +Ah!" + +The substitution of this ejaculation for the noun which usually +concludes the proverb is due to the fact of the couple he is interested +in having come back into sight, retracing their steps, and again +approaching. It is clear as they come near that the desire to explore +the villa grounds has given way, in this case, to the absorption of +conversation. With a pang of dread, Jim's sharpened faculties realize, +before they are within earshot, that they have exchanged the light and +_banal_ civilities which had at first employed them for talk of a much +more intimate and interesting character. Cecilia is generally but an +indifferent listener, greatly preferring to take the lion's share in any +dialogue; but now she is all silent attention, only putting in, now and +again, a short eager question, while her companion is obviously +narrating--narrating gravely, and yet with a marked relish. Narrating +what? Jim tells himself angrily that there are more stories than one in +the world; that there is no reason why, because Cecilia's clerical +friend is relating to her something, it must necessarily be that +particular something which he dreads so inexpressibly; but he strains +his ears as they pass to catch a sentence which may relieve or confirm +his apprehensions. He has not to strain them long. It is Cecilia who is +speaking, and in her eagerness she has raised her voice. + +"You may depend upon me; I assure you I am as safe as a church; if I had +chosen I might have made a great deal of mischief in my day, but I never +did. I always said that she had a history. I do not pretend to be a +physiognomist, but I said so the first time I saw her. I knew that they +came from Devonshire. I assure you I am as safe as a church!" + +It is clear that the clergyman's hesitation, already perhaps more coy +than real, is unable to withstand the earnestness of Cecilia's +asseverations of her own trustworthiness. He has already opened his +mouth to respond when an unexpected interruption arrests the stream of +his eloquence. Jim has sprung from his bench, and thrust himself +unceremoniously between the two interlocutors. + +"Come and see the wistaria," he says, brusquely addressing the girl; +"you were not with us when we were looking at it, were you? You were +maintaining the other day that wistaria has no scent; come and smell +it!" + +It is in vain that Cecilia protests that she has already seen quite as +much of the wistaria as she wishes; that she had never denied the +potency of its perfume; that her legs are giving way beneath her from +fatigue. Jim marches her relentlessly away, nor does he again quit her +side until he sees her safely seated in the fiacre which is to carry her +home. It is indeed his portion to have a _tete-a-tete_ drive back to +Florence with her, Byng having absently stepped into the vehicle which +bears the other ladies. He draws a long breath as they jog slowly away +from the villa, leaving the clergyman taking off his tall hat, with a +baffled and offended air of farewell. He is conscious that Cecilia is +swelling beside him with feelings no less wounded, even for some moments +before she speaks. + +"You rather cut your own throat," she says, in an affronted voice, "when +you interrupted me and Mr. Burton so rudely; he was on the point of +telling me something very interesting about your dear friends the Le +Marchants; he knows all about them; he has known Elizabeth ever since +she was a child." + +Even across Jim's alarm and anxiety there comes a flash of indignation +and distaste at the familiar employment of the name that even to himself +he only pronounces on his heart's knees. + +"Who is Elizabeth? Do you mean Miss Le Marchant?" + +"Mr. Burton talked of her as 'Elizabeth,'" replies Cecilia, with a still +more offended accent at the rebuke implied in his words; "one naturally +would of a person whom one had known in short frocks." + +"And he--he told you something very interesting about her?" + +"No, he did not," returns Cecilia snappishly, "he had not the chance; he +was just beginning when you rushed in like a bull in a china shop, and +now"--in a key of excessive vexation--"I shall probably never have +another chance of hearing, as he leaves Florence to-morrow." + +Jim's heart gives a bound. "Leaves Florence to-morrow, does he?" he +repeats eagerly. + +"I do not know why you should seem so delighted to hear it," rejoins +Cecilia, looking at him from under her smart hat with a mixture of +surprise and resentment. "I do not see anything particularly +exhilarating in losing an agreeable acquaintance almost as soon as one +has made it!" + +"Perhaps--perhaps it was a false alarm," says Jim, set, to some extent, +on his guard by her evident astonishment at the keenness of his interest +in the subject; "perhaps"--beginning to laugh--"he only said it to +frighten you; why do you think that he is leaving Florence to-morrow?" + +"Because he told me so," answers she impatiently; "he is at the Grande +Bretagne, and he was complaining of not being comfortable there, and I +was advising him to move to another hotel, and he said, 'Oh no, it was +not worth while, as he was leaving Florence to-morrow.'" + +Jim draws a long breath, and leans back in his corner of the fiacre. He +has gained the information he sought. It has come to his hand at the +very time he was chafing most at his inability to go in quest of it. + +"So your interruption was the more provoking," continues Cecilia, her +indignation puffing out and ruffling its feathers at the recollection of +her wrongs, "as it was our last chance of meeting; however, you cut your +own throat, as he evidently knew something very interesting about your +dear friends; something which he does not generally tell people, and +which he would not have told me only that he saw at once I was no blab." + +Jim shivers. He had only just been in time then--only just in time to +stop the mouth of this blatant backbiter in priest's raiment. His +companion looks at him curiously. + +"Are you cold," she asks, "or did a goose walk over your grave? Why did +you shiver?" + +He pulls himself together. "I was shivering," he says, compelling +himself to assume the rallying tone in which he is apt to address the +girl beside him, "at the thought of the peril I had saved you from. My +poor Cis, have not you and I suffered enough already at the hands of the +Church?" + +She reddens. "Though I do not pretend to any great sensitiveness on the +subject, I think you have worn that old joke nearly off its legs." + +But during the rest of the drive she utters no further lament over her +lost clergyman. + + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + + +It is past seven o'clock by the time that the party breaks up at the +door of the Anglo-Americain, and the dusk is gaining even upon the red +west that, in the upper sky, is insensibly melted into that strange +faint green that speaks, in so plain a language, of past and future fine +weather. + +"Are you coming to look in upon us to-night?" asks Amelia, with a rather +wistful diffidence, as her lover holds out his hand in farewell to her. + +He hesitates. In his own mind he had planned another disposition of his +evening hours to that suggested by her. + +"What do you advise?" he asks. "Shall you spend the evening in the usual +way?" + +"I suppose so," she answers. "I suppose we shall read aloud; you know +father likes to make our evenings as like our home ones as possible, and +Sybilla----" + +"Then it is no use my coming," interrupts he hastily. "I should have no +good of you;" then, seeing her face fall at his alacrity in seizing a +pretence for escape, he adds, "but, of course, if you wish it, dear--if +it would give you any satisfaction----" + +"But it would not," cries she precipitately, anxious as usual to be, if +possible, beforehand with his lightest wish; "when you are by, I always +lose my place"--laughing tremulously--"and father scolds me! No, you had +far better not come. I must not be greedy"--in a lower key. "I had quite +half an hour, nearly three-quarters, of you this afternoon." + +Without trusting herself to any further speech, she disappears, and he, +with a sigh that is only half of relief, turns away from the hotel door, +and, after a moment's hesitation, a moment's glance at the suave +darkening sky, and another at his watch, begins to walk briskly--not in +the direction of the Minerva. It is really not late, not much beyond +canonical calling hours, and he is almost sure that they dine at eight. +His face is set in the direction of the Piazza d'Azeglio, as he +addresses these reassuring remarks to himself. This is no case of +self-indulgence, or even of friendly civility. It is a question of +common humanity. Why should he leave them to endure their suspense for a +whole night longer than they need, merely to save himself the trouble of +a walk beneath the darkly splendid sky-arch, through the cheerful +streets, still full of leisurely foot-passengers, of the sound of +cracking whips and rolling carriages? + +He reaches No. 12 bis, and finds the porter's wife sitting at the door +of her _loge_, and smiling at him with all her white teeth, as if she +knew that he had come on some pleasant errand. He climbs the naked stone +stairs, and rings the bell. It is answered by Annunziata, who, smiling +too, as if she were saying something very agreeable, conveys to him that +the signora and the signorina are out. + +The intelligence baffles him, as he had not at all expected it. Probably +his disconcertment is written not illegibly on his features, as +Annunziata begins at once to inform him that the signore are gone to +drive in the Cascine, and that she expects them back every moment. It is +a good while before he quite masters her glib explanation, his Italian +being still at that stage when, if the careful phrase-book question does +not receive exactly the phrase-book answer, the questioner is at fault. +But the smiling invitation of the amiable ugly face, and the hospitably +open door--so different a reception from what the old bull-dog of an +English nurse would have accorded him--need no interpreter. After a +moment's hesitation he enters. He will wait for them. + +It is not until he has been left alone for a quarter of an hour in the +little _salon_ that he has time to ask himself nervously whether the +amount of his acquaintance with them, or the importance of the tidings +he brings, justifies his thus thrusting himself upon their evening +privacy. The table--since they have obviously but one sitting-room--is +spread for their simple supper--a coarse white cloth, a wicker-covered +bottle of rough Chian wine, and a copper pot full of delicately odorous +Freesias. He wanders restlessly about the room, looking at the +photographs. + +Tom--can it be Tom?--with a moustache, Charles with a beard and a +bowie-knife, Rose dandling her baby, Miriam hanging over her new +husband--all his little playfellows! How far the wave of time has rolled +them away from him! He strolls to the window whence, at sunset, the +green shutters have been thrown back, and stares out at the Piazza +garden, where the twilight is taking all the colour out of the Judas +flowers, thence to the piano upon which Schubert's "Trockne Blumen" +stands open. Absently he repeats aloud the song's joyous words: + + "Der Lenz wird kommen, der Winter ist aus!" + +Is her "Winter aus"? Judging by the look in her eyes, it has been a long +and cruel one. If he wishes to put the question to her, she comes in +just in time to answer it--enters laggingly, as one tired, blinking a +little from the sudden crude lamplight after the soft feather-handed +dusk. She is evidently unprepared to find anyone in the room, and gives +a frightened jump when she sees a man's figure approaching her. Even +when she recognises him the scared look lingers. It is clear that in her +sad experience surprises have been always synonymous with bad news. The +white apprehension written on her small face makes him so cordially +repent of his intrusion, that his explanation of his presence is at +first perfectly unintelligible. + +"I hope you will excuse my taking such a liberty. I know that I had no +business to come in when I was told you were out," he says incoherently, +"but--I thought--I hoped--I had an idea--that you might be glad to +hear----" + +He stops, puzzled how to word his piece of intelligence, whether or not +to name the person whose presence, whose very existence had yesterday +seemed to inspire with such terror the woman before him. She has sunk +down upon a chair, holding her hat, which she had taken off on entering +the room, nervously clutched in her hands, the little waves of her hair, +straightened out by the night wind, invading her forehead more than +their wont and giving her an unfamiliar look. + +"To hear what?" asks Mrs. Le Marchant, who, following her daughter more +leisurely, has come in just in time to catch the last few words of +Burgoyne's speech dissevered from their context. He begins that speech +again, still more stammeringly than before. + +"I thought you might be glad to hear that the--the inquiries you asked +me--I mean that I promised to make--that the person relating to whom +I--I made inquiries, leaves Florence to-morrow." + +He hears a long sighing breath that may mean relief that may mean only +distress at the introduction of the subject, from the chair beside him, +while the elder woman says in a low abrupt voice: + +"To-morrow? Are you sure? How do you know?" + +"He said so himself to-day." + +"Have you met him? Have you been talking to him?" + +It seems to Jim as if there were a sharp apprehension mixed with the +abruptness of her tone, as she puts the two last questions. He makes a +gesture of eager denial. + +"Heaven forbid! I have taken great care to avoid recalling myself to his +memory. I have no desire to renew my acquaintance with him. I--I--hate +the sight of him!" + +To an uninterested bystander there would have been something ludicrous +in the boyish virulence of the expression of hatred coming from so +composed and mature a man's mouth as Jim's. But neither of the two +persons who now hear it is in a position of mind to see anything +ridiculous in it. + +"Then how do you know that it is true?" + +"He told an--an acquaintance of mine; he was complaining of the +discomfort of his hotel, and, on her recommending him to change it, he +answered that it was not worth while, as he was leaving Florence +to-morrow." + +Again from the chair beside him comes that long low sigh. This time +there can be no question as to its quality. It is as of a spirit lifting +itself from under a leaden load. For a few moments no other sound breaks +the stillness. Then Mrs. Le Marchant speaks again in a constrained +voice: + +"We are extremely obliged to you for having taken so much trouble for +us, and it must seem very strange to you that we should be so anxious to +hear that this--this person has left Florence; but in so small a place +one is sure to be always coming into collision with those whom one would +rather avoid, and there are reasons which--which make it very--painful +to us to meet him." + +So saying, she tums away precipitately, and leaves the room hastily, by +another door from that by which they both entered, and which evidently +communicates with an adjoining bedroom. Elizabeth remains lying back in +her chair, looking as white as the tablecloth. She is always white, but +usually it is a creamy white, like meadow-sweet. Out of her eyes, +however, has gone the distressed look of fear, and in them is dawning +instead a little friendly smile. + +"You must have thought us rather impostors when you saw us at the +Accademia this morning, after leaving us apparently so shattered +overnight," she says, with a somewhat deprecating air. + +"I was very glad to find you so perfectly recovered," he replies, but he +does not say it naturally. When a person, habitually truthful, slides +into a speech not completely true, he does it in a bungling journeyman +fashion; nor is Burgoyne any exception to this rule. + +"I think we are a little like india-rubber balls, mammy and I," +continues Elizabeth; "we have great recovering powers; if we had not" +(stopped for a second by a small patient sigh) "I suppose that we should +not be alive now." + +He does not interrupt her. She must be a much less finely-strung +instrument than he takes her for if she does not divine the sympathy of +his silence, and sympathy so much in the dark as to what it sympathizes +with as his, must needs walk gropingly, if it would escape gins and +pitfalls. + +"But we should not have gone out sight-seeing this morning--we were not +at all in a junketing mood--if it had not been for Mr. Byng; he came in +and took us both by storm. It is difficult," her face dimpling and +brightening with a much more confirmed smile than the tiny hovering one +which is all that Jim has been able to call forth--"it is difficult to +resist a person who brings so much sunshine with him--do not you find it +so? He is so very sunshiny, your Mr. Byng. We like sunshine; we--we have +not had a great deal of it." + +It is on the very edge of his lip to tell her that when he had known her +she had had and been nothing but sunshine. But he recollects in time her +prohibition as to the past, and restrains himself. + +"When you look so kind and interested," she cries impulsively, sitting +up in her chair, with a transparent little hand on each arm of it, "I +feel a fraud." + +She stops. + +"I look interested because I feel interested," returns he doggedly; +"fraud or not--but" (in a distressed voice) "do not, even in joke, call +yourself ugly names--fraud or not, you cannot hinder me." + +"Do not be interested in me," says she, in her plaintive cooing voice; +"we are very bad people to get interested in, we are not repaying people +to be interested in. I think--that perhaps" (slowly and dreamily) "under +other circumstances we might have been pleasant enough. Mammy has +naturally excellent spirits, and so have I; it does not take much to +make us happy, and even now I often feel like poor little Prince +Arthur-- + + "'By my Christendom, + So I were out of prison and kept sheep, + I should be as merry as the day is long.' + +But then," sighing profoundly, "the moment that we begin to feel a +little cheerful, something comes and knocks us down again." + +There is such a blank hopelessness in the tone with which she pronounces +the last words, and, in his almost total ignorance of the origin of her +despair, it is so impossible to put his compassion into fit words, that +he can think of nothing better than to pull his chair two inches nearer +her, to assure her by this dumb protest of how little inclined he is to +accept her warning. + +"Are you sure that he is really gone--going, I mean," she asks, in an +excited low voice, "going to-morrow morning, as you say? Oh, I wish it +were to-morrow morning! But perhaps when to-morrow morning comes, he +will have changed his mind. Was he quite, quite sure about it?" + +"He said he was going to-morrow morning," replies Jim, repeating +Cecilia's quotation from her new friend's conversation with +conscientious exactness; "that it was not worth while to change his +hotel, as he was leaving Florence to-morrow morning." + +"He will not go," she says, shaking her head with restless dejection; +"nobody but would be loth to leave this heavenly place"--glancing out +affectionately through the open window, even at the commonplace and now +almost night-shaded Piazza garden--"we shall find that he is not gone +after all." + +"Nothing will be easier to ascertain than that fact," says Burgoyne, +eagerly catching at so easy an opportunity for help and service; "now +that I know which is his hotel, I can inquire there to-morrow morning, +and bring you word at once." + +"Could you, would you?" cries she, life and light springing back into +her dejected eyes at his proposal; "but no," with an accent of remorse, +"why should you? Why should we keep you running upon our errands? What +right have we to take up your time?" + +"_My time_," repeats he ironically. "I am like the German Prince +mentioned by Heine, who spent his leisure hours--hours of which he had +twenty-four every day--in----" + +"But if we do not rob you," interrupts Elizabeth, looking at him in some +surprise, "we rob Miss--Miss Wilson. What will she say to us?" + +"She will be only too glad," replies he stiffly, a douche of cold water +thrown on his foolish heart by the little hesitation which had preceded +her pronunciation of Amelia's name, showing that her interest in him had +not had keenness enough even to induce her to master his betrothed's +appellation. + +"Will she?" rejoins Elizabeth, quite ignorant of having given offence, +and with her eyes fixed rather wistfully upon his. "How good of her! and +how unlike most very happy people! Happy people are generally rather +exacting; but she looks good. She has a dear face!" + +He is silent. To hear the one woman's innocent and unconscious encomiums +of the other fills him with an emotion that ties his never ready tongue. +She mistakes the cause of his muteness. + +"I am afraid I have vexed you," she says, sweetly and humbly. "I had no +business to praise her to you; it was like praising a person to himself; +but do not be angry with me--I did not mean to be impertinent!" + +One small fragile hand is hanging over the arm of her hard lodging-house +arm-chair, and before he has an idea of what his own intentions are, it +is lying, without any asking of its consent, in his. + +"I will not--I will not let you say such things," he says, trembling. +"She _is_ good: she _has_ a dear face: and I love to hear you say so! +May I--may I bring her to see you?" + +As he makes this request, he feels the little fingers that are lying in +his palm give a nervous start; and at once, quietly but determinedly, +the captive hand is withdrawn. It and its fellow fly up to her face, and +together quite cover it from his view. Though, as I have said, they are +small, yet, it being small too to match them, they conceal it entirely. + +"You will not say no?" he cries anxiously. "I am sure you will not say +no. I shall feel very much snubbed if you do." + +Still no answer. Still that shielded face, and the ominous silence +behind it. He rises, a dark red spreading over his features. + +"I must apologize for having made the suggestion. I can only beg you to +forget that it was ever made. Good-bye!" + +He has nearly reached the door, when he hears the _frou-frou_ of her +gown, and turning, sees that her unsteady feet have carried her after +him, and that her face is changing from crimson to white and back again +with startling rapidity. + +"I thought you would have understood," she says faintly. "I thought that +you were the one person who would not have misunderstood." + +His conscience pricks him, but he is never very quick to be able to own +himself in the wrong, and before he can bring himself to frame any +sentence that smacks of apology and regret, she resumes, with a little +more composure and in a conventional voice: + +"You know--we told you--even at Genoa--that--that we are not going out, +that we do not wish to make any new acquaintances!" + +"I know," replies he, with some indignation, "that that is the hollow +formal bulletin you issue to the world in general, but I thought--I +hoped----" + +"Do not bring her to see me," she interrupts, abandoning her effort for +composure, and speaking in a broken voice, while her eyes swim in tears. +"She--she might be sorry--she--she might not like it--afterwards!" + +He looks back at her with an almost terrified air. Is the answer to her +sad riddle coming to him thus? Has he had the brutality to force her +into giving it? + +"You have been so kind in not asking me any questions, you have even +given up alluding to old times since you saw that it hurt me; but you +must see--of course you do--that--that there is something--in me--not +like other people; something that--that prevents--my--having any +friends! I have not a friend in the world" (with a low sob) "except my +mother--except mammy! Do you think" (breaking into a watery smile) "that +it is very silly of me, at my age, to call her 'mammy' still?" + +"I think," he says, "that I am one of the greatest brutes out, and that +I should be thankful if someone would kick me downstairs." + +And with this robust expression of self-depreciation, he takes his hat +and departs. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + + "Ihr Blumen alle, Heraus! Heraus!" + + +It was to German flowers that the above hest was addressed. If they obey +it, with how much more alacrity do the Italian ones comply with its glad +command. It is a week later, and now no one can say that "the spring +comes slowly up this way." Vines, figs, and mulberries, all are +emulously racing out, and the corn has added two emerald inches to its +juicy blades. The young plane-trees in the Piazza d'Azeglio, so skimpily +robed when first Jim had rung the _entresol_ bell of No. 12, are +exchanging their "unhandsome thrift" for an apparel of plenteous green, +and a wonderful Paulownia is beginning to hold up her clusters of +gloccinia bells. + +Jim has watched the daily progress of the plane-leaves from the low +window of No. 12's _entresol_. The daily progress? Is it possible that +he has been there every day during the past week? He asks himself this, +with a species of shock; and it is with a sense of relief that he finds +that one whole day has intervened, during which he had not heard the +sound of the electric bell thrilling through the apartment under the +touch of his own fingers. What can have taken him there, every day but +one? He runs over, in his mind, with a misgiving as to their +insufficiency, the reasons of his visit. For the first he had had an +excellent excuse. Surely it would have been barbarous not to have +imparted to the anxiously-watching pair the good news that the object of +their mysterious terror had really and authentically gone! On the second +day it seemed quite worth while to take the walk, in order to tell them +that he had accidentally learned the clergyman's destination to be +Venice, and his intention to return _via_ Milan and the St. Gothard. On +the third day, being as near to them as San Annunziata, it had seemed +unfriendly not to inquire after Mrs. Le Marchant's neuralgia. On the +fourth----He is pulled up short in his reminiscences. Why had he gone on +the fourth day? He can give no answer to the question, and slides off +from it to another. Which was the fourth day? Was it--yes, it was the +one on which the wind blew as coldly east as it might have done across +Salisbury Plain's naked expanse, and he had found Elizabeth sitting on a +milking-stool shivering over a poor little fire of green wood, and +blowing it with a pair of bellows. He had helped her to blow, and +between them they had blown the fire entirely away, as often happens in +the case of unskilled handlers of bellows, and Elizabeth had laughed +till she cried. + +And meanwhile, how many times has he been within the portals of the +Anglo-Americain? With all his arithmetic he cannot make it more than +twice. This neglect of his betrothed, however, is not of quite so +monstrous a cast as at the first blush it may appear. It is she herself +who, true to her life-long principle of shielding him from all +disagreeable experiences, has forbidden him her door. He can aid her +neither to bandage her father's swollen foot in the severe gout-fit +under which he is groaning, nor to allay Sybilla's mysterious +sufferings, which always display a marked increase in acuteness whenever +any other member of the family shows a disposition to set up claims as +an invalid. Cecilia, indeed, is ready enough to give her help in nursing +her father, but she has on former occasions shown such an unhappy +aptitude for tumbling over his swathed and extended leg, and upsetting +his physic all over him, that she is received with such objurgations as +his cloth will permit, so often as she shows her short nose within his +sick-room. Only twice in a whole week. Can Amelia have wished to be +taken quite so literally when she had bidden him stay away? There is +only one answer possible to this question, and he shows his +consciousness of it by at once raising himself out of the chair in which +he is sunk, and turning his steps hastily towards her. + +It is morning. The east wind is clean gone, and the streets are full of +the scent of the innumerable lilies of the valley, of which everybody's +hands are full. He stops a minute and buys a great sheaf for a +miraculously small sum, from one of the unnumbered sellers. It shall +make his peace for him, if indeed it needs making, which it has never +done yet. He almost smiles at the absurdity of the suggestion. He finds +Cecilia alone in the sitting-room, Cecilia sitting by the window reading +the _Queen_. Upon her large pink face there is a puzzled expression, +which is perhaps to be accounted for by the fact that the portion of the +journal which she is perusing is that entitled "Etiquette," and under it +are the answers to last week's questions, upon nice points of social +law, which, if you do not happen to have read the questions, have +undoubtedly an enigmatical air, as in the following instances: "Your +husband takes the Baronet's daughter, and you follow with the +Prince."--"We do not understand your question--babies never dine out," +etc. + +Upon Jim's entrance Cecilia lays down her paper, and at once offers to +go in search of her sister, with whom she shortly returns. He had been +quite right. There is no peace to make. Amelia greets him with her usual +patient and perfectly unrancorous smile, but his second glance at her +tells him that she is looking old and fagged. It is only in very early +youth that vigils and worries and self-denials do not write their names +upon the skin. + + +"How--how pale you are!" he says. If he had given utterance to the word +that hovered on his lips, he would have cried, "how yellow!" + +"It would be very odd if she did not," says Cecilia with a shrug, +looking up from her "Etiquette," to which she has returned; "she has sat +up three nights with father, and last evening Sybilla bid us all +good-bye. You know she never can bear anybody else to be ill, and when +father has the gout she bids us all good-bye--and Amelia is always taken +in and sheds torrents of tears--do not you, Amelia?" + +Amelia has subsided rather wearily into a chair. "She really thinks that +she is dying," says she apologetically--"and who knows? some day perhaps +it may come true." + +"Not it," rejoins her sister, with an exasperated sniff "she will see us +all out--will not she, Jim?" + +"I have not the remotest doubt of it," replies he heartily; and then his +conscience-struck eyes revert to his betrothed's wan face, all the +plainer for its wanness. "No sleep, no fresh air," in an injured tone, +checking off the items on his fingers. + +"But I have had fresh air," smiling at him with pale affection; "one day +Mrs. Byng took me out for a drive. Mrs. Byng has been very kind to me." + +She does not lay the faintest invidious accent on the name, as if +contrasting it with another whose owner had been so far less kind; it is +his own guilty heart that supplies the emphasis. His only resource is an +anger which--so curiously perverse is human nature--is not even feigned. + +"You can go out driving with Mrs. Byng then, though you could not spare +time to come out with me," he says in a surly voice. + +She does not defend herself but her lower lip trembles. + +"Come out with me now," he cries, remorse giving a harshness even to the +tone of the sincerely-meant invitation. "You look like a geranium in a +cellar; it is a divine day, a day to make the old feel young, and the +young immortal; come out and stay out with me all day. I will take you +wherever you like. I will----" + +The genuine eagerness of his proposal has tinged her sickly-coloured +cheek with a healthier hue for the moment, but she shakes her head. + +"I could not leave father this morning; he will not take his medicine +from anyone else, and he likes me to sit with him while he eats his +arrowroot." + +The only sign of approval of this instance of filial piety given by Jim +is that he rises and begins to stamp irritably about the room. + +"He is really not at all exacting," continues Amelia in anxious +deprecation; "he was quite pleased just now when I told him that Mrs. +Byng was going to take me to a party at the Villa Schiavone this +afternoon. He said----" + +"Mrs. Byng! Mrs. Byng again!" + +This is not what Mr. Wilson said, but is the expression of the unjust +wrath which Burgoyne, feeling it much pleasanter to be angry with +someone else than himself is artificially and not unsuccessfully +fostering. Again Amelia's lip quivers. + +"I thought," she says gently, "if--if you have no other engagement this +afternoon; if--if you are free----" + +Nothing can be milder than the form which this suggestion takes, and yet +there is something in its shape that provokes him. + +"Free!" he interrupts tartly, "of course I am free! Have I a gouty +father and a hysteric sister? Why should not I be free?" + +"I am very glad to hear it," rejoins she--the light that his first +proposal to take her out had brought into her face growing brighter and +more established--"because in that case there is nothing to prevent your +meeting us at the villa, and----" + +"And seeing you and Mrs. Byng walking about with your arms round each +other's necks, like a couple of schoolgirls," cries he, with a sort of +spurious grumpiness. + +"I can't think why you should object to Amelia walking about with her +arm round _Mrs._ Byng's neck," says Cecilia, whose attention to her +"Etiquette" is apparently not so absorbing but that she has some to +spare for the conversation going on in her neighbourhood. + +They all laugh a little; and harmony being restored, and Jim graciously +vouchsafing to forgive Amelia for having ignored her for a sennight, she +returns to her patient, and he to his hotel, where he is at once, +contrary to his wish, pounced upon by Byng. + +For some reason, which he would be puzzled to explain to himself, he has +for the last week rather avoided his friend's company--a task rendered +easier by the disposition manifested by the young man's mother to +monopolize him, a disposition to which Burgoyne has felt no inclination +to run counter. It is without enthusiasm that he receives Byng's +expressions of pleasure in their accidental meeting. + +"I have been searching for you, high and low." + +"Have you?" + +"Where have you been?" + +"I have been to the Anglo-Americain"--with a flash of inward +self-congratulation at this query having been put to-day, instead of +yesterday, or the day before. The other looks disappointed. + +"To the Anglo-Americain? I thought--I hoped; have you--seen _them_ +lately?" + +Burgoyne has ceased to feign lack of understanding to whom the personal +pronoun refers, and he answers with as much carelessness as at a +moment's notice he can put on: "Why, yes, I have, once or twice." + +"Do they--do not they think it strange of me not to have been near them +all this time?" + +"They may do"--dryly. + +"They did not say so?" + +"They did not; perhaps"--sarcastically--"the subject was too acutely +painful for them to allude to." + +Frequently as he has exposed himself to them, his Mentor's sneers never +fail to send the crimson racing into Byng's face, and it finds its way +there now. It does not, however, prevent his proceeding, after a +confused moment or two, with his anxious catechism. + +"She--she has not referred to the subject?" + +"What subject?" + +"To--to me?" + +"She has never mentioned your name. Stay"--his veracity winning a +reluctant victory over his ill-nature--"one day she said that you were +sunshiny, and that she liked sunshine." + +As he speaks he looks down at his boots, too unaffectedly annoyed at the +justification of Elizabeth's epithet which its retailing has worked on +Byng's countenance to be able to contemplate him with any decent +patience. But there is enough evidence in the boy's voice of the effect +wrought upon him by Miss Le Marchant's adjective to make his comrade +repent very heartily of having repeated it. + +"I should have been over," says Byng in a low eager way, "every day, +every hour, as often as they would have received me, only that I could +not leave my mother; and she--she has taken them _en grippe_!" + +"_En grippe?_ Your mother?" repeats Jim, too honestly and disagreeably +startled by this piece of news to be able any longer to maintain his +ironical manner; "why?" + +The other shrugs his shoulders dispiritedly. + +"I have not an idea; it cannot be because they did not seem to wish to +be introduced to her at the Accademia the other day; she is quite +incapable of such pettiness, and she admired HER so tremendously at +first, did not she? You heard her; but since then she has taken it into +her head that there is something--I cannot bear even to say it"--dashing +his hat and gloves vehemently upon the table--"something _louche_, as +she calls it, about her. Mother thinks that she--she--she"--sinking his +voice to an indistinct half-whisper--"has--has gone off the rails some +time or other. Can you conceive?"--raising his tone again to one of the +acutest pain and indignation--"that anyone--any human being could look +in her face and harbour such a notion for a single instant?" + +He stares with eyes ablaze with wrathful pity at his friend's face, +expecting an answering outbreak to his own; but none such comes. +Burgoyne only says, in a not much more assured key than that which the +young man had employed: + +"How--how can such an idea have got into your mother's head?" + +"I do not know, but it is there; and what I wanted you, what I have been +searching everywhere for you for, is to ask you to--to set her right, at +once, without any delay. It is unbearable that she should go on thinking +such things, and nothing could be easier for you, who know them so well, +who know all about them!" + +Burgoyne is at first too much stupefied by this appeal, and by the +impossibility of answering it in a satisfactory manner, to make any +response at all; but at length: + +"Know all about them?" he says, in a voice whose surface impatience +hides a much profounder feeling. "Who dares ever say that he knows all +about any other living soul? How many times must I tell you that, until +we met at Genoa, I had not set eyes on Miss Le Marchant for ten good +years?" + +At the tone of this speech, so widely different from the eager +acceptance of the suggested task which he had expected, Byng's face +takes on a crestfallen, almost frightened look. + +"But when you knew them," he says, "in Devonshire, they--they were all +right then, were not they? they were well thought of?--there was nothing +against them?" + +"Good Heavens--no!" replies Jim heartily, thankful that the appeal is +now so worded as to enable him to give a warm testimony in favour of his +poor friends. "There was not a family in all the neighbourhood that +stood so high. Everybody loved them; everybody had a good word for +them." + +Byng's countenance clears a little. + +"And there is no reason--you have no reason for supposing anything +different now?" + +Jim stirs uneasily in his chair. Can he truthfully give the same +convinced affirmative to this question as to the last? It is a second or +two before he answers it at all. + +"The facts of life are enough for me; I do not trouble myself with its +suppositions." + +He gets up and walks towards the door as he speaks, resolved to bring to +an end this to him intolerable catechism. + +"But you must have an opinion--you must think," cries the other's voice, +persistently pursuing him. He turns at bay, with the door-handle in his +hand, his eyes lightening. + +"I asked her permission to bring Amelia to see her," he says, in a low +moved voice; "if I had thought as ill of her as your mother does, do you +think I should have done that?" + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + + CAMILLE.--"Que me conseilleriez-vous de faire le jour ou je + verrais que vous ne m'aimez plus?" + + +There is no greater fiction than that for time to go quickly implies +that it must needs go pleasantly. Jim has seldom spent a more +disagreeable period than the hours which follow his conversation with +Byng, and which he passes in his own bedroom, with his elbows on the +window-ledge, looking blankly out at the Piazza, and at the great +"Bride" of Arnolpho's planning, the church of Santa Maria Novella. And +yet, when the city clocks, which have chimed unnoticed by him several +times, at length convey to his inattentive ear what the hour is, he +starts up, shocked and confused at its lateness. He had meant to have +reached the Villa Schiavone in time to receive Amelia, and now she must +have long preceded him, and be attributing his tardiness to some fresh +neglect and indifference. In five minutes he has rearranged his dress, +and jumped into a fiacre. Through the Porta Romana, and up between the +straight row of still and inky cypresses, up and up to where the villa +door, promising so little and performing so much, opens as so many do, +straight upon the road. + +The day has changed its ravishing blue gaiety for a pensive cloudy +gloom, and the guests at the villa are walking about without any +sunshades. They are numerous, though few indeed in comparison of the +Banksia roses on the laden wall, over which, too, a great wistaria--put +in, as the host with a just pride relates, only last year--is hanging +and flinging its lilac abundance. And seen above its clusters, and above +the wall, what a view from this raised terrace! Jim is really in a hurry +to find Amelia, and yet he cannot choose but stop to look at it--from +Galileo's tower on the right, to where, far down the plain of the Arno, +Carrara loses itself in mist. It is all dark at first, sullen, +purple-gray, without variation or stir--city, Duomo, Arno, Fiesole, and +all her chain of sister-hills--one universal frown over every slope and +jag, over street and spire, over Campanile with its marbles, and Santa +Croce with its dead. But now, as it draws on towards sun-setting, in the +western sky there comes a beginning of light, a faint pale tint at +first, but quickly broadening across the firmament, while the whole huge +cloud canopy is drawn aside like a curtain, and, as a great bright eye +from under bent brows, the lowering sun sends arrows of radiance over +plain, and river, and city. All of a sudden there is a vertical rain of +dazzling white rays on the plain, and the olive shadows, merged all the +afternoon in the universal gray, fall long and soft upon the blinding +green of the young corn. He has forgotten Amelia. Oh, that that other, +that creature herself made out of sun-rays and sweet rain-drops, were +beside him, her pulses beating, as they so surely would, to his tune, +her whole tender being quivering with delicate joy at this heavenly +spectacle. + +Someone touches him on the shoulder, and he starts violently. Has the +intensity of his invocation called her spirit out of her light body, and +is she indeed beside him? + +"What a bad conscience you must have! Did you think that I was a +bailiff?" cries Mrs. Byng, laughing. + +"Where is Amelia?" he asks, rather curtly, the memory of Byng's +communication about his mother being too fresh in his mind to make it +possible for him to answer her in her own rallying key. "What have you +done with Amelia?" + +"What a 'Stand-and-deliver' tone!" says she, laughing still, but looking +not unnaturally surprised. "Well, where is she?" glancing round. "She +was here five minutes ago with Willy. Poor Amelia!" lowering her voice +to a more confidential key. "I am so glad you have come at last; she is +patience personified. I must congratulate you upon the excellent +training into which you have got her, but I think that she was beginning +to look a little anxious." + +"And _I_ think that you have been giving the reins to your imagination, +as usual," replies he, walking off in a huff. + +There is another delightful garden at the back of the villa, and there, +having failed to find her in the first, he now with growing irritation +at her for not being more immediately conspicuous, seeks Amelia. It is a +sheltered leisurely paradise, where white rose-trees, with millions of +bursting buds, are careering over the walls in leafy luxuriance, where +double wallflowers--bloody warriors, one should call them, if one could +connect any warlike idea with this Eden of scented peace--stocks in +fragrant row are flowering as we Britons never see them flower in our +chary isle, save in the plates of a Gardeners' Chronicle. But among them +he finds no trace of his homely English blossom. He finds, indeed, him +who had been named as her late companion, Byng; but it is not with +Amelia, but with one of the pretty young daughters of the house that he +is pacing the straight walk in lively dialogue. Jim accosts him +formally: + +"I understood that Miss Wilson was with you? Do you happen to know where +she is?" + +Byng stops short in his leisurely pacing. + +"Why, where is she?" he says, looking round, as his mother had done, but +with a more guilty air. "She was here five minutes ago. Where can she +have disappeared to?" + +It is but too obvious that in greeting and being greeted by their +numerous acquaintances, both poor Amelia's chaperon and that chaperon's +son have completely forgotten her existence. Always nervously afraid of +being burdensome, Jim feels convinced from what he knows of her +character that she is going about in unobtrusive forlornness, the +extreme smallness of her Florentine acquaintances making it unlikely +that she has found anyone to supply the place of the friends who have +become so entirely oblivious of her. The conviction, pricking his +conscience as he hastens contritely away from the vainly-repentant Byng, +lends speed and keenness to his search. But thorough and earnest as it +is, it is for some time quite unsuccessful. She makes one of no group, +she loiters under no Banksia rose-bower, she is no gazer from the +terrace at gold-misted valley or aureoled town, she is to be found +neither in hidden nook, nor evident path. She is not beneath the loggia, +she is nowhere out-of-doors. She must then, in her loneliness, have +taken refuge in the house. He finds himself in a long, noble room, with +a frescoed ceiling, a room full of signs of recent habitation and recent +tea, but which has apparently been deserted for the sunset splendours on +the terrace. He can see no single occupant. He walks slowly down it to +assure himself of the fact of its entire emptiness. + +By a singular and unaccountable freak of the builders, the windows are +set so high in the wall that each has had to have a little raised dais +erected before it to enable the inmates to look comfortably out. Upon +each small platform stands a chair or two, and low over them the +curtains sweep. As he passes one recess, he notices that the drapery is +stirring a little, and examining more closely, sees the tail of a +well-known gown--of that gown which has met with his nearest approach to +approval among Amelia's rather scanty stock--peeping from beneath the +stiff rich folds of the old Italian brocade. It is the work of a second +to sweep the latter aside, and discover his poor _fiancee_ all alone, +and crouching desolately in a low arm-chair. There is something so +unlike her in the attitude, something so different from her usual +uncomplaining, unpretending fortitude, something so disproportioned to +the cause--his own careless but not criminal delay, as he supposes--in +the despair evidenced by her whole pose, that he feels at once terrified +and angry. In a second he, too, has stepped up on to the little platform +beside her. + +"Amelia!" he cries. "Amelia! What are you doing up here? With whom are +you playing hide-and-seek?" + +Her words and her smiles are apt to be prompt enough, Heaven knows, to +spring out, answering his least hint; but now she neither speaks nor +moves a muscle of her face. She scarcely starts at all at his sudden +apparition and address, and no light comes across her features--those +features which, now that he looks at them more closely, he sees to be +set in a much more pinched pallor than even three watching nights and a +week of airless worry can account for. + +"Are you ill?" + +"No; I am not ill." + +The sting of irritation which, mixed with genuine alarm, had besieged +Jim's mind on his first realizing her crouched and unnatural attitude, +now entirely supersedes any other feeling. Is the accidental delay of +half an hour, an hour, say even an hour and a half, enough to justify +such a parade of anguish as this? + +"Is it possible," he inquires, in a tone of cold displeasure, "that I am +to attribute this--this state of things--to my being accidentally late? +It was a mere accident: it is not like you to make a scene. I do not +recognise you; I am very sorry that I was late, and that I have made you +angry." + +The chill reproach of his words seems to rouse her to a state more akin +to her natural one, to the humble and unexacting one which is habitual +to her. + +"Angry!" she repeats: "angry with you for being late? Oh, you are quite +mistaken! In all these years how often have I been angry with you?" + +There is such a meek upbraiding in her tone that his ill-humour gives +way to a vague apprehension. + +"Then what is it?" he cries brusquely; "what is it all about? I think I +have a right to ask you that; since I saw you last something must have +happened to you to produce this extraordinary change." + +She heaves a long dragging sigh. + +"Something has happened to me; yes, something has happened!" + +"But what--what kind of a something? I have a right to know--I insist +upon knowing; tell me!" + +He has grasped both her hands, whose unnatural coldness he feels even +through her rather ill-fitting gloves. So strange and mean a thing is +human nature that even at this moment it flashes across him, with a +sense of annoyance, what bad gloves Amelia always wears. However, he is +not troubled with them long, for she takes them and her cold hands +quietly back. + +"I will tell you, there is no question of insisting. I should have told +you anyhow; but not _here_"--glancing nervously round the dropped +curtains--"not now!" + +"Why not here? Why not now?" + +Her face quivers. + +"I could not," she says piteously. "I do not quite know how I shall get +through telling it; it must be somewhere--somewhere where it will not +matter if I do break down!" + +He stares at her in an unfeigned bewilderment, again slightly streaked +with wrath. + +"Have you gone mad, Amelia? or are you taking a leaf out of Sybilla's +book? If you do not clear up this extraordinary mystification at once, I +shall be compelled to believe either the one or the other." + +Again her face contracts with pain. + +"Oh, if it were only a mystification!" she says, with a low cry. "I +cannot tell you here; it is physically impossible to me. But do not be +afraid"--with an accent of bitterness, which he is quite at a loss to +account for--"you shall not have long to wait; I will tell you, without +fail, to-morrow; to-morrow morning, if you like. Come as early as you +please, I shall be ready to tell you; and now would you mind leaving me? +I want to have a few moments to myself before I see anybody--before I +see Mrs. Byng; will you please leave me?" + +It is so apparent that she is in deadly earnest, and resolute to have +her request complied with, that he can do nothing but step dizzily down +off the little dais, feeling as if the world were turning round with +him. + +A quarter of an hour later he sees her leaving the party with Mrs. Byng, +looking as simple, as collected, and not very perceptibly paler than +usual. + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + + +There is always something in the nature of a mountain in a night that is +interposed between us and either any promised pleasure or any threatened +pain. In the case of pleasure, we are naturally in a hurry to scale it, +in order to see how full of sunshine and flowers is the happy valley on +the other side; and in the case of pain, we are all scarcely less eager +to ascertain how deep is the abyss, how choking the swamp, how angry the +waves that wait us beyond the dusty hill. + +Burgoyne has no expectation of finding anything agreeable on the further +slope of his mountain, and yet the time seems long to him, till he has +climbed its crest, and slidden down its other side. Early and splendid +as is the new light that takes possession of him and his shutterless +bedroom, he upbraids it as a laggard; and the hours that pace by till +the one appointed for the explanation of yesterday's mystery seem to him +to hobble on crutches. What can Amelia have to say to him that needs +such a pomp of preparation? What can have turned Amelia into a Tragedy +Queen? What miracle can have made her take the imperative mood? For it +was the imperative mood unquestionably which, contrary to all precedent, +she had made use of when she had commanded him, most gently it is true, +since, being by her nature gentle, she can do nothing ungently, to leave +her. He absolutely laughs at the topsy-turviness of the idea. What can +she have to say that requires so carefully selected a spot to say it +in?--a spot where "it does not matter if she does break down." What, in +Heaven's name, can she be going to say that inspires her with such a +cold-blooded intention beforehand of breaking down? + +Jim's state of mind is something that of the Baron's in "On ne badine +pas avec l'amour," on hearing that his daughter's governess had been +turning somersaults in a field of luzerne. "Non, en verite, non, mon +ami, je n'y comprends absolument rien. Tout cela me parait une conduite +desordonnee, il est vrai, mais sans motif comme sans excuse." If she +were any other woman, he should ascribe her behaviour to some tiresome +but passing tantrum, evoked by his delay in appearing? But in the past +eight years how many hundred times has he kept her waiting? and has she +ever failed to meet him with the same meek good-humour that has not had +even a tinge of reproachful forgiveness in it. As she herself had said, +"In all these years how often have I been angry with you?" He has been +angry with her times out of mind, angry with her on a thousand unjust +and unkind counts; angry with her for her slowness, her bad complexion, +her want of a sense of humour; for a hundred things that she cannot +help, that she would have altered--oh, how gladly!--if she could! But +how often has she been angry with him? In vain he searches his memory, +hoping to overtake some instance of ill-humour, or even pettishness, +that may make the balance between them hang a little more equal. But in +vain. She has never been angry with him. And even now neither her face +nor her manner--whatever else of strange and unparalleled they may have +conveyed--have conveyed the idea of anger. + +But if not anger, what then can be the cause that has produced a change +so startling in one so little given to impulsive action or +eccentricities of emotion? Can she have heard anything about him? +anything to his discredit? He searches his conscience, but whether it be +that that organ is not a particularly sensitive one, or that it really +has no damaging facts to give up, it is silent, or almost so. He has +perhaps been rather slack in his attendance upon her of late, but at her +own bidding. At his visits to the Le Marchants' no one could take +exception, dictated as they so obviously have been by philanthropy, and +his conversations with Elizabeth--how few and scant! his heart heaves a +rebellious sigh at their paucity--might be proclaimed without excision +at the market cross. Our thoughts are our own, and are, moreover, so +safely padlocked in our minds that he does not think it worth while to +inquire whether, if his future wife could have looked in and seen the +restive fancies capering, saddleless and bridleless, there, she might +have been justified in assuming a crouching attitude and a sorrowfully +commanding manner. + +He is as far as ever from solving the problem, when--for once in his +life before his time at the rendezvous--he presents himself at the +familiar door. It is opened to him by Amelia herself. She has often done +it before, seeming to know by instinct his ring from that of any other +person, but to-day the familiar action disconcerts him. He had expected +to be received with a formality and pomp of woe such as yesterday had +seemed to threaten; and here is Amelia looking exactly like her ordinary +self, except that she is perhaps rather more carefully dressed than +usual; but that may be due to the fact of her having, for the first +time, assumed the fresh calico gown, which the high summer of the +Italian April morning seems to justify. Whether it be due to the calico +gown or not, there is an indisputable air of gala about her, and she is +smiling. A revulsion of feeling comes over the man, to whom her tragic +semi-swooning airs had given a wakeful night. It was a tantrum after +all, then; a storm in a teacup. And now her common sense has come to the +rescue, and she has seen the folly of quarrelling with her bread and +butter. These reflections naturally do not translate themselves into +responsive smiles on his face, but she does not seem to notice his dour +looks. + +"I have a proposal to make to you," she says, still smiling. "Father is +so well this morning, quite easy, and he has been wheeled into the +sitting-room to see Sybilla. She has been very good about him this time, +and quite believes that he has been really bad." + +"How good of her!" comments Jim grimly; "it would be so easy and so +amusing to play at having a swollen toe, would not it?" + +"And so," continues Miss Wilson, wisely ignoring his fleer at her +sister, "I am perfectly free, and I want you to take me somewhere, some +little drive or expedition; you see," with a conciliatory glance at her +own modest finery, "I counted upon your saying 'yes'; I dressed so as +not to keep you waiting." + +Every word of this sentence confirms Burgoyne in the idea implanted by +her first address. This is her _amende_, and she is quite right to make +it. But she would have been more right still if her conduct had not +rendered it necessary. + +Amelia is not the type of woman who through life will gain much by +pouts. Perhaps, by-and-by, very kindly and delicately, he may obliquely +hint this to her. But all that he says aloud is the rather stiff +acquiescence conveyed in the words: + +"By all means. I am quite at your service." + +"And now where shall we go?" continues Amelia, shutting the door behind +her and beginning to cross the hotel courtyard at his side; "that is the +next thing--not to any gallery or church, I think, if you do not mind; I +say such stupid things about Art, and the more I try, the stupider they +are; let us go somewhere into the country--I can understand the country. +I am not afraid of saying stupid things about it." + +Into Burgoyne's mind comes the odious thought that he would not put it +past his betrothed to say stupid things even about the Tuscan landscape, +but he only awaits her decision in a respectful silence while helping +her into a fiacre. + +"It would be a sin to be under any roof to-day but this one," she says, +looking up to the immeasurable azure bridge above her head; "would you +mind--could you spare time to go to Fiesole?" + +His only answer is to repeat the word Fiesole to the driver, who, with +the inevitable tiny poodle-shaven dog beside him, is awaiting the order +as to his destination. It is but a little way to Fiesole, as we all +know, but yet, as the slow hired vehicle crawls up the steep ascent, +with the driver walking alongside, or even lagging behind, there would +be time and opportunity to say a good deal. But Amelia says next to +nothing. Perhaps the heat makes her sleepy, for it is so hot, so hot +between the garden walls, where the rose hedges are beginning to show a +pale flush of plenteous pink among their multitude of green buds. Young, +indeed, just born as the roses are, the highway dust has already +powdered them with its ash-toned white. He does not know it at the time, +but those dust-filmed rosebuds have found a home in his memory from +which no after-sights, however numerous, will dislodge them. They have +reached the village, and left their carriage, and begun, silently still, +to ascend the steep lane up which the feet of most of Europe and America +have in turn climbed to see the famous view that rewards the little +effort. Past the cottages, whose inmates, tranquilly sitting in their +doorways, or leaning idly against their door-posts, have probably seen +all that is illustrious, notorious, history-making of the day, pass +pantingly. Is there a prime minister, a princess, a poet, a prima donna, +of the time, that has not toiled up the steep path to the welcome rest +of the bench on the high plateau, on the hillside? Jim and Amelia are +certainly not likely to figure in the annals of their time, but the +peasants look at them with as much or as little interest as if they +were. An immortal, unless his immortality is printed on his back in +letters as large as those that announce Colman's mustard to the world, +has, to the vulgar, very much the air of one of themselves. + +Our friends have reached the haven of the stone seat, and, thanks to the +earliness of the hour, have it all to themselves, save for a trio of +sunburnt women of the people, with handkerchiefs tied over their tanned +heads, who tease them to buy straw hand-screens. And when they have +bought a couple, and made it kindly but distinctly evident that no +amount of worrying will induce them to buy any more, even these leave +them in peace and descend the hill again, in search of newer victims. +They are alone under the sky's warm azure. Beneath their eyes spreads +one of those nobly lovely spectacles that Italy and spring, hand in +hand, alone can offer. To some, indeed, it may seem that the prospect +from the Bellosguardo side of the valley is even more beautiful, since +Fiesole, sitting so high as she does, dwarfs the opposite hills, and +makes the looker lose their wavy line. They seem flat in comparison, the +plain appears wider, the beloved city more distant, and does not show +the same exquisite distinctness of separate tower and spire and palace. +But yet such comparison is mere carping. Who can wish for a sight more +divinely suave and fair than this from the bench above Fiesole? Not a +breath of smoke dares to hang about the glorious old town, dimming its +lustre, and between them and it what a spread of manifold colour, of +more "mingled hue" than the rainbow's "purfled scarf doth show!" The +moon-tinted olives, twilight and ghostly, even in the dazzling radiance +of this superb morning hour, with the blinding green of the young corn +about their gray feet, the cypress taper-flames, the gay white houses, +terrace gardened, and, above all, the vast smile of the Tuscan heaven. + +At first Amelia's muteness seems natural and grateful to Jim, as the +outcome of the awe and hush that exceeding beauty breathes on the human +heart, but by-and-by, as it is prolonged beyond the limits that seem to +him fit or agreeable, it begins to get on his nerves. After having so +genuinely and wantonly alarmed him, has she brought him here, without +any expressions of regret or remorse, simply to steep herself in a +silent luxury of selfish enjoyment? After brooding resentfully on this +idea for a considerable time, he translates it into speech. + +"I thought that you had something to say to me?" + +It seems as if her soul had gone out into the sun and April-painted +champaign country, and that it is only with an effort and a sigh that +she fetches it home again: + +"So I have." + +"And how much longer am I to wait for it?" + +There is no indication of any capacity for patience in his tone. + +She brings her look back from the shining morning city, and fixes it +wistfully upon him. + +"Are you in such a hurry to hear?" + +The pathetic streak in her voice, instead of conciliating, chafes him. +What is the sense of this paraphernalia of preliminaries? Why not come +to the point at once? if indeed there is a point--a fact of which he +begins to entertain grave doubts. + +"I do not know what you call hurry," he replies drily; "I have been +awaiting this mystic utterance for sixteen or seventeen hours." + +Her sallow cheek takes on a pinky tinge of mortification at his accent. + +"You are quite right," she answers quickly; "I have no business to keep +you waiting. I meant to tell you as soon as we got here; I asked you to +bring me here on purpose, only----" + +"You told me that you must make the communication at some place where it +would not matter if you did break down," says he, rather harshly helping +her memory; "you must allow that that was not an encouraging exordium. +Do you look upon this"--glancing ironically round--"as a particularly +suitable place for breaking down?" + +Again that pain-evidencing wave of colour flows into her face. There is +such an unloving mockery in his displeased voice. + +"I shall not break down," she replies, forcing herself to speak with +quiet composure; "you need not be afraid that I shall. I know that +yesterday I was foolish enough to say the very words you quote, but I +was not quite myself then; I did not quite know what I was saying; I had +only just heard it." + +"_It?_ What IT? Is this a new riddle? For Heaven's sake let us hear the +answer to the first before we embark on any fresh one!" + +"It is no riddle," replies she, her low patient tones contrasting with +his exasperated ones, "nothing could be plainer; it was only that I +happened to overhear something rather--rather painful--something that +was not intended for me." + +His angry cheek blanches as his thought flies arrow-quick to the one +subject of his perennial apprehension. Someone has been poisoning her +ear with cowardly libels, or yet more dreadful truths about Elizabeth Le +Marchant. For a moment or two his tongue cleaves to the roof of his +mouth, then he says in a tone which he uselessly tries to make one of +calm contempt alone: + +"If you had lived longer in Florence, you would know how much importance +to attach to its tittle-tattle and _cancans_." + +She shakes her head with a sorrowful obstinacy. + +"This was no tittle-tattle--no _cancan_." + +Her answer seems but to confirm him in this first horrible suspicion. + +"It is astonishing," he says, in a strangled voice, "how ready even the +best women are to believe evil; what--what evidence have you of the +truth of--of these precious stories?" + +"What evidence?" she repeats, fastening her sad eyes upon him--"the +evidence of my own heart. I realize now that I have known it all along." + +Read by the light of his fears, this response is so enigmatic that it +dawns upon him with a flash of inexpressible solace that perhaps he may +be on the wrong track after all. His ideas are precipitated into such a +state of confusion by this blessed possibility that he can only echo in +a stupefied tone: + +"Have known what all along?" + +She has turned round on the stone bench upon which they have hitherto +been sitting side by side, and, as he in the eagerness of his listening +has done the same thing, they are now opposite to one another, and he +feels as well as sees her hungry eyes devouring his face. + +"That you are sick of me," she answers, in a heart-wrung whisper, "sick +to death of me--that was what she said." + +It is impossible to deny that Burgoyne's first impulse is one of relief. +He has been mistaken, then. Elizabeth's secret is in the same state of +precarious safety as her enemy's departure from Florence had left it in. +His second impulse--our second impulses are mostly our best ones, +equally free from the headlongness of our first, and the cold worldly +wisdom of our third--is one of genuine indignation, concern, and +amazement. + +"What who said?" + +"Mrs. Byng." + +His stupefaction deepens. + +"_Mrs. Byng_--Mrs. Byng told you that I was sick of you? Sick to death +of you?" + +"Oh, no," she cries, even her emotion giving way to her eagerness to +correct this misapprehension, "she did not tell _me_ so! How could you +imagine such a thing? She is far, far too kind-hearted; she would not +hurt a fly intentionally, and would be exceedingly pained if she thought +I had overheard her." + +He shrugs his shoulders despairingly. + +"_Je m'y perds!_ She told you, and she did not tell you; you heard, and +you did not hear." + +"I am telling it very stupidly, I know," she says apologetically, "very +confusedly; and of course I can't expect you to understand by instinct +how it was." She sighs profoundly, and then goes on quickly, and no +longer looking at him. "You know she took me to the party, but when we +reached the villa, I found that she knew so many people, and I so few, +that I should only be a burden to her if I kept continually by her side, +and as I was rather tired--you know that I had not been in bed for two +or three nights--I thought I would go into the house and rest, so as to +be quite fresh by the time you came. I fancied it was not unlikely you +might be a little late." + +His conscience, at the unintentional reproach of this patient +supposition, reminds him of its existence by a sharp prick. How many +times has her poor vanity suffered the bruise of being long first at the +rendezvous? + +"I discovered that chair by the window under the curtain, the one where +you found me." + +"Well?" + +"It was so quiet there, as everybody was in the garden, that I suppose I +fell asleep; at least I remember nothing more until suddenly I heard +Mrs. Byng's voice saying----" + +"Saying what?" + +"Her son was with her--he had brought her in to have some tea; it was to +him that she was speaking; she was asking him about me, where I was? +where he had left me? whether he had seen me lately? And then she said, +'Poor Amelia, Jim really does neglect her shamefully; and yet one cannot +help being sorry for him, too; it was such child-stealing in the first +instance, and he is evidently dead-sick of her! It is so astonishing +that she does not see it!'" + +There is something almost terrible in the calm distinctness with which +Amelia repeats the sentences that had laid the card-house of her +happiness in the dust. Certainly she keeps her promise to him to the +letter; she gives no lightest sign of breaking down. There is not a tear +in her eye, not a quiver in her voice. After a moment's pause, she +continues: + +"And then he, Mr. Byng, answered, 'Poor soul, it--it _is_ odd! She must +have the hide of a hippopotamus.'" + +Amelia has finished her narrative, repeating the young man's galling +comment, with the same composure as his mother's humiliatingly +compassionate ones; and for a space her sole auditor is absolutely +incapable of making any criticism upon it. He is forbidden, if he had +wished it, to offer her even the mute amends of a dumb endearment, by +the reappearance on the scene of a couple of the sun-scorched peasant +torments with their straw hand-screens. It is not likely that those so +lately bought should have worn out already; but yet they renew their +importunities with such a determined obstinacy, as if they knew this to +be the case; and it is not until they are lightened of two more, that +they consent once again to retire, leaving the warm bright plateau to +the lovers--if indeed they can be called such. + + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + + "True, be it said, whatever man it said, + That love with gall and honey doth abound; + But if the one be with the other way'd, + For every dram of honey therein found + A pound of gall doth over it redound." + + +"She was perfectly right," says Amelia, still speaking quite quietly; +"it is astonishing that I should not have seen it; and it _was_ +child-stealing; you were barely twenty-one, and I--I was not very young +for a woman even then--I was twenty-three. I ought to have known +better." + +For once in his life Burgoyne is absolutely bereft of speech. It is +always a difficult matter to rebut a charge of being dead sick of a +woman without conveying an insult in the very denial; and when there +lies a horrid substratum of truth under the exaggeration of the +accusation, the difficulty becomes an impossibility. + +"However, it might have been much worse," continues Miss Wilson; "just +think if I had overheard it only after I had married you, when I knew +that there was nothing but death that could rid you of me. I thank God I +have heard it in time." + +His throat is still too dry for him to speak; but he stretches out his +arm to encircle her in a mute protest at that thanksgiving over her own +shipwreck; but, for the first time in her life, she eludes his caress. + +"Child-stealing," she repeats, under her breath; "and yet"--with a +touching impulse of apology and deprecation--"you seemed old for your +age; you seemed so much in earnest; I think you really were;"--a wistful +pause--"and afterwards, though of course I could not help seeing that I +was not to you what you were to me, yet I thought--I hoped that if I +waited--if I was patient--if no one else--no one more worthy of you came +between us"--another and still wistfuller delay in her halting +speech--"you might grow a little fond of me, out of long habit; I never +expected you to be more than a little fond of me!" + +He has entirely hidden his face in his two hands, so that she is without +that index to guide her as to the effect produced by her words, and he +continues completely silent. Whether, even after her rude awakening, she +still, deep in her heart, cherishes some pale hope of a denial, an +explaining away of the reported utterances, who shall say? It is with a +half-choked sigh that she goes on: + +"But you could not; I am not so unjust as not to know that you tried +your best. Poor fellow! it must have been uphill work for you"--with a +first touch of bitterness--"_labouring_ to love me, for eight years; is +it any wonder that you failed? and I was so thick-skinned I did not see +it--the '_hide of a hippopotamus_' indeed! There could not be a juster +comparison; and now all I can do is to beg your pardon for having spoilt +eight of your best years--_your best years_"--with slow iteration; "but +come"--more lightly--"you have some very good ones left too; you are +still quite young; for a man you are quite young; the harm I have done +you is not irreparable; I think"--with an accent of reproach--"you might +ease my mind by telling me that the harm I have done you is not +irreparable!" + +Thus appealed to, it is impossible for him any longer to maintain his +attitude of disguise and concealment. His hands must needs be withdrawn +from before his face; and, as he turns that face towards her, she +perceives with astonishment, almost consternation, that there is an +undoubted tear in each of his hard gray eyes. + +"And what about the harm I have done to you?" he asks under his breath, +as if having no confidence in his voice; "what about the eight best +years of _your_ life?" + +A look of affection, so high and tender and selfless, as to seem to +remove her love out of the category of the mortal and the transitory, +dawns and grows in her wan face. + +"Do not fret about them," she answers soothingly, "they were--they +always will have been--the eight best years of my life. They were full +of good and pleasant things. Do not forget--I would not for worlds have +you forget--I shall never forget myself--that they all came to me +through you!" + +At her words, most innocent as they are of any intention of producing +such an effect, a hot flush of shame rises to his very forehead, as his +memory presents to him the successive eras into which these eight good +years had divided themselves: six months of headlong boyish passion; six +months of cooling fever; and seven years of careless, intermittent, +matter-of-course, half-tenderness. + +"Through _me_?" he repeats, with an accent of the deepest +self-abasement; "you do not mean to be ironical, dear; you were never +such a thing in your life; you could not be if you tried; but if you +knew what a _sweep_ you make me feel when you say the sort of thing you +have just said!--and so it is all to come to an end, is it? Good as +these eight years have been, you have had enough of them? You do not +want any more like them?" + +She says neither yes nor no. He remains unanswered, unless the faint +smile in her weary eyes and about her drooped mouth can count for a +reply. + +"And all because you have heard some fool say that I was tired of you?" + +The tight smile spreads a little wider, and invades her pale cheeks. + +"Worse than tired! _sick! sick to death!_" + +She is looking straight before her, at the landscape simmering in the +climbing sun, the divine landscape new and young as it was before duomo +and bell-tower sprang and towered heavenwards. Why should her gaze dwell +any more upon him? She has renounced him, her eyes must fain renounce +him too. As he hears her words, as he watches her patient profile, the +sole suffering thing in the universal morning joy, a great revulsion of +feeling, a great compassion mixed with as large a remorse pours in +torrent over his heart. These emotions are so strong that they make him +deceive even himself as to their nature. It seems to him as if scales +had suddenly fallen from his eyes, showing him how profoundly he prizes +the now departing good, telling him that life can neither ask nor give +anything better than the undemanding, selfless, boundless love about to +withdraw its shelter from him. His arm steals round her waist, and not +once does it flash across his mind--as, to his shame be it spoken, it +has often flashed before--what a long way it has to steal! + +"Am I sick of you, Amelia?" + +She makes no effort to release herself. It does him no harm that she +should once more rest within his clasp. But she still looks straight +before her at lucent Firenze and her olives, and says three times, +accompanying each repetition of the word with a sorrowful little +head-shake: + +"Yes! _yes!_ YES!" + +He will compel her to look at him, his own Amelia. Have not all her +tender looks been his for eight long years? He puts out his disengaged +hand, and with it determinately turns her poor quivering face round so +as to meet his gaze. + +"Am I sick of you, Amelia?" + +In the emotion of the moment, it appears to him as if there were +something almost ludicrously improbable and lying about that accusation, +in which, when first brought against him, his guilty soul had admitted +more than a grain of truth. Her faded eyes turn to his, like flowers to +their sun; the veracity of his voice and of his eager gray orbs--still +softened from their habitual severity by the tears that had so lately +wet them--making such a hope, as, five minutes ago, she had thought +never again to cherish, leap into splendid life in her sick heart. + +"Is it possible?" she murmurs, almost inaudibly, "do you mean--that you +are _not_?" + + * * * * * + +They go down the hill, past the cottages, and the incurious peasants, +hand in hand, her soul running over with a deep joy; and his occupied by +an unfamiliar calm, that is yet backed by an ache of remorse, and +by--what else? That "else" he himself neither could nor would define. He +spends the whole of that day with Amelia, both lunching and dining with +her and her family; a course which calls forth expressions of unaffected +surprise, not at all tinctured with malice--unless it be in the case of +Sybilla, who has never been partial to him--from each of them. + +"We have been thinking that Jim was going to jilt you, Amelia!" Cecilia +has said with graceful badinage; nor, strange to say, has she been at +all offended when Jim has retorted, with equal grace and much superior +ill-nature, that on such a subject no one could speak with more +authority than she. + +The large white stars are making the nightly sky almost as gorgeous as +the day's departed majesty had done, ere Jim finds himself back at his +hotel. His intention of quietly retreating to his own room is traversed +by Byng, who, having evidently been on the watch for him, springs up the +stairs, three steps at a time, after him. + +"Where have you been all day?" he inquires impatiently. + +"At the Anglo-Americain. I wonder you are not tired of always asking the +same question and receiving the same answer to it." + +"I am not so sure that I should always receive the same answer," replies +the other, with a forced laugh--"but stop a bit!"--seeing a decided +quickening of speed in his friend's upward movements--"my mother is +asking for you; she has been asking for you all the afternoon; she wants +to speak to you before she goes." + +"_Goes?_" + +"Yes, she is off at seven o'clock to-morrow morning--back to England: +she had a telegram to-day to say that her old aunt, the one who brought +her up, has had a second stroke. No!"--seeing Jim begin to arrange his +features in that decorous shape of grave sympathy which we naturally +assume on such occasions--"it is no case of great grief; the poor old +woman has been quite silly ever since her last attack; but mother thinks +that she ought to be there, at--at the end; to look after things, and so +forth." + +There is an alertness, a something that expresses the reverse of regret +in the tone employed by Mrs. Byng's son in this detailed account of the +causes of her imminent departure, which, even if his thoughts had not +already sprung in that direction, would have set Burgoyne thinking as to +the mode in which the young man before him is likely to employ the +liberty that his parent's absence will restore to him. + +"I offered to go with her," says Byng, perhaps discerning a portion at +least of his companion's disapprobation. + +"And she refused?" + +Byng looks down, and begins to kick the banisters--they are still on the +stairs--idly with one foot. + +"Mother is so unselfish that it is always difficult to make out what she +really wishes; but--but I do not quite see of what use I should be to +her if I did go." + +There is a moment's pause; then Burgoyne speaks, in a dry, hortatory +elder brother's voice: + +"If you take my advice you will go home." + +The disinterested counsel of wise elder brothers is not always taken in +the spirit it merits; and there is no trace of docile and unquestioning +acquiescence in Byng's monosyllabic-- + +"Why?" + +"Because, if you stay here, I think you will most likely get into +mischief." + +The young man's usually good-humoured eyes give out a blue spark that +looks rather like fight. + +"The same kind of mischief that you have been getting into during the +past week?" he inquires slowly. + +The acquaintance with his movements evidenced by this last sentence, no +less than the light they throw upon his own motives, stagger Jim, to the +extent of making him accept the sneer in total silence. Is not it a +richly deserved one? But the sweet-natured Byng is already repenting it; +and there is something conciliatory and almost entreating in the spirit +of his last remark: + +"I do not know what has happened to my mother," he says, lowering his +voice; "there is no one less of a _mauvaise langue_ than she, as you +know; but in the case of----"--he breaks off and begins his sentence +afresh; "she has been warning me against _them_ again; I can't find that +she has any reason to go upon; but she has taken a violent prejudice +against _her_. She says that it is one of her instincts; and you--you +have done nothing towards setting her right?" + +Perhaps it may be that his young friend's reported metaphor of the +"hippopotamus hide" has not served to render him any dearer to Jim; but +there is certainly no great suavity in his reply: + +"Why should I?--it is no concern of mine." + +"No concern of yours to stand by and see an angel's white robe +besmirched by the foul mire of slander?" cries Byng indignantly, and +lapsing into that high-flown mood which never fails to make his more +work-a-day companion "see blood." + +"When I come across such a disagreeable sight it will be time enough to +decide whether I will interfere or not. At present I have not met with +anything of the kind," returns he, resolutely putting an end to the +dialogue by knocking at Mrs. Byng's portal, within which he is at once +admitted. + +The door of the bedroom communicating with the _salon_ is open, and +through it he sees the lady he has come to visit standing surrounded by +gaping dress-baskets, strewn raiment, and scattered papers; all the +uncomfortable litter that speaks of an imminent departure. She joins him +at once, and, shutting the door behind her, sits down with a fagged air. + +"I hear," he begins--"Willy tells me--I am very sorry to hear----" + +"Oh, there is no great cause for sorrow," rejoins she quickly, as if +anxious to disclaim a grief which might be supposed to check or limit +her conversation--"poor dear old auntie!--the people who love her best +could not wish to keep her in the state she has been in for the last +year; oh, dear!"--sighing--"how very dismal the dregs of life are! do +not you hope, Jim, that we shall die before we come to be 'happy +releases'?" + +"I do indeed," replies he gravely; "I expect to be sick--dead-sick of +life long before I reach that stage of it." + +He looks at her resentfully as she speaks, but she has so entirely +forgotten her own application of the accented adjectives to his feelings +for Amelia, that she replies only by a rather puzzled but perfectly +innocent glance. + +"I never was so unwilling to leave any place in my life," she goes on +presently, pursuing her own train of thought; "I do not know how to +describe it--a sort of presentiment." + +He smiles. + +"And yet I do not think that there are any owls in the Piazza to hoot +under your windows!" + +"Perhaps not," rejoins she, with some warmth; "but what is still more +unlucky than that happened to me last night; they passed the wine the +wrong way round the table at the MacIvors. I was on thorns!" + +"And you think that the wine going the wrong way round the table gave +your aunt a stroke?" inquires Jim, with an irritating air of asking for +information. + +Mrs. Byng reddens slightly. + +"I think nothing of the kind; I draw no inference; I only state a fact; +it _is_ a very unlucky thing to send the wine round the wrong way: if +you had not spent your life among grizzly bears and cannibals you would +have known it too!" + +"There are no cannibals in the Rocky Mountains," corrects Jim quietly; +and then they both laugh, and recommence their talk on a more friendly +footing. + +"I am not at all happy about Willy." + +"No?" + +"It is not his health so much--his colour is good, and his appetite not +bad." + +"Except the Fat Boy in 'Pickwick,' I never heard of anyone who had a +better." + +"But he is not himself; there is something odd about him!" + +"Indeed!" + +"Have not you noticed it yourself?--do not you think that there is +something odd about him? Does not he strike you as odd?" + +"_Odd?_" repeats Burgoyne slowly, reflecting in how extremely +commonplace a light both the virtues and vices of his fellow-traveller +have always presented themselves to him; "it would never have occurred +to me that Willy was _odd_; I cannot"--smiling--"encourage you in the +idea that you have added one to the number of the world's eccentrics." + +She sighs rather impatiently at his apparently intentional +misunderstanding of her drift. + +"'Children are avenues to misfortune,' as somebody said, and I think +that, whoever he was, he was right. 'If Jacob take a wife of the +daughters of Heth, such as are those in the land, what good shall my +life do to me?'" + +"Why should you credit Jacob with any such intention?" + +"I do not half like leaving him here by himself." + +"_By himself?_ You count me as no one then?" + +"Oh yes, I do--I count you as a great deal; that is why I was so anxious +to speak to you before I went; of course I do not expect you to take +upon yourself the whole responsibility of him, but you might keep an eye +upon him." + +He shrugs his shoulders. + +"As I have to keep the other eye upon myself, I am afraid that the +effort would but make me squint." + +"It is his own generosity that I am afraid of--his self-sacrificing +impulses; I am always in terror of his marrying someone out of pure +good-nature, just to oblige her, just because she looked as if she +wished it." + +"Stevenson thinks that it does not much matter whom we marry, whether +'noisy scullions,' or 'acidulous vestals.'" + +"I do not care what Stevenson thinks: ever since Willy was in Eton +jackets, I have had a nightmare of his bringing me home as +daughter-in-law some poor little governess with her nose through her +veil, and her fingers through her gloves!" + +Burgoyne smiles involuntarily as a vision of Elizabeth's daintily-clad +hands flashes before his mental eye. + +"I think you overrate his magnanimity; I never saw him at all tender to +anyone whose gloves were not beyond suspicion." + +Mrs. Byng laughs constrainedly. + +"Well, if she has not holes in her gloves, she may have holes in her +reputation, which is worse." + +Jim draws in his breath hard. The tug of war is coming, as the preceding +leading remark, lugged in by the head and shoulders, sufficiently +evidences. At all events he will do nothing to make its approach easier +or quicker. He awaits it in silence. + +"These Le Marchants--as they are friends of yours--I suppose that I +ought not to say anything against them?" + +"I am sure that you are too well-bred to do anything of the kind," +replies he precipitately, with a determined effort to stop her mouth +with a compliment, which she is equally determined not to deserve. + +"I do not think I am; I am only well-bred now and then, when it suits +me; I am not going to be well-bred to-night." + +"I am sorry to hear it." + +"Whether they are friends of yours or not, I do not like them." + +"I do not think that that matters much, either to you or to them." + +"I have an instinct that they are adventuresses." + +"I know for a certainty "--with growing warmth--"that they are nothing +of the kind." + +"Then why do not they go out anywhere?" + +"Because they do not choose." + +"Because no one asks them, more likely! Why were they so determined not +to be introduced to me?" + +"How can I tell? Perhaps"--with a wrathful laugh--"they did not like +your looks!" + +She echoes his false mirth with no inferior exasperation. + +"Who is ill-bred now?" + +Her tone calls him back to a sense of the ungentleman-likeness and +puerility of his conduct. + +"I!"--he replies contritely--"undoubtedly I! but----" + +"Do not apologize," interrupts she, recovering her equanimity with that +ease which she has transmitted to her son; "I like you for standing up +for them if they _are_ your friends; and I hope that you will do the +same good office for me when someone sticks pins into me behind my back; +but come now, let us be rational; surely we may talk quietly about them +without insulting each other, may not we?" + +"I do not know; we can try." + +"I suppose"--a little ironically--"that you are not so sensitive about +them but that you can bear me to ask a few perfectly harmless +questions?" + +He writhes. "Of course! of course! what are they to me?--they are +nothing to me!" + +A look of incredulity, which she perhaps does not take any very great +pains to conceal, spreads over her face. + +"Then you really will be doing me a great service if you tell me just +exactly all you know about them, good and bad." + +"All I know about them," replies Jim in a rapid parrot-voice, as if he +were rattling over some disagreeable lesson--"is that they were +extremely kind to me ten years ago; that they had a beautiful place in +Devonshire, and were universally loved and respected: I hear that they +have let their place; so no doubt they are not so much loved and +respected as they were; and now you know as much about the matter as I +do!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. + + "Welcome ever smiles; and Farewell goes out sighing." + + +This last clause is not always true. For example, there is very little +sighing in the farewells made to Mrs. Byng by the two young men who see +her off at the Florence Railway Station. And Mrs. Byng herself has been +too much occupied in manoeuvring to get a few last private words with +each of her escort to have much time for sighing either. + +She would have been wounded if her old friend Jim had not come to see +the last of her, and she would have been broken-hearted if her son had +not paid her this final attention; and yet each necessarily destroys the +_tete-a-tete_ she is burning to have with the other. It is indelicate to +implore your adored child not to go to the devil in the presence of an +intimate friend, and it would give a not unnatural umbrage to that child +if you urged the guardian friend to check his downward tendency while he +himself is standing by. Nor do her two companions at all aid her in her +strategy; rather, they show a tendency to unite in baffling her, hanging +together round her like a bodyguard, and effectually hindering the last +words which she is pining to administer. Only once for a very few +minutes does she succeed in outwitting them, when she despatches Willy +to the bookstall to buy papers for her--an errand from which he returns +with an exasperating celerity. The instant that his back is turned, Mrs. +Byng addresses her companion in an eager voice of hurry and prayer: + +"You will keep an eye upon him?" + +Silence. + +"You will keep an eye upon him--promise?" + +"I do not know what 'keeping an eye upon him' means in your vocabulary; +often you and I do not use the same dictionary; until I know, I will not +promise." + +"You will look after him; _do_, Jim!" + +"My dear madam"--with irritation--"let me go and buy your papers; and +meanwhile urge _him_ to look after _me_; I assure you that it is quite +as necessary." + +"Fiddlesticks, with your unimaginative, unemotional nature----" + +"H'm!" + +"Your head will always take care of your heart." + +"Will it?" + +"While he--promise me at least that, if you see him rushing to his ruin, +you will telegraph to me?" + +"Certainly, if you wish it; I will telegraph, 'Willy rushing Ruin.' At +five-and-twenty centimes a word, it will cost you sevenpence halfpenny; +not dear at the price, is it?" + +The mother reddens. + +"You have become a very _mauvais plaisant_ of late, Jim; oh dear me! +here he is back again, tiresome boy!" + +It is with feelings tied into a knot of complications, which he scarcely +seeks to unravel, that Burgoyne walks away from the station, and from +the good-natured staunch woman, whose last few moments in fair Firenze +he has done his best to embitter. He is glad that she is gone, and he is +sorry that she is gone. He is remorseful at his gladness, and he is +ashamed of his sorrow, knowing and acknowledging that it results from no +regret for her companionship, which he had been wont to prize; but to +the consciousness that she had stood like an angel with a drawn sword +between her son and the Piazza d'Azeglio. Both angel and drawn sword are +steaming away now, covered by a handsome travelling cloak down to the +heels in a _coupe toilette_, and the road to the Piazza lies naked and +undefended, open to the light feet that are so buoyantly treading the +flags beside him. + +The step of youth is always light, but there is something aggressively +springy in Byng's this morning; and though he does not _say_ anything +offensively cheerful, there is a ring in his voice that makes his kind +friend long to hit him. He, the kind friend, is thankful when their ways +part, without his having done him any bodily violence. + +"You are late to-day," says Cecilia, as he enters the _salon_, giving +him a nod of indifferent friendliness, while Sybilla crossly asks him to +shut the door more quietly, and Amelia lays her hand lingeringly in his, +with a silent smile of rapture; "we began to think you had had a +relapse. I was just telling Amelia that the pace had been too good to +last--ha, ha!" + +Burgoyne has always found it difficult to laugh at Cecilia's jokes, and +his now perfect intimacy with her relieves him from the necessity of +even feigning to do so. + +"I have been seeing Mrs. Byng off," he replies, with that slight shade +of awkwardness in his tone which has accompanied his every mention of +the mother or son since his explanation with his betrothed. + +"You let her go without getting that wedding present out of her, after +all?" cries Cecilia, who is in a rather tryingly playful mood. + +"Gone, is she?" says Sybilla, with a somewhat ostentatious sigh of +resentful relief; "well, I, for one, shall not cry. I am afraid that she +was not very _simpatica_ to me; she was so dreadfully robust. Perhaps, +now that she is no longer here to monopolise him, we shall be allowed to +see something more of that nice boy." + +No one answers. Not one of her three listeners is at the moment disposed +to chant or even echo praises of the "nice boy." Sybilla perversely +pursues the subject. + +"I dare say that he has a delicacy about coming without a special +invitation," she says, "where there is an invalid; but you might tell +him that on my good days no one is more pleased to see their friends +than I; it does not even send my temperature up; you might tell him that +on my good days Dr. Coldstream says it does not even send my temperature +up!" + +Again no one answers. + +"You do not seem to be listening to what I am saying," cries Sybilla +fractiously; "will you please tell him, Jim?" + +Jim lifts his heavy eyes from the ugly carpet on which they have been +resting, and looks distastefully back at her. + +"I do not think that I will, Sybilla," he replies slowly; "I do not +think he cares a straw whether your temperature goes up or down. I think +that he does not come here because--because he has found metal more +attractive elsewhere." + +He makes this statement for no other reason than because it is so +intensely unpleasant to him, because he realizes that he must have to +face the fact it embodies, and to present it not only to himself, but to +others. And each day that passes proves to him more and more +conclusively that it _is_ a fact. He asks Byng no question as to the +disposition of his day. He sees but little of him, having, indeed, +changed the hours of his own breakfast and dinner in order to avoid +having his appetite spoilt by the sight of so much unnecessary radiance +opposite him; but he knocks up against him, flower-laden, at the Strozzi +steps; he notes the splendour of his ties and waistcoats; he grows to +know the _Elizabeth-look_ on his face, when he comes singing home at +evening, as one knows the look of the western clouds that the sun's red +lips have only just ceased to kiss, though no sun is any longer in +sight; and yet he does not interfere. He has received from the young +man's mother a hasty letter, pencilled in the train, not an hour after +she had quitted him; another more leisurely, yet as anxious, from Turin; +a third from Paris, and lastly a telegram from Charing Cross. All bear +the same purport. + +"Write; keep an eye upon him!" "Write; keep an eye upon him! Write!" + +And yet, though a full week has passed, though he sees the son of his +old ally drifting, faster than ever autumn leaf drifted on a flush +October river, to the whirlpool she had dreaded for him, yet he sends +her never a word. He writes her long letters, it is true, covers +telegram-forms with pregnant messages, but they all find their ultimate +home in the wood fire. When the moment comes, he finds it impossible to +send them, since, upon searching his heart for the motives that have +dictated them, he finds those motives to be no fidelity to an ancient +friendship, no care for the boy's welfare, but, simply and nakedly, the +satisfaction of his own spite, the easing of his own bitter jealousy. + +So the Florentine post goes out daily, bearing no tale of Byng's +backslidings to his native land, and Jim, brushing past him, answering +him curtly, never going nearer to the Piazza d'Azeglio than the +Innocenti--a good long street off--devotes himself to the frantic +prosecution of a suit long since won, to the conquest of a heart for +eight weary years hopelessly, irrecoverably, pitiably his. His presence +at the Anglo-Americain is so incessant, and his monopolizing of Amelia +so unreasonable, that Sybilla--for the first time in her life really a +little neglected--alternately runs up her pulse to 170 and drops it to +40. + +"And then you wonder that I am anxious to be married," says Cecilia, +accompanying her future brother-in-law to the door, on the day on which +the latter phenomenon has occurred, and wiping the angry tears from her +plump cheeks. "I make no secret of it, I _am_ madly anxious, I would +marry anyone, I am desperate. Just think what my life will be when +Amelia is gone; and though of course I shall be a great deal with +her--she has promised that I shall be almost always with her" (Jim +winces)--"yet of course it can't be the same thing as having a home of +your own." + +"We will do our best for you," replies he, with a rather rueful smile +and a sense of degradation; "but you know, my dear Cis, anybody can lead +a horse to the water, but it is not so easy to make him drink." + +"That is quite true," replies Cecilia, one of whose most salient merits +is an extreme unreadiness to be affronted, wiping her eyes as she +speaks, "and I have no luck; such promising things turn up, and then +come to nothing. Now, that clergyman the other day, whom we met at the +Villa Careggi--such a pleasant gentlemanlike man--he was on the look-out +for a wife, he told me so himself, and I know so much about the working +of a parish, and next day he was off, Heaven knows where!" + +Jim gives a slight shudder. + +"I do not think you had any great loss in him," he says hastily; then, +seeing her surprised air, "I mean, you know, that it is always said that +a man is a better judge of another man than a woman is, and I did not +like his looks; give us time, and we will do better for you than that." + +Cecilia can no longer accuse her future relation of any slackness in the +matter of expeditions. There is something of fever in the way in which +he arrives each morning, armed with some new plan for the day, giving no +one any peace until his project is carried out. It seems as if he must +crowd into the last fortnight of Amelia's stay in Florence all the +sight-seeing, all the junkets, all the enjoyment which ought to have +been temperately spread over the eight years of their engagement. + +One day--all nearer excursions being exhausted--they drive to Monte +Senario, that sweet and silent spot, happily too far from Florence for +the swarm of tourists to invade, where earth-weary men have set up a +rest scarcely less dumb than the grave in a lonely monastery of the +Order of La Trappe. Through the Porta San Gallo, along the Bologna Road +they go. It is a soft summer morning, with not much sun. Up, past the +villas and gardens, where the Banksia roses and wistarias are rioting +over wall, and berceau and pergola, climbing even the tall trees. Round +the very head of one young poplar two rose-trees--a yellow and a white +one--are flinging their arms; flowered so lavishly that hardly a pin's +point could be put between the blossoms. Up and up, a white wall on +either hand. The dust lies a foot thick on the road; thick too on the +monthly roses, just breaking into full pink flush; thick on themselves +as the endless mulecarts come jingling down the hill with bells and red +tassels, and a general air of what would be jollity were not that +feeling so given the lie to by the poor jaded, suffering beasts. Up and +up, till they leave stone walls and villas and oliveyards behind them, +and are away among the mountains. At a very humble little house that has +no air of an inn they leave the carriage, and climb up a rocky road, and +through a perfumed pine-wood, to where the Trappist Monastery stands, in +its perfect silence and isolation, on its hilltop, looking over its +fir-woods at the ranges of the Apennines, lying one behind the other in +the stillness of the summer-day; looking to distant Florence, misty and +indistinct in her Arno plain; looking to Fiesole, dwarfed to a +molehill's dimensions. + +"I am told that one of the brothers is an Englishman; I did not hear his +name, but he is certainly English," says Cecilia, as they mount the +shallow, grass-grown steps to the monastery door. "If I send up word +that I am a fellow-countrywoman, perhaps he will come out and speak to +me; I am sure that it would be a very nice change for him, poor fellow!" + +And it is the measure of the amount of Cecilia's acquaintance with the +rules of the Order, that it is only half in jest that she makes the +suggestion. But she does not repeat it to the lay-brother who stands, +civil yet prohibitory, at the top of the flight, and who, in answer to +Burgoyne's halting questions as to where they may go, politely answers +that they may go anywhere--anywhere, _bien entendu_, outside. So they +wander aimlessly away. They push open a rickety gate, and passing an old +dog, barking angry remonstrances at them from the retirement of a +barrel, step along a grassy path that leads they know not whither. Two +more young lay-brothers meet them, with their hands full of +leopard's-bane flowers, which they have been gathering, probably to deck +their altar with. + +Amelia has passed her hand through Jim's arm--since his late increased +kindness to her she has been led to many more little freedoms with him +than she had hitherto permitted herself--and though she is very careful +not to lean heavily or troublesomely upon him, yet the slight contact of +her fingers keeps him reminded that she is there. Perhaps it is as well, +since to-day he is conscious of such a strange tendency to forget +everything, past, present, and to come. Has one of the monks' numb hands +been laid upon his heart to lull it into so frozen a quiet? To-day he +feels as if it were absolutely impossible to him to experience either +pleasure or pain; as if to hold Elizabeth in his own arms, or see her in +Byng's, would be to him equally indifferent. His apathy in this latter +respect is to be put to the test sooner than he expects. Not indeed that +Elizabeth is lying in Byng's arms--it would be a gross misrepresentation +to say so, she being, on the contrary, most decorously poised on a +camp-stool--least romantic of human resting places--when they come +suddenly upon her and him in the course of their prowl round the +inhospitable walls. She is sitting on her camp-stool, and he is lying on +his face in the grass, just not touching her slim feet. + +The advancing party perceive the couple advanced upon before the latter +are aware of their nearness; long enough for the former to realize how +very much _de trop_ they will be, yet not long enough to enable them to +escape unnoticed. Jim becomes aware of the very second at which Amelia +recognises the unconscious pair, by an involuntary pinch of her fingers +upon his arm, which a moment later she hastily drops. His own first +feeling on catching sight of them--no, not his _very_ first--his very +first is as if someone had run a darning-needle into his heart--but +almost his first is to shout out to them in loud warning: + +"Be on your guard! we are close to you!" + +He will never forgive either himself or them if they ignorantly indulge +in any endearment under his very eyes. But they do not. There are no +interlacing arms to disentwine, nothing to make them spring apart, when +at length they look up and take in the fact--an unwelcome fact it must +needs be--of their invasion. + +On hearing approaching footsteps, Byng rolls over on his back in the +grass; on perceiving that most of the footsteps are those of ladies, he +springs to his feet. Elizabeth remains sitting on her camp-stool. + +"What a coincidence!" cries Cecilia, breaking into a laugh. + +They are all grateful to her for the remark, though it is rather a silly +one, as there is no particular coincidence in the case. Burgoyne is +irritatedly conscious that Amelia is covertly observing him, and before +he can check himself he has thrown over his shoulder at her one of those +snubbing glances from which, for the last ten days, he has painstakenly +and remorsefully refrained. It is not a happy moment to look at poor +Amelia, as she has not yet cooled down from the heat of her climb +through the fir-wood--a heat that translates itself into patchy flushes +all over her face, not sparing even her forehead. Elizabeth is flushed +too. She has not met Miss Wilson since she had declined Burgoyne's offer +of bringing his betrothed to see her, and in her deprecating eyes there +is a guilty and tremulous recollection of this fact. But below the guilt +and the deprecation and the tremor, what else is there in Elizabeth's +eyes? What of splendid and startling, and that comes but once in a +lifetime? Rather than be obliged to give a name to that vague radiance, +Jim turns his look back upon his own too glowing dear one. + +"Did you come here all alone? You two all alone? What fun!" asks +Cecilia, with an air of delighted curiosity. + +Again her companions inwardly thank her. It is the question that +both--though with different degrees of eagerness--have been thirsting to +ask. + +"Alone?--oh no!" replies Elizabeth, with that uneasy, frightened look +that Burgoyne has always noticed on her face when she has been brought +into unwilling relation with strangers. "My mother is here--she came +with us; why, where is she?"--looking round with a startled air--"she +was here a moment ago." + +A grim smile curves Jim's mouth. It is evident that the unhappy Mrs. Le +Marchant, worn out with her _role_ of duenna, has slipped away without +being missed by either of her companions. Would they have even +discovered her absence but for Cecilia's query? + +"Mrs. Le Marchant was here a moment ago," echoes Byng, addressing the +company generally; "but"--dodging his friend's eyes--"she said she was a +little stiff from sitting so long; she must be quite close by." + +"I will go and look for her," says Elizabeth, confused, and rising from +her rickety seat as she speaks; but Amelia, who is nearest to her, puts +out a friendly hand in prohibition. + +"Oh, do not stir!" she cries, smiling kindly and admiringly. "You look +so comfortable. Let _me_ go and search for Mrs. Le Marchant; +I--I--should be afraid to sit down, I am so hot. I should like to find +her; Cecilia will help me, and Mr. Byng will show us the way." + +It is not always that generous actions meet their meed of gratitude from +those for whose sake they are performed; and, though Burgoyne recognises +the magnanimity of his _fiancee's_ line of conduct, thankfulness to her +for it is not the feeling uppermost in his mind when, a few moments +later, he finds himself standing in uneasy _tete-a-tete_ over the seated +Elizabeth. + +"Will not you sit down?" she asks presently, adding, with a low, timid +laugh, "I do not know why I should invite you, as if"--glancing round at +the sun-steeped panorama--"this were my drawing-room." + +He complies, taking care to occupy a quite different six feet of herbage +from that which still bears the imprint of Byng's lengthy limbs. The +grass grows cool and fresh, full of buttercups and tall blue bugle; out +of them the gray monastery wall rises, in its utter lifeless silence, +with its small barred windows. Was ever any building, within which is +human life, so unutterably still? As he leans his elbow among the +king-cups, Jim says to himself that the lovers had chosen their place +well and wisely--that the consciousness of the austere, denied lives +going on so close behind them, in their entire joylessness, must have +given an added point, a keener edge to the poignancy of their own +enjoyment of the sweet summer day outside. + +"You have not been to see us for a long time," says Elizabeth presently, +in a small and diffident voice, after having waited until the +probability of his speaking first has become a mere possibility, and +even that a faint one. + +He replies baldly, "No." + +His look is fixed on a knoll, whence the monks must have gathered their +leopard's bane. They cannot have gathered much, so bounteously do the +gay yellow flowers still wave on the hillock. Nearer stands a colony of +purple orchises, and from them the eye travels away to the silent +fir-wood, to the range of misty hills and the distant plain, touched now +and again by a vague hint of sunshine, that makes one for the moment +feel sure that one has detected Duomo or Campanile. How many hill ranges +there are! One can count six or seven, like the ridges in a gigantic +ploughed field, one behind another--all solemnly beautiful on this +windless day of grave and ungaudy sweetness. Has the young man been +reckoning the ranks of the Apennines, that it is so long before he adds +a low-voiced, mocking question to his monosyllable? + +"Have you missed me very much?" + +The woman addressed seems in no hurry to answer. She has drawn her +narrow brown brows together, as if in the effort to hit truth in her +nicest shade in her answer. Then she speaks with a sort of soft +self-remonstrance: + +"Oh, surely! I _must_ have missed you--you were so extraordinarily, so +unaccountably kind to us!" + +There is not one of us who would not rather be loved for what we _are_ +than for what we _do_; so it is perhaps no wonder if the young woman's +reply strikes with an unreasonable chill upon the asker's heart. + +"You must have been very little used to kindness all your life," he +says, with some brusqueness, "to be so disproportionately grateful for +my trumpery civilities." + +She hesitates a moment, then: + +"You are right," she replies; "I have not received any great kindness in +my life--justice, well, yes, I suppose so--but no, not very much mercy." + +Her candid and composed admission of a need for mercy whets yet farther +that pained curiosity which has always been one of the strongest +elements in his uncomfortable interest in her. But the very sharpness of +that interest makes him shy away awkwardly from the subject of her past. + +"I always think," he says, "that there is something fatuous in a man's +apologizing to a lady for not having been to see her, as if the loss +were hers, and not his." + +"Is there? All the same, I am sorry that you did not come." + +This simple and unsophisticated implication of a liking for him would +have warmed again the uneasy heart that her former speech had chilled +had not he, under the superficial though genuine regret of her face, +seen, still shining with steady lustre, that radiance which has as +little been called forth by, as it can be dimmed by him or anything +relating to him. And so he passes by in silence the expression of that +sorrow which he bitterly knows to be so supportable. + +The still spirit of the day seems to have touched the very birds. They +sing a few low notes in veiled, chastened voices from the fir-wood, and +again are silent. The clock tells the hours in quarters to the doomed +lives inside the monastery, self-doomed to suffering and penance and +incarceration, even with the winning blue of the Tuscan sky above their +tonsured heads, with the forget-me-nots pressing their feet, and the +nightingales singing endless love-songs to them from the little dark +forest nigh at hand. + +"I suppose," says Elizabeth presently, in a reflective tone, "that the +fact is, when people are in your position--I mean on the brink of a +great deep happiness--they forget all lesser things?" + +He snatches a hasty glance of suspicion at her. Is this her revenge for +his neglect of her? But nothing can look more innocent or less ironical +than her small profile, bent towards the gigantic forget-me-nots and the +pulmonaria, azure as gentians. + +"Perhaps." + +"The big fish"--her little face breaking into one of her lovely smiles, +which, by a turn of her head from side to full, she offers in its +completeness to his gaze--"swallows up all the little gudgeons! Poor +little gudgeons." + +"Poor little gudgeons!" he echoes stupidly, and then begins to laugh at +his own wool-gathering. + +"And now I suppose you will be going directly--going home?" pursues she, +looking at him and his laughter with a soft surprise. + +"I hope so; and--and--you too?" + +She gives a start, and the sky-coloured nosegay in her hand drops into +her lap. + +"We--we? Why should _we_ go home? We have nothing pleasant to go to, +and"--looking round with a passionate relish at mountain, and suffused +far plain, and sappy spring grass--"we are so well--so infinitely well +here!" Then, pulling herself together, and speaking in a more composed +key, "But yes, of course we, too, shall go by-and-by; this cannot last +for ever--nothing lasts for ever. That is the one thought that has kept +me alive all these years; but now----" + +She breaks off. + +"But now?" + +Even as he watches her, putting this echoed interrogation, he sees the +radiance breaking through the cloud his question had gathered, as a very +strong sun breaks through a very translucent exhalation. + +"But now?" she repeats vaguely, and smiling to herself, forgetful of his +very presence beside her--"But now? Did I say 'But now?' Ah, here they +are back again!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. + + +"I am going to turn the tables on you," says Amelia next morning to her +lover, after the usual endearments, which of late he has been +conscientiously anxious not to scant or slur, have passed between them, +very fairly executed by him, and adoringly accepted and returned by her; +"you are always arranging treats for me; now I have planned one for +you!" + +She looks so beaming with benevolent joy as she makes this statement, +that Jim stoops and drops an extra kiss--not in the bond--upon her +lifted face. "Indeed, dear!" he answers kindly, "I do not quite know +what I have done to deserve it; but I hope it is a nice one." + +"It is very nice--delightful." + +"Delightful, eh?" echoes he, raising his brows, while a transient wonder +crosses his mind as to what project she or anyone else could suggest to +him that, at this juncture of his affairs, could merit that epithet; +"well, am I to guess what it is? or are you going to tell me?" + +Amelia's face still wears that smile of complacent confidence in having +something pleasant to communicate which has puzzled her companion. + +"We have never been at Vallombrosa, have we?" asks she. + +"Never." + +"Well, we are going there to-morrow." + +"Are we? is that your treat?" inquires he, wondering what of peculiarly +and distinctively festal for him this expedition may be supposed to have +above all their former ones. + +"And we are not going alone." + +"There is nothing very exceptional in that; Cecilia is mostly good +enough to lend us her company." + +"I am not thinking of Cecilia; I have persuaded"--the benevolent smile +broadening across her cheeks--"I have persuaded some friends of yours to +join us." + +It does not for an instant cross his mind either to doubt or to affect +uncertainty as to who the friends of whom she speaks may be; but the +suggestion is so profoundly unwelcome to him, that not even the +certainty of mortifying the unselfish creature before him can hinder him +from showing it. Her countenance falls. + +"You are not glad?" she asks crestfallenly, "you are not pleased?" + +It is impossible for him to say that he is, and all that is left to him +is to put his vexation into words that may be as little as possible +fraught with disappointment to his poor hearer's ear. + + +"I--I--had rather have had you to myself." + +"Would you really?" she asks, in the almost awed tones of one who, from +being quite destitute, has had the Koh-i-Noor put into his hand, and +whose fingers are afraid to close over the mighty jewel; "would you +really? then I am sorry I asked them; but"--with intense +wistfulness--"if you only knew how I long to give you a little pleasure, +a little enjoyment--you who have given me so infinitely much." + +If Miss Wilson were ever addicted to the figure of speech called irony, +she might be supposed to be employing it now; but one glance at her +simple face would show that it expressed nothing but adoring gratitude. +Her one good fortnight has spread its radiant veil backwards over her +eight barren years. + +He takes her hand, and passes the fingers across his lips, murmuring +indistinctly and guiltily behind them: + +"Do I really make you happy?" + +"Do you?"--echoes she, while the transfiguring tears well into her +glorified pale eyes--"I should not have thought it possible that so much +joy could have been packed into any fortnight as I have had crammed into +mine!" + +They have to set off to Vallombrosa at seven o'clock in the morning, an +hour at which few of us are at our cleverest, handsomest, or our best +tempered; nor is the party of six, either in its proportion of women to +men--four to two--or in its component parts, a very well adjusted one. +They are too numerous to be contained in one carriage, and are therefore +divided into two separate bands--three and three. Whether by some +manoeuvre of the well-meaning Amelia, or by some scarcely fortunate +accident, Burgoyne finds himself seated opposite to his betrothed and to +Elizabeth; while Byng follows in the second vehicle as _vis-a-vis_ to +Cecilia and Mrs. Le Marchant. There is a general feeling of wrongness +about the whole arrangement--a sense of mental discomfort equivalent to +that physical one of having put on your clothes inside out, or buttoned +your buttons into unanswering buttonholes. + + +Mrs. Le Marchant's face, as Burgoyne catches sight of it now and then, +as some turn in the road reveals the inmates of the closely-following +second carriage to his view, wears that uneasy and disquieted look which +always disfigures it when there is any question of her being brought +into personal relation with strangers. And Elizabeth, of whom he has +naturally a much nearer and more continuous view, is plainly +ill-at-ease. Miss Wilson has not thought it necessary to mention to her +lover how strong had been the opposition to her plan on the part of the +objects of it; nor, that it was only because her proposal was made _viva +voce_, and therefore unescapable, that it had been reluctantly accepted +at last. At first Burgoyne had attributed Elizabeth's evident +ill-at-easeness to her separation from Byng; but he presently discovers +that it is what she possesses, and not what she lacks, that is the chief +source of her _malaise_. During the latter part of his own personal +intercourse with her she had been, when in his company, sometimes sad, +sometimes wildly merry; but always entirely natural. Strange as it may +seem, it is obviously the presence of Amelia that puts constraint upon +her. Before the spirit of that most unterrifying of God's creatures, +Elizabeth's "stands rebuked." Once or twice he sees her inborn +gaiety--that gaiety whose existence he has so often noted as it +struggles up from under the mysterious weight of sorrow laid upon +it--spurt into life, only to be instantly killed by the reassumption of +that nervous formal manner which not all Amelia's gentle efforts can +break through. + +A very grave trio they drive along through the grave day. For it is, +alas! a grave day--overcast, now turning to rain, now growing fair again +awhile. Not a grain of Italy's summer curse, her choking white dust, +assails their nostrils. It must have rained all night. Through the +suburbs by the river, crossing and recrossing that ugly iron interloper +the railway; by the river flowing at the foot of the fair green hills, +so green, so green on this day of ripe accomplished spring. The whole +country is one giant green garland, of young wheat below and endless +vine necklaces above--necklaces of new juicy, just-born, yet vigorous +vine-leaves. The very river runs green with the reflection of the +endless verdure on its banks. The road is level as far as Pontassieve, +the town through which they roll, and then it begins to mount--mounts +between garden-like hills, dressed in vine leaves and iris-flowers, and +the dull fire of red clover; while the stream twists in flowing +companionship at the valley bottom, until they turn abruptly away from +it, up into a steep and narrow valley, almost a gorge, and climb up and +up one side of it, turning and winding continually to break the +steepness of the ascent. However broken, it is steep still. But who +would wish to pass at more than a foot's pace through this great sheet +of lilac irises wrapping the mountain side, past this bean-field that +greets the nostrils with its homely familiar perfume, along this wealthy +bit of hedge, framed wholly of honeysuckle in flower? At sight of the +latter Elizabeth gives a little cry. + +"Oh, what honeysuckle! I must have some! I must get out! Tell him to +stop!" + +In a moment her commands are obeyed; in another moment Byng has sprung +out of the second carriage and is standing beside her. The door of +Byng's vehicle is stiff apparently, and a sardonic smile breaks over the +elder man's face as he hears the noise of the resounding kicks +administered to it by the younger one's impatient foot. But he need not +have been in such a hurry--no one interferes with his office of rifling +the hedge of its creamy and coral bugles. + +Burgoyne gets out of the carriage; but it is only to walk to the other +one and assume Byng's vacated seat. + +"Are you going to change places?" Amelia has asked rather chapfallenly +as he leaves her; and he has given her hand a hasty pressure, and +answered affectionately-- + +"It will not be for long, dear; but you know"--with an expressive +glance, and what he rather too sanguinely hopes looks like a smile in +the direction of the flower-gatherers--"fair play is a jewel!" + +If his departure from the one vehicle is deplored, it is not welcomed at +the other. Cecilia asks the same question as her sister had put, though +the intonation is different. + +"Are you going to change places?"--adding--"do not you think we did very +well as we were?" + +But probably he is too much occupied in wrestling with the stiff door to +hear her, for he makes no answer beyond getting in. The only reward that +he receives for his piece of self-sacrifice is a rapturous look of +gratitude from Byng, when he perceives the changed position of his +affairs, and that recompense Jim had far rather have been without. + +They are off again. Being now second in the little procession, Burgoyne +has but meagre and difficult views of the first; but now and again, when +the road describes an acuter angle than usual, he can by turning his +whole body, under pretext of admiring the view, snatch a glimpse of all +three occupants leaning their heads sociably together, evidently in +bright light talk. After all, he had deceived himself. It is he and not +Amelia who had made her shy. Even when he cannot see her, there come to +his ears little wafts of laughter, in which her voice is mixed. He +catches himself trying to recall whether she had laughed even once +during the period of his being her companion. There is not much mirth in +his own carriage. What a kill-joy he has grown! Cecilia, though her +heart is as pure as the babe unborn of any serious designs on Byng, of +which indeed she has long seen the fruitlessness, yet thinks a sulky +brother-in-law-elect but a poor exchange for a handsome young +acquaintance, whom neither his good manners nor the amount of his +intimacy allow to sit opposite to her in grumpy silence. Mrs. Le +Marchant is obviously as ill at ease as was her daughter when in his +fellowship, though in this case a little observation shows him that he +counts for nothing in her discomfort of mind, but that she is watching +the other half of the party with an anxiety as keen, if almost as +covert, as his own. She is too well-bred indeed not to endeavour to keep +up a decent show of conversation, but as neither of her companions makes +any effort to second her, an ever-deepening silence falls upon them as +they advance, nor, as the day grows older, is the weather calculated to +exhilarate their spirits. + +The sky's frown becomes more and more pronounced the higher they mount. +Through a village nobly seated on its hilltop, but, like most Italian +townlets, squalid enough on a nearer view--up and up--up and up--till +they reach what were once groves of stately chestnuts, but where the +hungry Tuscan axe has left nothing but twigs and saplings, but never a +spreading tree; then on into the fir-woods, which are woods indeed, +though even here the hatchet's cruel tooth has begun to bite. No sooner +is their dark umbrage reached than the mist, that has been hanging with +threatening lowness above the travellers' heads, comes down close, +blinding, clinging like wet flannel, and as thick. + +"Perhaps it will lift," Jim says, with a sort of dismal unlikely +hopefulness as he strains his eyes, trying to look down the straight +solemn fir aisles, with their files upon files of tall stems, that seem +to be seen only as if through a thick gauze. Neither of his companions +has the spirit necessary to echo the supposition. The road winds +endlessly, steeper and steeper up through the mist. The tired horses +step wearily, and the unfortunate pleasure-seekers are beginning to +think that the muffled monotony of firs, of winding road, of painfully +labouring horses, will never end, when the vetturino turns round with a +smile on his fog-wet face, and says, "Vallombrosa!" + +Under other circumstances, the announcement might have been cheering, +might have excited a poetic curiosity; but as it is, the hood of the +vehicle--necessarily raised some miles back--is so far poked forward +that nothing is to be seen but a pour of rain--the rain has begun to +descend in torrents--a glass-door in a house-wall opening to admit them, +and a waiter holding up a green umbrella to protect their descent. +Neither he nor the landlord, nor yet the chambermaid, show any signs of +mirth or wonder at their arrival among the clouds on such a day. They +are used to mad Inglese. And amongst the mad Inglese themselves there is +certainly no temptation to mad merriment. On such an occasion there is +nothing to do but eat, so they lunch dismally in a long, bare +dining-room, with a carpetless floor, a table laid for a grossly +improbable number of guests, and a feeling of searching cold. Having +spun out their scanty meal to the utmost limits of possibility, and +washed it down with the weakest red wine that ever lived in a wicker +bottle, they pass into a funereal _salon_, to which the waiter invites +them. Someone makes the cheering announcement that they have as yet been +here only half an hour, and that the horses must have two full hours to +bait before there can be any question of beginning the return journey. +And then they amble about the room, looking at the dreadful lithographs +of Italy's plain King and fair Queen on the walls; at the venerable +journals and gaudy English storybook, so dull as to have been forgotten +by its owner, on the table. Their spirits are not heightened by a +pervading sense as of being in a cellar, minus the wine. The equipment +of this pleasant apartment is completed by a half-dead nosegay of what +must once have been charming mountain blossoms. The sight decides them. +They must go out. Perhaps even through this opaque cloud they may dimly +see the mountain flowers growing, the mountain brooks dashing, which +John Milton has told them that-- + + "the Etrurian shades, + High over-arch'd imbower." + +They all catch at the suggestion, when made by Byng, and presently sally +forth to see as much of Vallombrosa as a fog that would not have +disgraced the Strand, as a close blanket of almost _confluent_ rain, and +as umbrellas held well down over their cold noses, will let them; Mrs. +Le Marchant alone declines to be one of the party, and is left sitting, +swaddled in all the superfluous wraps, on a horsehair chair in the +_salon_, to stare at the wall and at King Humbert's ugly face, until +such time as her companions see fit to release her. It is no wonder that +Burgoyne overhears her eagerly whispering to Elizabeth a request that +she will not stay too long away. And Elizabeth, whose spirits have gone +up like a rocket at the prospect of a taste of the fresh air, and who +knows what else, lays her little face, crowned with a deer-stalking cap, +against her mother's, and promises, and skips away. + +At first they all five keep together, wet but sociable. They ask their +way to the Paradiso--the name sounds ironical--and set off climbing up +through the fir-wood in the direction indicated; along a path which in +fair weather must be heavenly with piny odours, but which is now only a +miry alternative of dripping stones and muddy puddles. Through the mist +they see indeed fair flowers gleaming, yellow anemones, unfamiliar and +lovely, but they are too drenched to pluck. The sound of falling water +guides them to where the clear brook--clear even to-day--falls in little +cascades down the hill's face between the pines. How delicious to sit on +its flat stones some hot summer's noon, with your hands coolly straying +among its grasses, or dabbling in its bright water; but to-day they can +but look at it sadly from the low bridge, saying sighingly, "If!" + +They reach the goal, some cross, and all floundering, the ladies with +draggled skirts and cold, dank ankles. The Paradiso is a little house, a +_dependance_ apparently of the hotel below--apparently also tenantless +and empty. It is built on the bare rock, looking sheer down on--what? on +a blanket of fog. What does, what can, that maddening blanket conceal? +Oh, if they could but tear it in pieces, rend it asunder, hack it with +knives, by any means abolish its unsightly veil from over the lovely +face they will now, with all their climbing, all their early rising, +never see! But will not they? Even as they look, despairingly straining +their eyes, in the vain effort to pierce that obscure and baffling veil, +there is a movement in it, a stirring of the inert mass of vapour; a +wind has risen, and is blowing coldly on their brows, and in a moment, +as it seems, the maddening wet curtain is swept away and up, as by some +God-hand, the hand of some spirit that has heard their lament and has +pitied them and said, "They have come from afar; it is their only +chance; let us show it to them." The curtain has rolled up and up, the +sombre fir-wood starts out, and the emerald meadows, the lowest and +nearest range of hills, then the next, and then the next, and then the +furthest and highest of all. There they stand revealed, even the city, +Florence, far away. They can make out her Duomo, small and dim with +distance, yet certainly there; in the sudden effulgence all the valley +alight and radiant. Range behind range stand the hills; belated vapour +wreaths floating, thin as lawn, up their flanks; wonderful dreamy +patches of radiance on the far slopes; marvellous amethysts starring +their breasts. Mystery and beauty, colour and space, sky and lovely +land, where, five minutes ago, there was nothing but choking fog. +Burgoyne stands as in a trance, vaguely conscious--trance-wise too--that +Elizabeth is near him; all his soul passed into his eyes; stands--how +long? He hardly knows. Before that fair sight time seems dead; but even +as he yet looks, smiling as one smiles at anything surpassingly lovely, +the cloud-wreaths float downwards again, wreaths at first, then great +volumes, then one universal sheet of vapour, impenetrably dense as +before. Vanished are the Apennine slopes, sun-kissed and dreamy; +vanished the distant Arno plain; vanished even the near pines. He can +scarce see his hand before him. And yet he can see Elizabeth's face +transfigured and quivering, lifted to his--yes, to _his_--though Byng is +on her other side; her eyes full of tender tears of ravishment, while +her low voice says sighingly: + +"It is gone; but we have seen it! Nothing can ever take that from us! +nothing! nothing!" + +And although the next moment she is reabsorbed into the fog and Byng, +though for the rest of the deplorable walk he scarce catches sight again +of the little brown head and the soaked deer-stalking cap, yet it makes +a gentle warmth about his chilled heart to think that, in her moments of +highest emotion, it is her impulse to turn to him. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. + + "Oh, gentle Proteus, Love's a mighty lord, + And hath so humbled me that I confess + There is no grief to his correction + Nor to his service no such joy on earth. + Now no discourse except it be of Love; + Now can I break my fast, dine, sup and sleep + Upon the very naked name of Love." + + +Not once again, so long as they remain at Vallombrosa, does the envious +cloud-blanket lift; and, after slopping about for some time longer, in +the vain hope that it will, Burgoyne and his two female relatives-elect +return to the inn, all fallen very silent. The other two members of the +party have disappeared into the fog. At the door of the hotel they find +Mrs. Le Marchant, who has broken from her cerements, and is looking +anxiously out. As she catches sight of them the look of tension on her +face lessens. + +"Oh, here you are!" says she. "I am so glad; and the others--no doubt +the others are close behind." + +"We know nothing about the others," replies Cecilia, with some +ill-humour, taking upon her the office of spokeswoman, which neither of +her companions seems in any hurry to assume; "the others took French +leave of us an hour ago. Oh dear, how wet I am! What a horrible +excursion! How I detest Vallombrosa!" + +Amelia is to the full as wet as her sister; nothing can well be more +lamentable than the appearance of either; and upon Amelia's face there +is, in addition to a handsome share of splashes of rain, a look of +mortification and crestfallenness; but she now puts in her word, with +her usual patience and thoughtful good-temper. + +"I do not think you need be in the least anxious about them," she says, +observing the immediate relapse into what seems an exaggerated concern +following instantly upon Cecilia's remark on Mrs. Le Marchant's +features; "they were with us not long ago. We were certainly all +together not so long ago; they were with us at the Paradiso--they were +certainly with us at the Paradiso?" turning with an interrogative air to +Burgoyne. + +"Yes, they were certainly with us at the Paradiso," he assents, not +thinking it necessary to add why he is so very certain as to this fact. + +"They must have so much inducement to loiter this charming weather," +cries Cecilia, with an exasperated laugh. "Oh, how wet I am! I do not +expect that we shall any of us forget Vallombrosa in a hurry! I shall go +and ask the chambermaid to lend me some dry shoes and stockings." + +With these words she walks towards the staircase and climbs it, leaving +a muddy imprint on each step to mark her progress as she mounts. + +Amelia does not at once follow her example. She remains standing where +she was, her arms hanging listlessly by her sides, and the expression of +crestfallenness deepened on her fagged face. Her lover is touched by her +look, and, going up to her, lays his hand kindly and solicitously on her +shoulder. + +"Umbrellas are not what they were in my days," he says, trying to smile. +"You are quite as wet as Cis, though you do not proclaim your sufferings +nearly so loudly. Had not you better go and see whether the chambermaid +owns two pairs of dry stockings?" + +She lifts her eyes with wistful gratitude to his. "This is my treat," +she says slowly; "my first treat to you; oh, poor Jim!" + +There is a depth of compassion in her tone as disproportioned to the +apparent cause as had been Mrs. Le Marchant's anxiety for her daughter's +return, and beneath it he winces. + +"Why do you pity me?" he inquires half indignantly. + +"Am I-- + + "'A milksop; one that never in his life + Felt so much cold as over shoes in snow?' + +What do I care for a little rain?" Adding cheerfully, "You shall give me +a second treat, dear; we will come here again by ourselves when the sun +shines." + +"By ourselves--when the sun shines!" echoes she, as if repeating a +lesson; and then she goes off docilely, in obedience to his suggestion, +in search of dry raiment. + +He rejoins Mrs. Le Marchant, whose unaccountable fears have led her +beyond the house's shelter out into the rain, where she stands looking +down that river of mud which represents the road by which she hopes to +see the truants reappear. + +"I think you are unnecessarily alarmed," he says, in a reassuring and +remonstrating tone. "What harm could have happened to them?" + +She does not answer, her eyes, into which the rain is beating under her +umbrella brim, still fixed upon the empty road. + +"Is she--is she apt to take cold?" he asks, his own tone catching the +infection of her vague and nameless disquiet. + +"Yes--no--not particularly, I think. Oh, it is not that!"--her composure +breaking down into an unaffected outburst of distress. "It is not that! +Do not you understand? Oh, how unwilling I was to come here to-day! It +is--do not you see? Oh, I should not mind in the least if it had been +you that were with her!" + +"If it had been I that was with her?" repeats Jim slowly, not at the +first instant comprehending, nor even at the second quite taking in the +full, though unintentional, uncomplimentariness of this speech; which, +however, before his companion again takes up her parable, has tinglingly +reached--what? His heart, or only his vanity? They lie very close +together. + +"Why did not he go home with his mother?" pursues Mrs. Le Marchant, +still in that voice of intense vexation. "It would have been so much +more natural that he should, and I am sure that she wished it." + +"You are making me feel extremely uncomfortable," says Burgoyne gravely; +"when I remember that it was I who introduced him to you." + +"Oh, I am not blaming you!" replies she, with an obvious effort to +resume her usual courteous manner. "Please do not think that I am +blaming you. How could you help it?" + +"I thought you liked him." + +"Oh, so I do--so we both do!" cries the poor woman agitatedly. "That is +the worst of it! If I did not like him, I should not mind; at least, I +should not mind half so much." + +"I am very sorry," he begins; but she interrupts him. + +"Do not be sorry," she says remorsefully; "you have nothing to say to +it. I do not know, I am sure"--looking gratefully at him through the +rain--"why I am always regaling you with my worries; but you are so +dependable--we both feel that you are so dependable." + +"Am I?" says he, with a melancholy air that does not argue much +gratification at the compliment. "Do not be too sure of that." + +But she does not heed his disclaimer. + +"We have been so happy here," she goes on; "I do not mean +_here_"--looking round with an involuntary smile at the envelope of wet +vapour that encases them both--"but at Florence; so peacefully, +blessedly happy, she and I--you do not know"--with an appealing touch of +pathos--"what a dear little companion she is!--so happy that I naturally +do not want our memory of the place to be spoilt by any painful +_contretemps_. You can understand that, cannot you?" + +It is senseless of him; but yet, little as he can comprehend why it +should be so, the idea of Byng's love being described as a "painful +_contretemps_" presents itself not disagreeably to his mind. For +whatever mysterious reason, it is apparent that even Byng's own mother +cannot be much more adverse to his suit than is the lady before him. + +"I can perfectly enter into your feelings," he answers, with sympathetic +gravity; "but do not you know that 'a watched pot never boils'? As long +as you are looking for them, they will never appear; but the moment that +your back is turned they will probably come round the corner at once." + +"I think it is the truest proverb in the world," she says, with an +impatient sigh; but she allows him to guide her and her umbrella back to +the inn. + +Burgoyne's prediction is not verified; probably he had no very great +faith in it himself. Mrs. Le Marchant's back has, for the best part of +an hour, been turned upon the mountain road, and the stragglers have not +yet rejoined the main body. There has been plenty of time for Cecilia to +be thoroughly dried, warmed, comforted, and restored to good humour; for +the _vetturino_ to send in and ask whether he shall not put the horses +to; for Amelia to exhaust all her little repertory of soothing +hypotheses; for Mrs. Le Marchant to stray in restless misery from +_salon_ to _salle-a-manger_ and back again, and for Burgoyne to pull +gloomily at a large cigar in the hall by himself before at length the +voices of the truants are heard. + +Burgoyne being, as I have said, in the hall, and therefore nearest the +door of entrance, has the earliest sight of them. His first glance tells +him that the blow apprehended by Mrs. Le Marchant has fallen. Of +Elizabeth, indeed, he scarcely catches a glimpse, as she passes him +precipitately, hurrying to meet her mother, who, at the sound of her +voice, has come running into the outer room. But Byng! Byng has not +experienced so many very strong emotions in his short life as to have +had much practice in veiling them from the eyes of others when they +come, and the gauze now drawn over his intolerable radiance is of the +thinnest description. Again that earnest desire to hit him _hard_ +assails the elder friend. + +"Why, you are back before us!" cries the young man. + +"Yes, we are back before you," replies Burgoyne; and if the penalty had +been death, he could not at that moment have added one syllable to the +acrid assent. + +"Are we late?" asks Elizabeth tremulously; "I am afraid we are late--I +am afraid we have kept you waiting! Oh, I am so sorry!" + +She looks with an engaging timidity of apology from one to other of the +sulky countenances around her; and Burgoyne stealing a look at her, +their eyes meet. He is startled by the singularity of expression in +hers. Whatever it denotes, it certainly is not the stupid simplicity of +rapture to be read, in print as big as a poster's, in Byng's. And yet, +among the many ingredients that go to make up that shy fevered beam, +rapture is undoubtedly one. + +"Did you lose yourselves? Did you go further into the wood?" asks +Cecilia, with a curiosity that is, considering the provocation given, +not unjustifiable. + +They both reply vaguely that they had lost themselves, that they had +gone deeper into the wood. It is obvious to the meanest intelligence +that neither of them has the slightest idea where they have been. + +"I may as well tell the driver to put the horses in," says Burgoyne, in +a matter-of-fact voice, glad of an excuse to absent himself. + +When he comes back, he finds the Le Marchants standing together in the +window, talking in a low voice, and Byng hovering near them. It is +evident to Jim that the elder woman has no wish for converse with the +young man; but in his present condition of dizzy exhilaration, he is +quite unaware of that fact. He approaches her indeed (as the unobserved +watcher notes) with a dreadful air of filial piety, and addresses her in +a tone of apology it is true, but with a twang of intimacy that had +never appeared in his voice before. + +"You must not blame her; indeed you must not! it was entirely my fault. +I am awfully sorry that you were alarmed, but indeed there was no cause. +What did you think had happened? Did you think"--with an excited laugh +of triumph and a bright blush--"that I had run off with her?" + +The speech is in extremely bad taste, since, whatever may be the posture +of affairs between himself and Elizabeth, it is morally impossible that +her mother can yet be enlightened as to it; the familiarity of it is +therefore premature and the jocosity ill-placed. No one can be more +disposed to judge it severely than its unintended auditor; but even he +is startled by the effect it produces. + +Without making the smallest attempt at an answer, Mrs. Le Marchant +instantly turns her shoulder upon the young man--a snub of which Jim +would have thought so gentle-mannered a person quite incapable, and +walks away from him with so determined an air that not even a person in +the seventh heaven of drunkenness can mistake her meaning. Nor does +Elizabeth's conduct offer him any indemnification. She follows her +mother a little more slowly; and, as she passes Jim, he sees that she is +shaking violently, and that her face is as white as chalk. A sort of +generous indignation against the mother for spoiling the poor little +soul's first moments of bliss mixes curiously in his mind with a less +noble satisfaction at the reflection that there are undoubtedly breakers +ahead of Byng. + +"How--how are we to divide?" cries Cecilia, as they all stand at the +door while the two carriages drive up. + +No one answers. The arrangement seems planned by no one in particular, +and yet, as he drives down the hill, Burgoyne finds himself sitting +opposite the two Misses Wilson. He is thankful that the raised hood and +unfurled umbrellas of the second equipage prevent his having any ocular +evidence of the ecstasy that that wet leather and that dripping silk +veil. But even this consolation is not long left him. As they leave the +fir-wood, they come out of the clouds too, into clear, lower air. Hoods +are pushed back and umbrellas shut. The horses, in good heart, with +homeward-turned heads, pricked with emulation by another carriage ahead +of them, trot cheerfully down the road--the road with all its bent-elbow +turnings--down, down, into the valley beneath. But the clouds that have +rolled away off the evening sky seem to have settled down with double +density upon the spirit of Burgoyne and his companions. Even the +fountain of Cecilia's chatter is dried. Once she says suddenly _a propos +de bottes_: + +"She must be years older than he!" To which Amelia quickly rejoins-- + +"But she does not look it." + +It is almost the only remark she makes during the long drive, and +Burgoyne is thankful to her for her silence. Conscious of and grateful +for her magnanimity as he is, there is yet something that jars upon him +in her intuition of his thoughts, and in her eager championship of that +other woman. He looks out blankly at the flowers, wetly smiling from +field and bank, at the endless garden of embracing vines and embraced +mulberries, joining their young leafage; at the stealing river and the +verdurous hill-sides. In vain for him Italy's spring laughter broadens +across the eternal youth of her face. + +On reaching Florence and the Anglo-Americain, he would fain enter and +spend the evening with his betrothed. He has a feverish horror of being +left alone with his own thoughts, but she gently forbids him. + +"It would not be fair upon father and Sybilla," she says. "I am afraid +they have not been getting on very well _tete-a-tete_ together all this +wet day, and I should not be much good to you in any case. I feel +stupid. You will say"--smiling--"that there is nothing very new in that; +but I am quite beyond even my usual mark to-night. Good-night, dear; I +humbly beg your pardon for having caused you to spend such a wretched +day. I will never give you another treat--never, _never!_ it was my +first and last attempt." + +She turns from him dejectedly, and he is himself too dejected to attempt +any reassuring falsities. She would not have believed him if he had told +her that it had not been a wretched day to him, and the publicity of +their place of parting forbids him to administer even the silent +consolation of a kiss. And yet he feels a sort of remorse at having said +nothing, as the door closes upon her depressed back. Backs can look +quite as depressed as faces. The lateness of their start home has thrown +their return late. Burgoyne reflects that he may as well dine at once, +and then trudge through his solitary evening as best he may. Heaven +knows at what hour Byng may return. Shall he await his coming, and so +get over the announcement of his bliss to-night, or put the dark hours +between himself and it? + +He decides in favour of getting it over to-night, up to whatever small +hour he may be obliged to attend his friend's arrival. But he has not to +wait nearly so long as he expects. He has not to wait at all, hardly. +Before he has left his own room, while he is still making such toilette +for his own company as self-respect requires, the person whom he had not +thought to behold for another four or five hours enters--enters with +head held high, with joy-tinged, smooth cheeks, and with a superb lamp +of love and triumph lit in each young eye. A passing movement of +involuntary admiration traverses the other's heart as he looks at him. +This is how the human animal ought to--was originally intended to--look! +How very far the average specimen has departed from the type! There is +not much trace of admiration, however, in the tone which he employs for +his one brief word of interrogation: + +"Already?" + +"I was sent away," replies Byng, in a voice whose intoxication pierces +even through the first four small words; "they sent me away--they would +not let me go further than the house-door. I say 'they,' but of course +_she_ had no hand in it--_she_, not _she_. _She_ would not have sent me +away, God bless her! it was her mother, of course--how could she have +had the heart?" + +Burgoyne would no doubt have made some answer in time; though the "she," +the implication of Elizabeth's willingness for an indefinite amount of +her lover's company, the "God bless her," gave him a sense of choking. + +"But I do not blame Mrs. Le Marchant," pursues Byng, in a rapt, +half-absent key. "Who would not wish to monopolize her? Who would not +grudge the earth leave to kiss her sweet foot? + + "'All I can is nothing + To her whose worth makes other worthies nothing. + She is alone!'" + +"That at least is not your fault," replies Burgoyne dryly; "you have +done your best to avert that catastrophe." + +But to speak to the young man now is of as much avail as to address +questions or remonstrances to one walking in his sleep. + +"If she had allowed me, I would have lain on her threshold all night; I +would have been the first thing that her heavenly eye lit on; I would--" + +But Burgoyne's phial of patience is for the present emptied to the +dregs. + +"You would have made a very great fool of yourself, I have not the least +doubt. Why try to persuade a person of what he is already fully +convinced? But as Miss Le Marchant happily did not wish for you as a +doormat, perhaps it is hardly worth while telling me what you would have +done if she had." + +The sarcastic words, ill-natured and unsympathetic as they sound in +their own speaker's ears, yet avail to bring the young dreamer but a +very few steps lower down his ladder of bliss. + +"I beg your pardon," he says sweet-temperedly; "I suppose I am a hideous +bore to-night; I suppose one must always be a bore to other people when +one is tremendously happy." + +"It is not your being tremendously happy that I quarrel with," growls +Burgoyne, struggling to conquer, or at least tone down, the intense +irritability of nerves that his friend's flights provoke. "You are +perfectly right to be that if you can manage to compass it; but what I +should be glad to arrive at is your particular ground for it in the +present case." + +The question, sobering in its tendency, has yet for sole effect the +setting Byng off again with spread pinions into the empyrean. + +"What particular ground I have?" he repeats, in a dreamy tone of +ecstasy. "You ask what particular ground I have? Had ever anyone cause +to be so royally happy as I?" + +He pauses a moment or two, steeped in a rapture of oblivious reverie, +then goes on, still as one only half waked from a beatific vision: + +"I had a prognostic that to-day would be the culminating day--something +told me that to-day would be the day; and when you gave me up your seat +in her carriage--how could you be so magnificently generous? How can I +ever adequately show you my gratitude?" + +"Yes, yes; never mind that." + +"Then, later on, in the wood"--his voice sinking, as that of one who +approaches a Holy of Holies--"when that blessed mist wrapped her round, +wrapped her lovely body round, so that I was able to withdraw her from +you, so that you did not perceive that she was gone--were not you really +aware of it? Did not it seem to you as if the light had gone out of the +day? When we stood under those dripping trees, as much alone as if--" + +"I do not think that there is any need to go into those details," +interrupts Burgoyne, in a hard voice; "I imagine that in these cases +history repeats itself with very trifling variations; what I should be +glad if you would tell me is, whether I am to understand that you have +to-day asked Miss Le Marchant to marry you?" + +Byng brings his eyes, which have been lifted in a sort of trance to the +ceiling, down to the prosaic level of his Mentor's severe and +tight-lipped face. + +"When you put it in that way," he says, in an awed half-whisper, "it +does seem an inconceivable audacity on my part that I, who but a few +days ago was crawling at her feet, should dare to-day to reach up to the +heaven of her love." + +Burgoyne had known perfectly well that it was coming; but yet how much +worse is it than he had expected! + +"Then you _did_ ask her to marry you?" + +But Byng has apparently fled back on the wings of fantasy into the wet +woods of Vallombrosa, for he makes no verbal answer. + +"She said yes?" asks Burgoyne, raising his voice, as if he were +addressing someone deaf. "Am I to understand that she said yes?" + +At the sound of that hard naked query the dreamer comes out of his +enchanted forest again. + +"I do not know what she said; I do not think she said anything," he +answers, murmuring the words laggingly; while, as he goes on, the fire +of his madness spires high in his flashing eyes. "We have got beyond +speech, she and I! We have reached that region where hearts and +intelligences meet without the need of those vulgar go-betweens--words." + +There is a moment's pause, broken only by the commonplace sound of an +electric bell rung by some inmate of the hotel. + +"And has Mrs. Le Marchant reached that region too?" inquires Jim +presently, with an irony he cannot restrain. "Does she, too, understand +without words, or have you been obliged, in her case, to employ those +vulgar go-betweens?" + +"She _must_ understand--she _does_--undoubtedly she does!" cries Byng, +whose drunkenness shares with the more ordinary kind the peculiarity of +believing whatever he wishes to be not only probable but inevitable. +"Who could see us together and be in uncertainty for a moment? And her +mother has some of her fine instincts, her delicate intuitions; not, of +course, to the miraculous extent that _she_ possesses them. In _her_ +they amount to genius!" + +"No doubt, no doubt; but did you trust entirely to Mrs. Le Marchant's +instincts, or did you broach the subject to her at all? You must have +had time, plenty of time, during that long drive home." + +"Well, no," answers Byng slowly, and with a slight diminution of +radiance. "I meant to have approached it; I tried to do so once or +twice; but I thought, I fancied--probably it was only fancy--that she +wished to avoid it." + +"To avoid it?" + +"Oh, not in any offensive, obvious way; it was probably only in my +imagination that she shirked it at all--and I did not make any great +efforts. It was all so perfect"--the intoxication getting the upper hand +again--"driving along in that balmy flood of evening radiance--did you +see how even the tardy sun came out for us?--with that divine face +opposite to me! Such a little face!"--his voice breaking into a tremor. +"Is not it inconceivable, Jim, how so much beauty can be packed into so +tiny a compass?" + +Burgoyne has all the time had his brushes in his hand, the brushes with +which he has been preparing himself for his solitary dinner. He bangs +them down now on the table. How can he put a period to the ravings of +this maniac? And yet not so maniac either. What gives the sharpest point +to his present suffering is the consciousness that he would have made +quite as good a maniac himself if he had had the chance. This +consciousness instils a few drops of angry patience into his voice, as, +disregarding the other's high-flown question, he puts one that is not at +all high-flown himself. + +"Then you have not told Mrs. Le Marchant yet?" + +But the smile that the memory--so fresh, only half an hour old--of +Elizabeth's loveliness has laid upon Byng's lips still lingers there; +and makes his response dreamy and vague. + +"No, not yet; not yet! _She_ had taken one of her gloves off; her little +hand lay, palm upward, on her knees almost all the way; once or twice I +thought of taking it, of taking possession of it, of telling her mother +in that way; but I did not. It seemed--out in the sunshine, no longer in +the sacred mist of that blessed wood--too high an audacity, and I did +not!" + +He stops, his words dying away into a whisper, his throat's too narrow +passage choked by the rushing ocean of his immense felicity. + +Burgoyne looks at him in silence, again with a sort of admiration mixed +with wrath. How has this commonplace, pink-and-white boy managed to +scale such an altitude, while he himself, in all his life, though with a +better intelligence, and, as he had thought, with a deeper heart, had +but prowled around the foot? Why should he try to drag him down? On the +peak of that great Jungfrau of rapture no human foot can long stand. + +"As I told you, Mrs. Le Marchant turned me away from their door," +pursues Byng. "It struck me--I could not pay much attention to the fact, +for was not I bidding _her_ good-night--taking farewell of those +heavenly eyes?--did you ever see such astonishing eyes?--for four +colossal hours--but it struck me that her mother's manner was a little +colder to me than it usually is. It had been a little cold all day--at +least, so I fancied. Had the same idea occurred to you?" + +Burgoyne hesitates. + +"But even if it were so," continues Byng, his sun breaking out again in +full brilliancy from the very little cloud that, during his last +sentence or two, had dimmed its lustre, "how can I blame her? Does one +throw one's self into the arms of the burglar who has broken open one's +safe and stolen one's diamonds?" + +Burgoyne still hesitates. Shall he tell the young ranter before him what +excellent reasons he has for knowing that any filial disposition on his +part to throw himself on Mrs. Le Marchant's neck will be met by a very +distinct resistance on that lady's part, or shall he leave him poised on + + "The jag + Of his mountain crag" + +till morning? The morning light will certainly see him tumbling at the +least some few kilometres down. He decides generously to leave him in +present possession of his peak; but yet, so inconsistent is human +nature, his next speech can have no drift but that of giving a slight +jog to his friend's towering confidence. + +"And your own mother?" + +It may generally be concluded that a person has not a very pertinent +response to give to a question if his only answer to that question be to +repeat it in the same words. + +"My own mother?" + +"Yes; you will write at once to tell her, I suppose?" + +For a second the young man's forehead clouds, then he breaks into an +excited laugh. + +"Tell her? I should rather think I should! Do you suppose that I shall +lose a moment in telling everybody I know--everybody I ever heard of? I +want you to tell everybody too--every single soul of your acquaintance!" + +"_I?_" + +"Tell Amelia; tell Cecilia"--quite unaware, in his excitement, of the +freedom he is taking, for the first time in his life, with those young +ladies' Christian names--"tell the other one--the sick one; tell them +all! I want _her_ to feel that all my friends, everybody I know, welcome +her--hold out their arms to her. I want them all to tell her they are +glad--you most of all, of course, old chap; she will not think it is all +right till you have given your consent!"--laughing again with that +bubbling-over of superfluous joy. "Do you know--it seems +incomprehensible now--but there was a moment when I was madly jealous of +you? I was telling _her_ about it to-day; we were laughing over it +together in the wood." + +Burgoyne feels that one more mention of that wood will convert him into +a lunatic, quite as indisputable as his companion, only very much more +dangerous. + +"Indeed!" he says grimly. "I should have thought you might have found a +more interesting subject of conversation." + +"Perhaps I was not so very far out either"--possibly dimly perceiving, +even through the golden haze of his own glory, the lack of enjoyment of +his last piece of news conveyed by Jim's tone--"for she has an immense +opinion of you. I do not know anyone of whom she has so high an opinion; +she says you are so dependable." + +The adjective, as applied to himself by Elizabeth and her mother, has +not the merit of novelty in the hearer's ears, which is perhaps the +reason why the elation that he must naturally feel on hearing it does +not translate itself into words. + +"So dependable," repeats Byng, apparently pleased with the epithet. "She +says you give her the idea of being a sort of rock; you will come +to-morrow, and wish her joy, will not you?" + +"I am afraid that my wishing it her will not help her much to it," +answers Burgoyne, rather sadly; "but I do not think you need much doubt +that I do wish it. Joy"--repeating the word over reflectively--"it is a +big thing to wish anyone." + +The extreme dampness of his tone arrests for a few minutes Byng's +jubilant paean. + +"You do not think that my mother will be pleased with the news?" he asks +presently, in a changed and hesitating key. + +"I do not think about it; I know she will not!" + +"I suppose not; and yet"--with an accent of stupefaction--"it is +inconceivable that she, who has always shown such a tender sympathy for +me in any paltry little bit of luck that has happened to me, should not +rejoice with me when all heaven ope----" + +"Yes, yes; of course." + +"Do you think"--with a gleam of hope--"that my mother may have tried to +dissuade me because she thought I was only laying up disappointment for +myself--because she thought it so unlikely that _she_ should deign to +stoop to me?" + +Burgoyne shakes his head. + +"Perhaps," he says, with the slowness of a man who is saying what he +himself does not believe, "a part of your mother's dislike to the idea +may be in the fact of Miss Le Marchant's being older than you." + +"_Older!_" cries Byng, with almost a shout of angry derision at the +suggestion. "What have creatures like _her_ to do with age? I neither +know nor care what her age is! If you know, do not tell me! I will not +listen! Upon that exquisite body time and change are powerless to work +their hideous metamorphoses!" + +"Fiddlesticks!" replies Burgoyne gruffly. "If she live long enough, she +will be an old woman, and will look like one, I suppose!" though, even +as he speaks, he realizes that to him this is almost as incredible as to +the young madman whom he is so pitilessly snubbing. "But, however that +may be, I think you had better make up your mind to meeting the most +resolved opposition on the part of your mother." + +"I believe you are right," replies Byng, out of whose voice his kind +Mentor has at last succeeded in momentarily conjuring the exaltation. +"Her prejudice against them, against _her_, always filled me with +stupefaction. I never dared trust myself to discuss it with her; I was +afraid that if I did I might be led into saying something to her, +something I should be sorry for afterwards. Thank God, I have never +spoken unkindly to her in all my life!" + +"You would have been a sweep if you had!" interjects Jim. + +"I never heard her give any reason for it, did you? It was as baseless +as it was senseless." After a pause, his voice taking on again its +inflection of confident, soaring triumph: "But it cannot last--it is +absolutely beyond the wildest bounds of possibility that it can last! +After five minutes' talk mother will be at her feet; I know my mother so +well! Not one of her exquisite ways will be lost upon her, and _she_ +will do her very best to win her! Jim, I ask you--I put it to you +quietly and plainly--I know you think I am mad, but I am not--I am +speaking quite rationally and coolly--but I ask you--_you_, an impartial +bystander--do you think that any human being, anything made of flesh and +blood, could resist _her_--_her_ when she puts herself out to +please--_her_ at her very best?" + +As Burgoyne is conscious of not being in a position to answer this +question with much satisfaction to himself, he leaves it unanswered. + + + + + +CHAPTER XXV. + + "Some say the genius so + Cries 'Come' to him that instantly must die." + + +A new day has awaked, and Firenze, fresh-washed after yesterday's rain, +smelling through all her streets of lilies, laughs up, wistaria-hung, to +a fleckless sky. If poor Amelia had but deferred her treat for +twenty-four hours, what a different Vallombrosa would she and her +companions have carried home in their memories! Amelia's treat! + +"I shall not forget Amelia's treat in a hurry!" Burgoyne says to +himself, as he sits appetiteless over his solitary breakfast. "I had +better go and tell her the result of it." + +As he makes this reflection, he rises with some alacrity, and, leaving +his scarcely-tasted coffee and his not-at-all-tasted omelette, walks out +of the _salle-a-manger_. His motive for so early a visit to the +Anglo-Americain is less an excessive eagerness to proclaim his piece of +news than the thought that by so doing he will, at least for a few +hours, escape the necessity of being in his young friend's company. As +to where that young friend at present is, whether, after having wandered +about the town all night, he is now sleeping late, or whether he is +already off to persecute poor Mrs. Le Marchant for that maternal +blessing which she has so little inclination to give, Jim is ignorant. +All he knows is that such another dose of Byng's erotic eloquence as he +had to swallow last night will leave him (Burgoyne) either a murderer or +suicide. + +Owing to his arrival at the Anglo-Americain so much sooner than usual, +he finds himself coming in for the ceremony of Sybilla's installation +for the day in the drawing-room. There is always a little pomp and fussy +bustle about this rite. Sybilla totters in (grave doubts have +occasionally crossed the minds of her family as to whether she does not +in reality possess a pair of excellent and thoroughly dependable legs), +supported on one side by Amelia and on the other by her maid. Cecilia +goes before with an air cushion, and Mr. Wilson follows, when he does +not turn restive--which is sometimes the case--with a duvet. To-day, as +I have said, this rite is in full celebration when Jim arrives, but it +is being performed with mutilated glories. The rite is going forward, +but the high priest is absent. That ministrant, upon whose arm the +sufferer is wont to lean far the most heavily; she upon whom devolves +the whole responsibility of arranging the three cushions behind the long +limp back; the properly covering the languid feet; the nice +administering of the reviving cordial drops that are to repair the +fatigue of the transit from bedroom to sitting-room--that most important +and unfailing ministrant is nowhere to be seen. No artist wishes his +picture to be viewed in an inchoate, unfinished stage, nor is Sybilla at +all anxious to have the public admitted to the sight of that eminent +work of art herself until she is stretched in faint, moribund, graceful +completeness on her day-bed. At the moment of Burgoyne's entry she has +just reached that unbecoming point, where she is sitting sideways on her +sofa, before her wasted limbs--Burgoyne is one of those heretics who +have never believed that they are wasted--have been carefully lifted +into their final posture of extension upon the Austrian blanket. It is, +of all moments, the one at which interruption is least welcome; nor is +the intruder at all surprised at being greeted by the invalid with a +more than sub-acid accent. + +"My dear Jim, _already_! Why you become more _matinale_ every day! you +_are_ the early bird indeed! You do not"--with an annoyed laugh--"give +us poor worms a chance of being beforehand with you." + +"I am very sorry if I am too soon," replies he, his eyes wandering away +from the fretful features before him in search of others upon which he +knows he shall find written no complaint of his prematureness--"but I +came to----Where's Amelia?" + +"You may well ask," replies Sybilla, with a sort of hysterical laugh. +"It is pretty evident that she is not _here_! My dear Cis, would you +mind remembering that my head is not made of mahogany? you gave it such +a bang with that cushion. I am very sorry to trouble you. The heaviest +load a sick person has to bear is the feeling that she is such a burden +to those around her; and certainly, my dear, you do not help me to +forget it." + +"Where is she?" repeats Burgoyne hastily, both because he wants to know, +and because he is anxious to strangle in its infancy one of those +ignoble family bickerings, to assist at many of which has been the +privilege or penalty of his state of intimacy. + +"She is not well," replies Cecilia shortly, her rosy face rosier than +usual, either with the joy of imminent battle, or with the exertion of +swaddling, under protest, the invalid's now elevated legs. + +"Not well! Amelia not well," echoes he, in a tone of incredulity. + +During all the years of their acquaintance not once has he heard his +patient sweetheart complain of ache or pain. Manlike, he has therefore +concluded that she can never have felt either. + +"It is very thoughtless of her," says Cecilia, with a not altogether +amiable laugh, and giving a final irritated slap to Sybilla's +coverlet--"considering how much illness we already have in the house; +ha! ha! but it is true all the same: she is not well, not at all well; +she is in bed." + +"_In bed!_" + +"She must have caught a chill yesterday on that disgusting excursion; +driving home that long distance in wet shoes and stockings." + +"But I thought, I hoped that--I asked her to change them." + +"She had them dried in a sort of way; but I could see when she put them +on again that they were really wringing wet still. I told her so, but +she only answered that even if they were, what matter? she never caught +cold. You know that Amelia never thinks that anything matters that +concerns herself." + +This would be an even handsomer tribute to Amelia than it is, if it did +not suggest a secondary intention of administering a back-hander to +someone else. + +"In the case of my children," says Mr. Wilson, making his voice heard +for the first time from the window, where he is discontentedly peering +up and down the sheets of a journal through his spectacles, "there seems +to be no mean possible between senseless rashness and preposterous +self-indulgence." + +Mr. Wilson likes his eldest daughter. He is uneasy and upset, and rather +angry at her indisposition, and this is his way of showing his paternal +tenderness. + +"_In bed!_" + +The human animal is the most adaptive of created beings; but even it +requires some little time to adjust itself to entirely new conditions of +existence. + +"Amelia," continues Mr. Wilson, fanning the flame of his ire with the +bellows of his own rhetoric, "is the one among you whom I did credit +with the possession of a head upon her shoulders, and now here she is +wantonly laying herself up!" + +"You talk as if she did it on purpose, father," says Cecilia, with an +indignant laugh--"as if she enjoyed it. I do not think that anyone, even +Sybilla"--with a resentful side-glance at the sofa--"could enjoy having +her teeth chattering with cold, her head as heavy as lead, and her knees +knocking together under her." + +"Good heavens!" cries Jim, his bewildered surprise swallowed up in +genuine alarm; "you do not mean to say that she is as bad as that?" + +Sybilla laughs, and even in the midst of his real anxiety, Burgoyne has +time for the reflection that the Wilson family seem this morning to have +_se donne le mot_ to show in how many different styles it is possible to +be merry without the least tinge of genuine mirth in any. + +"My dear Jim, have not you known Cis long enough not to take her _au +pied de la lettre_? Do not you know of old what a magnificent colourist +she is?--a perfect Tintoret! Of course Amelia is not quite the thing, +poor dear--she has no one but herself to blame for that!--but equally of +course, to a colossally healthy person such as she, any little ailment +appears a mountain." + +This speech is uttered with the accent of such entire conviction that it +ought to carry reassurance into the heart of the person to whom it is +addressed. Sybilla really and honestly disbelieves in the reality of any +claims but her own to sincere sickness. But Jim unreasonably neither is +nor feigns to be reassured. + +"You have had advice for her? You have sent for Dr. Coldstream?" he asks +rapidly of the two sound members of the family, turning his back +unceremoniously upon the invalid. + +"I was going to send for him at once," answers Cecilia, her own latent +anxiety quickened by the evident alarm of her interlocutor, "but Sybilla +said it was needless, as in any case he was coming to see her this +afternoon." + +"I think he wishes to change my medicine," puts in Sybilla in a piano +voice, that shows an evident desire to assert her threatened position of +prime and only genuine invalid, a sort of "beware of imitations" tone; +"he is not quite satisfied with the effect of the last, I think; it has +not brought up the pulse and quickened the appetite in the way he hoped. +I thought that he might run up and look at Amelia at the end of his +visit to me." + +"And is it possible," inquires Jim, with some heat, "that you are going +to let half a day go by without doing anything for her? I suppose you +have not exaggerated, have you?" turning with an earnest appeal in his +eyes to Cecilia; "but in any case I am very sure that nothing short of +being really and gravely ill would have kept her in bed--she who is +always waiting hand and foot upon us all, whom we all allow to spend her +life in hewing wood and drawing water for us." + +"Send for Dr. Coldstream at once," says Mr. Wilson irritably; "at once, +I tell you; he is so very seldom out of the house that I have often +thought of suggesting to him to take a room here; and now, on the only +occasion on which he is really needed, he is not at hand." + +"If you will write the note," says Jim, a shade relieved at having at +last succeeded in rousing Amelia's relations to prompt action, and +feeling a feverish desire to be doing something, "I will take it at +once; it will be the quickest way; I may catch him before he goes out +and bring him back with me." + +"Do you really think it is necessary?" asks Sybilla, as Jim hustles +Cecilia to her writing-table, and stands, nervously fidgeting beside her +as she writes; "do you think, if it is only a common cold, as I suspect, +that it is quite fair to worry a man who is so run off his legs already? +He will probably laugh in your face; still, if you are so set upon it, +it is perhaps more satisfactory." + +"You need not go into details--just a line--make haste!" cries Jim, +hanging tiresomely over Cecilia, rather impeding her than the reverse by +his impatience, and leaving entirely unnoticed Sybilla's observation, +which indeed has been uttered more to preserve her own self-respect than +with much hope that in the present wrong-headed state of mind of her +family any member will pay much heed to it. + +In five minutes more, Jim, with Cecilia's note in his pocket, is being +borne rapidly in a fiacre through the sweet, gay streets. But, drive as +rapidly as he may, he is not quick enough to intercept the popular +English doctor, who, although, as his servant tantalizingly informs Jim, +he is almost always at home at that hour, has, on this occasion, been +sent for to an urgent case of sudden illness out of Florence, at the +village of Peretola. Jim has to content himself with the assurance that +immediately on his return the note will be given him; and with this +unsatisfactory intelligence Mr. Burgoyne reappears at the +Anglo-Americain. He finds the three persons whom he had left much as he +had quitted them--uneasy, cross, and unemployed. + +"It is all the fault of that odious expedition yesterday," says Cecilia, +harking back to her old cry. "Why we set out at all, I can't imagine; on +such a day, it was madness, and----" + +"It is not much use thinking of that now," interrupts Burgoyne +impatiently, and wincing at these philippics against his poor bride's +miserable treat as if they had been directed against herself. + +"Well, it is an ill-wind that blows nobody any good," pursues the young +lady. "I suppose that two of us enjoyed it enough to make up for the +wretchedness of the other four." + +Her large prominent eyes are fixed upon Jim as she speaks with a sort of +knowingness overlying their former lugubrious expression. + +"Do you mean Mr. Byng and Miss Le Marchant?" inquires he, pronouncing +both names with a laboured distinctness, while his voice sounds to +himself loud and wooden. "You are perfectly right in your conjecture; no +doubt they enjoyed themselves. Byng wished me to tell you that they are +engaged to be married." + +If the essence of a good piece of news is to surprise, Jim can certainly +not flatter himself that his comes under that head. + +"It did not require a conjurer to prophesy that," is Cecilia's comment. +"I never saw two people who troubled themselves less to disguise their +feelings. I saw that they neither of them knew whether they were on +their heads or on their heels, when they emerged dripping from that +horrid pine wood. Dear me!"--with a good-sized sigh--"how smoothly +things run for some people! how easily some of these affairs come off, +without a hitch anywhere from beginning to end!" + +She pauses, and it is plain to those acquainted with her heart history +that her thoughts are coursing mournfully back to the all-along +reluctant and ultimately entirely faithless clergyman who had last +possessed her young affections. + +"Without a hitch from beginning to end?" cries Jim hotly, jarred more +than he would like to own to himself by this phrase. "How can you +possibly tell? These are early days to assert that so dogmatically. + + "'There's many a slip + 'Twixt the cup and the lip.'" + +"Do you mean to say that you think it will not come off?" asks Cecilia, +a slightly pleasurable light coming into her eyes as she asks--not that +she has any ill-will towards Elizabeth, nor any distinct design of her +own upon Byng; but that there is something not absolutely disagreeable +to her in the idea of his being still among the ranks of the possible. + +"I am sure he would make a delightful husband," puts in Sybilla, her +praise given emphasis by her desire to employ it as a weapon of offence +against one who is at present more deeply than usual in her black books; +"he has such gentle, feminine ways; he comes into a room so quietly, and +when he asks one how one is really listens for the answer." + + +"Perhaps you are right, and it will fall through," says Cecilia +thoughtfully; "many engagements do!" (sighing again). "She is a sweet, +pretty creature, and looks as if butter would not melt in her mouth; but +she is evidently older than he." + +"Jim will not allow that to be an objection," cries Sybilla, with a +faint laugh, "will you, Jim? How much older than you is Amelia? I always +forget." + +"I never can help thinking that she has a history," resumes Cecilia, in +a meditative voice, "and that Mr. Greenock knows it. If ever her name is +mentioned he always begins to look wise, as if there were something that +he was longing to tell one about her; it is continually on the tip of +his tongue--some day it will tumble over the tip." + +"I do not think that there is any use in my staying all this while!" +cries Jim, jumping up. "Dr. Coldstream cannot be here at soonest for +another hour; and I do not think that we are, any of us, very good +company for each other to-day, so I will look in again later." + + +He is out of the room and out of the hotel before his companions can +take exception to his disappearance. For some time he walks along +aimlessly, his mind a jumble of misery, and dull, remorseful anxiety +about Amelia; intolerable comparisons between his own lot and his +friend's; sharp knives of jealousy as often as--which is almost +unintermittently--his imagination wings its cruel way to the Piazza +d'Azeglio--through one opulent week, _his_ Piazza. At this moment--this +moment, while his own leaden feet are treading goalless the hot flags +that for him lead nowhere--Byng is enthroned with _her_ in the heaven of +the mean little _salon_. He unconsciously shows his teeth in a stern +smile to the surprised passers-by. He had jeered Byng for his +hyperboles, and now he is _out-hyperboling_ him. What a detestable verb +he has invented! He laughs out loud. Are they sitting at the window, +looking out at the judas tree and the Paulownia? Not they! The window is +commanded to a certain extent by the roadway. The window is for +acquaintances, banal acquaintances, like himself--no place for the +permitted freedoms of exquisite new love. Are they then on the sofa, the +vulgar walnut sofa, over which Elizabeth has thrown her blue Neapolitan +tablecloth? It is a little sofa, scarcely room for two upon it, but, oh! +plenty of room for them! Or are they at the piano? Is she singing him +some sugared ditty "lovely well" until he breaks into her song with the +storm of his kisses, and her little white hands drop from the keys, and +they lie sobbing with ecstasy in each other's arms? It is quite certain +that Byng will sob. He is always delighted at having an opportunity for +turning on the water-works. Is there a bare possibility that Mrs. Le +Marchant may carry her disapprobation to the pitch of impeding by her +presence their _tete-a-tete_? The idea gives him a momentary +alleviation. Why should not he go and see for himself whether it is so? +It will be a method of passing the tedious interval before he can hear +the doctor's verdict on Amelia. He must at some time or other comply +with Byng's pressing prayer to him to offer his congratulations to +Elizabeth, and he may as well have a day of complete and perfect +pain--pain of various flavours and essences mixed into one consummate +draught--a day of which not one hour shall be without its ache. + +Having come to this conclusion, his aimless walk quickens, and changes +into a purposeful striding through streets and Piazzas, till he finds +himself standing at the door of 12_a_. He looks up at the _entresol_ +windows--they are all open, but no one is either sitting in or looking +out at them. It is as he had thought. The window is too public for them; +neither can they be at the piano, for not a sound of either voice or +instrument is wafted down to him. He runs up the stone stairs, and rings +the electric bell. The standing before the unopened portal, and the +trembling jar of the bell, bring back to him, with a vividness he could +do without, those other long-ago days--they seem to him long ago--when +he stood there last, with no easy heart even then, but yet with how +different anticipations. He has found it hard enough to bear the brunt +of Byng's furious inhuman joy when alone with him. How will he stand it +when he sees them together? + +He is recalled from these reflections by the opening of the door, and +the appearance in it of the ministering angel who has usually admitted +him into his Eden--Annunziata. It strikes him that Annunziata looks +older and more dishevelled than ever, and is without that benevolent +smile of welcoming radiance which her hard-featured face generally +wears. Nor does she, as has been her wont, stand back to let him pass in +almost before he has put his question, as if she could not admit him +quickly enough. But to-day she stands, on the contrary, in the doorway +without a smile. In a second the idea flashes across Jim's mind that +Byng has forbidden anyone to be let in. It turns him half sick for the +moment, and it is with an unsteady voice that he stammers: + +"The Signora? The Signorina?" + +Annunziata lifts her shoulders in a dismal shrug, and stretches out her +hands: + +"Gone!" + +"_Gone?_ You mean gone out driving?" Then remembering that her English +is as minus a quantity as his Italian, he adds in eager explanation, "En +fiacre?" + +She shakes her head, and then nods vaguely in the direction of the whole +of the rest of the world--the whole, that is, that is not 12 bis. + +"No, _gone_!" + +"But _where_? _Dove?_" cries he, frantic with irritation at his own +powerlessness either to understand or be understood. + +Again she shakes her head. + +"I do not know; they did not say." + +He gathers this to be her meaning, and hurriedly puts another query. + +"When? _Quando?_" + +But her answer being longer and more voluble, he can't take in its +drift, seeing which she retreats a step, and, motioning him with her +hand to enter, points down the passage. He does not require to have the +dumb-show of invitation twice repeated, but, rushing past her, hurries +down the well-known little corridor to the _salon_ door. It is open, and +he stands within. At the first glance it seems to him to wear much its +usual air. There is even a score of music standing on the piano, the +copper pots are full of rose-branches, and the _scaldini_ brimming with +Firenze's own lilies, the bit of red Venetian brocade, with the little +old tinsel fringe, still hangs over the arm-chair by the fireplace, and +the blue Neapolitan table-cover still disguises the vulgarity of the +sofa. He has misunderstood Annunziata--it is really monstrous to be so +helplessly ignorant of the language of the country you are living in--or +she has lost her wits, or----He had thought the room empty, but as he +advances a step further into it, he discovers that he is not the sole +occupant: that lying stretched upon the floor, with his fair head buried +in a little pillow, against which both men have often seen Elizabeth's +small white cheek resting, is Byng!--the Byng whose riotous, insolent +happiness he had doubted his own powers of witnessing without murdering +him!--the splendid felicity of whose lot he has been so bitterly laying +beside his own destiny--the Byng whom he had been gnashing his teeth at +the thought of--at the thought of him lying in Elizabeth's arms! + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI. + + "Cressid, I love thee in so strained a purity, + That the blest gods--as angry at my fancy, + More bright in zeal than the devotion which + Cold lips blow to their deities--take thee from me." + + +"What does this mean?" + +The question has to be twice repeated before the person to whom it is +addressed gives any sign of having heard it. His ears must be so deeply +embedded in the pillow that the passage to his hearing is blocked. It is +not till the interrogation is put a second time, in a louder key, and +accompanied by a not very gentle shake of the shoulder, that he at +length looks up, and reveals what Jim knows to be, and yet has some +difficulty in recognising, as the features of Byng--features so altered, +so distorted, so swollen by excessive weeping, that no one less +intimately acquainted with them than the person who has been already +contemplating them, under the influence of a variety of circumstances +for a couple of months, could possibly put the owner's name to them. Jim +has expected that his young friend would spend some portion of this day +in crying, knowing well both his powers of, and his taste for, "turning +on the water-works," as he but lately cruelly and uncivilly phrased it +to his own mind. But the warm tears of emotion, few and undisfiguring, +with which he had credited him, have not much kinship with the scalding +torrents that have made his handsome young eyes mere red blurs on his +ashen face, that have furrowed his cheeks, and damped his disordered +curls, and taken all the starch out of his immaculate "masher" collar. +They have wetted, too, into a state of almost pulp, a crumpled sheet of +note-paper, which his head seems to have been burrowing in, upon the +pillow. + +"What does it mean?" repeats Burgoyne, for the third time, a hideous +fear assailing him, at the sight of the young man's anguish, that he +himself may have mistaken Annunziata's meaning; that her "gone" may have +stood for the final one; that some instant stroke may have snatched +lovely Elizabeth away, out of the world. Surely no catastrophe less than +death can account for such a metamorphosis as that wrought in Byng. "Why +do you look like that?" he goes on, his voice taking that accent of rage +which extreme fear sometimes gives. "Why do not you speak?" + +The other, thus adjured, plainly makes a violent effort for +articulation; but his dry throat will let pass nothing but a senseless +sob. + +"What does that paper mean?" goes on Burgoyne, realizing the impotence +of his friend to obey his behest, and rendered doubly terrified by it; +"what is it? what does it say? Does it--does it--explain anything?" + +He points as he speaks to the blurred and rumpled _billet_, and Byng +catches it up convulsively, and thrusts it into his hand. + +"It is the first letter I ever had from her," he says, the words rushing +out broken and scarcely intelligible upon a storm of sobs, and so flings +his head violently down upon the floor again in a new access of furious +weeping. + +Burgoyne holds the paper in his fingers, but for a moment or two he is +unable to read it. There is an ugly swimming before his eyes for one +thing; for another, Byng's treatment has not improved it as a specimen +of caligraphy; but it never in its best days could have been a very +legible document. And yet it is not long. Its few words, when at length +he makes them out, ran thus: + + "_Good-bye, I was mad yesterday. I shall never marry you; I + have no right to marry anyone. For God's sake do not ask me + what I mean; and oh! don't, don't, DON'T come after me!_" + +There is neither date nor signature. As Jim stands staring at the five +crooked, straggling sentences, a great swelling compassion fills his +heart. Did ever poor little scribble make it so easy to construct the +small shaking hand, and the tender breaking heart that penned it? An +immense pity fills his soul; yet does it quite fill it? Is there room +besides, in one corner, for a small pinch of devilish joy? + + "There's many a slip + 'Twixt the cup and the lip." + +His own words of ill-natured croaking, uttered not an hour ago, to +Cecilia Wilson, recur to his mind. How little he thought that that +prophecy would so soon be fulfilled! He remains so long motionless and +silent, his fingers still holding the paper, whose contents he has long +ago mastered, that Byng--the violence of his paroxysm of grief at length +exhausted--struggles to his feet and speaks--speaks as well as the catch +in his sobbing breath and his quivering lips will let him. + +"It is not her doing! You may think it is her doing, but I know it is +not! I know her better than you do." + + +"I never made any pretensions to knowing her well," replies the other +sadly, and relinquishing as he speaks the note to its owner. + +"Is it likely, I ask you?" cries Byng excitedly. "I put it to you +fairly: is it likely that she, with her seraph nature, all love and +burning, she that is tender over drowning flies, would have put me to +this horrible pain?--O God, you do not know what pain it is" ["Do not +I?" aside]--"of her own free will?" + +"I do not know; as you say, I do not know her well." + + "'Then tell, oh tell! how thou didst murder me?'" + +says Byng, beginning to walk up and down the room with the tears still +rolling down his cheeks, but in his spouting voice--a voice which at +once assures Jim of an amelioration in his friend's condition, and +hardens his heart against him. As a broad rule, indeed, it may be laid +down that that sorrow which courses through one of the numberless +channels cut by the poets for it will not bring its owner to Waterloo +Bridge. + +"But what am I saying?" lapsing out of his quotation into broken-hearted +prose again. "It was not she! If I thought it were she, could I live a +moment? It is her mother; no sane person can doubt that it is her +mother's doing! She was always so sweetly docile, and her mother has +conceived some prejudice against me. Did not I tell you how barbarously +she shut the door upon me last night?--shut the door of my heaven in my +face just as I thought I had won the right to enter it. Who would not +have thought that it was won who had seen us together in the wood?" + +Jim writhes. + +"Oh, never mind the wood now!" + +"Someone has prejudiced her against me, but who? I did not know that I +had an enemy in the world. Someone has told her about--about +Oxford--about my being sent down." + +Jim is silent. + +"If it is only that----" a tearful buoyancy beginning to pierce through +his despair. + +"It is not that." + +"Someone has put a spoke in my wheel; but who? You are the only person +who could, and you, dear old chap, are the last person who would, though +you were not very encouraging to me last night! _You_ did not?" + +There is so direct an interrogation in the last words, accompanied by so +confiding a look of affection, that yet has an uneasy touch of doubt in +it, that Jim is obliged to answer. + +"No, I did not put a spoke in your wheel; but"--his honesty forcing the +admission--"I am not at all so sure that I am the last person who would +have done so, if I could." + +Byng has wiped his eyes to clear his vision of the blinding tears, and +has again directed them to the note, which he has all this while been +alternately pressing against his heart, laying upon his forehead, and +crushing against his mouth. + +"It seems blasphemy to say so of anything that came from her hand," he +says, poring for the hundredth time over each obscure word, "but it +reads like nonsense, does it not? '_I shall never marry you! I have no +right to marry anyone!_' No right? what does she mean?" + +Jim shakes his head sadly. + +"How can I tell?" + +"Do you think it is possible"--lifting his disfigured eyes in horrified +appeal to his friend--"it is a dreadful hypothesis, but I can think of +no other--that that bright intelligence was clouded--that--that her dear +little wits were touched when she wrote this?" + +"No, I do not think so." + +"You--you are not keeping anything from me?"--coming a step nearer, and +convulsively clutching his friend's arm--"you--you do not know +anything--anything that could throw light upon--upon this? I do not know +whether you are conscious of it, but there is something in your manner +that might lead me to that conclusion. Do you know--have you heard +anything?" + +"I know nothing," replies Jim slowly, and looking uncomfortably away +from the questioner, "but I conjecture, I fear, I believe +that--that----" + +"That what? For God's sake, be a little quicker!" + +"That--that--there is a--a--something in her past." + +Byng falls back a pace or two, and puts up his hand to his head. + +"What--what do you mean? What are you talking about? Her past? +What"--soaring into extravagance again--"what can there be written on +that white page?--so white that it bedazzles the eyes of even the angels +who read it." + +"I do not know what there is," replies Jim miserably, irritated almost +beyond endurance by this poetic flight, and rendered even more wretched +than he was before by the _role_ that seems to be forced upon him, of +conjecturally blackening Elizabeth's character. "How many times must I +tell you that I _know_ no more than you, only from--from various +indications I have been led to believe that she has _something_--some +great sorrow behind her?" + +There is a silence, and when it is broken it is infringed by what is not +much more than a whisper. + +"What--what do you mean; what--what sort of a sorrow?" + +"I tell you, I do not know." + +Byng's tears have stopped flowing, and he now lifts his eyes, full of a +madness of exaltation, to the ceiling. + +"I will go to her," he cries; "if sorrow has the audacity to approach +her again, it will have to reckon with me. There is no sorrow, none, in +the whole long gamut of woe, for which love such as mine is not a balm. +Reciprocal love!"--trailing the words in a sort of slow rapture--"no one +that had seen her in the wood could have doubted that it _was_ +reciprocal." + +"No doubt, no doubt." + +"I will go to her!"--clasping his hands high in the air--"I will pour +the oil and spikenard of my adoration into her gaping wounds! I will +kiss the rifts together, though they yawn as wide as hell--yes, I will." + +"For heaven's sake, do not talk such dreadful gibberish," breaks in Jim, +at length at the end of his patience, which had run quite to the extreme +of its tether indeed at the last mention of that ever-recurring wood. +"It _is_ a knockdown blow for you, I own, and I would do what I could to +help you; but if you will keep on spouting and talking such terrible +bosh----" + +"I suppose I am making an ass of myself," replies Byng, thus brought +down with a run from his heroics. "I beg your pardon, I am sure, old +man. I have no right to victimize you," his sweet nature asserting +itself even at this bitter moment; "but you see it is so horribly +sudden. If you had seen her when I parted from her last night at the +door! She lingered a moment behind Mrs. Le Marchant--just a moment, just +time enough to give me one look, one wordless look. She did not speak; +she was so divinely dutiful and submissive that nothing would have +persuaded her by the lightest word to imply any censure of her mother; +but she gave me just a look, which said plainly, 'It is not _my_ fault +that you are turned away! _I_ would have welcomed you in!' Upon that +look I banqueted in heaven all night." + +He stops, choked. + +"Well?" + +"And then this morning, when I got here--I think I ran all the way; I am +sure I did, for I saw people staring at me as I passed--to be met by +Annunziata with the news that they were _gone_! I did not believe her; I +laughed in her face, and then she grew angry, and bid me come in and see +for myself! And I rushed past her, in here, with my arms stretched out, +confident that in one short moment more _she_ would be filling them, and +instead of her"--dropping upon his knees by the table with a groan--"I +find this!"--dashing the note upon the floor--"all that she leaves me to +fill my embrace instead of her is this poor little pillow, that still +seems to keep a faint trace of the perfume of her delicate head!" + +He buries his own in it again as he speaks, beginning afresh to sob +loudly. + +Jim stands beside him, his mind half full of compassion and half of a +burning exasperation, and his body wholly rigid. + +"When did they go? at what hour? last night or this morning?" + +"This morning early, quite early." + +"They have left all their things behind them"--looking round at the +room, strewn with the traces of recent and refined occupation. + +"Yes"--lifting his wet face out of his cushion--"and at first, seeing +everything just as usual, even to her very workbasket--she has left her +very workbasket behind--I was quite reassured. I felt certain that they +could have gone for only a few hours--for the day perhaps; but----" + +He breaks off + +"Yes?" + +"They left word that their things were to be packed and sent after them +to an address they would give." + +"And you do not know where they have gone?" + +"I know nothing, nothing, only that they are gone. + + "'Then tell, oh tell! how thou didst murder me?' + +Oh! oh!! oh!!!" + +"You never heard them speak of their plans, mention any place they +intended to move to on leaving Florence?" + +"Never!" + +"It is too late for Rome," says Jim musingly; "England? I hardly think +England," recalling Elizabeth's forlorn admission made to him at Monte +Senario, "Why should we go home? We have nothing pleasant to go to." + +"I do not think they had any plans," says Byng, speaking in a voice +which is thick with much weeping; "they never seemed to me to have any. +She was so happy here, so gay, there never was anything more lovely than +her gaiety, except--except--her tenderness." + +"Yes, yes, no doubt. Then you are absolutely without a clue?" + +"Absolutely." + +"Do you mean to say that up to yesterday--all through yesterday, +even--she never gave you a hint of any intention of leaving Florence?" + +"Never, _never_. On the contrary, in the----" (he is going to say "the +wood," but thinks better of it), "we were planning many more such +expeditions as yesterday's. At least, I was planning them." + +"And she assented?" + +"She did not _dis_sent. She met me with a look of divine acquiescence." + +Jim turns away his head. He is involuntarily picturing to himself what +that look was like, and with what sweet dumb-show it was accompanied. + +"What powers of hell"--banging his head down upon the table +again--"could have wrought such a hideous change in so few hours? Only +ten! for it was eight in the evening before I left them, and they were +off at six this morning. They could have seen no one; they had received +no letters, no telegrams, for I inquired of Annunziata, and she assured +me that they had not. Oh no!"--lifting his face with a gleam of moist +hope upon it--"there is only one tenable hypothesis about it--it is not +_her_ doing at all. She wrote this under pressure. It is her +handwriting, is it not?--though I would not swear even to that. I--I +have played the mischief with my eyes"--pulling out his drenched +pocket-handkerchief, and hastily wiping them--"so that I cannot see +properly; but it _is_ hers, is not it?" + +"I do not know; I never saw her handwriting; she never wrote to me." + +"It was evidently dictated to her," cries Byng, his sanguine nature +taking an upward spring again; "there are clear traces, even in the very +way the letters are formed, of its being written to order reluctantly. +She did it under protest. See how her poor little hand was shaking, and +she was crying all the while, bless her! There, do not you see a blister +on the paper--here on this side?" + +Burgoyne does not see any blister, but as he thinks it extremely +probable that there was one, he does not think himself called upon to +wound his friend by saying so. + +"I declare I think we have got hold of the right clue at last," cries +Byng, his dimmed eyes emitting such a flash as would have seemed +impossible to them five minutes ago. "Read in this light, it is not +nearly so incomprehensible: '_I shall never marry you, I have no right +to marry anyone._' Of course, I see now! What an ass I was not to see it +at once! What she means is that she has no right to leave her mother! To +anyone who knew her lofty sense of duty as well as I ought to have done +it is quite obvious that that is what she means. Is not it quite +obvious? is not it as clear as the sun in heaven?" + +Jim shakes his head. + +"I am afraid that it is rather a forced interpretation." + +"I do not agree with you," rejoins the other hotly; "I see nothing +forced about it. You do not know as well as I do--how should you?--her +power of delicate, self-sacrificing devotion. It is overstrained, I +grant you; but there it is--she thinks she has no right to leave her +mother now that she is all alone." + +"She is not alone; she has her husband." + +"I mean now that all her other children are married and scattered. There +are plenty more--are not there?--though I never could get her to talk +about them." + +"There are two sisters and two brothers." + +"But they are no longer any good to their mother," persists Byng, +clinging to his theory with all the greater tenacity as he sees that it +meets with no very great acceptance in his friend's eyes; "as far as she +is concerned they are non-existent." + +"I do not know what right you have to say that." + +"And so she, with her lofty idea of self-sacrifice, immolates her own +happiness on the altar of her filial affection. It is just like +her!"--going off into a sort of rapture--"blind mole that I was not to +divine the motive, which her ineffable delicacy forbade her to put into +words. She thought she had a right to think that I should have +comprehended her without words!" + +He has talked himself into a condition of such exalted confidence before +he reaches the end of this sentence that Jim is conscious of a certain +brutality in applying to him the douche contained in his next words. + +"I do not know why you should credit Mrs. Le Marchant with such colossal +selfishness; she never used to be a selfish woman." + +But Burgoyne's cold shower-bath does not appear even to damp the +shoulders for which it is intended. + + "'Since you left me, taking no farewell,'" + +murmurs Byng, beginning again to tramp up and down the little room, with +head thrown back and clasped hands high lifted; and in his rapt poet +voice: + + "'Since you left me, taking no farewell,' + +I must follow you, sweet! Despite your prohibition, I must follow you. + + "'We two that with so many thousand sighs, + Did buy each other.'" + +Then, coming abruptly down to prose--"Though they left no address, it +will of course be possible, easy, to trace them. I will go to the +station and make inquiries. They will have been seen. It is out of the +question that she can have passed unnoticed! No eye that has once been +enriched by the sight of her can have forgotten that heavenly vision. I +will telegraph to Bologna, to Milan, to Venice. Before night I shall +have learnt her whereabouts. I shall be in the train, following her +track. I shall be less than a day behind her. I shall fall at her feet, +I shall----" + +"You are talking nonsense," answers Burgoyne impatiently; and yet with a +distinct shade of pity in his voice; "you cannot do anything of the +kind. When the poor woman has given so very unequivocal a proof of her +wish to avoid you, as is implied in leaving the place at a moment's +notice, without giving herself even time to pack her clothes, it is +impossible that you can force your company again upon her--it would be +persecution." + +"And do you mean to tell me," asks Byng slowly, and breathing hard, +while the fanatical light dies out of his face, and leaves it chalk +white; "do you mean to say that I am to acquiesce, to sit down with my +hands before me, and submit without a struggle to the loss of----O my +God"--breaking out into an exceeding bitter cry--"why did you make me + + "'so rich in having such a jewel, + As twenty seas, if all their sands were pearl, + The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold,' + +if it were only to rob me of her?" + +"I do not see what other course is open to you," replies Jim, answering +only the first part of the young sufferer's appeal, and ignoring the +rhetoric, terribly genuine as is the feeling of which it is the florid +expression. "It is evident that she has some cogent reasons--or at least +that appear cogent to her--for breaking off her relations with you." + +"What cogent reasons can she have that she had not yesterday?" says Byng +violently--"yesterday, when she lay in my arms, and her lips spoke their +acquiescence in my worship--if not in words, yet oh, far, far more----" + +"Why do you reiterate these assertions?" cries Burgoyne sternly, since +to him there seems a certain indecency in--even in the insanity of +loss--dragging to the eye of day the record of such sacred endearments. +"I neither express nor feel any doubt as to the terms you were on +_yesterday_; what I maintain is that _to-day_--I do not pretend to +explain the why--she has changed her mind; it is not"--with a sarcasm, +which he himself at the very moment of uttering it feels to be cheap and +unworthy--"it is not the first time in the world's history that such a +thing has happened. She has changed her mind." + +"I do not believe it," cries Byng, his voice rising almost to a shout in +the energy of his negation; "till her own mouth tell me so I will never +believe it. If I thought for a moment that it was true I should rush to +death to deliver me from the intolerable agony of such a thought. You do +not believe it yourself"--lifting his spoilt sunk eyes in an appeal that +is full of pathos to his friend's harsh face. "Think what condemnation +it implies of her--her whom you always affected to like, who thought so +greatly of you--her whose old friend you were--her whom you knew in her +lovely childhood!" + +"You are right," replies Jim, looking down, moved and ashamed; "I do not +believe that she has changed her mind. What I do believe is that +yesterday she let herself go; she gave way for one day, only for one +day, after all, poor soul, to that famine for happiness which, I +suppose"--with a sigh and a shrug--"gnaws us all now and then--gave way +to it even to the pitch of forgetting that--that something in her past +of whose nature I am as ignorant as you are, which seems to cast a +blight over all her life." + +He pauses; but as his listener only hangs silently on his utterance he +goes on: + +"After you left her, recollection came back to her; and because she +could not trust herself again with you, probably for the very reason +that she cared exceedingly about you"--steeling himself to make the +admission--"she felt that there was nothing for it but to go." + +Either the increased kindness of his friend's tone, or the conviction +that there is, at least, something of truth in his explanations, lets +loose again the fountain of Byng's tears, and once more he throws his +head down upon his hands and cries extravagantly. + +"It is an awful facer for you, I know," says Burgoyne, standing over +him, and, though perfectly dry-eyed, yet probably not very much less +miserable than the young mourner, whose loud weeping fills him with an +almost unbearable and yet compunctious exasperation. + +"What is he made of? how can he do it?" are the questions that he keeps +irefully putting to himself; and for fear lest in an access of +uncontrollable irritation he shall ask them out loud, he moves to the +door. At the slight noise he makes in opening it Byng lifts his head. + +"Are you going?" + +"Yes; if it is any consolation to you, you have not a monopoly of +wretchedness to-day. Things are not looking very bright for me either. +Amelia is ill." + +"Amelia," repeats the other, with a hazy look, as if not at first able +to call to mind who Amelia is; then, with a return of consciousness, "Is +Amelia ill? Oh poor Amelia! Amelia was very good to her. Amelia tried to +draw her out. She liked Amelia!" + +"Well"--with an impatient sigh--"unfortunately that did not hinder +Amelia from falling ill." + +"She is not ill _really_?"--his inborn kind-heartedness struggling for a +moment to make head against the selfishness of his absorption. + +"I do not know"--uneasily--"I am going back to the hotel to hear the +doctor's verdict. Will you walk as far as to the Anglo-Americain with +me? There is no use in your staying here." + +But at this proposition the lover's sobs break out louder and more +infuriating than ever. + +"I will stay here till I die--till I am carried over the threshold that +her cruel feet have crossed. + + "'Then tell, oh tell! how thou didst murder me?'" + +Against a resolution at once so fixed and so rational, Jim sees that it +is useless to contend. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII. + + +The sun rides high, as Burgoyne issues into the open air, and beats, +blinding hot, upon the great stone flags that pave the Florentine +streets, and seem to have a peculiar power of absorbing and retaining +light and heat. He must have been longer in the Piazza d'Azeglio than he +had thought, and the reflection quickens his steps as he hurries, +regardless of the midsummer blaze--for, indeed, it is more than +equivalent to that of our midsummer--back to the Anglo-Americain. As he +reaches it, he hears, with annoyance, the hotel clocks striking one. He +is annoyed, both because the length of his absence seems to argue an +indifference to the tidings he is expecting, and also because he knows +that it is the Wilsons' luncheon hour, and that he will probably find +that they have migrated to the _salle-a-manger_. In this case he will +have to choose between the two equally disagreeable alternatives of +following and watching them at their food, or that of undergoing a +_tete-a-tete_ with Sybilla, who, it is needless to say, does not +accompany her family to the public dining-room; a _tete-a-tete_ with +Sybilla, which is, of all forms of social intercourse, that for which he +has the least relish. + +But as he apprehensively opens the _salon_ door, he sees that his fears +are unfounded. They have not yet gone to luncheon; they are all sitting +in much the same attitudes as he had left them, except that Sybilla is +eating or drinking something of a soupy nature out of a cup. There are +very few hours of the day or night in which Sybilla is not eating +something out of a cup. There is that about the entire idleness of the +other couple which gives him a fright. Are they too unhappy? Have they +heard too bad news to be able to settle to any occupation? Urged by this +alarm, his question shoots out, almost before he is inside the door: + +"Has not he come yet? Has not the doctor come yet?" + +"He has been and gone; you see, you have been such a very long time +away," replies Cecilia. She has no intention of conveying reproach, +either by her words or tone; but to his sore conscience it seems as if +both carried it. + +"And what did he say?" + +"He did not say much." + +"Does he--does he think that it is anything--anything serious?" + +"He did not say." + +"Do you mean to tell me"--indignantly--"that you did not ask him?" + +"If you had been here," replies Cecilia, with a not inexcusable +resentment, "you might have asked him yourself." + +"But did not you ask him?" in too real anxiety to be offended at, or +even aware of, her fleer. "Did not he say?" + +"I do not think he knew himself." + +"But he must have thought--he must have had an opinion!" growing the +more uneasy as there seems no tangible object for his fears to lay hold +of. + +"He says it is impossible to judge at so early a stage; it may be a +chill--I told him about that detestable excursion yesterday, and he +considered it quite enough to account for anything--it may be +measles--they seem to be a good deal about; it may be malaria--there is +a good deal of that too." + +"And how soon will he know? How soon will it declare itself?" + +"I do not know." + + +"But has he prescribed? Is there nothing to be done--to be done _at +once_?" asks Jim feverishly, chafing at the idea of this inaction, which +seems inevitable, with that helpless feeling which his own entire +ignorance of sickness produces. + +"Do not you suppose that if there was we should have done it?" cries +Cecilia, rendered even more uncomfortable than she was before, by the +contagion of his anxiety. "We are to keep her in bed--there is no great +difficulty about that, poor soul; she has not the least desire to get +up; she seems so odd and heavy!" + +"So _odd and heavy_?" + +"Yes; I went in to see her just now, and she scarcely took any notice of +me; only when I told her that you had been to inquire after her, she lit +up a little. I believe"--with a rather grudging smile--"that if she were +dead, and someone mentioned your name, she would light up." + +A sudden mountain rises in Jim's throat. + +"If she is not better to-morrow, Dr. Coldstream will send a nurse." + +"But does he think it will be necessary?" + +"He does not know." + +Jim writhes. It seems to him as if he were being blind-folded, and +having his arms tied to his sides by a hundred strong yet invisible +threads. + +"Does no one know anything?" he cries miserably. + +"I have told you exactly what the doctor said," says Cecilia, with the +venial crossness bred of real anxiety. "I suppose you do not wish me to +invent something that he did not say?" + +"Of course not; but I wish I had been here--I wish I had been +here!"--restlessly. + +"Why were not you?" + +No immediate answer. + +"Why were not you?" repeats she, curiosity, for the moment, superseding +her disquiet. "What prevented you? I thought, when you left us, that you +meant to come back at once?" + +"So I did, but----" + + +"But what?" + +"I could not; I was with Byng." + +"With Byng?" repeats Cecilia, too genuinely astonished to remember even +to prefix a "Mr." to Byng's name. "Why, I should have thought that if +there were one day of his life on which he could have done without you +better than another, it would have been to-day!" + +"Were not you rather _de trop_?" chimes in Sybilla's languid voice from +the sofa. "Rather a bad third?" + +"I was not a third at all." + +"Do you mean to say," cries Cecilia, her countenance tinged with the +pink of a generous indignation, "that you were _four_--that Mrs. Le +Marchant stayed in the room the whole time? I must say that now that +they are really and _bona fide_ engaged, I think she might leave them +alone together." + +"Mrs. Le Marchant was not there at all." Then, seeing the open-mouthed +astonishment depicted on the faces of his audience, he braces his mind +to make the inevitable yet dreaded announcement. "I had better explain +at once that neither Mrs. nor Miss Le Marchant was there; they are +gone." + +"Gone!" + +"Yes; they left Florence at seven o'clock this morning." There is a +moment of silent stupefaction. + +"I suppose," says Cecilia, at last slowly recovering the power of +speech, "that they were telegraphed for? Mr. Le Marchant is dead or ill? +one of the married sisters? one of the brothers?" + +Never in his life has Jim laboured under so severe a temptation to tell +a lie, were it only the modified falsehood of allowing Cecilia's +hypothesis to pass uncontradicted; but even if he were able for once to +conquer his constitutional incapacity, he knows that in this case it +would be useless. The truth must transpire to-morrow. + +"I believe not." + +"Gone!" repeats Cecilia, in a still more thunderstruck key than +before--"and where are they gone?" + +"I do not know." + +"Why did they go?" + +Jim makes an impatient movement, fidgeting on his chair. "I can only +tell you their actions; they told me their motives as little as they did +you." + +"Gone! Why, they never said a word about it yesterday." + +This being of the nature of an assertion--not an interrogation--Jim +feels with relief that it does not demand an answer. + +"Gone, at seven o'clock in the morning! Why, they could not have had +time to pack their things!" + +"They left them behind." + +The moment that this admission is out of Burgoyne's mouth, he repents +having made it; nor does his regret at all diminish under the shower of +ejaculations from both sisters that it calls forth. + +"Why, it was a regular flit! they must have taken French leave." + +There is something so horribly jarring in the semi-jocosity of the last +phrase that Jim jumps up from his chair and walks towards the window, +where Mr. Wilson is sitting in dismal idleness. + +Mr. Wilson has never cared much about the Le Marchants, and is now far +too deeply absorbed in his own trouble to have anything but the most +inattentive indifference to bestow upon the topic which to his daughters +appears so riveting. Jim blesses him for his callousness. But the window +of a small room is not so distant from any other part of it that sounds +cannot, with perfect ease, penetrate thither, as Jim finds when +Cecilia's next eager question pursues him. + +"Did Mr. Byng know that they were going?" + +"No." + +There is a pause. + +"It is absolutely incomprehensible!" says Cecilia, with almost a gasp. +"I never saw any one human being so much in love with another as she was +yesterday--there was so little disguise about it, that one was really +quite sorry for her--and this morning at cockcrow she decamps and leaves +him without a word." + +"You are mistaken--she left a note for him." + +"Poor dear boy!" sighs Sybilla, "is not he quite prostrated by the blow? +I am not apt to pity men generally--they are so coarse-grained--but he +is much more delicately strung than the general run." + +"I suppose he is frightfully cut up," says Cecilia, with that +inquisitiveness as to the details of a great affliction which we are all +apt to experience. + +For some perverse reason, inexplicable even to himself, Jim would like +to be able to answer that his friend is not cut up at all; but truth +again asserting its empire, he assents laconically, "Frightfully!" + +"How did he take it?" + +"How do people generally take such things?" + +The impatience of the key in which this is uttered, coupled with the +implied side-allusion to an acquaintance with sorrows of a somewhat +similar nature on her own part, silences the younger and sounder Miss +Wilson for a moment, but only for a moment--a moment long enough to be +filled by another sighing "Poor dear boy!" from Sybilla. + +"You say that she left a note for him?"--with a renewed light of +curiosity in her eyes--"have you any idea what was in it?" + +Jim hesitates; then, "Yes," he replies; "but as it was not addressed to +me, I do not think that I have any right to repeat it." + +"Of course not!"--reluctantly; "but did it throw no light--absolutely no +light at all--upon this extraordinary stampede?" + +"No." + +"Did not she even tell him where they were going?" + +"No." + +"Nor whether they were coming back?" + +"No." + +"Nor ask him to follow her?" + +"If she did not tell him where she was going, is it likely that she +would ask him to follow her?" cries Jim irritably, deeply annoyed to +find that he is, by the series of negatives that is being forced from +him, doing the very thing which he had just denied his own right to do. + +"It is the most incomprehensible thing I ever heard in my life. I +wonder"--with an air of even alerter interest than before--"what Mr. +Greenock will say? Perhaps he will now tell what he knows about them; if +they are gone, there will no longer be any need to conceal it. I am +afraid this looks rather as if there were something!" + +For the second time in one day the mention of an amiable _flaneur's_ +name makes Jim vault to his feet. + +"Well, I will not keep you any longer from your luncheon," he cries +hastily. "I will call in again later." + +"Are you going?" asks Mr. Wilson dully, lifting his head from his chest, +upon which it is sunk. "Well, you are about right; we are not much good +to anyone when our mainspring is gone." + +The phrase strikes cold on Jim's heart. + +"Are you going back to the poor dear boy?" inquires Sybilla as he passes +her. "By-the-bye, if it is not too much trouble, would you mind tucking +the Austrian blanket a little closer in on the left side?" and as he +stoops to perform the asked-for service, she adds: "Let him know how +sincerely I sympathize with him; and if he wants anything quieting for +his nerves, tell him that there is nothing that I can more +conscientiously recommend than----" + +But what Sybilla can conscientiously recommend is shut into the closing +door. Outside that door Jim finds that Cecilia has joined him. Anxiety +has quite banished the not altogether disagreeable curiosity of five +minutes ago, from the troubled face she lifts to his. + +"You will come back, will not you?" she asks. "You are not of much use, +I suppose; but still, one feels that you are there, and we are all so +much at sea. You have not an idea how much we are at sea--without her." + +"I think that I have a very good idea," he answers mournfully. "Tell me, +Cis; do you think she is really very ill?" + +As he puts the question, he feels its irrationality. He knows that the +person to whom he is making his futile appeal has already given him all +the scanty tidings she has to give; yet he cannot help indulging a faint +hope that her response to this last query of his may perhaps set +Amelia's condition in a slightly more favourable light. A look of +helpless distress clouds Cecilia's already cloudy face. + +"I tell you I do not know; I am no judge; I have seen so little real +illness. Sybilla would kill me if she heard me say so, would not +she"--with a slight parenthetical smile--"but I have seen so little real +illness, that I do not know what things mean; I do not know what it +means that she should be so heavy and stupid. As I told you before, the +only time that she roused up at all was when I mentioned your--" + +He stops her, breaking rudely into her sentence. He cannot bear to hear +that it is only at the magic of his name that his poor faithful love +lifts her sick head. + +"Yes, yes; I remember." + +"Some one ought to sit up with her, I am sure," pursues Cecilia, still +with that same helpless air of disquiet; "she ought not to be left alone +all night; but who? I should be more than willing to do it, but I know +that I should fall asleep in five minutes, and I am such a heavy sleeper +that, when once I am off, there is no possibility of waking me. I am a +dreadfully bad sick-nurse; father can never bear to have me near him +when he has the gout." + +Burgoyne is too well aware of the perfect truth of this last statement +to attempt any contradiction of it. + +"Amelia has always been the one to sit up when any one was ill," +continues she woefully; "and even now, by a stupid confusion of ideas, I +catch myself thinking, 'Oh, Amelia will sit up with her!' before I can +realize that _her_ is Amelia herself." + +Jim can well sympathize with this same confusion, when, several times +during his walk back to the Piazza d'Azeglio, a muddled thought of +comfort, in the idea that he will go and tell Amelia what a terrible day +of anxiety about some one he has been having, taps at the door of his +brain. The portals of No. 12 are once again opened to him by Annunziata, +who indicates to him, by a series of compassionate gestures and liquid +Tuscan sentences, that the _povero_ is still within, and the Padrona, +who this time also appears on the scene, and who is possessed of +somewhat more English than her handmaid, intimates, albeit with a good +deal of sympathy for his sufferings, yet with still more of +determination, that it would be no bad thing were he to be removed, +since, whether the sun shines or the rain falls, people must live, and +the apartment has to be prepared for new occupants. + +Anything that speaks less intention of removing than Byng's pose, when +his friend rejoins him, it would be difficult to imagine. He is +stretched upon the parquet floor, with his head lying on the small +footstool that has been wont to support Elizabeth's feet; her rifled +workbasket stands on the floor beside him, while her bit of embroidery +half shrouds his distorted face. The needle, still sticking in it, may +prick his eyes out for all he cares; the book she last read is open at +the page where she has put her mark of a skein of pale silk; and the +yellow anemones, that he must have plucked for her yesterday in drenched +Vallombrosa, are crushed under his hot cheek. But outwardly he is quite +quiet. Jim puts his hand on his shoulder. + +"Come away, there is no use in your staying here any longer." + +As he receives no answer, he repeats the exhortation more imperatively, +"Come." + +"Why should I come? Where should I come to?" says the young man, lifting +his head, "where can I find such plain traces of her as here? I will +stay." + +He says this with an air of resolution, and once more lays down his face +upon the footstool, which, being entirely worked in beads, has impressed +the cheek thrust against it with a design in small hollows, a fact of +which the sufferer is quite unaware. + +"You cannot stay!" cries Burgoyne, the more impatiently that his own +share of anxiety is fretting his temper almost past endurance; "you +cannot stay, it is out of the question; they want to come into the +rooms, to prepare them for new occupants." + +"_New occupants!_" repeats Byng, turning over almost on his face, and +flattening his nose and lips against the beaded surface of his stool, +"other occupants than _her_. Never! never!" + +It is to be placed to the credit side of Mr. Burgoyne's account that he +does not, upon this declaration, withdraw the resting-place from his +young friend's countenance and break it over his head. It is certainly +not the temptation to do so that is lacking. Instead, he sits down at +some distance off, and says quietly: + +"I see, you will force them to call in the police. You will make a +discreditable _esclandre_. How good for her; how conducive to her good +name. I congratulate you!" + +The other has lifted his head in a moment. + +"What do you mean?" + +"Do you think," asks Jim indignantly, "that it is ever very advantageous +to a woman to have her name mixed up in a vulgar row? And do you suppose +that hers will be kept out of it? Come"--seeing a look of shocked +consternation breaking over the young man's face, and determined to +strike while the iron is hot--"I will call a fiacre, and we will go home +to the hotel. Put back her things into her basket. What right have you +to meddle with them? You have no business to take advantage of her +absence to do what you would not do if she were here." + +Byng obeys with a scared docility; his eyes are so dim, and his fingers +tremble so much, that Jim has to help him in replacing Elizabeth's small +properties. His own heart is pricked with a cruel smart that has no +reference to Amelia's illness, as he handles the departed girl's spools +and skeins, and awkwardly folds her scrap of broidery. Byng offers no +further resistance, and, equally indifferent to his own bunged-up eyes, +bead-marked cheeks, and dishevelled locks, follows his companion dully, +down the stone stairs, compassionately watched from the top by +Annunziata, whose heart is an inconveniently tender one to be matched +with so tough a face. They get into the fiacre, and drive in dead +silence to the Minerva. Arrived there, Jim persuades his friend, who now +seems prepared to acquiesce meekly in whatever he is told to do, to lie +down on his bed, since the few words that he utters convey the fact of +his being suffering from a burning headache, a phenomenon not very +surprising, considering his late briny exercises, since, even at the +superb age of twenty-two, it is difficult to spend six hours in banging +your forehead against a parquet floor, in moaning, bellowing, and +weeping, without leaving some traces of these gymnastics on your +physique. + +Burgoyne stands or sits patiently beside him, bathing his fiery temples +with eau-de-Cologne, not teasing him with any questions, having, indeed, +on his own part, the least possible desire for conversation; and so the +heavy hours go by. The day has declined to evening before Burgoyne quits +his _protege's_ side to dine, shortly and solitarily, previous making a +third visit to the Anglo-Americain, to learn the latest news of his +betrothed. + +He had left Byng still stretched upon his bed, apparently asleep, and is +therefore the more surprised, on returning to take a final look at him +before setting out on his own errand, to find him up, with hat and stick +in hand, evidently prepared for a walk. + +"You are going out?" + +"Yes." + +"Where are you going?" + +The other hesitates. + +"I am going back there." + +"Impossible!" + +"But I am," replies Byng doggedly; "it will not do _her_ any injury, for +I shall not attempt to go in, I shall only ask at the door whether any +telegram has yet been received from--from them; they must telegraph to +direct where their things are to be sent to, and it is most probable +that they have done so already." + +"It is most _im_probable." + +"Well, at all events, it is possible, it is worth trying, and I mean to +try it." + +There is such a fixed resolution in his voice, which is no longer +quavering with sobs, and in his ashy face, that Jim offers no further +resistance. The only concession he can obtain from him is that of +permitting him to accompany him. + +"You will not mind coming with me to the Anglo-Americain first, will +you?" inquires Jim, as they set off walking across the Piazza. + +"It will delay us quite half-an-hour," answers the other restlessly. +"But stay" (a hazy look of reminiscence dawning over his preoccupied +haggard face), "did you tell me that Amelia was ill--or did I dream it?" + +"No, you did not dream it," replies the other sadly. "She _is_ ill." + +Perhaps the wretchedness that pierces through his friend's quiet tones +recalls the young dreamer to the fact that the world holds other +miseries than his own. There is at all events something of his old quick +sympathy in his next words, and in the way in which they are uttered: + +"Oh, poor Amelia, I _am_ sorry! By all means let us go at once and ask +after her. Is there nothing that we can get?--nothing that we can do for +her?" + +It is the question that Jim, in baffled anxiety, puts when he is +admitted inside the dull _salon_, where no love-glorified, homely face +to-night lights up the tender candles of its glad eyes, from over its +stitching, at his entry. + +Sybilla is lying less comfortably than usual on her sofa, her cushions +not plumped up, and her bottle of smelling-salts rolled out of her +reach. Mr. Wilson is walking uneasily up and down the room, instead of +sitting placidly in his chair, with the soothing voice--which he had +always thought as much to be counted on, and as little to be +particularly thankful for, as the air that fills his lungs--lullingly +reading him to sleep. + +"Cecilia is with her just now," he says, in a voice of forlorn +irritation. "I wish she would come down again; I have no great opinion +of Cecilia as a sick-nurse, and she must know how anxious we are." A +moment later, still pursuing his fidgety ramble from wall to wall, and +exclaiming peevishly, as he stumbles over a footstool: "If it would only +declare itself! There seems to be nothing to lay hold of, we are so +completely in the dark--if it would only declare itself!" + +A not very subdued sob from the sofa is the only answer he gets, an +answer which evidently irritates still further his fretted nerves. + +"I cannot think what Cecilia is doing!" he cries, hastening to the door, +opening it noisily, and then listening. + +"Let me run up and see," says Jim, his heart going out to the fractious +old man in a sympathy of suffering. "Yes, I know where her room is--_au +troisieme_, is not it?" (a flash of recollection lighting up the fact +that Amelia's is distinctly the worst room of the suite occupied by the +Wilson family; the room with most stairs to climb to, and least +accommodation when you reach it). "I will knock quite gently. Do not be +afraid, I will not disturb her, and I will come down immediately to tell +you." + +Without waiting for permission, he springs up the stairs, and, standing +on the landing, taps cautiously on the closed door, whose number (by one +of those quirks of memory that furnish all our minds with insignificant +facts) he has recollected. His first knock is so superfluously soft that +it is evidently inaudible within, since no result follows upon it. His +second, a shade louder, though still muffled by the fear of breaking +into some little fitful yet salutary sleep, brings Cecilia out. His +first glance at her face shows him that she has no good news, either to +warm his own heart, or for him to carry down as a solace to the poor old +man below. + +"Oh, it is you, is it?" says she, shutting the door behind her with a +clumsy carefulness that makes it creak. "No, I do not think she is any +better; but it is so difficult to tell, I am no judge. She does not +complain of anything particular; but she looks so _odd_." + +It is the same adjective that Cecilia had applied earlier in the day to +her sick sister, and it fills Jim with an impotent terror. + +"If she is asleep, might not I just look in at her?" he asks. "I do not +know what you mean when you say she looks _odd_." + +"She is not asleep," replies Cecilia, in a noisy whisper, much more +likely to pierce sick ears than a voice pitched in its normal key; "at +least, I think not. But I am sure you ought not to see her; Dr. +Coldstream said she was to be kept very quiet, and nothing would upset +her so much as seeing you." + +"She need not see me; I would only take just one look at her from behind +the door," persists Jim who feels a desire, whose gnawing intensity +surprises himself, to be assured by the evidence of his own eyes that +his poor love's face has not undergone some strange and gruesome change, +such as is suggested by Cecilia's disquieting epithet. + +"Do you think she would not know you were there?" asks she scornfully, +"Why, she hears your step three streets off!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII. + + +So that night Jim does not see Amelia. After all, as Cecilia says, it is +better to be on the safe side, and to-morrow she will be brighter, and +he can sit by her, and tell her lovingly--oh very lovingly!--what a +fright she has given him. Yes, to-morrow she will be brighter. The +adjective is Cecilia's; but, apparently, he cannot improve upon it, for +he not only keeps repeating it to himself as he runs downstairs, but +employs it for the reassurance of Miss Wilson's anxious relatives. + +"She will be brighter to-morrow; sick people are always worse at night, +are not they?"--rather vaguely, with again that oppressive sense of his +own inexperience in illness. "Not that she is _worse_"--this is hastily +subjoined, as he sees her father's face fall--"Cecilia never said she +was _worse_--oh, no, not _worse_, only not distinctly better; and, after +all, it would have been irrational to expect that. She will be brighter +to-morrow--oh, yes, of course she will be brighter to-morrow!" + +He leaves the hotel with the phrase, which sounds cut and dried and +unreal, still upon his lips, after bidding a kinder good-night than +usual to Mr. Wilson, after having offered to supply Amelia's place by +reading aloud to him, a feat he has not performed since the evening of +his disastrous experience of the Provident Women of Oxford; and lastly, +having even--as a reward to Sybilla, who has been understood to murmur +something tearful about letting her maid look in upon Amelia at +intervals through the night--tucked in her Austrian blanket, and picked +up her smelling-bottle. He has expected to rejoin Byng outside, as he +had promised to wait for him with such patience as a cigar could lend, +and on the condition that his absence should not exceed a stipulated +period. But either the promise has been broken, or the period exceeded, +for Byng is gone. The fact does not greatly surprise Burgoyne, though it +causes him a slight uneasiness, which is, perhaps, rather a blessing for +him, distracting his mind in some slight measure from the heaviness of +his own trouble. + +He walks fast to the Piazza d'Azeglio; but he neither overtakes him of +whom he is in pursuit, nor finds him at 12 bis. He has been there, has +inquired with agitation for the telegrams, which have naturally not been +received, and has then gone away again immediately. Whither? The +Padrona, who has answered the door-bell herself and, with Italian +suavity, is doing her best to conceal that she is beginning to +think she has heard nearly enough of the subject, does not know. For a +few moments Jim stands irresolute, then he turns his steps towards the +Arno. It is not yet too late for the charming riverside promenade, the +gay Lung'Arno, to be still alive with _flaneurs_; the stars have lit +their lamps above, and the hotels below. The pale planets, and the +yellow lights from the opposite bank of the river, lie together, sweet +and peaceful upon her breast. In both cases the counterfeits are as +clear and bright as the real luminaries; and it seems as if one had only +to plunge in an arm to pick up stars and candles out of the stream's +depths. + +Leaning over the parapet near the Ponte Vecchio, Burgoyne soon discovers +a familiar figure, a figure which starts when he touches its arm. + +"I thought I would wait about here for an hour or so," says Byng, with a +rather guilty air of apology, "until I could go back and inquire again. +The telegram has not arrived yet--I suppose it is too early. Of course +they would not telegraph until they get in to-night. You do not +think"--with a look of almost terror--"that they are going through to +England, and that they will not telegraph till they get there?" + +"How can I tell?" + +"There is nothing in the world less likely," cries Byng feverishly, +irritated at not having drawn forth the reassurance he had hoped for. "I +do not for a moment believe that they have gone home; I feel convinced +that they are still in Italy! Why should they leave it, when they--when +she is so fond of it?" + +Jim looks down sadly at the calm, strong stream. + +"I do not know, I cannot give an opinion--I have no clue." + +"I will ask again in about an hour," says Byng, lifting his arms from +the parapet, "in an hour it is pretty certain to have arrived; and +meanwhile, I thought I would just stroll about the town, but there is no +reason--none at all--why I should keep you! You--you must be wanting to +go back to Amelia." + +He glances at his friend in a nervous, sidelong way, as he makes this +suggestion. + +"I am not going back again to-night," replies Jim quietly, without +giving any evidence of an intention to acquiesce in his dismissal. +"There is nothing that I can do for her--there is nothing to be done." + +His tone, in making this statement, must be yet more dreary than he is +aware, as it arouses even Byng's self-absorbed attention. + +"Nothing to be done for her?" he echoes, with a shocked look. "My dear +old chap, you do not mean to say--to imply--" + +"I mean to imply nothing," interrupts Jim sharply, in a superstitious +panic of hearing some unfavourable augury as to his betrothed put into +words. "I mean just what I say--neither more nor less; there is nothing +to be done for her to-night, nothing but to let her sleep--a good sleep +will set her up: of course a good sleep will quite set her up." + +He speaks almost angrily, as if expecting and challenging contradiction. +But Byng's spirit has already flown back to his own woes. He may make +what sanguine statements he pleases about Amelia's to-morrow, without +fearing any demurrer from his companion. What attention the latter has +to spare is evidently only directed to the solving of the problem, how +best, with amicable civility, to be rid of him. Before he can hit upon +any expedient for attaining this desired end, Burgoyne speaks again, his +eye resting with a compassionate expression upon his junior's face, +whose wild pallor is heightened by the disorder of his hair, and the hat +crushed down over his brows. + +"You have not had anything to eat all day--had not you better come back +to the hotel and get something to eat?" + +"Eat!" cries the other, with almost a scream; "you must have very little +comprehension of----" Then, checking himself and with a strong and +palpable effort for composure: "It would not be worth while, I should +not have time; in an hour--less than an hour now, for I must have been +here quite ten minutes at the least--I have to return to the Piazza +d'Azeglio." + +"Then go to Doney's; why not get something to eat at Doney's? It will +not take you five minutes to reach the Via Tornabuoni." + +"What should I do when I got there?" asks Byng impatiently. "If I tried +to swallow food, it would stick in my throat; no food shall pass my lips +till I learn where she is; after that"--breaking out into a noisy +laugh--"you may do what you please with me--we will make a night of it +with all my heart, we will-- + + "'Drink, drink, + Till the pale stars blink!'" + +Jim looks blankly at him. Is he going mad? + +"If you think that you will get me to go back to the hotel to-night, you +are very much mistaken," continues Byng recklessly; "no roof less high +than this"--jerking back his head, to throw his fevered look up to the +cool stars--"shall shelter my head; and besides, where would be the use +of going to bed when I should have to be up again so early? I shall be +off by one of the morning expresses: until I have learnt--as, of course, +I shall do to-night--where she has gone, I cannot tell which; but +neither of them starts much later than seven." + +For a moment Jim stands dumb with consternation at the announcement of +this intention; but, reflecting that it would not be a whit more +irrational to attempt to reason with a madman who had reached the +padded-room stage of lunacy, than with his present companion, he +contents himself with saying: + +"And supposing that you do not learn to-night where she has gone?" + +"There is no use in supposing anything so impossible!" + +But as the hours go by, the possibility becomes a probability, the +probability a certainty! Midnight comes, and the closed telegraph-office +puts a final extinguisher upon the expectation, which no one but the +unhappy lover had ever entertained, that Florence would be enlightened +before the dawn of another day as to the place whither her two truants +have fled. + +Burgoyne has accompanied his friend upon his last importunate visit to +the now-going-to-bed and justly-incensed 12 bis. He has been ashamed +again to present himself at the so-often-attacked door, so has awaited +at the bottom of the stairs, has heard Byng's hoarse query, and the +negative--curter and less suave than the last one--that follows it; has +heard the door shut again, and the hopeless footsteps that come +staggering down to him. + +"You will go home now?" + + "'Perchance, Iago, I shall ne'er go home!'" + +replies Byng; and, though he is compelled to admit that there is no +longer any possibility of his to-night obtaining the information for +which he so madly hungers, that there can consequently be no question of +his setting off by one of the early trains, since he would not know in +which direction to go, and might only be fleeing further from her whom +he would fain rejoin, yet he still keeps with fevered pertinacity to his +project of spending the night _a la belle etoile_. + +Finding it impossible to dissuade him, Jim resigns himself to bearing +him company. It is with very little reluctance that he does so. There is +no truer truism than that all sorrows, however mountainous, are more +easily carried under God's high roof than man's low ones, and he who +does not sleep has for compensation that at least he can have no +dreadful waking. So the two men wander about all night in the boon +southern air, and see-- + + "The moon exactly round, + And all those stars with which the brows of ample heaven are crown'd; + Orion, all the Pleiades, and those seven Atlas got; + The close-beam'd Hyades, the Bear, surnamed the Chariot, + That turns about heaven's axle-tree, holds ope a constant eye + Upon Orion, and of all the cressets in the sky, + His golden forehead never bows to the Ocean's empery." + +There are not many hours of a summer's night during which the stir of +life has ceased and has not yet reawaked in an Italian town, the talk +and the tread and the mule bells, and the flutes of the voiceful people +lasting on till near the small hours, and beginning again ere those +hours have had strength to grow big. But yet there is a space of time +when Florence lies silent, baring her beauty to the constellations +alone; and under this unfamiliar and solemn and lovely aspect the two +night-wanderers see her. They see her Campanile + + "Commercing with the skies," + +with no distracting human bustle about her feet; they see her Perseus +battling beneath her Loggia, and her San Giorgio standing wakeful at his +post on Or san Michele. They see her scowling palace rows, her stealing +river, and her spanning bridges--palaces out of which no head peeps, a +river on which no boat oars, bridges upon which no horse-hoof rings. +They have all her churches--Santa Croce, Arnolpho's great "Bride," that +_new_ Maria that is now four hundred years old or more, the humbly +glorious San Marco--to themselves; all her treasure houses, all her +memories, all her flower-embalmed air--for a few hours they possess them +all. She is but a little city, this fair Firenze, and in these few hours +they traverse her in her length and breadth, rambling aimlessly wherever +Byng's feverishly miserable impulses lead them. Burgoyne offers no +opposition to any of these, but accompanies his friend silently down +slumbrous thoroughfare, or across sleeping Piazza, by Arno side, under +colonnade or arch. It is all one to him; nor is he sensible of any +fatigue, when at length, at about the hour when Byng had meant to have +caught the early morning train, they return to the hotel, and the +younger man, happily dead-beat at last, worn out with want of food, +tears, and weariness, flings himself down, dressed, upon his bed, and +instantly falls into a leaden sleep. Jim feels no desire, nor indeed any +power of following his example. He is not easily tired, and his former +life of travel and hardship has made him always willing to dispense with +the--to him--unnecessary luxury of a bed; and, under ordinary +circumstances, a night passed in the open air would have had an effect +upon him rather exhilarating than otherwise. He has his bath, dresses, +breakfasts, and then jumps into a fiacre, and has himself driven to the +Anglo-Americain. + +The day is so exactly the counterpart of its predecessor, in its even +assured splendour, that Jim has a hazy feeling that they both make only +one divided into two parts by the narrow dark blue ribbon of the +exquisite brief night. When did yesterday end and to-day begin? As he is +borne along, his memory, made more alert by sleeplessness, +reproduces--merely, as it seems to him, the better to fill him with pain +and remorse--the different states of mind in which he has passed over +the often trodden ground. Here, at the street corner, what a nausea had +come over him at the thought of the interest he would have to feign in +those humdrum details, so dear to Amelia's soul, of their future +_menage_, with all its candle-end economies and depressing restrictions. +Here, in the church shadow, how he had tried to lash himself up into a +more probable semblance of pleasure in her expected and dreaded +caresses. There seems to be scarcely an inch of the way where he has not +had some harsh or weary thought of her; he is thankful when the brief +transit, that has appeared to him so long, is over. And yet the change +is only from the sharp sting of recollected unkindness to the dull +bruising ache of anticipated ill. A _garcon_ is sweeping out the +_salon_, for the hour is not much beyond eight, so Jim goes into the +dreary little dining-room, where two places are laid with coffee-cups +and rolls. Only two. And, though he knows that nothing short of a +miracle could have already restored Amelia so completely as to enable +her to come down to breakfast, yet the ocular demonstration of the fact +that her place is and will be empty, strikes a chill to his boding +heart. He is presently joined by Cecilia, whose carelessly-dressed hair, +heavy eyelids, and tired puffy face, sufficiently show that not to her, +any more than to himself has night brought + + "Sweet child sleep, the filmy-eyed." + +"How fresh and cool you are!" she cries, with an almost reproachful +intonation. "Do not look at me!"--covering her face with her hot +hands--"I am not fit to be seen; but what does that matter? What do I +care?"--beginning to cry--"Oh, she is so bad! We have spent such a +dreadful night! As I tell you, I am a shocking sick-nurse; I never know +what to do; I lose my head completely; and she has been so odd--she has +been talking such gibberish!" + +"Delirious?" + +"Yes, I suppose that is what you would call it. I never saw anybody +delirious before, so I do not know. I have seen Sybilla in hysterics, +but I never believed that they were real--I always thought that a bucket +of water would bring her round." + +As a general rule, Jim may be counted upon for cordial co-operation in +any hit directed against Sybilla, but now he is too spiritless even to +notice it. + +"I was so frightened," continues Cecilia; "it is not cheerful being all +alone at the dead of night with a person talking such nonsense as she +was. Amelia, of all people, to talk nonsense! I could not quite make out +what it was about, but it seemed to have more or less reference to you. +She was begging you to forgive her for something she had done, as far as +I could gather; some treat she had prepared for you, and that you had +not liked. Have you the least idea what she could have meant?" + +He has every idea; but it would seem profanation to explain that her +poor wandering brain is still distressedly labouring with the abortive +project she had so happily framed for his enjoyment. + +"She is quieter now. Sybilla's maid is with her; Sybilla really has not +behaved badly--_for her_; she let her maid look in several times during +the night; but still, for the most part I was alone with her! Oh, I do +trust"--shuddering--"that I may never again have to be alone at night +with a person who is not right in her head!" + +This aspiration on the youngest Miss Wilson's part is, for the present +occasion, at least, likely to be gratified; for, by the time that +another night settles down on Florence, Amelia's illness has been +declared by Dr. Coldstream to have every symptom of developing into the +malarious Florentine fever, which not unfrequently lays low the chilled +or over-fatigued, or generally imprudent foreign visitor to that little +Eden. Amelia has Florentine fever; and the verification of this fact is +followed by all the paraphernalia of serious sickness--night and day +nurses, disinfectants, physic phials. + +The announcement of her being attacked by a definite and recognised +disease brings at first a sort of relief to Burgoyne's mind, which, +under Cecilia's frightened and frightening word-pictures, had been beset +by terrors great in proportion to their vagueness. Now that Amelia is +confessedly sick of a fever, there is nothing abnormal in her being +"odd," and "stupid," and "wandering," these being only the inevitable +stages on a road which will--which _must_ lead to ultimate recovery. His +heart is heavy, yet scarcely so heavy as it had been upon his arrival in +the morning, when, late in the afternoon--not sooner do the claims upon +him of the disorganized and helpless family of his betrothed relax--he +returns to the Minerva to look after Byng. Having had every reason to +fear that he will not find him at the hotel, but will be obliged again +to set off in pursuit of him through the streets and squares so +repeatedly traversed last night, he is relieved to learn from the hotel +servants that the young man is in his bedroom. He finds him there +indeed; no longer stretched in the blessed oblivion of deep sleep upon +his bed, but sitting on a hard chair by the open window, his arms +resting upon the back, and his face crushed down upon them. By no +slightest movement does he show consciousness of his friend's entrance. + +"I am afraid I have been a long time away," says the latter kindly. + +"Have you?" answers Byng, his voice coming muffled through lips still +buried in his own coat-sleeve. "I do not know; I have done with time!" + +"I do not know how you have managed that," rejoins Jim, still +indulgently, though a shade dryly. "Have you been here all day?" + +"I do not know where I have been. Yes,"--lifting his head--"I do; I have +been to the Piazza d'Azeglio." + +"Well?" + +"They know where she is. They were packing her things; through the door +I saw them tying the label on the box; if I had tried I could have read +the address on the label, but I did not. She had forbidden them to give +it to me; in her telegram she had forbidden them to give it to anyone." + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX. + + +Jim refrains from saying how likely this culmination of his friend's +woes has appeared to him, since it would have been the height of the +illogical for the Le Marchants to have put themselves to extreme +inconvenience in order to escape from a person to whom they immediately +afterwards gave the power of following them. He refrains from saying it, +because he knows of how very little consoling power the "told you so" +philosophy is possessed. + +"And what will you do now?" + +"Do! What is there to do? What does a man do when he is shot through the +heart?" + +"I believe that in point of fact he jumps his own height in the air. I +know that a buffalo does," replies Burgoyne with a matter-of-fact +dryness, which proceeds less from want of sympathy, than from an honest +belief that it is the best and kindest method of dealing with Byng's +heroics. + +"_Shot through the heart!_" murmurs the latter, repeating his own phrase +as if he found a dismal pleasure in it. "I had always been told that it +was a painless death; I now know to the contrary." + +"Shall you stay here? There is no longer any use in your staying here." + +"There is no longer any use in my doing anything, or leaving anything +undone. + + "'There's nothing in this world can make me joy; + Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale, + Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.'" + +So saying, he replaces his head upon his arms, and his arms upon the +chair-rail, with the air of one who, upon mature consideration, has +decided to maintain that attitude for the remainder of his life. + + * * * * * + +A week has passed; a week upon which Burgoyne looks back as upon a blur +of wretchedness, with distinct points of pain sticking up here and there +out of it. It is a blur; for it is a time-space, without the usual +limitations and divisions of time; a week not cut up into orderly +lengths of day and night, but in which each has puzzlingly run into and +overlapped each. There have been nights when he has not been in bed at +all, and there have been days when he has slept heavily at unaccustomed +hours. He has not dined at any particular time; he has shared forlorn +breakfast, dotted about the morning as the less or more anxiety about +Amelia dictated, with the Wilsons. He has drunk more tea than he ever +did in his life before, and the result of this whole condition of things +is, that he cannot for the life of him tell whether the day of the week +is Wednesday, or Thursday, or Friday, and that he has lost all sense of +proportion. He has not the least idea whether the dreadful moments when +he stood on the landing outside Amelia's door, and heard her +heartrendingly beg him not to go away from her for _quite_ so long, to +be a little gladder to see her when he came back; or again affectingly +assure him that she can do quite well, be quite cheerful without +him--whether, I say, those dreadful moments were really only moments, or +stretched into hours. + +Besides the agony of remorse that the impotent listening to those +pathetic prayers and unselfish assurances causes him, he suffers too +from another agony of shame, that the father and sister, standing like +himself with ears stretched at that shut door, should be let into the +long secret of his cruelty and coldness, that secret which for eight +years she has so gallantly been hiding. It is an inexpressible relief to +him that at least the old man's thickened hearing admits but very +imperfectly his daughter's rapid utterances. + +"Poor soul! I cannot quite make out what it is all about," he says, with +his hand to his ear; "but I catch your name over and over again, Jim; I +suppose it is all about you." + +Cecilia, however, naturally hears as well as he himself does, and +apparently pitying the drawn misery of his face, whispers to him +comfortingly-- + +"You must not mind, you know it is all nonsense. She talks very +differently when she is well." + +The Wilson family have never hitherto shown any very marked affection +for Burgoyne, but now it seems as if they could hardly bear him out of +their sight. They cling to him, not because he is _he_--Jim makes +himself no illusion on that head--but because they have got into such a +habit of leaning, that it is no longer possible to them to stand +upright. He had never realized till now how helpless they are. He had +known that Amelia was the pivot upon which the whole family turned; but +he had not brought home to himself how utterly the machine fell to +pieces when that pivot was withdrawn. + +In the course of the past week each member of the family has confided to +him separately how far more she or he misses Amelia, than can be +possible to either of the others. Upon this head Sybilla's lamentations +are the loudest and most frequent. She had at first refused to admit +that there was anything at all the matter with her sister, but has now +fallen into the no less trying opposite extreme of refusing to allow +that there is any possibility of her recovery, talking of her as if she +were almost beyond the reach of human aid. Sybilla's grief for her +sister is perfectly genuine; none the less so that it is complicated by +irritation at her own deposition from her post of first invalid, at +having been compelled to confess the existence in the bosom of her own +family of a traitor, with an indisputably higher temperature and more +wavering pulse than she. + +"It is ridiculous to suppose that a person in such rude health as +Cecilia _can_ miss her as I do," she says querulously; "I was always her +first object, she always knew by instinct when I was more suffering than +usual; who cares now"--breaking into a deluge of self-compassionating +tears--"whether I am suffering or not?" + +Then, when next he happens to be alone with Cecilia, it is her turn to +assert a superiority of woe; a superiority claimed with still more +emphasis the next half hour by the father. With a patience which would +have surprised those persons who had seen him only in his former +relations with the family of his betrothed he tries to soothe the sorrow +of each--even that of Sybilla--in turn; but to his own heart he says +that not one of their griefs is worthy to be weighed in the balance with +his. In the case of none of theirs is the woof crossed by the hideous +warp of self-reproach that is woven inextricably into his. They have +worked her to death, they have torn her to pieces by their conflicting +claims; their love has been exacting, selfish, inconsiderate; but at +least it has been love; they have prized her at almost her full worth +while they had her. For him it has been reserved as for the base Indian, +to + + "Throw a pearl away + Richer than all his tribe." + +In the intervals--neither long nor many--between his ministrations at +the Anglo-Americain, Burgoyne hurries back to the Minerva to see that +Byng has not blown his brains out. In the present state of mind of that +young gentleman this catastrophe does not appear to be among the least +likely ones. He has refused to leave Florence, always answering the +suggestion with the same question, "Where else should I go?" and if +pressed, adding invariably in the same words as those employed by him on +the first day of his loss, when his friend had urged the advisability of +his removing his countenance from the beaded stool--"Where shall I find +such recent and authentic traces of her as here?" + +He passes his time either on the Lung' Arno, staring at the water, or +stretched face downwards upon his bed. He walks about the town most of +the night, and Jim suspects him of beginning to take chloral. +Occasionally he rouses up into a quick and almost passionate sympathy +with his friend's trouble, asking for nothing better than to be sent on +any errand, however trivial, or however tiresome, in Amelia's behalf. +But no sooner have the immediate effects of the appeal to his +kind-heartedness died away, than he sinks back into his lethargy, and +Jim is at once too much occupied and too miserable to use any very +strenuous endeavours to shake him out of it. But yet the consciousness +of the tacit engagement, under which he lies to the young man's mother, +to look after him, coupled with the absolute impossibility, under his +present circumstances, of fulfilling that engagement, and his uneasiness +as to what new form the insanity of Byng's grief may take on, from day +to day, add very perceptibly to the weight of his own already +sufficiently ponderous burden. + +It is the ninth day since Amelia fell sick, that ninth day which, in +maladies such as hers, is, or is at least reckoned to be, the crisis and +turning-point of the disease. Jim has been up all night, and has just +rushed back to the Minerva, for the double purpose of taking a bath, and +of casting an uneasy eye upon his charge. He finds the latter not in his +room, but leaning over the little spiky balcony, out of his window, +hanging over it so far, and so absorbedly, that he does not hear his +friend's approach, and starts violently when Jim lays a hand on his +shoulder. + +"What are you looking at?" + +"I; oh--nothing particular! What should I be looking at? What is there +to look to? I was only--only--wondering as a mere matter of curiosity, +how many feet it is from here to the pavement? Sixteen? eighteen? +twenty?" + +Jim's only answer is to look at him sadly and sternly; then he says +coldly: + +"I do not recommend it; it would be a clumsy way of doing it." + +"What matter how clumsy the way, so that one attains the end?" asks Byng +extravagantly, throwing off even the thin pretence he had at first +assumed; "who cares how bad the road is so that it leads him to the +goal? + + "'Oh, amiable lovely death! + Thou odoriferous stench, sound rottenness!'" + +Jim shudders. Death has been so near to him for the last nine days, that +the terrific realism of Constance's apostrophe seems to be almost more +than he can bear. + +"It is silliness to live when to live is a torment, and then, have we a +prescription to die, when death is our physician?" continues Byng loudly +and wildly, clasping his hands above his head, and apparently perfectly +indifferent as to whether the other inmates of the hotel, or passers-by +on the piazza, overhear him. + +"If you stay here much longer you will spare yourself the trouble of +putting an end to your existence," replies Jim, glancing at the other's +head, exposed hatless to the scorch of the Tuscan sun, "for you will +certainly get a sunstroke." + +So saying, he takes him quietly, yet decidedly, by the arm, and leads +him within the room. Either his matter-of-fact manner, or the sight of +his face, upon which, well-seasoned as it is, vigil and sorrow have +begun to write their unavoidable marks, brings the young madman back to +some measure of sense and self-control. + +"I had no fixed intention," he says apologetically, still looking white +and wild; "you must not think I meant anything; but, even if I had--do +you know--have you ever happened to read anything about the statistics +of suicide? Do you know what an increasing number of people every year +find life intolerable?" + +"I know that you are fast making _my_ life intolerable," answers Jim, +fixing his tired, sleepless eyes with melancholy severity upon his +companion. "Amelia is--you are as well aware of it as I am--probably +dying, and yet even now, thanks to you, into my thoughts of her is +continually pushing the fear that I may have to tell your mother that +you have had the colossal selfishness to rush out of the world, because, +for the first time in your pampered life, the toy you cried for has not +been put into your hand." + +Burgoyne's hopes have not been high, as to any salutary result of his +own philippic while uttering it. But our words, sometimes, to our +surprise, turn from wooden swords to steel daggers in our hands. For a +moment Byng stands as if stunned; then he breaks into a tornado of sobs +and tears, such tears as have often before angered his friend, but which +now he welcomes the sight of, as perhaps precursors of a saner mood. + +"Oh, my dear old chap!" he cries, catching at Jim's unresponsive hand, +and wringing it hard, "she is not dying _really_? You do not mean it? +You are only saying it to frighten me? Oh! dear, kind Amelia. Not dying! +not dying?" + +"I do not know: to-day is the turning-point, they say; even now it may +have come." + +"And why are not you with her? Why do not you go back to her?" cries +Byng, in a broken voice of passionate excitement, the tears still racing +down his face. + +"And leave you to go tomfooling out there again?" asks Jim, with a nod +of his head towards the balcony, seen from where they stand, grilling in +the midday blaze. + +The verb employed, if closely looked into, bears a ludicrous +disproportion to the intended action indicated, but neither of the men +sees anything ridiculous in it. + +"I will not!" cries Byng, in eager asseveration; "I give you my word of +honour I will not; if you do not believe me, take me with you! Keep me +with you all day! Do you think that I, too, do not want to know how +Amelia is? Do you think that I am indifferent as to whether she lives or +dies? Poor, good Amelia! When I think of that drive to Vallombrosa, only +ten days ago! They two sitting side by side, so happy, laughing and +making friends with each other!" + +He covers his face with his hands, and through them the scalding drops +trickle; but only for a moment. In the next, he has dashed them away, +and is moving restlessly about the room, looking for his hat. + +"Let us go this instant," he says urgently; "my poor old man, do you +think I would willingly add a feather weight to your burden? I should +never forgive myself if I kept you a second longer from her at such a +time; let us go at once." + +Burgoyne complies; but under pretext of making some change in his dress, +escapes from his friend, for just the few minutes necessary to write and +despatch a telegram to the young man's mother. It runs thus: + +"_No cause for alarm, but come at once. He is perfectly well, but needs +you._" + +If, as is to be hoped, Mrs. Byng is still in London, reaping the +succession of the old relative whose death-bed she had quitted Florence +to attend, his message will bring her hither within forty-eight hours, +and the burden of responsibility, now grown so insupportable, will be +shifted from his shoulders. Until those forty-eight hours have elapsed, +he must not again let Byng out of his sight. + +The day rolls by, the critical ninth day rolls by on its torrid wheels +to eventide, and when that eventide comes, it finds Cecilia Wilson +running down from Amelia's room, to give the last news of her to the +three men and one woman waiting below. + +"I think he seems quite satisfied," she says, in answer to the silent +hungry looks of question addressed to her, and alluding to the doctor, +who is still with the patient; "the strength is maintained; the +temperature lower." What a dreadful parrot-sound the two phrases, so +familiar to us all in the newspaper bulletins of distinguished men on +their death-beds, have during the last week assumed in Burgoyne's ears; +"you can speak to him yourself when he comes down, of course, Jim; but I +am sure he is satisfied." + +"She is better!--she is saved!" cries Byng, rushing forward and +snatching both Cecilia's hands--"do you say that she is really saved?" + +"Oh, are you here still, Mr. Byng? how very kind of you!" replies +Cecilia, a tinge of colour rushing over her mealy face--that face, ten +days ago, clothed in so many roses--"well, I am afraid he does not go +quite so far as that, but he says it is as much as we can expect, and +even I can see that she is not nearly so restless." + +"Thank God!--thank God!" + +In the ardour of his thanksgiving he presses her hands closer, instead +of dropping them, a fact of which he is entirely unaware, but so is not +she; and who knows, even at that serious moment, what tiny genial hope +may slide into her plump heart! + +Again this night Burgoyne does not go to bed, from a superstitious fear +that if he does, if he seems to take for granted an improvement, that +very taking for granted may annul it--may bring on a relapse. But when +the next morning finds no such backsliding to have taken place, when +each hour through the cheerfully broadening day brings falling fever and +steadying pulse, then indeed he cautiously opens the door of his heart +to let a tiny rose-pinioned hope creep in--then at last, on the third +night, he stretches his tired limbs in deep slumber upon his bed. + +He has received a brief telegram from Mrs. Byng to announce her arrival +as fast as boat and train can bring her; and seven o'clock on Saturday +morning--he having sent his despatch to her on the previous +Wednesday--finds him pacing the platform of the railway-station, +awaiting the incoming of the morning express from Turin. He is pacing it +alone, for he has thought it best not to reveal to her son the fact of +her expected return, not being at all sure in what spirit he will +receive it, nor whether indeed the news of it might not even drive him, +in his present unsound state of mind, to fly from the place at her +approach. + +The morning air, in its early clear coolness, blows sweet here, under +the station-roof, unconquered even by engine smoke, and on Jim's face as +he walks up and down--careworn as it still is--there comes, now and +again, a half-born smile. He is never one to hope very easily, but +surely now--now that yet another night has been prosperously tided over, +there can, even to him, seem no reasonable ground for doubt that Amelia +has turned the corner. Amelia, with the corner turned--Byng, in five +minutes wholly off his hands! The only wonder is, that the small smile +never comes quite to the birth. + +The train is punctual, and almost at its due moment draws up in dusty +length at the platform. Its passengers are comparatively few; for at +this latening season most of the English are winging home to their rooky +woods; and he has no difficulty in at once discovering among them the +tall smart figure--smart even after forty-eight hours of the unluxurious +luxury of a _wagon-lit_--of the lady he is awaiting. As he gives her his +hand to help her down the high step, the admiring thought crosses his +mind of what a large quantity of fatigue, dust, and uneasiness of mind a +radically good-looking Englishwoman, in radically good clothes, can +undergo without seeming much the worse for them. Before her neat narrow +foot has touched the pavement, a brace of eager questions shoots out of +her mouth. + +"Am I in time? Am I too late?" + +"In time for _what_? Too late for _what_?" + +"Has he--has he done anything--anything irrevocable? Is he--is he? I +suppose that horrid woman has got hold of him? I suppose that is why you +sent for me!" + +By this time she is safely landed at his side, which is possibly the +reason why he at once lets fall her hand. + +"I am not aware that there is any 'horrid woman' in the case." + +"Oh, what does it matter what I call her?" cries the mother, fast +becoming frantic at the delay in answering her passionate questions. "I +will call her what you please; you know perfectly whom I mean; she _has_ +got hold of him, I suppose. I always knew she would! Did not I tell you +so? but is it too late? is there no way of getting him off?" + +Now that Burgoyne has a nearer view of Mrs. Byng, he sees that she has a +more fagged and travel-worn air than he had at first supposed, and her +dusty eyes are fastened upon him with such a hunger of interrogation, +that, angered and jarred as he is by her tone, he has not the heart any +longer to keep her in suspense. + +"If you are alluding to Miss Le Marchant, I may as well tell you at once +that she has left Florence." + +"Left Florence! Do you mean to say that she has run away with someone +else?" + +She puts the question in all good faith, her lively imagination having +easily made the not very wide jump from the fact already established in +her own mind of Elizabeth being an adventuress, to the not much more +difficult one to swallow, of her having devoured another _fils de +famille_, as well as Mrs. Byng's own. + +For a moment, Burgoyne turns away, voice and countenance alike beyond +his control. He has by no means perfectly recovered either, when he +answers-- + +"Yes, with someone else--she has reached the pitch of turpitude of +leaving Florence with her mother." + +"She is gone?" cries Mrs. Byng, with an accent of the highest relief and +joy; "gone away altogether, do you mean?--oh, thank God!"--then, with a +sudden lapse into affright, she adds rapidly--"and he is gone after +her?--he is not here?" + +"No, he is here." + +"Then why has not he come to meet me?"--suspiciously. + +"He did not know you were expected." + +"You did not tell him?" + +"No." + +"Why did not you tell him?" + +"I did not know how he would take it." + +"Do you mean to say"--falling from her former rapidity of utterance to a +dismayed incredulous slowness--"that he will not be glad to see +me?--that _Willy_ will not be glad to see _me_?" + +"I mean to say that I am afraid you will not find him very much in +sympathy with you; I do not think he will find it easy to hear you speak +of Miss Le Marchant in the terms, and make the implication about her +that you did just now," replies Jim, avenging by this sentence the +wrongs done to Elizabeth, and doing it so well, that a moment later a +feeling of compunction comes over him at the success of his own attempt +at retributive justice. + +Mrs. Byng turns pale. + +"Then she has got hold of him?" she says under her breath. + +"Got hold of him?" repeats Jim, his ire aroused again, no sooner than +allayed, by this mode of expression; "you certainly have the most +extraordinary way of misconceiving the situation! _Got hold of him?_ +when she had to leave Florence at a moment's notice to escape his +importunities!" + +But at this, Mr. Burgoyne's auditor looks so hopelessly bewildered that +he thinks it the simplest plan at once, in the fewest possible words, to +put her in possession of the tale of her son's achievements and +disasters. He does this, partly to stem the torrent of her questions, +the form that they have hitherto taken producing in him a feeling of +frenzied indignation, which he doubts his own power much longer to +conceal--partly in order to set Elizabeth's conduct with the least +possible delay in its true light before her. Surely, when she has been +told of her magnanimous renunciation, she will do her justice, will +cease to load her with those hard names and insulting assertions that +have made him grind his own teeth to listen to. But in this expectation +he soon finds that he is mistaken. The wrath of Mrs. Byng against +Elizabeth for having "drawn in" her son, as she persists in stating the +case, is surpassed only by indignation at her insolence in having +"thrown him over." As to the genuineness of this last action she +expresses, it is true, the most complete incredulity. + +"It was only to enhance her own value. Do you suppose that she expected +him to take her at her word? She thought, of course, that he would +follow her--that he would employ detectives--it is a proof"--with an +angry laugh--"that he cannot be quite so bad as you make him out, that +he has not done so." + +"I would not put it into his head, if I were you," replies Jim, with an +anger no less real, and a merriment no less spurious than her own. + +By this time they have reached the hotel; and Jim, having helped his +companion out of the fiacre, shows symptoms of leaving her. + +"Will not you stay to breakfast with me?" she asks, a little aghast at +this unexpected manoeuvre; "I cannot make my toilette till the luggage +arrives: and I suppose that he"--her eyes wandering wistfully over the +hotel front till they rest on her son's closed persiennes--"that he is +not up yet; it would be a sin to wake him; do stay with me." + +"I am afraid I cannot." + +"Why cannot you?"--with an impatient but friendly little mocking +imitation of his tone. "You are not"--with a conciliatory smile--"angry +with an old hen for standing up for her own chick?" + +Jim smiles too. + +"I do not think that the old hen need have clucked quite so loudly; but +that is not why I am leaving her; I _must_ go." + +"Where _must_ you go?" + +"To the Anglo-Americain." + +She lifts her eyebrows. + +"At this hour--you forget how early it is. Well, Amelia _has_ got you +into good training; but I can assure you that you will still find her in +bed." + +He sighs. + +"I am afraid that there is not much doubt of that." + +"What do you mean?--she is not ill, surely?"--in a tone of lively +surprise--"Amelia ill?--impossible!" + +He looks at her with an irrational stupefaction. It appears to him now, +in the distortion of all objects that the last fortnight has brought, as +if Amelia's illness had spread over the whole of his life, as if there +had never been a time when she had not been ill, and yet of this event, +immense as it seems to him in its duration, the woman before him +obviously has never heard. When he comes to think of it, how should she? +In point of fact it is not a fortnight since Miss Wilson fell sick, and +during that fortnight he himself has not written her a line; neither, he +is equally sure, has her son. + +"I am evidently very much behind the time," she says, noting the, to +her, unintelligible astonishment in his face; "but you must remember +that I have been kept completely in the dark--has she been ill?" + +In answer he tells her, with as much brevity and compression as he had +employed in the tale of Elizabeth's disappearance, that of Amelia's +illness, often interrupted by her expressions of sympathy. At the end +she says: + +"I am so thankful I did not hear till she was getting better! It would +have made me so wretched to be such a long way off!" + +Her adoption of his trouble as her own, an adoption whose sincerity is +confirmed by her impulsive seizure of his hand, and the feeling look in +her handsome eyes make him forgive the exaggeration of her statement, +and go some way towards replacing her in that position in his esteem +which her diatribes against Elizabeth had gone near to making her +forfeit. + +"But it will be all right now," continues she sanguinely; "there will be +nothing to do but to build up her strength again, and she is young--at +least"--as the reminiscence of Amelia's unyouthful appearance evidently +flashes across her mind, of that prematurely middle-aged look which an +unequal fortune gives to some plain women--"at least, young enough for +all practical purposes." + +Whether it be due to the possession of this modified form of juvenility, +to an excellent constitution, or to what other reason, certain it is +that the next two days go by without any diminution, rather with a +sensible and steady increase, in Miss Wilson's favourable symptoms, and, +on the afternoon of the latter of these days, Cecilia, in rather +impatient answer to Jim's long daily string of questions about her, +says: + +"You could judge much better if you saw her yourself. I do not see why +you should not see her to-morrow for a minute, that is to say, if you +would promise not to talk or ask her any questions." + +"But would it be safe?" inquires he, with a tremble in his voice. He +desires passionately to see her; until he does he will never believe +that she is really going to live; he has a hunger to assure himself that +no terrible metamorphosis has passed over her in these nightmare days; +and yet, coupled with that hunger, is a deep dread, which translates +itself into his next halting words. + +"Shall I be--shall I be very much shocked? is she--is she very much +changed?" + +"She does look pretty bad," replies Cecilia half sadly, yet with the +sub-lying cheerfulness of assured hope; "for one thing she is so wasted. +I suppose that that is what makes her look so much older; but then you +know Amelia never did look young." + +It is the second time within two days that the fact of his betrothed's +maturity has been impressed upon him, and formerly it would have caused +him a pang; but now, of what moment is it to him that she looks a +hundred, if only she is living, and going to live? + +"Has she--has she asked after me?" + +"We do not allow her to speak, but if anyone mentions your name there +comes a sort of smile over her face; such a ridiculous-sized face as it +is now!" + +The tears have come into Cecilia's large stupid eyes, and Jim himself +is, with regard to her, in the position of the great Plantagenet, when +he heard the lovely tale of York and Suffolk's high death. + + "I blame you not + For hearing this; I must perforce compound + With mistful eyes; or they will issue too!" + +As he walks away he is filled with a solemn joy, one of those deep +serious gladnesses with which not the stranger, no, nor even the close +friend or loving kinsman intermeddleth. He is under an engagement to +meet Mrs. Byng at a certain hour, but although that hour has already +come and passed, he feels that he cannot face all her sincere +congratulations without some preparatory toning down of his mood. + +The streets, with their gay _va-et-vient_, their cracking whips and +shouting drivers, seem all too secular and every-day to match the +profundity of his reverent thankfulness. He takes it with him into the +great cool church that stands so nigh at hand to his hotel, Santa Maria +Novella. The doors fall behind him noiselessly as he enters, shutting +out the fiery hot piazza, and the garish noises of the world. In the +great dim interior, cold and tranquil, there is the usual sprinkling of +tourists peering up at its soaring columns, trying to read themselves, +out of their guide-books, into a proper admiration for Cimabue's +large-faced Virgin and ugly Bambino, folded, with all its gold and +sombre colours, in the dignity of its twice two centuries of gloom. +There are the usual three or four blue-trousered soldiers strolling +leisurely about, there is a curly-tailed little dog trotting hither and +thither unforbidden, ringing his bell, and there are the invariable +tanned peasant-women kneeling at the side-altars. He does not belong to +the ancient Church, but to-day he kneels beside them, and the tears he +had hastened away to hide from Cecilia come back to make yet dimmer to +his view the details of the dim altar-pieces behind the tall candles. +His eye, as he rises to his feet again, falls on the contadina nearest +him. What is she praying for? In the expansion of his own deep joy he +longs to tell her how much he hopes that, whatever it is, she will +obtain it. It is not the contadina who, standing a little behind, joins +him as he turns away from the altar. + +"I saw you go into the church," says Mrs. Byng, her smile growing +somewhat diffident as she sees the solemnity of his face, "so I thought +I would follow you; do you mind? shall I go away?" + +He would, of the two, have preferred that she had not followed him, that +he had been given five more minutes to himself; but he naturally does +not say so. + +"Since we are here, shall we go into the cloisters?" and he assents. + +A small Dominican monk, with a smile and a bunch of keys, is opening a +door to some strangers, prowling like our friends about the church. The +latter follow, the little monk enveloping them too in his civil smile. +Down some steps into the great cloister, under whose arches pale +frescoes cover the ancient walls--where in Florence are there not +frescoes?--and the hands that painted them seem all to have wielded +their brushes in that astounding fifteenth century, which was to +Florence's life what May is to Italy's year. For some moments they stand +silent, side by side, perhaps picking out familiar scenes from among the +sweet faded groups--a slim Rebecca listening to Eliezar's tale, and +looking maiden pleasure at his gifts; a shivering Adam and Eve chased +out of Paradise; an Adam and Eve dismally digging and stitching +respectively; Old Testament stories that time has blurred, that +weather--even in this dry air--has rubbed out and bedimmed, and that +yet, in many cases, still tell their curious faint tale decipherably. + +"Good news this evening, I hope?" says Mrs. Byng presently, growing a +little tired of her companion's taciturnity, being indeed always one of +those persons who are of opinion that the gold of which silence is said +to be made has a good deal of alloy in it. + +"I am to see her to-morrow." + +He speaks almost under his breath, either because he has no great +confidence in his voice, if he employ a higher key, or because there +seems to him a certain sanctity in this promised meeting on the kindly +hither side of the grave which has so lately yawned. + +Mrs. Byng is much too old and intimate a friend of Jim's not to have +been pretty well aware of the state of his feelings during the past +eight years, though certainly not through any communication from him. So +it is, perhaps, scarcely to be wondered at that she presently says, in a +tone tinged with admiring surprise: + +"How fond you are of her!" + +He receives the remark in a jarred silence, his eye resting on the +square of neglected graves in the middle of the cloister, how unlike our +turfy quads and lawns. A commonplace nineteenth century photographer, +with his vulgar camera planted on the time-worn stones, is evidently +trying to persuade the little monk to pose for his picture. The +gentle-looking Fra laughs, and draws up his cowl, then lowers it again, +folding his arms, and trying various postures. + +"You are so much fonder of her than you were!" + +This speech--though such is certainly far from the good-natured +speaker's intention--stings Burgoyne like a whip-lash. + +"I was always fond of her--I always thought her the very best woman in +the world; you know!"--with an accent of almost anguished appeal--"that +I always thought her the very best woman in the world." + +"Oh, yes; of course, I know you did," replies she, astonished and +concerned at the evident and extreme distress of his tone. "That is not +quite the same thing as being _fond_ of her, is it? But"--with a laugh +that is at once uneasy and reassuring--"what does that matter _now_? +_Now_ your fondness for her is as indisputable as Tilburina's madness; +and, for my part, I always think people get on quite as well, if not +better, afterwards, if they do not begin quite so volcanically." + +But her light and well-meant words fail to remove the painful impression +from her hearer's mind. Has she, during all these years, been crediting +him with a wish for Amelia's death, that she should be so much +astonished at his thankfulness for her being given back to him? + +"I believe that this illness is the best thing that could have happened +to you both," continues Mrs. Byng, feeling uncomfortably that she has +not been happy in her choice of a topic, and yet unable to leave it +alone. "It will have drawn you so much together: in fact"--again +laughing nervously--"I think we are all looking up. As I told you, after +the first shock, Willy really was rather glad to see me; and you would +not believe how discreetly I handle the burning subject--yes, everything +is on the mend, and we are all going to have a lovely time, as the +Yankees say!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXX. + + + "The world's a city full of straying streets, + And Death the market-place where each one meets." + +The words are scarcely out of Mrs. Byng's mouth before she adds, in a +changed key, and with an altered direction of the eyes-- + +"Is this person looking for you? He seems to be coming straight towards +us." + +Jim turns his head at her speech, and at once recognises in the figure +hastening towards them the porter of the Anglo-Americain hotel. The man +looks strangely, and carries a slip of paper, unfolded and open, in his +hand. + +In a second Jim has sprung to his side, has snatched the paper, and is +staring at its contents. They are hardly legible, scrawled tremblingly +with a pencil, and for a moment he cannot make them out. Then, as he +looks, in one horrible flash their import has sprung into his eyes and +brain. + +"_She is gone; come to us!_" + +Mrs. Byng is reading too, over his shoulder. + +In going over the scene in memory afterwards, he believes that she gives +a sort of scream, and says, "Oh, what does it mean? It is not true!" But +at the time he hears, he knows nothing. + +He is out of the church; he is in the fiacre waiting at the door: he is +tearing through the streets, with the hot summer air flowing in a quick +current against his face. He thinks afterwards at what a pace the horse +must have been going, and how the poor jade must have been lashed to +keep it up to that useless speed. At the time he thinks nothing, he +feels nothing. He rushes through the court of the hotel, rushes through +what seem to be people; he thinks afterwards that they must have been +waiters and chambermaids, and that there came a sort of compassionate +murmur from them as he passed. He is up the stairs, the three flights; +as he tears up, three steps at a time, there comes across his numbed +intelligence a flash of wonder why they always give Amelia the worst +room. He is at that door, outside which he has spent so many hours of +breathless listening; he need no longer stay outside it now. It is open, +inviting him in. He is across that, as yet, unpassed threshold, that +threshold over which he was to have stepped in careful, soft-footed joy +to-morrow. He has pushed through the people--why must there be people +everywhere?--of whom the room seems full, unnecessarily full; he is at +the bedside. Across the foot a figure seems thrown--he learns afterwards +that _that_ is Sybilla. Another figure is prostrate on the floor, +heaving, in dreadful dry sobs; that is Cecilia. A third is standing +upright and tearless, looking down upon what, an hour ago, was his most +patient daughter. They have left her alone now--have ceased to tease +her. They no longer hold a looking-glass to her pale mouth, or beat her +tired feet, or pour useless cordials between her lips. They have ceased +to cry out upon her name, having realized that she is much too far away +to hear them. Neither does he cry out. He just goes and stands by the +father, and takes his thin old hand in his; and together they gaze on +that poor temple, out of which the spirit that was so much too lovely +for it has fleeted. Later on they tell him how it came about; later on, +when they are all sitting huddled in the little dark _salon_. Cecilia is +the spokeswoman, and Sybilla puts in sobbing corrections now and again. + +"She was sitting up the moment before; the nurse was holding her propped +up--she said she was so tired of lying. She had been quite laughing, the +nurse said." + +"Almost laughing," corrects Sybilla, who has forgotten to lie down upon +her sofa, and is sitting on a hard chair like anyone else. + +"Quite laughing," continues Cecilia, "at her own arm for being so thin. +She had pushed up her sleeve to look at it, and had said +something--something quite funny, only the nurse could not remember the +exact words--and then, all in a minute, she called out, in quite an +altered voice, 'The salts! Quick! Quick!' and her head just fell back, +and she was gone!" + +"And she had not bid one of us good-bye!" cries Sybilla, breaking into a +loud wail. + +Then comes a dreadful and incongruous flash of that ridiculous, which is +the underlining to all our tragedies, across Jim's mind at this last +lament. The going, "taking no farewell," naturally seems to Sybilla the +most terrible feature in the whole case, to her who has so repeatedly +taken heartrending last farewells of her family. + +"Who would ever have thought that I should have survived her?" pursues +Sybilla, still sobbing noisily, and without the least attempt at +self-control. Cecilia, who is sitting with her head on her arms resting +on the table, lifts her tear-blurred face and answers this apostrophe in +a voice choked with weeping. + +"Jim always did; he always said that you would see us all out." + +Again that dreadful impulse towards mirth assails Burgoyne. Is it +possible that, at such an hour, he can feel a temptation to laugh out +loud? But, later again, this horrible mood passes; later, when they have +all grown more composed, when their tears run more gently, when their +voices are less suffocated, and they are telling each other little +anecdotes of her, aiding each other's memories to recall half-effaced +traits of her homely kindness, of her noiseless self-denials, of her +deep still piety. + +They bring out her photographs, mourning over their being so few, and +such old and long-ago ones. There are effigies by the dozen of Cecilia, +and even touching presentments of Sybilla stretched in wasted grace upon +her day bed; but it had never occurred to anyone--least of all to Amelia +herself--that there is any need for _her_ image to be perpetuated. And +now they are searching out, as treasures most precious, the scanty faded +likenesses that exist of her, planning how they can be enlarged, and +repeated, and daintily framed, and generally done homage and tender +reverence to. + +Jim listens, occasionally putting in a low word or two, when appealed to +to confirm or correct the details of some little story about her. But it +seems to him as if his anguish only begins when the stream of their +reminiscences turns into the channel of her love for him. + +"Oh, Jim, she _was_ fond of you! We were none of us anywhere, compared +to you; she worshipped the ground you trod upon. We all knew--did not +we, Sybilla?--did not we, father?--when you used to be away for so long, +and wrote to her so seldom----Oh, I know!"--hastily--"that you were not +to blame, that you were in out-of-the-way places, where there was no +post: but there were sometimes long gaps between your letters; and we +always knew--did not we?--when she had heard from you by her face, long +before she spoke." + +Next it is-- + +"How she fired up if anyone said anything slightingly of you: she never +cared in the least if one abused herself; she always thought she quite +deserved it; but if anybody dared to say the least disparaging thing of +_you_"--it is pretty evident, though at the moment in his agony of +preoccupation the idea does not occur to Jim, that this has not been an +uncommon occurrence--"she was like a lioness at once." + +"The saddest thing of all," says Sybilla, taking up the antiphonal +strain, "is that she should have died just as she was beginning to be so +happy!" + +_Just beginning to be so happy?_ And he might have made her heavenly +happy so easily, since she asked so little--for eight years. The groan +he utters is low in proportion to the depth of the fountain whence it +springs, and they do not hear it. If they did, they would in mercy stop; +instead, they go on. + +"Did you ever see anything so radiant as she was--that last fortnight? +She used to say that she was quite ashamed of being so much more +fortunate than anyone else, she seemed always trying to make up to us +for not being so happy as she. Oh, she was happy that last fortnight!" + +This time he does not groan, he seems to himself to have passed into +that zone of suffering which cannot be expressed or alleviated by the +utterance of any sound. Perhaps, by-and-by, Cecilia dimly divines +something, some faint shadow of what he is enduring; for she begins with +well-intentioned labour to try to assert lamely that Amelia had always +been happy, well, _fairly_ happy, as happy as most people. You could not +expect, in this dreadful world, to be always in the best of spirits, but +she had never complained. And, oh! that last fortnight she _had_ been +happy, it was a pleasure to see her! And, oh, what a comfort it must be +now to Jim to think that it was all owing to him. + +She puts out her hand kindly to him as she speaks, and he takes it, and +silently wrings it in acknowledgment of the endeavour--however +clumsy--to lay balm upon that now immedicable wound. + +He stays most of the night with them; and when at length, overcome with +weariness and sorrow, they rise from their grief-stricken postures to go +to bed, he kisses them all solemnly, even the old man. He has never +kissed any of them before, except once or twice Cecilia on some return +of his from the Antipodes, and because she seemed to expect it. + + * * * * * + +Three days later Burgoyne leaves Florence; and, as his arrival in the +City of Flowers had been motived by Amelia alive, so is his departure to +companion her dead. + + +END OF PART ONE. + + + + +PART II. + +Elizabeth. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + + "It was a chosen plot of fertile land, + Amongst wide waves set like a little nest, + As if it had by Nature's cunning hand + Been choycely picked out from all the rest, + And laid forth for ensample of the best. + No daintie flower or herb that grows on ground, + No arborete with painted blossomes drest, + And smelling sweete, but there it might be found + To bud out faire, and throwe her sweet smell all around." + + +Time has stepped upon another year; not much more than stepped, since +that year's first month is not yet out; and Burgoyne has stepped upon +another continent before we again rejoin him. There are few, if any of +us, who, in the course of our lives, have not had occasion to wish that +certain spaces in those lives might be represented by the convenient +asterisks that cover them in books; but this is unfortunately impossible +to Jim, as to the rest of us; and he has fought through each minute and +its minuteful of pain (happily no minute can contain two minutefuls) +during the seven months that have elapsed since we parted from him. At +first those minutes held nothing but pain; he could not tell you which +of them it was that first admitted within its little compass any alien +ingredient; and he was shocked and remorseful when he discovered that +any such existed. But that did not alter the fact. He has not sold his +guns; on the contrary, he has bought two new ones, and he has visited +his old friends, the Rockies. Since Amelia's funeral--immediately after +which he again quitted England--he has seen no member of his dead +betrothed's family, nor has he held any intercourse, beyond the exchange +of an infrequent letter, with Mrs. Byng or her son. From the thought of +both these latter he shrinks, with a distaste equal in degree, though +inspired by different causes. From Mrs. Byng, because he knows that she +was aware of his weariness of his poor love--that poor love whom, had he +but known it, he had so short a time to be weary of; and from Byng, +because, despite the ocean of sorrow, of remorse, of death that rolls in +its hopelessness between him and her, he cannot even yet think, without +a bitter pang, of the woman who had inspired the young man's hysterical +tears and sincere, though silly, suicidal impulses. Jim took that pang +with him to the Rockies, stinging, even through the overlying load of +his other and acknowledged burden of repentant ache and loss, and he has +brought it back with him. He packs it into his portmanteau as much as a +matter of course as he does his shirts--in fact more so, for he has once +inadvertently left his shirts behind, but the pang never. + +It is the 20th day of January; here, in England, the most consistently +detestable month in the year. The good Januaries of a British +octogenarian's life might be counted upon the thumbs of that +octogenarian's hands. The favoured inhabitants of London have +breakfasted and lunched by gaslight; have groped their way along their +dirty streets through a fog of as thick and close a fabric as the furs +gathered round their chilled throats; have, even within their houses, +seen each other dimly across a hideous yellow vapour that kills their +expensive flowers, and makes their unwilling palm-trees droop in +homesick sadness. There is no fog about the Grand Hotel, Mustapha +Superieur, Algiers; no lightest blur of mist to dim the intensity of the +frame of green in which its white face is set. It is not so very grand, +despite its unpromising big name, as it stands high aloft on the +hillside, looking out over the bay and down on the town, looking down +more immediately upon tree-tops, and on the Governor's summer palace. It +is an old Moorish house, enlarged into an hotel, with little arched +windows sunk in the thick walls, with red-tiled floors, and balconies, +with low white balustrades of pierced brick, up which the lush creepers +climb and wave--yes, climb and wave on this 20th of January. + +From the red-floored balcony over the creepers, between the perennial +leafage of the unchanging trees, one can daily descry in the azure bay +the tiny puff of smoke that tells that the mail steamer from Marseilles +has safely breasted the Gulf of Lyons, threaded her away among the +Isles, and brought her freight of French and English and American news +to the hands and ears of the various expectant nationalities. To-day, +blown by a gently prosperous wind, the boat is punctual. It is the +_Eugene Perrere_, the pet child of the Transatlantic Company, the narrow +and strong-engined little vessel which is wont to accomplish the transit +in a period of time less by an hour than her brother craft. To-day she +has brought but one guest to the Grand Hotel, who, having left the bulk +of his luggage to be struggled for by Arabs, and by the hotel-porter at +the Douane, arrives at the modest Moorish-faced hostelry, having, with +British mercifulness, walked up the break-neck green lane that leads +from the steep main road in order to spare the wretched little galled, +pumped horse that has painfully dragged him and his bag from the pier. +He has travelled straight through from London--fifty-five hours without +a pause--so that it is not to be wondered at that his thoughts turn +affectionately towards a wash and a change of raiment. Having extracted +from the case of unclaimed letters in the bar two or three that bear the +address of James Burgoyne, Esq., he is ushered to his room by the civil +little fussy Italian landlord, who, in order to enhance his appreciation +of the apartment provided for him, assures him, in voluble bad French, +that only yesterday he had been obliged to turn away a party of eight. + +It is not until refreshed by a completed toilette--and who can overrate +the joy of a bath after a journey?--that it occurs to him to look out of +window. His room possesses two. One faces the hill's rich-clothed +steepness, and a row of orange-trees covered with fruit, and at whose +feet tumbled gold balls lie. But the dusk is falling fast, and he can +only dimly see the prodigality of green in which the modest Grand Hotel +lies buried. The other window looks out--but a very little way lifted +above it, for the room is on the ground floor--upon the red-tiled +terrace. It is growing very dim too. At the present moment it is empty +and deserted, but the chairs studded over its surface in talkative +attitudes, as if sociable twos and threes had drawn together in chat, +tell plainly that earlier in the day it had been frequented, and that +several people had been sitting out on it. Jim's London memories are too +fresh upon him for him not to find something ludicrous in the idea of +sitting out of doors on the 20th of January. How pleasant it would have +been to do so to-day in Hyde Park! He turns back to the table with a +smile at the idea, and, taking out a writing-case, sits down to scribble +a line. Jim's correspondence is neither a large nor an interesting one. +On the present occasion, his note is merely one of reminder as to some +trifling order, addressed to the landlord of his London lodgings. It +does not take him ten minutes to pen, and when it is finished he turns +to have one final look out of window before leaving the room. How +quickly the dark has fallen! The empty chairs show indistinct outlines, +and the heavy green trees have turned black. But the terrace is no +longer quite empty. A footfall sounds--coming slowly along it. One of +the waiters, no doubt, sent to fetch in the chairs; but, no! an +overworked Swiss waiter, hurried by electric bells, and with an imminent +swollen table _table d'hote_ upon his burdened mind, never paced so +slowly, nor did anything male ever step so lightly. + +It must be a woman; and even now her white gown makes a patch of light +upon the dark background of the quickly on-coming night. A white gown on +the 20th of January! Again that pleasing sense of the ludicrous tickles +his fancy. She must be one of the persons who lately occupied the empty +chairs, and have come in search of some object left behind. He +recollects having noticed an open book lying on the low parapet. She has +a white gown; but what more can be predicated of her in this owl-light? +The radiance from the candle behind him makes a small illuminated square +upon the terrace, falling between the bars of the window through which +the Moorish ladies once darted their dark and ineffectual ogles. + +Having apparently accomplished her errand, the white-gowned figure +obligingly steps into the illumined square, and still more obligingly +lifts her face and looks directly up at him. It is clear that the action +is dictated only by the impulse which prompts all seeing creatures to +turn lightwards, and no gleam of recognition kindles in the eyes that +are averted almost as soon as directed towards him. Placed as he is, +with his back to the light, his own mother could not have distinguished +his features; and, after her one careless glance, the white-gowned lady +turns away and disappears again into the gloom. She has one more oasis +of light to traverse before she reaches the hotel porch, just +discernible, gleaming in its whitewash, at the far end of the terrace; +just one more lit window throws its chequered lustre on the tiles. He +presses his face against the bars of his own lattice, and holds his +breath until she has reached and crossed that tell-tale patch. Her +traversing of it does not occupy the tenth part of a second, and yet it +puts the seal upon what he already knows. + +Five minutes later he is standing before the case, hung on the wall of +the entrance hall, which contains the names and numbers of the rooms of +the visitors, eagerly scanning them with eye and finger. He scans them +in vain. The name he seeks is not among them. Had it not been for that +five minutes' delay--that five minutes of stunned and stupid staring out +into the dark after her--he must have met her in the hall. He is turning +away in baffled disappointment, when the little host again accosts him. + +Monsieur must excuse him, but he must explain that the list of visitors +that monsieur has been so obliging as to peruse is by no means a full or +correct one. To-morrow morning he shall have the pleasure of placing +beneath monsieur's eye a proper and complete list of the visitors; but, +in point of fact, there has been such a press of business, he has been +daily obliged to turn away such large and _comme il faut_ families from +the door, that time has been inadequate for all his obligations, which +must be his excuse. + +Burgoyne accepts his apologies in silence. It would seem easy enough to +inquire whether among the English visitors there are any of the name of +Le Marchant; but the question sticks in his throat. It is seven months +since he has pronounced that name aloud, and he appears to have lost the +faculty of doing it. The host comes to his aid. + +Is there perhaps a family--a friend whom monsieur expects to meet? But +monsieur only shakes his head, and moves away. He has ascertained that +the _table d'hote_ is at seven, and it is now half-past five. He has, +therefore, only an hour and a half of suspense ahead of him. She will +surely appear at the _table d'hote_? But will she? + +As the hour of seven approaches, ever graver and graver doubts upon this +head assail his mind, both when he reflects upon how much it is a habit +with the better sort of travelling English to dine in their own rooms, +and also when he calls to mind the extremely retired character of +Elizabeth's and her mother's habits. Even if she does appear in the +public room--and the more he thinks of it, the less probable, it +seems--it is most unlikely that he will be placed near her. But he might +possibly intercept her in the hall on her way to the _salle a manger_. + +In pursuance of this project he takes up his position before the bell, +tingling so lengthily as to reach the ears of the deafest and most +distant, has summoned the company together; and it is several minutes +before enough are assembled to justify, according to the etiquette +prevailing at the Grand Hotel, a move to the dining-room. Men, at that +hotel, although in a very distinct minority--as when, indeed, are they +not?--are yet not quite the same choice rarities as at some of the Swiss +and Italian ones. But the young of the one sex are perennially +interesting to the other; and Burgoyne, as "the new man," is an object +of some attention to half a dozen young girls, and even to two or three +sprightly-hearted old ones. His eyes are eagerly shining as each opening +door, each step on the staircase, raises his hopes afresh. But neither +door nor staircase yields the form he seeks, and he is at last obliged, +under penalty of exciting remark, reluctantly to follow the band that go +trooping hungrily down a flight of steps to the whitewashed dining-room. +He finds himself placed between a bouncing widow who is too much +occupied in fondling an old valetudinarian on her other side to have +much notice to spare for him; and a sparkling creature of +five-and-thirty in a red shirt, who, before dinner is over, confides to +him that she fears she has not got a nice nature, and that she cannot +get on at home because her mother and the servants insist upon having +cold supper instead of dinner on Sunday. When she tells him that she has +not a nice nature, he absently replies that he is very sorry for it, and +her confidence about the Sunday supper provokes from him only the +extremely stupid observation that he supposes she does not like cold +meat. It is a wonder that he can answer her even as rationally as he +does. It is more by good luck than good management that there is any +sense at all in his responses. And yet he may as well give his full +attention to his neighbour, for now every place at the E-shaped table is +filled up, and, travel as his eye may over those who sit, both at the +long and cross-boards, it fails to discover any face in the least +resembling that which lifted itself from the dusk terrace into his +candle-light. + +Was it her little ghost, then, that he had seen, her dainty delicate +ghost? But why should it appear to him _here_? Why haunt these +unfamiliar shores? The only places in the room which still remain +untenanted are those at a round table laid for three, in the embrasure +of a Moorish window, not very distant from where he sits. On first +catching sight of it his hopes had risen, only immediately to fall +again, as he realizes that it is destined for a trio. Why should three +places be laid for Elizabeth and her mother? + +With a disheartened sigh he tums to his neighbour, intending to put to +her a question as to the habitual occupants of the empty table; but she +is apparently affronted at his tepidness, and presents to him only the +well-frizzled back of her expensive head. He is reduced to listening to +the conversation of his _vis-a-vis_, an elderly couple, who have been +upon some excursion, and are detailing their experiences to those around +them. They have been to Blidah apparently, and seen real live monkeys +hopping about without organs or red coats on real palm trees. He is +drawn into the conversation by a question addressed to him as to his +journey. + +It is five minutes before he again looks towards the table in the +window. His first glance reveals that the three persons for whom it is +destined have at length arrived and taken their seats. Idiot that he is! +he had forgotten Mr. Le Marchant's existence. + +"They are nice-looking people, are they not?" says his neighbour in the +red shirt, apparently repenting of her late austerity, and following the +direction of his eyes; "but they give themselves great airs; nobody in +the hotel is good enough for them to speak to. M. Cipriani evidently +thinks them people of importance; he makes twice as much fuss about them +as he does about anyone else. Look at him now!" + +And in effect the obsequious little host may be seen hanging anxiously +over the newcomers, evidently asking them with solicitous civility +whether the not particularly appetizing fish (the strongest point of the +blue Mediterranean does not lie in her fishes, of which some are coarse, +some tasteless, and some even lie under the suspicion of having +poisonous qualities)--whether it is not to their liking. + +At something that M. Cipriani says they all laugh. Elizabeth, indeed, +throws back her little head, and shows all her perfect teeth, in a +paroxysm of the most genuine mirth. It gives Burgoyne a sort of shock to +see her laugh. + +Not a day, scarcely an hour, has passed since he last saw her in which +he has not pictured her as doing or suffering, or living through +something; he has never pictured her laughing. It seems to him now but a +moment since he was reading her broken-hearted, tear-stained note; since +he was seeing Byng grovelling in all the utter collapse of his +ungoverned grief on the floor of the little Florentine _entresol_. What +business has she to laugh? And how unchanged she is! How much less +outwardly aged than he himself is conscious of being! Sitting as she now +is, in her simple white tea-gown, with one slight elbow rested on the +table, her eyes all sparkling with merriment and laughter, bringing into +prominence that one enchanting dimple of hers, she does not look more +than twenty. But a few moments later he forgives her even her dimple. +However _empresse_ may be the little landlord, he has to move away after +a time; and the merriment moves away, too, out of Elizabeth's face. Jim +watches it decline, through the degrees of humorous disgust, as she +pushes the coarse white fish about her plate, without tasting it (she +was always a very delicate eater), into a settled gravity. And now that +she is grave he sees that she is aged, almost as much as he himself, +after all. Her eyes had ever had the air of having shed in their time +many tears; but since he last saw her, it is now evident to him that the +tale of those tears has been a good deal added to. + +There is no pleasing him. He was angry with her when he thought her gay, +and now he quarrels with her for looking sad. As if, in her +unconsciousness of his neighbourhood, she was yet determined to give him +no cause of complaint, she presently again lays aside her sorrowful +looks, and, drawing her chair confidentially nearer to her mother's, +makes some remark of an evidently comic nature upon the company into her +ear. + +They stoop their heads together--what friends they always were, she and +her mother!--and again the blue twinkle comes into her eyes; the +dimple's little pitfall is dug anew in her white cheek. Was there ever +such an April creature? Mr. Le Marchant appears to take no part in the +jokes; he goes on eating his dinner silently, and his back, which is +turned towards Burgoyne, looks morose. + +How is it that Elizabeth's roving eye has not yet hit upon himself? He +sees presently that the cause lies in the fact of her look alighting +upon old and known objects of entertainment, rather than going in search +of new ones. But it must sooner or later embrace him in its range. The +fond fat widow beside him must surely be one of her favourites, and, in +point of fact, as he feverishly watches to see the inevitable moment of +recognition arrive, he perceives that Miss Le Marchant and her mother +are delightedly--though not so openly as to be patent to the rest of the +room--observing her. And then comes the expected careless glance at him, +and the no less expected transformation. Her elbows have been carelessly +resting on the table, and she has just been pressing her laughing lips +against her lightly-joined hands to conceal their merriment. In an +instant he sees the right hand go out in a silent desperate clutch at +her mother's, and the next second he knows that she also has seen him. +They both stare helplessly at him--at least, the one _at_ him, and the +other beyond him! How well he remembers that look of hers over his +shoulder in search of someone else. But yet it is not the old look, for +that was one of hope and red expectation. Is there any hope or +expectation lurking even under the white dread of this one? His jealous +heart is afraid quite to say no to this question, and yet an +indisputable look of relief spreads over her face as she ascertains that +he is alone. She even collects herself enough to give him a tiny +inclination of the head--an example followed by her mother; but they +are, in both cases, so tiny as to be unperceived, save by the person to +whom they are addressed. + +He would not have been offended by the minuteness of their salutations, +even had he not divined that it was dictated by a desire--however +futile--to conceal the fact of his presence from their companion. His +heart goes out in all the profundity of his former pity towards them, as +he sees how entirely that one glance at him (for she does not look again +in his direction) has dried the fountain of Elizabeth's poor little +jests; of how white and grave and frightened, and even shrunk, his mere +presence has made her. Now that they have detected him, good breeding, +and even humanity, forbid his continuing any longer his watch upon them. +The better to set them at ease he turns the back of his head towards +their table, and compels the reluctant widow to relinquish her invalid +booty for fully ten minutes in his favour. Perhaps when Elizabeth can +see only the back of his head she may resume her jokes. But all the same +he knows that, for her, there will be no more mirth to-day. + +"That is what they always do!" cries a voice on Burgoyne's left +hand--the voice of his other neighbour, who begins to think that his +attention has been usurped quite long enough by her plump rival. "That +is what they always do--come long after dinner has begun, and go out +long before it has ended. Such swagger!" + +There is a tinge of exasperation in both words and voice, nor is the +cause far to seek. + +The table in the window is again empty. In the meantime the "swaggering" +Elizabeth is clinging tremblingly about her mother's neck in the privacy +of their own little salon. The absence of the husband and father for the +moment in the smoking-room has removed the irksome restraint from both +the poor women. + +"Did you see him?" asks Elizabeth breathlessly, as soon as the door is +safely closed upon them, flinging herself down upon her knees beside +Mrs. Le Marchant, who has sunk into a chair, and cowering close to her +as if for shelter. "What is he doing here? Why has he come? When first I +caught sight of him I thought that of course--" She breaks off, sobbing; +"and when I saw that he was alone I _was_ relieved; but I was +disappointed too! Oh, I must be a fool--a bad fool--but I _was_ +disappointed! Oh, mammy! mammy! how seeing him again brings it all +back!" + +"Do not cry, dear child! do not cry!" answers Mrs. Le Marchant +apprehensively; though the voice in which she gives the exhortation is +shaking too. "Your father will be in directly; and you know how +angry----" + +"I will not! I will not!" cries Elizabeth, trying, with her usual +extreme docility, to swallow her tears; "and I do not show it much when +I have been crying; my eyes do not mind it as much as most people's; I +suppose"--with a small rainy smile--"because they are so used to it!" + +"Perhaps he will not stay long," murmurs the mother, dropping a fond +rueful kiss on the prone blonde head that lies on her knees; "perhaps if +we are careful we may avoid speaking to him." + +"But I _must_ speak to him," breaks in the girl, lifting her head, and +panting; "I _must_ ask him; I _must_ find out; why, we do not even know +whether Willy is dead or alive!" + +"He is not dead," rejoins the elder woman, with melancholy common-sense; +"if he had been, we should have seen it in the papers; and, besides, why +should he be? Grief does not kill; nobody, Elizabeth, is better able to +attest that than you and I." + +Elizabeth is now sitting on the floor, her hands clasped round her +knees. + +"He is aged," she says presently; and this time it is evident that the +pronoun refers to Burgoyne. + +Mrs. Le Marchant assents. + +"He must have cared more for that poor creature than we gave him credit +for. Get up, darling; dry your eyes, and sit with your back to the +light; here comes your father!" + + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +One of the reasons, though not the sole or even the main one, of +Burgoyne's visit to Algiers is that the Wilson family are wintering +there. And yet he dreads the meeting with them inexpressibly. When they +last parted, immediately after having stood together round Amelia's open +grave, they had all been at a high pressure of emotion, and of +demonstrative affectionateness, which nothing in their tastes, habits, +or natures could possibly make continuous. He has a horrible fear that +they will expect to take up their relations at the same point at which +he had left them. He would do it if he could, but he feels that it is +absolutely impossible to him. The door of that room in his memory which +is labelled "Amelia" is for ever locked. It is only in deepest silence +and solitude that he permits himself now and again to turn the key and +sparely and painfully look in. How will he bear it if they insist on +throwing the portals wide, dragging its disused furniture to the light, +rummaging in its corners? + +He sleeps ill on this, his first night of Africa; and even when at +length he succeeds in losing importunate consciousness, he is teased by +absurd yet painful dreams, in which Amelia and Elizabeth jostle each +other impossibly with jumbled personalities and changed attributes. +Extravagant as his visions are, they have yet such a solid vividness +that, at his first waking, he feels a strange sense of unsureness as to +which of the two women that have beset his pillow is the dead, and which +the living one. In dreams, how often our lost ones, and those whom we +still possess, take hands together on equal terms! Even when he is wide +awake, nay more, dressed and breakfasted, that feeling of uncertainty, +that something akin to the + + "Blank misgivings of a creature, + Moving about in worlds not realized," + +remains strong enough to drive him once again to the list of visitors in +the entrance-hall, in order to assure himself that his brain has not +been the dupe of his eye. + +M. Cipriani has been as good as his word. The corrected list, promised +overnight, has replaced the incomplete one, and almost the first names +that Jim's eye alights upon are those of "Mr., Mrs., and Miss Le +Marchant, England." His own name immediately follows, and he takes as a +good augury what is merely an accident due to the fact of his room and +theirs being on one floor. Elizabeth is, beyond question, beneath the +same roof as himself; nay, even now she may probably be sunning herself +like a white pigeon on that terrace, whose red tiles he sees shining in +the morning sun through an open side-door. + +The thought is no sooner formed than he follows whither it leads him; +but she is not on the terrace; and though a moment ago his nerves were +tingling at the thought of speech with her, yet he is conscious of a +feeling of relief that their meeting is, for the moment, deferred. What +can he say to her? What can she say to him? + +He stands looking down on the green sea of richly-clothed dark trees +beneath him--ilex and eucalyptus, and all the unfamiliar verdure of the +soft South. From the fiercely-blazing red purple of a Bougainvillia, so +unlike the pale, cold lilac blossom, to which in our conservatories we +give that name, his eye travels over tree-tops and snowy villas, cool +summer palace and domy mosque, to the curving bay, round which the Atlas +Mountains are gently laying their arms; and Cape Matifou, with the haze +of day's young prime about it, is running out into the Mediterranean. + +He is alone at first, but presently other people come forth; the old +valetudinarian, for once delivered from his fostering widow, sits down +with a pile of English newspapers to enjoy himself in the sun, which +does not yet ride so high as to be sun-strokey. Jim's last night's +neighbour in the red shirt comes out too, bonneted and prayer-booked. +She is going to church; so is he: but he does not tell her so, for fear +she should offer to accompany him. She observes to him that the climate +is a fraud; that this is the first day for three weeks in which she is +able to go out without a mackintosh and umbrella. + +"We are not so green for nothing, I can tell you," says she, with a +laugh, and a rather resentful glance at the splendid verdure around her, +and so leaves him. + +He, too, as I have said, is going to church, and is presently asking his +way to the English chapel. The Wilson family will certainly be there, +and it has struck him that the dreaded meeting will be robbed of half +its painful awkwardness if it takes place in public. At a church-porch, +crowded with issuing congregation, Sybilla cannot fall into +hysterics--it is true that Sybilla never attends divine service--nor can +Cecilia weepingly throw her arms about his neck. But whatever means he +may take to lessen the discomfort and smart of that expected encounter, +the thought of it sits like lead upon his spirits, as he walks +quickly--it is difficult to descend slowly so steep a hill--down the +precipitous lane, which is the only mode of approach for man or +labouring beast to the high-perched hotel he has chosen. But he is +young, and presently the cheerful, clean loveliness of the day and the +sight of Nature's superb vigour work their natural effect upon him. It +must, indeed, be an inveterate grief that refuses to be soothed by the +influences of this green Eden. + +What a generosity of vegetation, as evidenced by the enormous garlands +of great-leaved ivy, waving from tree to tree as for some perpetual +fete! Along the high hill bank that skirts this steep by-road, +eucalyptus rear their lofty heads and their faintly-scented blossoms, +aloe draws her potent sword, and thick-fleshed prickly pear displays her +uncouth malignity. Beneath, what a lush undergrowth of riotous +great-foliaged plants--acanthus, and a hundred other green sisters, all +flourishing and waxing, so unstinted, so at large! He has reached the +main road--the shady road that leads by a three-mile descent from +Mustapha Superieur to the town. + +How shady it is! Pepper-trees hang their green hair, so thick and fine, +over it; and ilexes hold the thatch of their little dark leaves. Past +the Governor's summer palace, with its snowy dome and Moorish arcades +gleaming through its iron gates. From a villa garden a flowering shrub +sends a mixed perfume of sweet and bitter, as of honey and hops, from +its long yellow flower-tassels to his pleased nostrils. + +At a sharp turn, where the hill falls away more precipitously than +before, the bay, the mole, the shipping, the dazzling little city, burst +upon him--the little city swarming up her hill, from where the French +town bathes its feet in the azure ripples, to where the Arab town loses +the peak of its triangle, in the Casbah and the fort of the now +execrated Emperor. Blinding white, ardent blue, profound green--what a +pleasant picture for a summer Sunday morning! And how gay the road is +too, as the East and the West step along it together! + +Here is a tram tearing down the steep incline with five poor little thin +horses abreast. It is full of English church-goers, and yet, oh anomaly! +standing up in the vulgarest of modern vehicles, with his slight dark +hands grasping the tramrail, is a tall Arab, draped with the grave grace +of the Vatican Demosthenes. But alas! alas! even upon him the West has +laid its claw, for, as the tram rushes past, Jim's shocked eyes realize +that he, who in other respects might have fed the flocks of Laban in +Padan-aram, wears on his feet a pair of old elastic-sided boots. + +Here come clattering a couple of smart Chasseurs d'Afrique, in blue and +red, followed by a woman dressed as Rachel was at the palmy well--so +dressed, that is to say, as to her white-shrouded upper woman, for, +indeed, there is no reason for supposing that Rachel wore a pair of Rob +Roy Tartan trousers! Past the Plateau Sauliere, where, in the +lichen-roofed lavoir Frenchwomen are sousing their linen in water +that--oh, hideous thought!--is changed but once a week; along an ugly +suburb, and past a little wood; through the arch in the fortifications, +the Porte d'Isly, till at length the Episcopal chapel--why are the +Protestant places of worship scattered over the habitable globe +everywhere so frightful?--stands before him. + +He had thought himself in good time, but he must have loitered more than +he had been aware of, as the bell is silent and the porch closed. He +enters as quietly as may be, and takes his place near the door. The +building strikes damp and chilly, despite the warming presence of the +whole English colony, emptied out of the four hotels sacred to +Anglo-Saxons, and out of many an ilex-shaded orange-groved campagne +besides. The building is quite full, which is, no doubt, the reason why +Jim fails to catch any glimpse of the Wilson family throughout the +service. He has plenty of time to interrogate with his eye the numerous +rows of backs before him, as the sermon is long. Jim had known that it +would be so from the moment when the clergyman entered the pulpit with +an open Bible--no written sermon--in his hand. The sound of a brogue, +piercing, even through the giving out of the text, soon puts him in +possession of the further fact that he is in the clutches, and at the +mercy, of an entirely uneducated yet curiously fluent Irishman. + +Is Elizabeth writhing under the infliction too? Never, in the Moat days, +was she very patient under prolonged pulpit eloquence. He can see her +with his memory's eye not very covertly reading her hymn-book--can hear +her foot tapping. Several people around him now are, not very covertly, +reading _their_ hymn-books, but she is not among them. He has no more +sight of her than he has of Cecilia; but in neither case--such are the +disadvantages of his position--does his failure to see prove the absence +of the object he seeks. He is one of the first persons to be out of +church when at length set free, and stands just outside the porch while +the long stream of worshippers defiles before him. It takes some time to +empty itself into the sunshine, and nearly as long before he catches +sight of any member of either of the families he is on the look-out for. +Of the Le Marchants, indeed, he never catches sight, for the excellent +reason that they are not to be caught sight of, not being there. In the +case of the Wilsons he is more fortunate, though here, too, a sort of +surprise is in store for him. He has involuntarily been scanning, in his +search for them, only those of the congregation who are dressed in +mourning. The picture that the retina of his eye has kept of Cecilia is +of one tear-swollen and crape-swaddled; and though, if he had thought of +it, his reason would have told him that, after seven months, she is +probably no longer sobbing and sabled, yet even then the impression that +he would expect to receive from her would be a grave and a black one. +This is why, although he is on the look-out for her, she yet comes upon +him at last as a surprise. + +"Jim!" cries a voice, pitched a good deal higher than is wont to make +itself heard within the precincts of a church--a female voice of +delighted surprise and cheerful welcome; "father, here is Jim!" + +Burgoyne turns, and sees a lady in a very smart bonnet, full of spring +flowers, and with a red _en tout cas_--for they have now issued into the +day's potent beam--shading her rosy face; a lady whose appearance +presents about as wide a contrast to the serious and inky figure he had +expected to see as it is well possible to imagine. + +Cecilia, indeed, is looking, what her maid admiringly pronounced her +before sending her forth to triumph, "very dressy." Mr. Wilson is black, +certainly--but, then, clergymen always are black--and he still has a +band upon his hat; but it is a very narrow one--sorrow nearing its +vanishing-point. In answer to his daughter's joyous apostrophe, he +answers: + +"'Sh, Cecilia! do not talk so loud. How are you, Jim?" + +And then the meeting is over--that first meeting which Jim had shrunk +from with such inexpressible apprehension--as certain to be so fraught +with intolerable emotion; with calls upon him that he would not be able +to answer; with baring of incurable wounds. The contrast with the +reality is so startling that at first it makes him almost dizzy. Can the +showy creature beside him, preening herself under her gay sunshade, be +the same overwhelmed, shrunk, tear-drenched Cecilia whom at their last +meeting he had folded in so solemn an embrace? Her cheerful voice +answers for herself: + +"It is so nice to see you again! When did you come? We did not expect +you quite so soon; in your last letter you were rather vague as to +dates; I can't say that you shine as a correspondent. You will come back +to luncheon with us, of course, will not you? _dejeuner_, as they call +it here; I always thought _dejeuner_ meant breakfast. You will come, +will not you? Sybilla will be so glad to see you--glad, that is to say, +in her dismal way." + + +She ends with a laugh, which he listens to in a silence that is almost +stunned. The sound of her voice, though set to so different a tune from +what he had anticipated, has brought back the past with such astonishing +vividness to him; her very fleer at Sybilla seems so much a part of the +old life that he half turns his head, expecting once more to see +Amelia's deprecating face, to hear her peace-making voice put in a plea, +as it has done so many hundred times, for the peevish _malade +imaginaire_. + +They have been strolling towards the carriages waiting outside, and have +now reached one, driven by an _indigene_, a Moor, dusky as Othello, +solemn as Rhadamanthus, and with his serious charms set off by a striped +yellow and white jacket and a red sash. + +"Is not he beautiful?" asks Cecilia, with another laugh, alluding to her +coachman, as she and Burgoyne set off upon their _tete-a-tete_ drive, +Mr. Wilson seeing, apparently, no reason in the fact of his (Burgoyne's) +appearance on the scene for departing from his invariable custom of +walking home from church; "is not he beautiful? When first we came here +we were in mourning; as if"--catching herself up with a stifled +sigh--"there were any need to tell _you_ that; and father wanted to put +him into black, but I would not hear of it: was not I right? He would +have been nothing in black; it is his red and yellow that give him his +_cachet_." + +Jim feels inclined to burst out laughing. There is something so +ludicrous in the disproportion between his fears and their fulfilment, +in the fact of the whole importance of Amelia's death resolving itself +into a sash or no sash for an Arab coachman, that he has some difficulty +in answering in a key of which the irony shall not be too patent: + +"I think you were perfectly right." + +He does not know whether she perceives the dryness of his tone; he +thinks probably not, as she goes on to ask him a great many questions as +to his journey, etc., talking quickly and rather flightily, scarcely +leaving room between her queries for his monosyllabic replies, and +ending with the ejaculation: + +"How nice it is to see you again!" + +"Thank you." His acknowledgment seems to himself so curt that, after a +moment, he feels constrained to add something to it. That something is +the bald and trivial inquiry: "And you--how have you all been getting +on?" + +Cecilia shrugs her shoulders. + +"We are better off than we were; you know that, of course. Nobody ever +thought that father's brother would have died before him. Wait till you +see our villa--it is one of the show ones here; and of course it is very +pleasant having more money; but one cannot help wishing that it had come +earlier." She sighs as she speaks; not an ostentatious sigh, but a +repressed and strangled one; and, despite the flower-garden in her +bonnet, his heart softens to her. Perhaps his look has rested on that +flower-garden with a more open disapprobation than he knows, for she +says presently: "I think that one may be very bright-coloured outside, +and very black inside. Father and I are sometimes very black inside." + +"Are you?" + +"We do very well when we are alone together, father and I; we like to +talk about her. Dear me! what a place Algiers is for dust! that is why +there are so many blind people here. How it gets into one's eyes!" She +puts her handkerchief up hastily to her face as she speaks; but Jim is +not taken in by the poor little ruse, and he listens to her in a silence +that is almost tender, as she goes on: "Sybilla begins to cry if we even +distantly allude to her; yet I know"--with exasperation--"that she talks +of her by the hour to strangers--to her new doctor, for instance; yes, +she has picked up a new doctor here--a dreadful little adventurer! She +will probably talk of nothing else but her to you." + +"God forbid!" + +They have by this time left the town behind them, and have turned +through a stone-pillared gate down an ilex and ficus-sheltered drive, +along which the _indigene_, whipping up his horses to an avenue canter, +lands them at the arched door of a snowy Moorish house, whose whitewash +shows dazzling through the interstices of a Bougainvillia fire blazing +all over its front. + +Two minutes later Jim is standing by Sybilla's couch. She is holding +both his hands in hers, and there is something in her face which tells +him that she means that he shall kiss her. + +"When I think--when I think of our last meeting!" she says hysterically. + +"Yes," he says, gasping; "yes, of course. What a beautiful villa you +have here!" + +The observation is a true one, though, for the moment, he has not the +least idea whether it is beautiful or not, as he turns his tormented +eyes round upon the delicious little court, with its charming +combination of slender twisted marble columns, of mellow-tinted tiles, +of low plashing fountain. Originally it has been open, roofless to the +eye and the breath and the rains of heaven; but its Northern purchaser +has covered it in with glass, and set low divans and luxuriantly +cushioned bamboo chairs about its soft-tumbling water. + +Sybilla has let fall her hands, and the expression of the wish for a +sisterly embrace has disappeared out of her face. For a few moments she +remains absolutely silent. He looks round anxiously for Cecilia, but she +has gone to take off her bonnet, and Mr. Wilson has not yet come in. +Under pretence of examining the tiles, he walks towards the lovely +little colonnade of horseshoe arches that form the court, and his uneasy +look rests, scarcely seeing them, upon the vertical lines of lovely old +faience that intersect the whitewash with softest blues and greens and +yellows. + +When will Cecilia return? Behind him he presently hears the invalid's +voice, steadied and coldened. + +"It is very beautiful; and, of course, it is everything for weary eyes +to have such pleasant objects to rest upon. I believe"--with a little +laugh--"that we sick people really take in most of our nourishment +through the eyes. Was not it wonderfully enterprising of us to come +here? I suppose your first thought when you heard the news was, 'How mad +of Sybilla to attempt it!'" + +It is needless to say how innocent of the mental ejaculation attributed +to him Jim has been, and the consciousness of it makes him inquire with +guilty haste: + +"But you were none the worse? you got over it all right?" + +"I was really wonderful," replies she; "we sick people"--with a little +air of playfulness--"do give you well ones these surprises sometimes; +but I must not take the credit to myself: it is really every bit due to +Dr. Crump, my new doctor, who is a perfect marvel of intuition. I always +tell him that he never need ask; he _divines_ how one is; he says he is +a mere bundle of nerves himself; that is, I suppose, why one can talk to +him upon subjects that are sealed books with one's nearest and dearest." + +Her voice has a suspicious tremble in it which frightens Jim anew. + +He looks again apprehensively for help towards the two tiers of curving +column and rounding arch, which rise in cool grace above each other, and +sees, with relief, the figure of Cecilia leaning over the balustrade +that runs along the upper tier, and looking down upon him. At the same +moment Mr. Wilson enters, and shortly afterwards they all go to +luncheon. It is not a very pleasant repast, although the cool +dining-room, with its beautiful old pierced stucco ceiling and its +hanging brass lamps, contributes its part handsomely towards what should +be their enjoyment. There is no overt family quarrel, but just enough of +covert recrimination and sub-acid sparring to make an outsider feel +thoroughly uncomfortable, and to prove how inharmonious a whole the +soured little family now forms. + +"We quarrel more than we used to do, do not we?" says Cecilia, when Jim, +a little later, takes leave, and she walks, under her red sunshade, up +the ilexed drive with him to the pillared gate; "and to-day we were +better than usual, because you were by. Oh, I wish you were always by!" + +He cannot echo the wish. He had thought that he had already held his +dead Amelia at her true value; but never, until to-day, has he realized +through what a long purgatory of obscure heroisms she had passed to her +reward. + +"I do hope you will not drop us altogether. Of course, now that the link +that bound us to you is broken"--her voice quivers, but he feels neither +the fear nor the rage that a like phenomenon in Sybilla has produced in +him--"there is nothing to hold you any longer; but I do trust you will +not quite throw us over." + +"My dear old girl, why should I? I hope that you and I shall always be +the best of friends, and that before long I shall see you settled in a +home of your own." + +"You mean that I shall marry? Well, to be sure"--with a recurrence to +that business-like tone which had always amused him formerly in her +discussion of her affairs of the heart--"I ought to have a better chance +now than ever, as I shall have a larger fortune; but"--with a lapse into +depression--"this is not a good place for men--I mean Englishmen. There +are troops of delightful-looking Frenchmen, Chasseurs d'Afrique, and +Zouaves; but, then, we do not know any of them--not one. Well, +perhaps"--philosophically--"it is for the best; one always hears that +Frenchmen make very bad husbands." + + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +Notre Dame d'Afrique--Lady of Africa--is an ugly lady, homely and black; +and the church that is dedicated to her is ugly too--new and +mock-Moorish; but, like many another ugly lady, being very nobly placed, +she has a great and solemn air. It is Our Lady of Africa who first gives +us our greeting as we steam in from seawards; it is to Our Lady of +Africa that the fisher-people climb to vespers, and to the touching +office that follows, when priests and acolytes pass out of the church to +the little plateau outside, where, sheer against the sky, stands a small +Latin cross, with a plain and, as it seems, coffin-shaped stone beneath +it, on which one reads the inscription: + + "A la memoire de tous ceux, qui ont peri dans la mer, et ont + ete ensevelis dans ses flots." + + "_All those who have perished in the sea, and been buried in + her waves._" + +What a gigantic company to be covered with one little epitaph! + +Notre Dame d'Afrique stands grandly on the cliff-tops, overlooking the +sea, whose cruel deeds she is so agonizedly prayed to avert, whose +cruelty she is sometimes powerful to assuage, witness the frequent +votive tablets with which the church walls are covered: + + "Merci, oh ma mere." + "J'ai prie, et j'ai ete exauce." + "Reconnaissance a Marie." + "Reconnaissance a Notre Dame d'Afrique." + +She does not look very lovable, this coal-black Marie, who stands in her +stiff brocade, with her ebon hands stretched straight out above the +high-altar; but how tenderly these poor fisherwives must have felt +towards her when she brought them back their Pierre or their Jean, from +the truculent deeps of the ocean! + +Burgoyne has been told, both by his guide-book and by his _table-d'hote_ +neighbour, that he ought to see Notre Dame d'Afrique; nor is he loth to +pay further obeisance to that high lady who already yesterday beckoned +to him across the blue floor of her waters. He does not tell Cecilia of +his intention, as he knows that she would offer to accompany him; but on +leaving her he takes his way through the gay French town, along its +Arab-named streets, Bab-a-Zoun and Bab-el-Oued, towards the village of +St. Eugene, and breasts the winding road that, with many an elbow and +bend, heading a deep gorge that runs up from the sea to the church-foot, +leads him within her portals. The congregation is sparse--a few +peasants, a blue and red Zouave, and several inevitable English. Now and +again a woman, clad in humble black that tells of prayers in vain, goes +up with her thin candle, and, lighting it, sticks it in its sconce among +the others that burn before the altar. For awhile Burgoyne finds it +pleasant after his climb to sit and watch her, and speculate pityingly +with what hope of still possible good to herself she is setting her +slender taper alight--now that her treasure has all too obviously gone +down beneath the waves; to sit and speculate, and smell the heady +incense, and listen to the murmur of chanted supplication; but +presently, growing weary of the uncomprehended service, he slips outside +to the little plateau, with its view straight out--no importunate +land-object intervening--towards the sea, across which a little steamer +is cutting her way; and on the horizon two tiny shining sails are lying. + +Here, on this bold headland, it seems as if one were one's self in +mid-ocean; and one has to lean far over the low wall in order to realize +that there is some solid earth between us and it; that two full cities +of the dead--a Jewish and a Christian--lie below. From the +land-cemeteries to the vast sea-cemetery--for read by the light of that +plain inscription upon which his eyes are resting, what is even the +azure Mediterranean but a grave? For the matter of that, what is all +life but a grave? + + "First our pleasures die, and then + Our hopes, and then our fears, and when + These are dead, the debt is due: + Dust claims dust, and we die too." + +He turns away, and, muttering these words half absently between his +lips, begins to make the circuit of the church; and in doing so, comes +suddenly upon three persons who are apparently similarly employed. The +party consists of a man and two ladies. Being a little ahead of him, +they are, for the first moment or two, not aware of his presence, an +ignorance by which he, rather to his own discomfiture, profits to +overhear a scrap of their conversation certainly not intended for his +ears. + +"I suppose that you were wool-gathering, as usual?" Mr. Le Marchant is +saying, with an accent of cold severity, to his daughter; "but I should +have thought that even _you_ might have remembered to bring a wrap of +some kind for your mother!" + +Jim starts, partly at having happened so unexpectedly upon the people +before him, partly in shocked astonishment at the harshness both of +voice and words. + +In the old days Elizabeth had been the apple of her father's eye, to +oppose whose lightest fancy was a capital offence, for whom no words +could be too sugared, no looks too doting. Yet now she answers, with the +sweetest good-humour, and without the slightest sign of surprise or +irritation, or any indication that the occurrence is not a habitual one: + +"I cannot think how I could have been so stupid; it was inexcusable of +me." + +"I quite agree with you," replies the father, entirely unmollified; "I +am sure you have been told often enough how liable to chills +insufficient clothing makes people in this beastly climate at sundown." + +"But it is not near sundown," breaks in Mrs. Le Marchant, throwing +herself anxiously, and with a dexterity which shows how frequently she +is called upon to do so, between the two others; "look what a great +piece of blue sky the sun has yet to travel." + +"You shall have my jacket," cries Elizabeth impetuously, but still with +the same perfect sweetness; "it will be absurdly short for you, but, at +least, it will keep you warm." So saying, she, with the speed of +lightning, whips off the garment alluded to, and proceeds to guide her +mother's arms into its inconveniently tight sleeves, laughing the while +with her odd childish light-heartedness, and crying, "You dear thing, +you do look too ridiculous!" + +The mother laughs too, and aids her daughter's efforts; nor does it seem +to occur to any of the three that the fatal Southern chill may possibly +strike the delicate little frame of Elizabeth, now exposed, so lightly +clad in her tweed gown, to its insidious influence. + +"I wish you had a looking-glass to see yourself in!" cries she, rippling +into fresh mirth; "does not she look funny, father!" appealing to him +with as little resentment for his past surliness as would be shown by a +good dog (I cannot put it more strongly), and yet, as it seems to Jim, +with a certain nervous deprecation. + +The next moment one of them--he does not know which--has caught sight of +himself, and the moment after he is shaking hands with all three. It is +clear that the fact of his presence in Algiers has been notified to Mr. +Le Marchant, for there is no surprise in his coldly civil greeting. He +makes it as short as possible, and almost at once turns to continue his +circuit of the church, his wife at his side, and his daughter meekly +following. Doubtless they do not wish for his (Jim's) company; but yet, +as he was originally, and without any reference to them, going in their +direction, it would seem natural that he should walk along with them. + +He is hesitating as to whether or no to adopt this course, when he is +decided by a very slight movement of Elizabeth's head. She does not +actually look over her shoulder at him, and yet it seems to him as if, +were her gesture completed, it would amount to that; but it is arrested +by some impulse before it is more than sketched. Such as it is, it +suffices to take him to her side; and it seems to him that there is a +sort of satisfaction mingled with the undoubted apprehension in her +face, as she realizes that it is so. Her eyes, as she turns them upon +him, have a hungry question in them which her lips seem afraid to put. +Apparently she cannot get nearer to it than this--very tremblingly and +hurriedly uttered, with a timid glance at her father's back, as if she +were delivering herself of some compromising secret instead of the mere +platitude which she so indistinctly vents: + +"A--a--great many things have happened since--since we last met!" + +Her eye travels for a moment to his hat, from which, unlike Cecilia's +rainbow raiment, the crape band has not yet been removed; and he +understands that she is comprehending his troubles as well as her own in +the phrase. + +"A great many!" he answers baldly. + +He has not the cruelty to wish to keep her on tenterhooks, and he knows +perfectly what is the question that is written in the wistful blue of +her look, and whom it concerns; but it would be impertinence in him to +take for granted that knowledge, and answer that curiosity which, +however intense and apparent, has yet not become the current coin of +speech. Probably she sees that he is unable or unwilling to help her, +for she makes another tremendous effort. + +"I hope that--that--all your friends are well." + +"All my friends!" repeats he, half sadly; "they are not such a numerous +band; I have not many friends left still alive." + +His thoughts have reverted to his own loss, for, at the moment, Amelia +is very present to him; but the words are no sooner out of his mouth +than he sees how false is the impression produced by his reply--sees it +written in the sudden dead-whiteness of her cheek and the terror in her +eye. + +"Do you mean"--she stammers--"that anybody--any of your friends--is--is +lately dead?" + +"Oh no! no!" he cries reassuringly; "you are making a mistake; nobody is +dead--nobody, that is"--with a sigh--"that you do not already know of. +All our friends--all our common friends--are, as far as I know----" + +"Elizabeth!" breaks in Mr. Le Marchant's voice, in severe appellation; +he has only just become aware that his daughter is not unaccompanied, +and the discovery apparently does not please him. + +Without a second's delay, despite her twenty-seven years, she has sprung +forwards to obey the summons; and Jim has the sense to make no further +effort to rejoin her. By the time that their circuit is finished, and +they have again reached the front of the church, vespers are ended, and +there is a movement outwards among the worshippers. They stream--not +very numerous--out on the little terrace. The priests follow, tonsured, +but--which looks strange--with beards and whiskers. The acolytes, in +their red chasubles, carry a black and white pall, and lay it over the +memorial stone below the cross. On either hand stand a band of decently +clad youths--sons of drowned seamen--playing on brass instruments. It is +a poor little music, doubtfully in tune; but surely no rolling organ, no +papal choir, could touch the heart so much as this simple ceremonial. +The little Latin cross standing sheer out against the sea; the black +pall thrown over the stone that commemorates the sea's innumerable dead; +the red-clad acolytes, standing with eyes cast down, holding aloft their +high tapers, whose flickering flame the sea-wind soon puffs out; and the +sons of the drowned sailors, making their homely music to the +accompaniment of the salt breeze. The little service is brief and those +who have taken part in it are soon dispersing. As they do so, Jim once +more finds himself for a moment close to Elizabeth. + +The sun has nearly touched the sea-line by this time, and he sees, or +thinks he sees, her shiver. + +"You are cold," he says solicitously; "you will get a chill." + +She looks back at him, half surprised, half grateful, at the anxiety of +his tone. + +"Not I!" she answers, with a gentle air of indifference and +recklessness; "naught never comes to harm!" + +"But you shivered! I saw you shiver." + +"Did I? It was only"--smiling--"that a goose walked over my grave. Does +a goose never walk over your grave?" + +And once more she is gone. + +He does not see her again that day. Of the three places laid for dinner +at the round table in the _salle a manger_, only two are occupied; hers +is, and remains, empty. She is not with her parents, and, what is more, +she does not appear to be missed by them. It fills Jim with something of +the same shocked surprise as he had felt on hearing the cold and surly +tone in which she had been addressed by her father, to see how much +more, and more genially, that father talks; how much less morose his +back looks than had been the case on the previous evening. + +The next morning rises superb in steady splendour, and Jim, on issuing +out on the little red-tiled terrace, finds the whole strength of the +hotel gathered upon it. Even the worst invalids, who have not shown +their noses outside their rooms for a fortnight, are sunning themselves, +wrapped in apparently unnecessary furs. The Arabs and Turks have spread +their gay rugs and carpets, and displayed their bits of stuff, their +brasswork, and their embroidery. They make a charming garden of colour +under the blue. One is lying beside his wares, in an azure jacket and a +rose-red sash, twanging a "gunebri," or little Arab mandolin. Apart from +the rest of the company, at the extreme end of the terrace, in a place +which is evidently hers by prescriptive right, close to the balustrade, +upon whose blue and white tiled top her books are lying, Elizabeth is +sitting--and sitting alone, neither truculent father not frightened +mother barring approach to her. He makes his way at once to her. + +"You were not at dinner last night?" + +"No." + +"I hope that did not mean that you were ill?" + +Her eyes are not lifted to his--resting rather on the balustrade, +through whose pierced brickwork little boughs of Bougainvillia are +pushing. + +"No, I was not ill," she replies slowly; "but I had made such a figure +of myself by crying that mammy thought I had better stay away. When I +looked in the glass," she adds humorously, "I thought so myself." + +"There was not much sign of tears about you when we parted at Notre Dame +d'Afrique," he says brusquely. + +"No, but"--with a sudden lifting of her pretty lashes--"you know there +is never any medium in me; I am always either laughing or crying; and, +of course, seeing you again brought--brought things back to me." + +She looks wistfully at him as she makes this leading remark. + +He can no longer have any doubt as to her wish to embark upon the +subject which, even in the three minutes of their meeting on the +previous day, she had sought to approach. If he is kind, he will enter +into her wish, he will make her path easier for her; but for the moment +he does not feel kind--angry, rather, and rebellious. + +Is his intercourse with her to be a mere repetition of that which, +although now seven months ago, makes him still writhe, in the +recollection of his latter intercourse with Byng? Is he again to be +spitted upon the skewer of reminiscences of the Vallombrosan wood? +_Never!_ + +He looks obstinately away from her--towards where first an ivied bank +rises, with red gladioli flowering upon it; then a little space of bare +ground, then a row of orange-trees; then some young stone-pines, holding +their heads against the blue to show what an exquisite contrast they +make to it; then, topping, or seeming to top the hill, a white villa, +with little blue jewels of sky, seen through the interstices of the +balustrade on its roof, its whitewash making the solid wall of sapphire +behind it look even more desperately and unnameably blue than elsewhere. +What a blue! sapphire! turquoise! lapis! To what poor shifts are we +driven to express it! How could we describe its glory to a blind person? +If to such a one the colour of scarlet is represented by the sound of a +trumpet, surely this divine tint above us can be best conveyed by the +whole heavenly hierarchy of burning seraphs and winged angels, harping +and quiring together. + +"I always think," says Elizabeth, following the direction of his +eyes--"perhaps it may be fancy--that this particular corner of the sky +is much bluer than any other." + +There is a shade of disappointment in her tone at his failure to take up +her challenge, but she is far too gentle to make any further effort in a +direction which, for some reason, is disagreeable to him; and since he +will not follow her inclination, she is pliantly willing to follow his. + +The Arabs have come up in might to-day, and, no longer fearing rain, +have carpeted almost the whole terrace with their wares. They hang over +the low wall, and cover the red tiles; blue and purple, and Moslem +green, and Venetian red; dazzling white _haiks_, blinding in the +blinding sunshine; carpets, embroidered jackets, flashing back gold in +the gold light. A pert English miss is standing over them, and saying +disparagingly about each: + +"You can get this 7-1/2d. cheaper at Whiteley's. I saw a much better one +than this for half the price at Marshall's," etc., etc. + +One longs to ask the "miss" whether she saw the sunlight, and the cobalt +sea, and the glorified whitewash, with its amethyst shadows, for 7-1/2d. +at Whiteley's too, and, if so, why she did not stay there? + +Burgoyne's friend in the red shirt is beating down a one-eyed Kabyle, +and having a happy haggle with him over a Mozambique coat. + +"She does not get on with her own family at home, and she has quarrelled +with all her travelling companions!" says Elizabeth, in a delighted +explanatory whisper. Wistfulness and disappointment have alike vanished +out of her small face, which is one ripple of mischief. "The fat widow +in the weepers, who is preening herself like a great pouter pigeon, is +trying to marry the wizened old gentleman in the bamboo chair. Sometimes +we think she will succeed; sometimes we think she will not: it is _so_ +interesting!" + +Jim looks down at her with an astonishment bordering on indignation. + +Is this the woman who cried herself sick last night over memories of the +so recent past? In this mobile nature, is there nothing that one can lay +hold of? + +"Mammy and I get an infinity of amusement out of them," continues she, +still playfully, but faltering a little under the severity of his look; +"oh, we know a great deal about them all; and those that we do not know +about we make stories for!" + +"Indeed!" + +His tone is so curt that the stream of her gaiety dries up under it, and +she relapses into silence, looking towards the flashing sea, and the +ficus-tree, that is casting its now grateful shade. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +"You said just now that seeing me brought things back to you." + +It is partly remorse at having snubbed her, and partly perversity, which +dictates this sentence on Jim's part. The perversity is, perhaps, the +predominating element in his motive--a perversity which, having chilled +her away from the subject when she was eagerly seeking an opening to it, +now forces her to return to it. She starts a little. + +"Yes--yes," she answers; "but 'brought things back' is not quite the +right phrase; they"--her voice growing low and tremulous--"had not very +far to come." + +The quiver in her voice annoys him almost as much as Byng's tears used +to do. + +"If you would like to ask me any questions," he says stiffly, "I am +ready to answer them." + +"Are you?" she cries hungrily; "oh, that is kind of you! but, then, you +always _were_ kind; but not here"--looking apprehensively round--"I +could not trust myself to talk about--about him here; I--I should break +down, and nothing"--with a smile that, though watery, is still +humorous--"would induce me to make a fool of myself before the widow +Wadman." Then, seeing him look at a loss: "Come indoors!" she says +impulsively, standing up, and half stretching out her hand as if to draw +him after her. "Come into our salon--no, you need not be afraid; we +shall have it all to ourselves; father and mother have gone out for +their usual constitutional on the Boulevard Mustapha." + +He follows her silently, and neither speaks till they find themselves +_tete-a-tete_ in the private apartment of the Le Marchants. + +It is on the _rez-de-chaussee_, a suite of three little whitewashed +rooms, transmogrified from their original hotel nakedness by flowers and +brocade bits. Three large green jars on the chimney-piece, full of +generous rose-branches, and boughs of salvia and iris, and stalwart +yellow jessamine, make the air sweetly and lightly perfumed. On the +table is a litter of Tauchnitz novels, disastrously old English papers, +the little scurrilous Algerian sheet, and, lastly, Elizabeth's +workbasket--the big workbasket which Jim had last seen standing on the +floor in the _entresol_, at the Piazza d'Azeglio, with its contents +strewn all over his friend's prostrate body. At the sight a bitter smile +breaks over his face. + +"An old acquaintance!" he says, making a mock salutation to it; "it is +in better order than when last I had the pleasure of seeing it." + +"Do you mean in Florence?" she asks, very slowly. + +"Yes"--still with that acrid smile--"after you were gone, I had the +honour of helping to pack it to send after you. I am afraid I was rather +clumsy over it; but, at any rate, I managed better than he. By-the-bye, +did you find any rust on your scissors and thimble when next you had +occasion to use them? Poor boy! he cried enough over them to take all +the polish off!" + +She has sunk down upon the sofa, over which a great woollen _haik_, dyed +with harmonious dull tints, is thrown. + +"Do not sneer at me!" she says faintly. "You would not if you knew how +you hurt me. Is he--is he--how is he?" + +"He is not ill." + +The answer ought to be reassuring; but there is something in the manner +in which it is uttered that tells her that it neither is, nor is meant +to be so. It is so ominous that her lips, after a feeble effort or two, +give up the endeavour to frame any query. All her power of interrogation +has passed into those eyes, out of which her companion has been so +brilliantly successful in chasing their transient morning mirth. + +"When a man," says Jim gravely, "at the outset of his life, gets such a +facer as he did, if he has not a very strong character, it is apt to +drive him off the rails, to give him a shove downwards." + +"I see; and you think I have given him a shove downwards?" + +"Yes." + +There is a pause. Jim's eyes are resolutely turned away from the face of +Elizabeth, upon whose small white area twitches of pain are making cruel +disfigurement. He does not want to have his heart softened towards her, +so he stares persistently over her head at a Mussulman praying-carpet, +which, old and still rich-toned, despite the wearing of pious knees, +hangs on the wall. At length she speaks, in a key as low as--were not +the room so entirely still--would be inaudible. + +"If I had married him, I should have given him a much worse shove down." + +Jim holds his breath. Is he about to hear from her own lips that secret +which he has magnanimously resisted all opportunities of hearing from +other sources? But the words that, after a pause, follow this almost +whispered statement are not a confession. They are only an appeal. + +"You would be doing the kindest thing that you ever did in your life, if +you could bring yourself to say that you thought I did it for the best." + +He feels that if he submits his eyes to hers, his will must go with +them; he will have no power left of dissent from any request she may +choose to make; so he still stares over her head at a screen which hides +the doorless entrance to the third room of the little suite. One leaf, +folded back, gives a peep through the little chamber, through its +deep-arched window to where a date-palm stands up straight against the +sea. + +"I could not possibly say that unless I knew the circumstances of the +case," he answers judicially. + +He hears a low sigh, not of impatience, but of melancholy acquiescence. + + +"Then you must go on thinking ill of me." + +There is such a depth of dejection, as well as such an unalterable +sweetness, in her voice, that the words of little Prince Arthur, +addressed to Hubert, flash upon his mind: + + "If Heaven be pleased that you should use me ill, + Why, then you must!" + +After all, what power in earth or sky has appointed him her executioner? + +"I do not wish to think ill of you," he answers sadly. "Good heavens! do +I need to tell you that? I have tried all along to keep myself from +judging you; but I should not be human--you must know that I should not +be human--if I did not ask myself why you did it." + +"Why I left Florence?" + +"Yes." + +She sits stock-still for a moment, the very little colour that there +ever was in it retreating out of her face. + +"If I told you that, I should be telling you everything." + +He is looking at her now; after all, he cannot keep his gaze pinned to +the screen for ever, and, as he looks, he sees an emotion of so +transcendently painful a nature set her little sad features working, +that the one impulse that dominates him is to ease her suffering. + +Poor little docile creature! She is going to tell him her secret, since +he exacts it, though it is only with a rending asunder of soul and body +that it can be revealed. He puts out his hand hurriedly, with a gesture +as of prohibition. + +"Then do not tell me." + +She sinks back upon her _haik_ with a movement of relief, and puts up +her fine handkerchief to her pale lips. There is a perfect silence +between them for awhile. At his elbow is a great un-English, unwintry +nosegay of asphodel and iris. He passes his fingers absently over the +freakish spikes. + +"How did he take it? how did he take it at first?" + +Her voice, though now tolerably distinct, is stamped with that character +of awe which fills us all at approaching a great calamity. + +"He would not believe it at first; and then he cried a great deal--oh, +an immense deal!"--with an accent of astonishment, even at the +recollection of his friend's tear-power--"and then--oh, then, he thought +of putting an end to himself!" + +Jim had meant to have made this relation in a tone of dispassionate +narrative, but against his will and intention, as his memory recalls +what seem to him the unworthy antics played by Byng's grief, his voice +takes a sarcastic inflection. The horror written on his auditor's face +as he utters the latest clause of his sentence recalls him to himself. + +"Do not be afraid!" he says, in a tone which has no longer anything akin +to a sneer in it, though it is not devoid of bitterness; "the impulse +was a short-lived one; he is not thinking of putting an end to himself +now, I can assure you of that; he is only thinking of how he can best +amuse himself. Whether he is much more successful in that than he was in +the former, I am not so sure." + +Her eyes have dropped to her own fragile, ringless hands as they lie on +her lap. + +"Poor boy! poor boy!" she says over softly twice, moving her head up and +down with a little compassionate movement. + +At the pity expressed by her gesture, an unjust and unjustifiable hard +anger takes harsh possession of him. + +"It was a pity you let it go so far," he says austerely; "you must allow +me to say that much; but I suppose, in point of fact, the ball once set +rolling, it was past your power to stop it." + +She listens to his philippic, with her head meekly bent. + +"I did not try," she answers, in a half.whisper; then, after a pause, +raising her down-dropped eyes, lit with a blue fire of excitement, +almost inspiration, to his, "I said to myself, 'If I have any luck, I +shall die before the smash comes;' and I just lived on from day to day. +I had not the heart to stop it; I knew it would stop of itself before +long; I had never--hardly ever"--correcting herself, as it seems, with a +modifying afterthought--"in my life before known what happiness meant; +and oh! _oh!_ OH!"--with a groan of deepening intensity at each repeated +interjection--"what a big word it is!" + +_Never--hardly ever--known what happiness meant before!_ Why, surely she +was happy at the Moat! and before his mind's eye there rises an image of +her in her riotous rosy gaiety; but even as it does, there flashes upon +him a comprehension of her speech. + +It is not the careless merriment of childhood to which she is alluding; +it is to _the_ happiness, _par excellence_, of life. If this is the +case, why did she correct herself and modify her negative with a +"hardly"? A jealous feeling of someone else--someone beside Byng; a +jealousy none the less keen for being vague--for not knowing on what +object it can lay hold--sharpens his tone as he repeats aloud, and with +an accent of interrogation, her qualifying adverb: + +"_Hardly_ ever, that implies----" + +But she breaks in hurriedly, as if dreading--and at the same time +doubting her own power of baffling--cross-examination upon that subject +on whose borders they are continually hovering. + +"Talking of happiness makes one think of unhappiness, does not it? We +both know something about that, do not we?" + +She pauses, and he sees that she is alluding to his own sorrow, and that +her eye is sounding his to see whether he would wish her to approach it +more nearly. His eye, in answer, must give but a dubious beam, since he +himself is quite unsure of what his wishes on the subject are; and she +goes on with the haste and yet unsteadiness of one who is treading on +swampy ground, that gives beneath his feet. + +"We saw it in the papers; I could not believe it at first. It was the +last thing I ever expected to happen. I thought of writing to you, but I +did not." + +She looks at him rather wistfully, and although but two minutes ago she +had been confessing to him her passion for another man, he sees that she +is anxious he should tell her that her sympathy would have been precious +to him. He feels the same sensation as before of mixed anger and +fascination at the ductility of her nature. What business has she to +care whether he would have liked to hear from her or not? + +"It seemed such a pity that it was she, and not I!" + +Again her eye interrogates his, as if asking for acquiescence in this +suggestion, but he cannot give it. With a shock of surprise--nay, +horror--at himself, he finds that he is unable to echo the wish that +Elizabeth had died and Amelia lived. + +"I said so to mammy at the time. Ah, here is mammy!" + +And, indeed, as she speaks the door opens, and Mrs. Le Marchant enters +in her walking-dress. At the sight of Jim, a look, which certainly does +not betoken pleasure, though good breeding prevents its representing the +opposite emotion, crosses her handsome, worn face. + +"I brought Mr. Burgoyne in here," says Elizabeth, in what seems rather +precipitate explanation, "because we could not talk comfortably out on +the terrace; they listen to everything we say: they have such long +ears--the Widow Wadman and Miss Strutt!" + +"I do not know what State secrets you and Mr. Burgoyne can have to +discuss," replies the mother, with a smile that, though courteous, but +ill disguises the underlying anxiety. "Yes, dear child, I shall be very +much obliged if you will take my bonnet upstairs for me"--this in answer +to little tender overtures from Elizabeth, overtures that remind Jim of +12 _bis_, Piazza d' Azeglio. "I do not know whether you have yet found +it so" (to Jim); "but this _is_ a slack place." + +No sooner has the door closed upon her daughter than her tone changes. + +"What have you been talking about to her," she inquires rapidly; "not, I +hope, about _him_?" + +"I could not help it; she asked me." + +Mrs. Le Marchant strikes her hands together, and gives utterance to that +short and shapeless monosyllable which has a prescriptive right to +express vexation. + +"Th! th!" A moment later, "I am sure you will understand that I do not +mean to imply any ill-will to you; but it _is_ unlucky that we should +have happened to meet you here; it has brought it all back to her, and +she was just beginning to pluck up her spirits a little." + +"Did she--did she take it so much to heart?" inquires Jim, in a tone of +almost as awed concern as Elizabeth had employed but a quarter of an +hour before in putting nearly the same question with regard to Byng. + +"_Did she take it to heart!_" repeats Mrs. Le Marchant, with the +irritation of one to whom a perfectly senseless and superfluous inquiry +is put; "why, of course she did! I thought at one time that she would +have gone out of her mind!" + +No one can feel less merry than Jim; and yet his lips at this juncture +cannot resist the impulse to frame themselves into a gloomy smile. + +"And I thought that _he_ would have gone out of _his_ mind," he rejoins. + +As he speaks, it flashes upon his memory that one of the hypotheses that +have formerly occurred to him to account for the mystery that hangs over +Elizabeth's past was that she had been mad; and though he had long +abandoned the idea, her losing her wits now recurs to him with a shock +as a possibility. Might not that changeful, mobile, emotional mind lose +its balance under the blow either of a sudden calamity or of a long +wearing sorrow? It has escaped--evidently but barely escaped the first. +Will it escape the second too? + +His heart goes out in a great yearning to her at the thought of what a +touching little lunatic she would make; and, with an oblivion of his own +personal feelings, which is generous, if not very lasting, he says +compassionately: + +"It seems a pity--a great pity!" + +"A pity!" repeats the mother, with a sort of wrath, down which he +detects a broad stripe of agony running; "I should think it _was_ a +pity! Pity is a weak word! The whole thing is piteous! her whole +history! If you only knew----" + +She breaks off. + +He is silent, waiting to see whether that impulse towards confidence in +him will go any further; but it does not. She has evidently gone beyond +her intention, and is passionately vexed with herself for having done +so. + +"They were so well suited to each other," continues Jim slowly, but +still generously. Possibly his generosity becomes more easy as he sees +how hopeless is the plea upon which he employs it. "Is it--I do not wish +to intrude upon your confidence, but in the interests of my friend you +will allow me to say that much--is it quite out of the question?" + +"Quite! quite!" replies the mother, in painful excitement; "what, poor +soul, is not out of the question for her that has any good or happiness +in it? and that--_that_ more than anything! If you have any mercy in +you, do not put it into her head that it is not!" + +"If it is not in her head already, I could not put it there," replies +Jim gravely; "but I will not--I promise you I will not." + +As he speaks, a slight smile touches the corners of his serious mouth as +he reflects how entirely easy it is to comply with a request _not_ to +urge Byng's suit upon its object, and how cheaply a character for +magnanimity may sometimes be bought. + +"That is very kind of you!" replies the poor woman gratefully; "and I am +sure when you say a thing I can depend upon you for it; and though, of +course, it was unlucky our happening to meet you, yet you need not see +much of her. Although it is not in the least 'out of sight, out of mind' +with her"--sighing--"yet she _is_ very much influenced by the objects +around her; and when you are gone--I dare say you do not mean to make a +long stay; this is not a place where there is much for a man to do--for +a man like you----" + +She breaks off, and her imploring eye invites him to reassure her by +naming a speedy day for his own departure. But magnanimity may have +calls made upon it that exceed its power to answer, and Jim's silence +sufficiently proves that he is not going to allow himself to be seduced +into a promise to go. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +The next morning proves the truth of Miss Strutt's words that "we are +not so green here in Algiers for nothing." The weather changes some time +after dark has fallen. A mighty wind arises. Jim's slumbers are broken +by the fact that somebody's outside shutters bang, loose and noisy all +night. The great sign at the top of the hotel swings and creaks and +groans. In the morning, as far as can be seen through blurred panes, the +trees--eucalyptus, ilex, stone-pine--are all cowering and stooping +before the wind's lash. The fan palm before Mrs. Le Marchant's window, +with its fans all pinched and bent, is staggering before the gale. One +cannot conceive what that unlucky tropical product can be doing in this +galley, and it requires a strong effort of reason and will to resist the +conviction that the oranges and lemons are tied upon the shivering trees +instead of growing naturally there. + +"And this is 'Afric's burning strand'!" says Jim to himself, over his +breakfast in the _salle a manger_, through whose shut windows the mad +rain forces itself; and the blast, coming to his wet sister's aid, +bursts them open now and again. + +The day seems enormously long. He gets through the morning tolerably +well with letter-writing, and after the twelve o'clock _dejeuner_ he +faces the gale in a determined walk down into the town. Seldom in the +course of his wide wanderings has he felt the furious scourge of more +tremendous rain. The side-path is whitened with big hailstones; red +torrents tear with ferocious speed and violence down the steep incline. +The great acanthus-leaves, and all the plentiful undergrowth, are +dripping and rejoicing. + +Through the blinding white deluge he gets forlorn peeps of the villas +that had shone yesterday with the white splendour one associates with +the city of the saints of God; and instead of, as yesterday, "laced with +heaven's own tinct," the Mediterranean is whitening the bay's rounded +curve with its angry breakers, and the snow is sprinkling the Atlas +crests. A few Arabs are sitting on the ground under the Pont d'Isly, +packed up into whitish woollen parcels, knees to nose, and arms and +hands all withdrawn into the protection of the sheltering burnous. But +no one else, who can help it, is abroad. + +It seems to Jim as if his disagreeable tussle with the elements had +lasted a long time, and yet, on his return to the hotel, he finds that +it is only half-past two. He thinks at first that the clocks must have +stopped, but finds, on examination, that they are all ticking, and all +unanimous. His drenched condition is at least a resource, necessitating +an entire and fundamental change of raiment; but even this expedient, +though dragged out to its utmost possible limit, does not carry him +further than three. How is he to dispose of the seven or eight hours +that must elapse before he can seek refuge in bed? He has exhausted his +correspondence, which is never a large one, and he has seldom in his +life been so short of books. + +He makes his way through the hall, which is crammed with young people +playing battledore, and noisily counting; with elder persons, dreadfully +short of a job, looking on and applauding; to the _salon_, in hopes of +there finding a Tauchnitz novel, or even a superannuated _Pall Mall_ or +_World_. But half a dozen other weather-bound sufferers have been before +him, and the tables are swept clean of all literature save a +three-months-old _Court Journal_. + + +Miss Strutt and the pert votary of Whiteley are sitting shawled, and +with their heads close together. By their titters, and the fragments he +catches of their talk, they seem to be concocting a practical joke of +some kind. The widow Wadman, shawled too, and her valetudinarian in a +comforter, are stopping over a wood-fire, which refuses to burn, the +souches being wringing wet. Jim rather injudiciously approaches them, +and offers his assistance in piling the damp logs; but he is so +evidently _de trop_, that he retires discomfited. On the other hand, the +invitation in Miss Strutt's and her coadjutor's eye is so apparent that +he beats a hasty retreat out of the room, in dread lest he should be +drawn into their mysterious pleasantry. + +He never is quite clear afterwards how he gets over the hours that +intervene before dinner--whether sleep comes to his aid, or whether he +is after all reduced to perusing in the _Court Journal_ the narrative of +which direction the Queen and Princess Henry of Battenburg took their +walk in, in October. But at length the welcome bell rings, drowning +even, for two minutes, the banging of the wind; and the whole hotel, +unwontedly punctual, rushes in answer to its summons. People who have +hitherto scarcely exchanged words, have eyed each other with hardly +veiled distrust, now show a feverish desire to enter into conversation, +to detain one another after dinner on the steps of the _salle a manger_. + +As the evening advances, Jim sees an intention among the younger portion +of the company to launch out into noisy, romping games, to institute a +Dumb Crambo. He feels it is far from impossible that he himself may fall +so low as to be drawn into it. Miss Strutt's eye is on him, but before +he succumbs he will make one effort on his own behalf. He embraces a +desperate resolution. He has seen the Le Marchants eating their dinner +near, and yet hopelessly far from him. Elizabeth had given him one +furtive smile, and her mother a hurried bow; this is, to tell the truth, +all the encouragement he has to go upon--all that he can find to keep +his courage up as he knocks at their door, telling himself that his +excuse--that of asking them to lend him a book--is a quite sufficient +and legitimate one. He knocks, and Elizabeth's voice at once answers: + +"Herein!" + +It is clear that she takes him for the German waiter, Fritz. She remains +in this belief even after he has opened the door, since she does not at +first look up. She is alone--not in the pretty flowered room in which +she had yesterday received him, but in the first and less adorned of the +little series--one that he had, on his former visit, cursorily supposed +to be chiefly used as an ante-room--sitting alone at a table, and before +her are spread writing-materials, over which she is stooping. An odious +and ridiculous thought darts, with a prick, across his mind. + +Is she sitting here, all alone, in order to write to Byng? + +"I came----" he begins; and at the unexpected voice she looks up with a +start: + +"Oh, it is you!" she says, in a low key, glancing rather apprehensively +at the closed door, which separates them from the inner room, in a +manner which tells him that her parents are within. + +"I came"--his voice almost unconsciously sinking to the level hers has +indicated to him--"to ask you to lend me a book." + +"A book!" she repeats doubtfully, with another and still more nervous +glance at the shut door; "I am afraid that they are all in there." + +"Oh, it is of no consequence!" rejoins Burgoyne hastily, unwittingly +quoting the words of the immortal Mr. Toots; "it does not matter in the +least." + +As he speaks, he begins to retreat towards the door, but so slowly as to +give her plenty of time to recall him had she so wished. But she does +not. She only stands looking uncertain and distressed. He cannot take +such a melancholy impression of her little face away for the whole night +with him--it would give him the blues too seriously after this dismal +day--so he takes a step or two forward again. + +"Are not you rather lonely?" he asks, with an expressive look round. + +She gives a small, uncomplaining smile. + +"Oh no; I do very well. I am generally alone at this time of day; they +like to have their evenings to themselves--at least, father likes to +have mammy to himself; I am sure it is quite natural." + +There is not the slightest trace of any sense of being aggrieved in +either words or tone. + +Again that picture of the adored Elizabeth of former days, of whose +prattle her father was never weary, whose jokes were always considered +so unequalled, and whose pre-eminence in favour was so allowed that her +intercession and influence were always employed by the others as certain +in their efficacy, rises before Jim's eyes. + +"They are like lovers still," continues Elizabeth softly; "it is very +pretty when people are lovers still after nearly thirty years." + +"And you--you write letters?" + +"No, I do not; I have not anyone to write to." + +A pang of shame at his unworthy suspicion, coupled with a sense of +astonishment at her simple confession of friendlessness, prevent his +speaking; and it is she who goes on: + +"I was writing an Italian exercise; I began to learn Italian in +Florence"--with the inevitable low sigh that always accompanies her +mention of that name--"and to-day, for something to do, I took it up +again. It has been a long day, has not it? Oh, _what_ a long day!" + +"_Long!_" repeats Jim emphatically; "it might choose to call itself a +_day_; but many a century has been shorter." + +"Someone was playing battledore and shuttlecock in the hall. I wonder to +what number they kept it up? how many years it is since I have played +battledore and shuttlecock!" + +There is a suppressed envy in her tone, which tells how far from +disagreeable the innocent noisy pastime to which she alludes would be to +her even now. She has sat down again on the straight-backed chair from +whose elevation she had commanded her Italian studies; a large grayish +cloak, lined and heavily collared, and bordered with fur, hangs, +unfastened at the throat, about her. Out of the dark beaver her delicate +neck and head rise, like a pale primrose from out of piled dead +oak-leaves in a yet wintry wood. Through the door, which he has left +open behind him, come bursts of maniac mirth from the votaries of Dumb +Crambo. + +"What a noise they are making!" + +"I should think they were!" + +"I wonder what they are doing?" + +"I can inform you on that point; they are playing Dumb Crambo." + +She repeats the words after him with a lingering intonation, in which +there again is, or, at least, he thinks that he detects it, a tinge of +envy. + +"Dumb Crambo!" + +"Would you like to join them?" + +"No"--slowly--"not quite that; but--it sounds ridiculous--but I should +like to play Dumb Crambo again. We used"--in an affectionate, lingering +tone--"to play it when we were children." + +It is the first time that she has ever voluntarily alluded to the Moat, +and he calls to mind her earnest prohibition addressed to him at +Florence against any mention of it. + +"I know you did; once or twice I played with you." + +"_You?_" + +She starts. It is evident that the unimportant fact of his having taken +part in their games has quite escaped her; but, a moment later, her soft +and courteous nature evidently making her fear that he will look upon +her obliviousness as unkind-- + +"Oh yes, to be sure!" Then again lapsing into reminiscence, "What odd +words we used to choose sometimes--words that nobody could guess! I +wonder what words they have chosen?" + +He thinks of saying jocosely, "Shall I go and ask them?" but refrains, +because he fears it would put it into her head to send him away. + +A sort of piercing squeal makes itself heard from the _salon_. + +"Do you think that that can be meant for a _pig_?" asks Elizabeth, her +line ears pricked in unaffected interest. "Oh!"--with a return of +uneasiness--"I wish that they would not make so much noise; father does +so dislike noise. They might as well have put it off till to-morrow." + +"Why would to-morrow's noise be more endurable than to-night's?" + +"It would not have mattered to-morrow; father will not be here; he is +going to Hammam Rhira." + +Burgoyne's jaw drops. Is this the alternative course decided upon by + +Mrs. Le Marchant? Having failed to dislodge him from Algiers, is she +going to remove herself and her daughter out of his reach? + +"Do you mean--are you _all_ going to Hammam Rhira to-morrow?--_all_ +going away?" + +Is it some effect of light from the rose-shaded lamp that makes it seem +to him as if a tiny smile, and a yet smaller blush, swept over +Elizabeth's face at the aghastness of his tone--an aghastness much more +marked than he had intended it should be. + +"Not to-morrow; not all of us. Father and mammy are going there for a +couple of nights to see what the place is like--one hears such +contradictory accounts; and if they are pleased with it--" + +"Yes?" + +"If they are pleased with it we shall all probably move on there in a +day or two." + +He would like to be sure that this sentence ends with a sigh, but a +prodigious storm of hand-clapping from the extempore theatre prevents +his hearing whether it has that regretful finish. + +"And they are going to leave you behind?" + +"Why not? there would not be much use in taking me; and, as I tell you, +they love being _tete-a-tete_." + +"And you love being alone?" + +The moment that the question is out of his mouth, he realizes its full +unkindness. He is perfectly aware that she does _not_ like being alone; +that she is naturally a most sociable little being; that, even now, +these frightened five minutes of unsatisfactory broken talk with himself +have made her look less chilled, less wobegone, less white. Her answer, +if it can be looked upon as one, must be taken by him as a rebuke. It is +only that she says nervously: + +"One certainly does hear dreadfully plainly here with the door open." + +Her tone is of the gentlest, her look no angrier than a dove's, and yet +he would be obtuser than he is if he did not at once comprehend that her +remark implies a wish that he should presently shut that door behind him +on the outside. He complies. With that newly-gained knowledge as to +to-morrow's Hammam Rhira, he can afford to comply. + + +The next morning's light reveals that the weather, pleased with having +so indisputably proved its power of being odious, has recovered its +good-humour. + +Beyond the tree-tops a radiant sea is seen laughing far below; and the +wet red tiles on the little terrace shine like jewels. A sea even more +wonderful than radiant; no servile copy of the sky and clouds to-day, +but with astonishing colours of its own--a faint yet glorious green for +a part of its watery breadth; then what our poverty compels us to call +blue; and then a great tablecloth of inky purple, which looks so solid +that the tiny white boats that are crossing it seem to be sailing on dry +land. From amongst the glossy green of the wooded hill, mosque and +campagne start out, dazzling, in their recovered lustre; one cool +entrancing villa in especial, backed with a broken line of dusky +stone-pines, stands, snowy-arcaded, enthroned high up among the verdure. + +Jim is very anxious to be out of the way at the hour of the Le +Marchants' departure. He has a panic fear of being waylaid by the +mother, and having some earnest supplication addressed to him to +abstain, during her absence, from any converse with Elizabeth. He is not +quite clear at what time they will set off, so, to insure himself +against mistakes, he resolves to spend the morning and lunch at the +Villa Wilson. Arrived there, he is shown by an Arab man-servant into the +court, and, finding it empty, sinks down into a cane chair, and lets his +eyes wander round to the fountain, lullingly dripping into its basin; to +the tiles, the white-arched doorways, carved in low relief, and +themselves so low that it must be a humble-statured person who enters +them without stooping. What a home for love in idleness! Who can picture +any of the vulgar work of the world done in such a house? any harder +labour ever entered upon than a listening to some lady singing "with +ravishing division to her lute"? + +The lady who presently joins Jim appears, by her ruffled air, to have +been engaged upon no such soothing occupation as luting to a recumbent +lover. + +"You will not mind staying here?" asks Cecilia; "Dr. Crump is in the +drawing-room with Sybilla; I am sure that you do not want to see Dr. +Crump!" + +"I cannot express how little I wish it." + +"I cannot think what has happened to Sybilla"--wrinkling up her forehead +into annoyed furrows--"but she is so dreadfully sprightly when he is +there; she never was sprightly with Dr. Coldstream, and he is such an +impossible man!--the sort of man who, when first he comes in, always +says, 'Well, how are we this morning?' Do not you think that it stamps a +man to say 'How are we?'" + +"I think it does." + +"He talks such nonsense to her!"--with irritation--"he tells her that +he, too, is a bundle of nerves! if you could only see him! And one day +he told her that when first he came here he had seen the Angel of Death +waving his fans above her head! and she swallows it all!" + +"I am not at all surprised." + +"It makes me sick!" cries she energetically; "let us go into the +garden." + +So into the garden they go; both the new one, whose luxuriant growth of +verdure is the outcome of but eight or nine years; and the old one, +along whose straight walks the feet of the Moorish ladies used to patter +under the orange-trees. Beneath them now there are no white bundles of +muslin; only on the ground the oranges lie thick, no one in this +plenteous land thinking it worth while to pick them up. Jim and his +companion pace rather silently to a pretty Moorish summer-house, dug, a +few years ago, by the English architect out of a farm-house, into which +it had been built. It is dainty and cool, with a little dome and lovely +green and blue tiles; and an odd small spring, which is taught to wander +by tiny snaky channels into a little basin. They go into the +summer-house and sit down. + +"Yes, it is pretty," says the girl absently! but her mind is evidently +preoccupied by some other subject than the beauty of the giant bignonia +which is expanding the multitude of its orange-red clusters all over a +low wall, making it into one burning hedge, and has called forth an +exclamation of delight from Burgoyne. What that subject is immediately +appears. + +"Do you know who is in Algiers--whom I saw driving through the Place +Bressant on Sunday afternoon?" + +"Who?" + +"The Le Marchants. Ah, you are not surprised!"--rather suspiciously. +"You knew already!" + +Jim hesitates a second; then, reflecting that, whether or not he +acknowledges the fact now, Cecilia is certain to learn it in a day or +two at latest, he answers with a slight laugh: + +"It would be odd if I did not, seeing that they are staying at my +hotel." + +"You knew that when you went there?"--very quickly. + +"Of course not!"--with a movement of impatience. + +A pause. + +"I suppose," says Cecilia, rather cautiously, as if aware that she is +treading on dangerous ground, "that you have not found out why they +stampeded from Florence in that extraordinary way? Oh no, of course +not!"--as this suggestion is received with a still more accented writhe +than her former one. "It is not a thing upon which you could question +them; and, after all, it was their own affair; it was no business of +ours, was it?" + +"Not the slightest." + +"I always used to like them," continues Cecilia pensively; "at +least"--becoming aware of an involuntary movement of surprise at this +statement on the part of her neighbour--"at least, they never gave me +the chance of _liking_ them; but I always _admired_ them. I wonder are +they more accessible than they were in Florence? There are so few nice +English here this year; everybody says that there never was a year when +there were so few nice English!" + +The tentative towards sociability implied in this last speech is +received by Jim in a discouraging silence. He has not the slightest +desire to promote any overture on the part of Cecilia towards intimacy +with Elizabeth. He knows that they would be unsuccessful; and, moreover, +he is conscious that he would be annoyed if they were not. + + +"I can fancy that this would be a very pleasant place if one had someone +to go about with," continues she; "but father grows less and less +inclined to move. Poor dear! he is not so young as he was, and I am not +quite old enough yet, I suppose, to go about alone." + +She makes a rather wistful pause--a pause which he feels that she +intends him to fill by an offer of himself as her escort. But none such +comes. Realizing this, she goes on with a sigh: + +"There are not many advantages in being old; but, at least, one is +freer, and in a youth spent as mine is, there is really not much profit +or pleasure." + +The tone in which she makes this lugubrious reflection is so extremely +doleful that Jim cannot refrain from a laugh. + +"Cheer up, old girl! there is a good time coming! It is a long lane that +has no turning." + +But he contents himself with these vague forms of consolation. He has no +engagements of his own. Why, then, is he conscious of so strong a +reluctance towards tying himself by any promise to the broadly-hinting +lady beside him? There is another pause, during which Cecilia looks down +on the floor with a baffled air, and traces the outlines of the tiles +with the point of her red sunshade. + +"There is a band plays twice a week in the Place de Gouvernement--plays +admirably. Now, I suppose that there would be nothing odd; that no one +could say anything; that it would not be the least improper, considering +our connection and everything, if you were to take me to hear it some +day?" + +"I never have the slightest idea of what is improper and what is not," +replies he; but there is more of alarm than of encouragement in his +tone. + +"No more have I"--laughing rather awkwardly--"but in this case I am +pretty sure. Tuesdays and Fridays are the days on which the band plays." + +"Oh!" + +"To-day is Tuesday, is not it?" + +"Yes." + +Another pause. + +"I thought that perhaps, if you had nothing better to do, you might take +me to-day?" + +The direct proposal which he has in vain tried to avert has come. If he +accept it, of what profit to him will the absence of the Le Marchant +parents be? He does not formulate this fact to himself, not having, +indeed, owned to his own heart that he has any set design upon +Elizabeth's company for the afternoon. + + +"I am afraid----" he begins slowly. + +"You are vamping up an excuse!" cries Cecilia, reddening. "I see it in +your eyes. You cannot have made any engagements here yet. You do not +know anybody, do you, except the Le Marchants?" + +"And they have gone to Hammam Rhira," replies he precipitately. + +He is ashamed the moment that the words are out of his mouth, for he +knows that they convey a falsehood. + +"At least----" + +But she interrupts him before he can add his conscience clause. + +"To-morrow, then?" + +Again he hesitates. The same objections apply with even greater force to +the morrow. + +"But the band does not play to-morrow." + +"Oh! what does that matter?" rejoins she impatiently. "I had just as +soon go somewhere else--the Arab town, the Kabyle village, anywhere." + +He is driven into a corner, and remains there silent so long that there +is a distinct element of offence in the tone and large sigh with which +the girl resumes. + +"Well, times are changed! I always used to make one in those happy +excursions at Florence; and somehow--thanks to her, I suppose--I never +felt a bad third." + +She rises as she speaks, and takes a couple of huffy steps towards the +house; but he overtakes and stops her. The allusion to Amelia has +annoyed and yet stirred in him the sea of remorse, which is always lying +but a very little way below the surface in his soul. + +"Why, Cis!" he says, in a tone of affectionate rallying, "are we going +to quarrel at this time of day--you and I? Of course I will take you to +the band and the Kabyle village, and any other blessed sight you choose +to name, only tell me by which of them you would like to begin to ride +round." + +As he leaves the house and the appeased fair one, after luncheon, an +hour and a half later, he tells himself that he has got off cheaply in +having vaguely sacrificed the whole of his Algerian future, but having +preserved to-day and to-morrow. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + "And therein sat a lady fresh and fayre, + Making sweet solace to herself alone. + Sometimes she sang as lowd as lark in ayre, + Sometimes she laught, as mery as Pope Joan." + + +Jim's first care on returning to his hotel is to ascertain that the +departure for Hammam Rhira has really taken place, and, having been +reassured on this point, retires to his own bedroom to reconnoitre the +terrace, upon which it gives. The sun has long drunk up the rain from +the tiles, and the chairs have been set out again. The hotel guests, in +all the sociability of their after-luncheon mood, are standing and +sitting about. The widow Wadman, with great play of eyebrow and lip, is +pacing up and down in arch conversation with her habitual victim. +Snatches of her alluring talk reach Jim behind his muslin curtain as she +comes and goes: + +"I think that caged birds ought to be _loved_!" "The Prophet was a +wise man, was not he? he knew a little about us," etc. + +In her usual place, aloof from the rest of the company, Elizabeth is +sitting in a clinging white gown of some woolly stuff. With a dainty +white kerchief twisted about her head, and a bundle of many-tinted +Eastern stuffs on her knees, she looks like a little Romney. Now and +again, as fragments of the widow's siren strains reach her ears, he sees +her lips curl up into delighted laughter; but, for the most part, she +seems to be looking round rather uneasily, as if seeking something or +someone. Can it be himself that she, in her innocence of being observed, +is on the watch for? He has no right to be playing the spy on her in any +case. It is clear that, dressed as she is, she cannot be meditating +going out. He must not frighten her by any too direct or sudden +attentions. In a little while the other occupants of the terrace will +drift away, and he will stroll out and join her, and together they will +watch the shade of the ficus-tree, lengthening over the red flags. But +she presently baffles his calculations by rising, and, with her +rainbow-tinted pile of brocades clasped in her slender arms, slowly +passes into the house. Has she retreated thither for good? and will he +have to frame some new flimsy excuse for knocking at her door? But again +he is out of his reckoning, for in about a quarter of an hour she +re-issues, dressed for walking; and after one more lingering and, as it +seems to him, disappointed glance around her, paces, a solitary little +figure, down the hill. He lays his watch before him, and, having counted +five minutes on its dial-plate, sets off in pursuit. He overtakes her +just as she reaches the point where the lane debouches into the +highroad. She stands, looking rather disconsolately, first up the hill, +then down it, evidently uncertain which direction to choose. + +"You cannot make up your mind?" he says, pausing beside her, and taking +off his hat. + +She gives a slight start, and a friendly, pleased smile runs all over +her face and up into her eyes--a smile that makes him say to himself +confidently that it _was_ he whom her glance had been seeking on the +terrace. + +"Which do you advise?" + +"I advise the town." + +He has long known her teachableness, so it is no great surprise to him +that she at once turns in the direction counselled. + +"As I am going there myself, will you allow me to walk a little way with +you?" + +He makes the request with respectful diffidence; and she, after one +small troubled look, evidently given to the memory of her father, +assents. + +They set off down the hill together, the air, sharp after the rain--as +sharp, at least, as Algiers' stingless air ever is--bringing the colour +to Elizabeth's cheeks, as she steps along light-heartedly, scarcely +refraining from breaking into a run, down the steep incline. Her spirits +are so evidently rising at every yard that he hazards his next step. + +"I am going to see the Arab town; Miss Strutt says that I ought." + +"She meant you to ask her to show it you!" cries Elizabeth, with a +laugh; "but she was quite right--it is delightful; I am sure you will +like it." + +"You have been there?" + +"Yes, once or twice; not half so often"--regretfully--"as I should like +to have been." + +Dare he speak upon the last innocent hint? But while he is doubting she +goes on: + +"You must take care not to lose yourself; it is such a puzzling place; +all the streets are exactly like each other." + +"You do not feel inclined to show me the way about it?" + +He throws out the suggestion in a semi-bantering voice, so that if it +meet with obvious disapproval he may at once withdraw it. She stops +suddenly stock-still, and faces him. + +"Are you speaking seriously? It would be very delightful; but do you +think I might? do you think I ought?" + +She lifts her eyes, widely opened, like a child's at hearing of some +unexpected treat, to his. How astonishingly clear they are! and how +curiously guileless! He has not the least doubt that she will sweetly +acquiesce in his decision, whichever way it tends; and, for a second, a +movement of irritation with her for her pliability crosses his mind. She +ought to be able to have an opinion of her own. While he hesitates, she +speaks again. + +"It is just the afternoon to do something pleasant on," she says +wistfully, and yet gaily too. "Oh, how good the air tastes! and how +dearly I love the sun!"--lifting her face with sensitive lips, half +open, as if to suck in his beams, to the great gold luminary pouring +down his warmth through the pepper-trees upon them. "But I will take +your advice; I know of old"--with a pretty flattering smile--"that you +always give good advice. Do you think that I ought--do you _really_ +think that I ought?" + +He throws conscience to the winds, and although not two hours ago he had +professed to Cecilia his inability to decide upon the propriety or +impropriety of any given course of female action, now answers with an +almost brutal decisiveness: + +"I do not think that there is the smallest doubt about it." + +A relieved look crosses her features. + +"Then I am sure it is all right," she says, with a joyful surrendering +of her judgment into his keeping, and so, once again, steps along with +her quick feather-light feet at his side. + +For the moment she is the happier of the two, since he is not perfectly +pleased either with himself or her. It is in vain that he tells himself +that it is no babe whom he is beguiling; that, difficult as it is to +believe it, those limpid eyes have looked at the sun for +seven-and-twenty years. He still has a lingering sense of discomfort at +having availed himself, for his own profit, of her ductility. And yet, +five minutes later, he takes yet further advantage of that quality in +her. They have reached the Plateau Sauliere, and the stand of fiacres +that "stationnent" there. Jim pauses. + +"It is a good distance to the Arab town, I fancy, and very tiring +walking when you get there." + +"It is as steep as the side of a house; we shall be like flies on a +wall," cries she delightedly. + +"It would be a pity to be too tired to enjoy it before you got there, +would not it?" says he doubtfully, and eyeing her bright slenderness +with an air of uncertainty as to her powers of endurance. "Had not we +better--would you mind--our driving there?" + +"I am not at all tired," replies she; "I do not feel as if I ever should +be tired to-day; but if you think it better----" + +Still he looks at her dubiously. To him there appears to be a much +greater degree of the compromising in a _tete-a-tete_ drive than in a +walk. In the one case the meeting may have been accidental; in the other +there can be no mistake as to the deliberate intention. But either this +does not strike Elizabeth, or she thinks, "In for a penny, in for a +pound"; or, lastly, and most probably, having given up her judgment into +his keeping, she finds it easiest and most natural to acquiesce in +whatever he may propose. + +The ungenerous thought flashes across him that if this is the principle +on which she has guided her life, it is small wonder if she have made +shipwreck of it. He hails a fiacre, and silently hands her in, and again +they are off. + +Elizabeth has disclaimed fatigue, and yet the restful position is +evidently agreeable to her delicate body; and she thanks him so +gratefully for his thought of her that his hard thoughts of her dissolve +into remorse, and by-and-by change into an enjoyment almost as entire +and uncalculating as her own. + +Elizabeth has astonishing powers of enjoying herself. If he had not +known that fact before, the afternoon would have revealed it to him. + +She must have driven through the French town almost every day since her +arrival, and yet its cheerful white-shuttered houses, its boulevards of +glossy-leaved ficus-trees, its cafes, its arcaded streets with their +polyglot promenaders, seem to fill her with as lively a pleasure as if +she had but just landed from the steamboat that brought her. + +The three Spahis, eternally sitting in a row on a bench outside some +general officer's quarters, robed in their great red cloaks, with +muslin-swathed swart heads and long red-leather boots, dimly descried +beneath the stately sweep of their mantles, sitting there motionless, +solemn and silent as the Fates; a venerable Arab, only to be +distinguished from Abraham or Isaac by his carrying a vulgar brown +umbrella; a short Kabyle seen in back view, with his rope-bound +headdress, his brown-and-white striped frock, and his bare red legs +striding along, looking exactly like a ludicrous and indelicate old +woman; a Biskrah water-carrier, poising a great burnished copper pot on +his shoulder; two little baggy trousered white ladies waddling along; a +dozen of smart blue Turcos. She is enraptured with them all. + +They leave their fiacre in the Place de la Cathedrale, and enter upon +the mysterious recesses of the Arab town. Up and down endless flights of +steps, up street after street--if streets they can be called, that are +not wider than a yard in their widest part--and above their heads the +rafter-supported houses lean together, letting scarce a glint of +daylight drip down upon the dusky path far below. + +They pass arched doorways, with pretty designs in plaster--doorways +whose doors open inwards upon mysterious interiors--house or court, or +mosque or Marabe. All along stand tiny shops, like wild-beast dens, as +far as light and space go, lit only by the tempered light--in reality, +only semi-darkness--that enters in front. How can they see to +work--plait straw, for instance? as the three ebon-black negroes are +doing, upon whom they stare in, asquat upon the ground. The turbans, and +the red sashes, and the burnouses glimmer out of the little dim +frontages, where charming pierced-brass Moorish lamps hang and swing +aloft; and tempting piles of dully splendid brocades and bright +gold-laminated gauzes gleam from the crowded shelves. + +The narrow streetlets are full of unbusy, un-hurrying Easterns, hideous +old negresses grinning like monkeys, idle Arabs sauntering along in +their lazy grace, draped like Greek statues, sauntering along between +the blue-washed walls that look in their effective variation upon the +blinding whitewash as if some of the sky-colour had rubbed off upon +them. + +Jim and Elizabeth have paused, in their leisurely strolling and staring, +to look from the straight shadowed alley in which they are standing up a +long flight of steps to a low carved doorway, and a bit of starch-blue +wall at the top. Down the steep flight a veiled, trousered woman is +waddling, her immense pantaloons waggling awkwardly as she descends. + +Elizabeth stands still, shaking with laughter at the sight. Jim laughs +too. + +"There is no expense spared in material there, is there? It would not be +a bad dress for a fancy ball. Did you ever go to a fancy ball as a +Moorish lady?" + +Her laughter lessens, though her face is still alight with mirth. + +"I never was at a fancy ball." + +"_Never?_" + +"Never; I never was at any ball in my life." + +Her laughter is quite dead now. + +"Never at any ball in your life!" repeats he, his surprise betraying him +into one of those flights back into the past for which she has always +showed such repugnance. "Why, you used to love dancing madly! I remember +your dancing like a dervish. What is more, I remember dancing with you." + +"Oh, do not remember anything to-day!" cries she, with a sort of writhe +in her voice; "do not let either of us remember anything! let us have a +whole holiday from remembering!" + +So saying, she moves on quickly; and yet with the dance gone out of her +feet. It never quite comes back. They look into an Arab club, where men +are squatting, playing with odd-looking cards and drinking muddy coffee. +Then a loud noise of jabbering young voices makes them peep in upon an +Arab school, where a circle of little Moslems is sitting on the ground, +scribbling Arabic on slates; while between the knees of the turbaned +master a tiny baby scholar, of three or four, is standing in a lovely +dull green coatlet. Elizabeth strokes the baby-learner's coppery cheek +with her light hand, and says, with a laugh, that it seems odd to see +little street-boys writing Arabic; but her laughter is no longer the +bubbling, irrepressible joy-drunk thing it was before he had indulged in +his tactless reminiscences; it is the well-bred, civil, grown-up sound +that so often has no inside gladness to match it. In his vexation with +himself for the clouding over of his little heaven that he himself has +effected, he tries to persuade himself that it is caused by bodily +fatigue. + +"If I were asked," he says, by-and-by, looking down affectionately at +her pallid profile, "I should say that you had had about enough of this; +your spirit"--smiling--"is so very much too big for your body that one +has to keep an eye upon you." + +"It would not be much of a spirit if it were not," replies she, with a +pretty air of perfectly sincere disparagement of her own slight +proportions; "I know that I look a poor thing, but I am rather a fraud: +I do not tire easily; I am not tired now." + +"Bored, then?" with a slight accent of pique. + +She lifts her sweet look, with a sort of hurry of denial in it. + +"Most distinctly not." + +"You would like to go on, then?" + +"Yes." + +"Or back?" + +She hesitates, her eye exploring his with, as he feels, a genuine +anxiety in it to discover what his own wishes are, so that her decision +may jump with them. + +"Yes--perhaps; I have really no choice." + +He both looks at and speaks to her with a streak of exasperation. + +"Do you never have a will--a preference of your own?" + +It is evidently no unfamiliar thing to her to be addressed with +causeless irritability. The recollection of her father's tone in +speaking to her flashes back remorsefully upon Jim's memory. Is he +himself going to take a leaf out of that book? It would be a relief to +him were she to answer him sharply; but to do that is apparently not +within her capabilities, though the tender red that tinges her cheek +shows that she has felt his snub. + +"In this case I really have not," she answers gently; "but I dare say +that it was tiresome of me not to speak more decidedly; let us--let +us"--another swift and apparently quite involuntary glance at him to see +that she is not, after all, running counter to his inclinations--"let us +go home!" + +So they go home. It is near sun-setting as they drive along the +Boulevard de la Republique, the fitting end to so princely a day. At the +quay the moored vessels lie, their masts and spars making a dark design +against an ineffable evening sky of mother-of-pearl and translucent +pink. The sea, which to-day has not been of sapphire, but of +"watchet-blue," pierced and shot with white, now copies exactly the +heavens. It, too, shades from opal to translucent pink. How many changes +of raiment there are in the wardrobe of the great wet mother! + +"If I had as many gowns as the Mediterranean, how well-dressed I should +be!" says Elizabeth, with a smile. + + +It is the first time she had spoken since they had set off on their +return-drive. She is lying back, with her hands carefully shielding in +her lap a few little crockery pots that she has bought of a fat Turk for +some children at her hotel Her face looks tired; and yet over its small +area is spread an expression of content that makes his heart warm. Is it +only the pageant of sky and ocean that has called forth that look of +real, if passing, happiness on the features of her who is always so +tremblingly sensitive an instrument for all influences of beauty and +grandeur to play upon? or has his own neighbourhood anything to say to +it? Before he can give himself an answer to this anxious question, she +speaks again. + +"You do not mind my not talking, do you?" she asks, half apologetically, +and yet with a confidence in his sympathy that still further quickens +the beats of his already not very still heart. + +"No, I am sure you do not. Somehow--it is a great gift--you always feel +in tune with one, and one does not chatter most when one is most greatly +pleased, does one? Oh, what a treat you have given me!" + +As she speaks, her humid eyes travel from his face to where, beyond the +long Atlas range, delicately toothed and cut out, rises the gold-washed +snow of the Kabyle mountains, that retire majestically invisible on dull +days, and only come out, candescent and regal, when the great sun rides +in pomp. Above their heads wild plumes of deep rose, that it seems +ridiculous to call clouds, tuft the sky. + +Jim's look has followed his companion's; the chins of both are in the +air; the cheerful _va et vient_ of the boulevard is lost upon them. They +see neither the Frenchmen nor plump Frenchwomen drinking coffee outside +the cafes, nor the idle _indigenes_ leaning draped against the sea-wall. +(Never does that industrious race seem to attempt any severer exertion.) + + "Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired." + +But it is brought back to life with a jump. + +"_Arretez! arretez!_" cries a female voice. "Jim! Jim! do you not see +us? _Arretez! arretez!_" + +Obedient to his ears, Burgoyne's eyes make one bound from the heavenly +spectacle down to earth, and alight upon the Wilsons' carriage, which, +going in the same direction as himself, has just been brought to a +standstill alongside of his fiacre, by the solemnly beautiful, +yellow-jacketed native coachman. + +It is, of course, Cecilia's voice that has apostrophized him, but oh, +portent! does his vision, so lately recalled from the skyey bowers, play +him false? or is it really the moribund Sybilla, stretched beside her, +with only two instead of three cushions at her back, with a bonnet on +her head--he did not even know that she possessed a bonnet--and with a +colour in her cheek and a lustre in her eye that may owe their origin +either to the freshness of the evening air, or to the invigorating +properties of the conversation of the very ordinary-looking young man +seated opposite to her? + +In a second Jim has leapt out of his own vehicle, and gone to the side +of the other. It is a perfectly futile impulse that leads him to do so. +Not all the leaping in the world from her side now can alter the fact +that he has been driving _tete-a-tete_ with Elizabeth Le Marchant, and +that the Wilson sisters have seen him so doing; but yet it is a dim +instinct of preservation towards, and shielding of her, that leads him +to adopt this useless course of action. It is Cecilia who has summoned +him, and yet, when he reaches her side, she does not seem to have +anything particular to say to him. Sybilla is the one to address him. + +"A miracle! a miracle! I know you are saying to yourself!" cries she, in +a sprightly voice; "and well you may! This is the miracle-monger!" +indicating with a still sprightlier air her _vis-a-vis_. "Dr. Crump, let +me present to you Mr. Burgoyne--Jim, our Jim, whom I have so often +talked to you about." + +The person thus apostrophized responds by a florid bow, and an +over-gallant asseveration that any person introduced to his acquaintance +by Miss Sybilla needs no further recommendation. + +"It is an experiment, of course; there is no use in pretending that it +is not an experiment," continues she, with a slight relapse into +languor; "but"--lowering her voice a little--"they wished me to make the +effort." + +It is a favourite allocation of Sybilla's that any course of action +towards which she is inclined is adopted solely under the pressure of +urgent wishes on the part of her family. Burgoyne has long known, and +been exasperated by, this peculiarity; but at present she may say what +she pleases; he hears no word of it, for his ear is pricked to catch the +sentences that Cecilia is leaning over the carriage-side to shoot at +Elizabeth. + +"Oh, Miss Le Marchant! is it you? I beg your pardon, I did not recognise +you at the first moment. One does not recognise people--does one?--when +one is not expecting to see them"--is an intended sting lurking in this +implication? "How are you? How do you like Algiers? I hope Mrs. Le +Marchant is well. What a long time it is since we met! I hope we shall +see something of you." + +(No, evidently no sting was meant. Cecilia, with all her faults, is +really a good soul, and he will take her to hear the band play next +Tuesday.) + +There seems to him to be a slight falter in the tone with which +Elizabeth responds, and her voice sounds curiously small and low; but +that may be merely owing to its flute quality, following upon and +contrasting the other's powerful organ. + +It is not till the two parties have again separated, and that he is once +more seated by her side in the fiacre, that he dares steal a look at her +face to see how plainly written on it are the traces of vexation caused +by a meeting which has produced in his own breast such acute annoyance. +Good heavens! it is even worse than he had expected. Down the cheek +nearest to him two good-sized tears are unmistakably trickling. No doubt +the consciousness of the mysterious story attaching to her past makes +her smartingly aware of how doubly discreet her own conduct should +be--makes her bitterly repent of her present indiscretion. + +He is a strait-laced man, and it seems to him as if there were something +gravely compromising to her in this _tete-a-tete_ drive with himself, in +the known absence of her parents at Hammam Rhira. Why was he fool enough +this morning to admit to Cecilia that they had gone thither? He had no +business to have led her into temptation, and she had no business to +have fallen into it. Remorse and irritation give a tartness to his tone +as he says: + +"After all, I do not think you need take it so much to heart." + +"Take what to heart?" she asks, in unaffected surprise, turning her full +face, and her eyes, each with one hot raindrop dimming its slate-blue, +upon him. "Oh, I see"--a sudden enlightenment coming to her, and +changing her with instant spring from a snowdrop to a carnation--"I see +what you mean; but you are mistaken. I--I--it had not occurred to me; I +was only thinking--only remembering that the last time I saw her was +at--at Vallombrosa." + +_Vallombrasa!_ Is he never to hear the last of Vallombrosa? + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + + +The latest waking impression left on Jim's fancy is that it is the +golden rule of Elizabeth Le Marchant's life to comply with any and every +request that is made to her; moreover, that in her mind the +boundary-line which parts the permitted from the unpermitted is not so +clearly defined as, did she belong to him (the naked hypothesis makes +his strait-laced heart give a jump), he should wish it to be. If on the +morrow, with the sun shining and the leaf-shadows dancing on the fretted +balcony-wall, he invite her to some fresh junket, he is sure that she +will readily and joyfully acquiesce; that her spirits will go up like +rockets at the prospect; and that her one anxiety will be that she may +be sure to hit in her choice upon the form of dissipation most congenial +to him. He will therefore not invite her. He will have a greater care +for her reputation than apparently she has for it herself. Not until the +return of her parents, not until the difficulties of intercourse with +her are centupled, and the pleasure minimized, will he again seek her. + +To put himself beyond the reach of temptation, he sets off immediately +after breakfast on a long walking expedition, which he means to occupy +the whole of the daylight hours. He wanders about the great plain of the +Metidje; he visits a Kabyle village, with its hovels cowering among its +hideous fat-fleshed cactus; later on in the afternoon he finds himself +in the little French hamlet of Biermandreis, and finally drops down upon +the Jardin d'Essai, that delightful botanic garden which is one of the +many blessings for which Algerian France has to thank the +much-vilipended Napoleon III. + +It is difficult for even the reddest Republican to think hardly of that +dead ruler as he walks down the avenue of gigantic palms that lead, +straight as a die, to where, like a deep blue gem far away, the +Mediterranean shows + + "No bigger than an agate stone + On the forefinger of an alderman." + +Jim walks along beneath the huge date-palms that give him a crick in the +neck to gape up at ere he can perceive their towering head of waving +plumes far up against the blue. They remind him absurdly of the pictures +in the missionary books of his youth--the palm-tree, the log cabin, the +blackamoors, and the missionary in a palm hat. Is _he_ the missionary, +and is this inky negress in a black bonnet, scarcely distinguishable +from her face, his one catechumen? + +Alternating with the date are superb fan-palms, of which it is difficult +to realize that it is their stunted, puny brothers which, anxiously +tended, sponged, and cosseted, drag out a languid existence in London +drawing-rooms. Among their Titan fans lies their mighty fruit, like a +bunch of grapes, a yard and a half long, strung upon ropes of yellow +worsted. + +Half-way down its length the main avenue is intersected by a splendid +alley of bamboos, which lean their smooth-jointed stems and their +luxuriant narrow leaves towards each other across the dimmed interspace, +and unite in a pointed Gothic arch of living green. + +Jim paces objectlessly down the long arcade, stooping now and again to +pick up a fragment of the peeled bark that looks so strangely like a +papyrus roll with a mother-of-pearl glaze upon it. He pulls it idly +open, as if expecting to find the secret of some forgotten race written +upon its shining surface; but if he reads any secret there, it is only +his own, which, after all, is not much of a secret. He merely sees +written there that it is too early to go home yet; that there is no +security that Elizabeth may not still be sitting on the terrace +stitching away with her gold thimble and her coloured silks. The sun, it +is true, has left the garden, but he departs thence over-early. It will +be safer to stay away yet half an hour or so. + +Thus resolving, he retraces his steps, and explores in a new direction; +saunters down a rose-alley, where, climbing immoderately high up tall +palms, seeming as if they would strangle them with their long bowery +arms, rose-trees wave far above him in the still air; and upon them, +though it is still but the month of January, when people are skating, +blue-nosed, in England, creamy tea-roses show their pale-yellow hearts, +fair and frequent, on the unpruned boughs, rioting in licensed liberty +above his head. The walk ends in a circle of gigantic magnolias, which +take hands round a square fountain-basin. Each huge trunk is, as it +were, a little commonwealth of trees rolled into one, instead of a +single tree. Beneath them benches stand. Upon one his negress sits, +chatting with a French _bonne_; on a second there is also something +female and slender, something with its little white profile--how white +it looks in this deceiving light!--lifted, although white, yet smiling, +animated, and talking to a man standing beside it. + +He has dawdled and kicked his heels, and run the chance of contracting a +spiteful Southern chill, in order to avoid Elizabeth; and he has +succeeded in running straight into her arms. + +He does not at the first glance recognise her companion, but a second +look shows him that he is one of the inmates of the hotel--a French +Vicomte; and though Jim knows that he is both consumptive and the father +of a family, that knowledge does not hinder the rising in his breast of +the jealous and censorious thought that he has detected Elizabeth in +throwing a great deal more than the necessary modicum of amiability into +her manner to him. + +As Jim comes into sight, the Frenchman clicks his heels, doubles up his +body, lifts his hat, and walks away. It is evident, at all events, that +their meeting was a casual one; and the reflection brings with it a +sense of relief, coupled with a feeling of shame at his own rooted +readiness to suspect her, on any or no evidence, which yet, on the other +hand, is not strong enough, when she turns her sweet bright look towards +him, to hinder the thought that it is scarcely, if at all, sweeter or +brighter than that which he had caught her squandering on the casual +_table d'hote_ acquaintance who has just quitted her. + +"You, too!" she says; "why, the whole hotel seems to be emptied out into +these gardens; the widow Wadman is buying violets--mark if they do not +appear upon Uncle Toby at dinner to-night. The Vicomte----" + +"Yes, I saw you engaged in animated dialogue with him," interrupts Jim, +with slight acrimony; "I had no idea that you were such allies." + +"Had not you?" rejoins she innocently. "He was telling me about his +English governess, what a treasure she is"--her face dimpling +mischievously--"and how wonderfully pure her accent. So it is--pure +Cockney. You should hear the little Vicomte talk of the b_i_by and the +p_i_pers." + +He rewards her small pleasantry only by an absent smile, and she speaks +again--rather wistfully this time. + +"Have you been on another expedition?" + +"No, not an expedition; only a walk. If"--yielding to the temptation of +putting a question which no one would have judged more severely than he, +had it been put by anyone else--"if I had invited you to do me the +honour of making another excursion with me to-day, do you think that you +would have consented?" + +As he speaks, he departs yet further from the line of conduct he has +marked out for himself by sitting down on the bench at her side. + +Her eyes are fixed upon the soaring date-palm, which stands, instead of +a water-jet, in the middle of the fountain-basin, and on which last +year's dead plumes hang sapless, and ready to fall off, in contrast to +this year's verdant vigour. + +"Is not that rather a tantalizing question when you did not ask me?" +inquires she, with soft archness. "Yes, I suspect that I should; I was +so very happy yesterday; and although you told me the other +night"--swallowing a sigh--"that you supposed I must love my own +society, in point of fact, I do not think I do." + +After all, the sun is not quite gone; there are flashes of light in the +verdant gloom, and green reflections in the water. + +"And yet," says Jim thoughtfully, "you seem to have a good deal of it; I +suppose, in your position, it is unavoidable." + +He had meant an allusion to her situation as bad third to her uxorious +parents; before his mind's eye has risen a picture of the little forlorn +shawled figure he had seen studying its Italian Grammar with the door +shut upon its loneliness; but almost before the words have left his +lips, he sees of how different, of how cruel, a construction they may be +capable. + +He snatches a glance of real terror at her, to see whether she has made +that erroneous, yet all too plausible application--a glance which +confirms his worst fears. She has turned as white as the +pocket-handkerchief which she is passing over her trembling lips. + +"Yes," she says in a hollow whisper; "you are right. In my position it +_is_ unavoidable, and it is cowardly of me not to accept it as such." + + +"I mean"--he cries desperately--"I only meant--I mean----" + +But she does not suffer him to finish his stuttered explanation. + +"It is cold," she says, rising. "I will go home." + +He does not attempt to accompany or follow her. + +After she is gone, he rages about the garden, and passes beyond it to +where--still sunlight-smitten--the blue Mediterranean is breaking in +joyous foam. + +He sits down on the shelly strand, and, in futile anger, hurls back the +wet pebbles into the sea's azure lap. Away to the left, the +three-cornered town swarms candescent up the hill, and the white +lighthouse stands out against the lapis-coloured air. + +How sharp-cut and intense it all is!--none of our dear undecided grays. +Here, if you are not piercing blue, you are dazzling white or profound +green. There is, indeed, something less sharp-cut and uncompromising--a +something more of mystery in the glory that--bright, too, but not making +its full revelation--envelopes the long hill range that, ending in Cape +Matifou, stretches away to the far right. Round the corner, to the right +too, a party of Arabs, sitting sideways on little donkeys, white draped, +with their _haik_-swathed heads, are disappearing on their small beasts +in the clear air. It is like a page out of the Bible--a flight into +Egypt--and they are going towards Egypt too. + +Jim's eye follows the placid Easterns, but without catching the +infection of their tranquillity. "Whenever I see her, I stick a knife +into her! It is impossible! There is no use trying! I will give up the +attempt. It is out of the question to have any happy relations with a +woman who has a past!" + + * * * * * + +After all, Mr. Le Marchant does not like Hammam Rhira. He thinks the +hotel cold and the roads bad. Jim overhears him telling someone this, +and his own heart leaps. + +It is true that he takes it to task for doing so. Perhaps, after all, +Elizabeth's removal would have been the best solution of his problem. +Had she left Algiers, he could scarcely have followed her, and she would +have been freed from the chance of his clumsy stabs. + +But all the same his heart leaps. It leaps yet higher a day or two later +when he discovers that, though Hammam Rhira has not met with Mr. Le +Marchant's approbation, yet that, by his trip to it, he has been bitten +with a taste for travel, the outcome of which is his solitary departure +on an expedition to Constantin, Tunis, etc., which must occupy him at +least a week. His wife accompanies him to the station, but his daughter +is not allowed to go beyond the hotel steps. + +Jim surreptitiously watches her hovering with diffident affection round +her father, unobtrusively and unthanked fetching and carrying for him. +He sees the cold kiss that just brushes her cheek, and hears the chill +parting admonition to look well after her mother and see that she does +not overtire herself. + +It is accepted with ready meekness, but leaves the recipient so +crestfallen, as she stands looking after the departing vehicle, that +Burgoyne cannot forbear joining her, with some vague and, as he knows, +senseless velleity of championship and consolation. + +"He is gone for a week, is not he?" is the form that his sympathy takes, +in a tone which he is at but small pains not to render congratulatory. + +"Yes, quite a week." + +"Are you"--he is perfectly conscious while asking it that he has not the +slightest right to put the question--"are you glad or sorry?" + +She starts perceptibly. + +"Why should I be glad? Do you mean"--with an unconquerable streak of +satisfaction in her own voice--"because I shall have mammy all to +myself? You must not think"--with an obvious rush of quickly following +compunction--"that I am not fond of him, because he sometimes speaks a +little roughly to me." After a pause, in a lowered voice: "You see, when +you have broken a person's heart, you can scarcely blame him for not +having a very high opinion of you." + +So saying, she suddenly leaves him as she had left him in the Jardin +d'Essai. He does not again approach her that day, but at dinner-time he +has the answer to his question as to her being glad or sorry at her +father's departure. She is apparently in the best of spirits, sitting +nestled close up to her mother for the better convenience of firing a +series of little jokes and comments into that parent's appreciative ear. + +"They make fun of the whole hotel," observes Miss Strutt with +exasperation. "I do not believe that one of us escapes! When he is not +there to check them, there is no holding them!" + +_No holding_ Elizabeth! The phrase recurs to him several times during +the next few days, as not without its justness, when he sees its object +flitting about the house, gay as a linnet; when he meets her singing +subduedly to herself upon the stairs; when he watches her romping with +the French children, and mischievously collecting flowers of Clapham +eloquence from their governess, which she is good enough to retail for +his own and her mother's benefit when evening unites the three in the +retirement of their little salon. For, strange and improbably blissful +as it seems, he has somehow, ere three days are over, effected an +entrance into that small and fragrant sanctuary. + +Mrs. Le Marchant's first fears that the meeting with him again would +re-open sorrow have disappeared in the light of her daughter's childish +gaiety, and are even exchanged for a compunctious gratitude to him for +having been in part the cause of her new light-heartedness. The weather +has again broken, a fact which he alone of the whole hotel does not +deplore, since it was his own ostentatiously displayed wet-day +dreariness that was the cause of his first admission within the doors +that are closed upon all others. Moreover, had it not been wet weather, +could he have held an umbrella over Elizabeth's head when he met her in +the eucalyptus wood, and they walked among the naked trunks, while the +long, loose, pale foliage waved like dishevelled hair in the rain, and +the pungent asphodels grew thick about their feet in the red earth? And +when, by-and-by, the clouds disperse again, and there comes a fair day, +bracketed between three or four foul ones--the usual Algerian +proportion--it has grown quite natural to all three that he should sit +opposite to them in their drives; that he should haggle with Arabs for +them, and remonstrate with the landlord, and generally transfer all the +smaller roughnesses of life from their shoulders to his own. Brought +into more intimate communion with them than he has ever been before, +Burgoyne realizes how much they belong to the kneeling, leaning, +spoiling type of womankind. Elizabeth would be the easiest woman in the +world to manage. How is it that in her ten years of womanhood no man has +been found to undertake the lovely facile task? He himself knows +perfectly the treatment that would befit her; the hinted wishes--her +tact is too fine and her spirit too meek to need anything so coarse as +commands--the infinitesimal rebukes and the unlimited--oh! +limitless--caresses: + + "Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles." + +Every day he finds himself repeating Wordsworth's line, and every day, +in his fancied guidance of her, he tells himself that the blame should +be less and the kisses more. + + * * * * * + +Mr. Le Marchant has been gone more than a week, and February has come +wetly in, with rain wildly weeping against the easements, and +angry-handed rain boxing the unlucky orange-trees' ears. It has rained +for forty-eight hours without a break. The Grand Hotel is at the end of +its resources. Uncle Toby, his struggle ended, lies vanquished in the +widow's net; and there is murder in the lurid eye which Miss Strutt +turns on the votary of Whiteley. + +Jim alone, outdoor man as he habitually is, looking upon a house merely +in the light of a necessary shelter, has no quarrel either with the +absent sun or the present deluge? for are not they the cause of his +having spent two whole afternoons in the company of Elizabeth and her +mother? To-day has not Elizabeth been singing to him, and cutting him +orange-flower bread-and-butter, when Fritz brought in the afternoon tea, +and set the real English kettle fizzing over its spirit-lamp? And, in +return, has not he now, after dinner, been helping her to weed out her +own and her mother's photograph-books? As he does so the idea strikes +him of how very meagre her own collection of acquaintances seems to be. +From that weeding have they not, by an easy transition, at her +suggestion, passed to the more playful and ingenious occupation of +amputating the heads of some of the rejected friends and applying them +to the bodies of others? Each armed with a pair of scissors, and with +Mrs. Le Marchant for umpire, they have been vying with each other as to +who can produce the most startling results by this clever process. + +The palm has just been awarded to Elizabeth for a combination which +presents the head of an elderly lady, in a widow's cap, mounted upon the +cuirass and long boots of a Life Guardsman. Jim's application of the +cornet's discarded head to the body of a baby in long clothes, although +allowed to be a pretty conceit, commands but little real admiration--an +instance of nepotism which he does not allow to pass without protest. + +Elizabeth, elated by her triumph, has flown out of the room to examine +her private stores for fresh material, and Jim and her mother--for the +first time, as it happens, since that early meeting, when her anxious +eye had so plainly implored him to leave Algiers--are _tete-a-tete_. Her +changed aspect towards him as she sits, with a lingering laugh still on +her face, beside the wood fire--which, after having twice gone out, as +it almost always does, the souches being invariably wet, burns bright +and crackly--strikes him with such a feeling of warm pleasure that he +says in a voice of undisguised triumph: + +"What spirits she is in, is not she?" + +"Yes; is not she?" assents the mother eagerly. "Oh, I cannot say how +grateful I am to you for having cheered her up as you have done! Oh," +with a low sigh that seems to bear away on its slow wings the last +echoes of her late mirth, "if it could only last!" + +"Why should not it last?" + +"If nothing fresh would happen!" + +"Why should anything fresh happen?" + +She answers only indirectly; + + "'Fear at my heart, as at a cup, + The life-blood seemed to sip.' + +"Sometimes I think that Coleridge wrote those lines expressly for me." +After a pause, in a voice of anxious asking: "She has not mentioned him +to you lately, has she?" + +"No." + +"That is a good sign. Do not you think that that is a good sign? I think +that she is getting better; do not you?" + +For a moment he cannot answer, both because he is deeply touched by the +confidence in him and his sympathy evidenced by her appeal, and for a +yet more potent reason. Little she guesses how often, and with what +heart-searchings and spirit-sinkings, he has put that question to +himself. + +"I do not know," he replies at last, with difficulty; "it is hard to +judge." + +"You have not told him that we are here?" in a quick, panic-struck tone, +as of one smitten with a new and sharp apprehension. + +"Oh no!" + +"You do not think that he is at all likely to join you here?" + +"Not in the least!" with an almost angry energy, which reveals to +himself how deeply distasteful the mere suggestion of Byng's +reappearance on the scene is to him. + +Mrs. Le Marchant heaves a second sigh. This time it is one of relief. + +"Then I do not see," with a sudden bound upwards into sanguineness which +reminds him of her daughter, "why we should not all be very +comfortable." + +Jim is pondering in his mind upon the significance of this "all," +whether it is meant to include only Mr. Le Marchant, or whether, under +its shelter, he himself may creep into that promised comfort, when she +of whom they have been speaking re-enters. She has a packet of +photographs, presumably suitable for amputation, in her hand, in which +is also held a telegram, which she extends to Burgoyne. + +"I met M. Cipriani bringing you this. It seems that you ought to have +had it two days ago, but, by some mistake, it was put into another +gentleman's room--a gentleman who has never arrived--and there it has +remained. He was full of apologies, but I told him what culpable +carelessness it showed. I do trust," with a sweetly solicitous look, +"that it is not anything that matters." + +"It cannot be of much consequence," replies Jim indifferently, while a +sort of pang darts through him at the thought of how strangely destitute +he is of people to be uncomfortably anxious about, and so tears it open. + +An English telegram transmitted by French clerks often wears a very +different air from that meant to be imparted to it by the sender, which +is, perhaps, the reason why Jim remains staring so long at his--so long +that the two women's good manners prompt them to remove their +sympathetic eyes from him, and to attempt a little talk with each other. + +"I hope you have no bad news?" + +The elder one permits herself this inquiry after a more than decent +interval has elapsed, during which he has made no sign. + +He gives a start, as one too suddenly awaked out of deep sleep. + +"Bad news?" he repeats in an odd voice--"what is bad news? That depends +upon people's tastes. It is for you to judge of that; it concerns you as +much or more than it does me." + +So saying, he places the paper in her hand, and, walking away to the +little square window--open, despite the wildness of the weather--looks +out upon the indigo-coloured night. + +Although his back is turned towards them, he knows that Elizabeth is +reading over her mother's shoulder--reading this: + + "BOURGOUIN, + "Grand Hotel, + "Algiers. + + "Have heard of Le Marchants. If you do not wire to the + contrary, shall cross to-morrow.--BYNG, Marseille." + +He is not left long in doubt as to their having mastered the meaning of +the missive. + +"He is coming!" says Mrs. Le Marchant with a species of gasp; "and you +told me--not five minutes ago you told me"--with an accent of +reproach--"that there was not the remotest chance of it. Oh, stop him! +stop him! Telegraph at once! The office will be open for two or three +hours yet! There is plenty, plenty of time! Oh, telegraph at once--at +once!" + +"It is too late," replies Jim, retracing his steps to the table; "you +forget that it is two days old. You see, they have spelt my name wrong; +that accounts for the mistake. _Bourgouin!_ It looks odd spelt +_Bourgouin_, does not it?" + +He hears himself giving a small, dry laugh, which nobody echoes. + +"He must have sailed yesterday," continues the young man, wishing he +could persuade his voice to sound more natural; "he may be here at any +moment. If the weather had been decent, he would have arrived ere now." + +"Then there is nothing to be done!" rejoins Mrs. Le Marchant in a tone +of flat desperation, sitting down again on the chair out of which she +had instinctively risen at the little stir of the telegram's arrival. + +Elizabeth is dead silent. Though there is no direction by the eye to +show that Jim's next remark is aimed at her, there can be no doubt that +it is awkwardly thrown in her direction. + +"If this had not been delayed--if it had not been too late, would you +have wished, would you have decided to stop him?" + +"What is the use of asking me such a question now that it _is_ too +late?" replies she, with more of impatience, almost wrath, in her voice +than he has ever before heard that most gentle organ express. + +But besides the ire and irritation, there is another quality in it which +goads him to snatch a reluctant glance at her. She is extremely +agitated, but underlying the distress and disturbance of her face there +is an undoubted light shining like a lamp through a pale pink shade--a +light that, with all her laughter and her jokes, was not there half an +hour ago. He had often reproached himself that, by his clumsiness, he +had stuck a knife into her tender heart. She is even with him to-night. +To-night the tables are turned. It is she that has stuck a knife into +him. It is clear as day that she is _glad_ it is too late. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + +"After all," says Mrs. Le Marchant presently, rallying a little, her +naturally buoyant temperament--that temperament which she has +transmitted with such curious fidelity to her child, coming to her +rescue; "after all, there is no reason why you should see him, +Elizabeth. There is no reason why she should see him, is there, Mr. +Burgoyne? It could serve no possible end--could it?--and only be +exceedingly painful to them both. You will explain to him, will not you? +You will take any message from her? You will tell him that she really is +not up to it, will not you? It is quite true, I am sure. You are not, +are you darling? She is not, is she?" + +The mother turns as she speaks eagerly from one to the other, addressing +each in turn; but from neither does she obtain any answer. + +"Or I would speak to him myself; if you thought that better," continues +she, still interrogating them with her handsome, careworn eyes. "I would +say anything you wished said to him, and I would be careful to say it as +kindly as possible. I am sure he would understand; he would see the +sense, the justice of it, would not he? There is no need for her to +expose herself to such useless suffering, is there, Mr. +Burgoyne?"--appealing desperately to him by name, since he will not +respond to any less direct address--"when either you or I are more than +ready to shield her from it, are not we?" + +Thus apostrophized, Jim is compelled to break the silence, which seems +to himself to wall him round like a petrifaction. It is to Elizabeth +that he offers his hardly-won speech. + +"I think I need not tell you," he says gravely, and with passable +steadiness, "that I would help you in any way I could." + +She stands a moment or two irresolute, her features all quivering as if +with pain; and yet, underlying and under-shining the pain, something +that is not pain. Then she puts out a hand impulsively to each. If the +one that gives itself to Burgoyne had struck him on the mouth, instead +of offering itself with affectionate confidence to his clasp, it could +not have hurt him more than do those small fingers that lie in his, +trembling with a passion that is not for him. + +"You are both very good to me," she says brokenly. "As to you, mammy, +that is an old story. But I really believe that there is nothing +disagreeable that you, too"--with a slight grateful pressure of the +lifeless hand that so slackly keeps possession of hers--"would not do +for me. But do not think me obstinate if I say that I think--I am +sure--that it would be better--that it would hurt him less--if I spoke +to him myself." + +"It is not a question of what will hurt him least," cries Mrs. Le +Marchant, with an agony of impatience in her tone. "The thing to be +considered is what will hurt _you_ least. Mr. Burgoyne, am I not right? +Do tell her that I am! Ought not she to think of what will hurt her +least?" + +But Jim is incapable of coming a second time to her rescue. His eyes are +painfully fastened upon Elizabeth, and he is watching the pain fall off, +as it were, from her face, and the light spread rosily over it. Some +instinct makes her withdraw that hand of hers which he has shown so +little eagerness to retain, ere she says, in a low but perfectly firm +voice: + +"Well, then, I think it will hurt me least, too." + +Five minutes later Jim has left the room--ostensibly to make +arrangements for his friend's arrival, in reality because he cannot +count upon his own self-control if he remain in it. The survivors of +Elizabeth Le Marchant's acquaintance remain undecapitated. The +widow-headed Life Guardsman and the baby-bodied cornet lie unregarded on +the table, while Elizabeth herself is stretched along the floor, with +her face pressed against her mother's knees. Jim has decided to sit up +for his friend. He is perfectly aware that neither will the two women go +to bed. But he has no desire that their vigil should be shared in +common. It is equally impossible to him to take part in the noisy mirth +of the rest of the hotel, which, having taken the place of their +measureless daylight ennui, now boils over in ebullient laughter, in +dancing, squeaking, and noisily scampering out of the public +drawing-room into the hall and up the stairs. It is not till the clamour +has declined, until, indeed, its total cessation tells him that the +promiscuous revellers have retired to their apartments, that he issues +from his, and takes possession of the now empty smoking-room, whence he +can hear more distinctly than from his own bedroom any noise of wheels +approaching the hotel. The wind has risen again, and it needs an ear +very finely pricked to dissever from its mad singing, and from the +storming of the frantic rain, any lesser and alien sound. What a +terrific night in which to be out on the raging sea! Worse even than +that one last week, when the _Moise_ broke her shaft, and tossed for +twenty-four hours at the mercy of the waves. Possibly the weather may +have already yesterday been so rough at Marseille as to prevent his +setting off. But the idea--at the first blush eagerly welcomed by +him--is dismissed from his mind almost as soon as entertained. If the +boat has started--and it is only under such heavy penalties that the +mail-boats do not start, that this contingency hardly ever occurs--Byng +will have started too. A terrific bang at the casement seems to come as +a comment upon this conviction. He will have started; but will he ever +arrive? It is said that in eight years during which they have been +running no catastrophe has ever sent one of this line of steamers to the +bottom; but yet they are cranky little craft, with engines too big for +them--built rather for speed than safety. The clock has struck, with a +repetition that seems strangely frequent through the sleeping house: 11, +11.30, 12, 12.30. + +"I will give him half an hour more," says the watcher to himself, "and +then I will turn in." + +Of this allotted half-hour only five minutes are yet left to run, when, +in a lull in the hurricane, the sound which Jim's hearing has been so +long stretched to catch--the sound of wheels on the gravel--is at length +audible. During the last two hours he has heard many phantom +wheels--many of those ghostly coaches that the wind drives shrieking +through the winter nights. But these are real ones. Before the drowsy +porter, nodding in his little den, can reach the hall-door, Jim has +opened it--opened it just in time to admit a man who, his pace still +further accelerated by the mighty hands of the pushing blast, is +bounding up the steps. If any doubt as to this person's identity +lingered in Jim's mind, his first words would dispel it. + +"She is here? There is no mistake? She is here?" + +"How late you are!" cries the other, apparently regarding the new +arrival's utterance more as an ejaculation than as a question expecting +or needing an answer. "Why are you so late? Did the engines break down?" + +"She is here?" repeats Byng insistently, taking no notice of the queries +addressed to him. "You have not deceived me? For mercy's sake say that +you have not deceived me!" + +"Why should I deceive you?" rejoins Jim impatiently. "Yes; certainly she +is here." + +They are in the hall by now--the hall which, the Grand Hotel being +gasless, is lit by only one weak paraffin lamp, which the gust from the +door, necessarily still open to admit of the carrying in of the +traveller's bags and rugs, is making even more faint and flickering than +its wont. + +"You must have had a fine tossing!" + +"I believe you; they all thought we were going to make a dinner for the +fishes--ha, ha! All but I. I knew better. I knew that I could not come +to grief when _she_ had called me to her." + +Byng's hat is rammed down over his brows, and his fur coat turned up so +high round his ears that it is impossible in the obscurity to see his +face; but there is something in the tone of his voice--a loud, wild +rollicking--that makes the idea cross Jim's mind that he has been +drinking. What a shock it will give to Elizabeth if, in her covert +vigil--he has no more doubt that she has been watching than that he has +been doing so himself--she overhears that thick, raised voice! Prompted +by this thought, he says hastily: + +"Come into the dining-room. I told them to put something to eat for you +there." + +Byng complies; and when they have reached the empty _salle a manger_, +whose whitewash looks weird and unnatural in the chill of the night, he +sends his hat skimming down one of the long tables, and, grasping both +Jim's hands in his, cries out, in the same loud tone of intoxicated +triumph: + +"Oh, my dear old chap, how good it is to see your ugly old mug again! If +you had known--oh, if you had only known!--what I went through during +the twenty-four hours after I sent you that telegram, when through every +hour, through every minute and second of every hour, I said to myself, +'It may come _now_--my death-warrant may come _now_! In five minutes it +may have come!' But it did not, it did not! I ought to have known"--with +an accent of ecstasy--"that of her pitifulness she would relent at last. +She is infinitely pitiful, is not she? but I shall upbraid her a +little--oh, do not be afraid; it will be gently, _most_ gently--for +having kept me so long, so inhumanly long, upon my gridiron! I had +always"--breaking into a rather wild laugh--"something of a tenderness +for St. Lawrence, but during the last seven months I have loved him like +a brother!" + +He goes on again, with scarcely a pause, or apparently any consciousness +of the unresponsive silence of his auditor: + +"But what does it matter now?" beginning to stride about with his eyes +cast up to the beamed ceiling and his lifted hands locked +together--"what does it matter? 'After long grief and pain, to feel the +arms of my true love round me once again!' You may think that I word it +extravagantly," returning to Jim as he leans downcast and shocked upon +one of the chairs of the monotonous _table-d'hote_ row; "but in the hope +itself, the more than hope, there is nothing extravagant; you must own +that yourself. If she had not meant to put an end to my long agony, she +would not have sent for me; _not_ to stop me was to send for me." + +"You are labouring under a mistake," says Jim coldly, and yet with an +inward quaking as to the effect that his words may produce; "she had not +the option of stopping you. By some accident I did not receive your +telegram till four hours ago. She could not have stopped you if she had +wished." + +The idea, as I have already said, has occurred to Burgoyne that his +companion is under the influence of intoxication; but either this is not +the case, or the shock of the last words has the effect of instantly +sobering him. + +"I--I--do not understand," he says in a voice out of which all the +insane exhilaration has been conjured as if by magic; "I do not follow +you. What do you mean?" + +"I mean," replies Jim, in a matter-of-fact, level tone, meant to have a +calming effect upon his auditor, "that owing, I suppose, to my name +being spelt wrongly--Bourgouin instead of Burgoyne--your telegram was +given to someone else, and did not reach me till nine o'clock this +evening." + +Byng puts up his hand to his throat, and, unfastening the collar of his +fur coat as if it were strangling him, throws back the coat itself. Now +that he sees him freed from enveloping wrap and concealing hat-brim, Jim +can realize the full amount of change and deterioration that are visible +in his appearance; can see how bloodshot his eyes are; how lined his +mouth; and how generally ravaged and dimmed his good looks. + +"I am to understand, then, that--that she would have stopped my coming +if she could." + +Jim is silent. He cannot answer that question with any certainty even to +himself. + +"She would have escaped me again if she had had the chance! What am I +saying?"--with a sudden access of terror in his tone--"she may have +escaped me already! She may be gone! Tell me the truth--do not dare to +tell me anything but the bare truth. I saw that you hesitated when I +asked you whether she was really here. Is she gone?" + +"Gone!" repeats Jim, with an exasperated jerk of the head towards the +window, against which the rain and wind are hurling themselves with +threefold rage, as if to recapture the victim just escaped them. +"To-night--in this storm? How likely! Come, be rational; try to keep +your head, and let us have a truce to this ranting. I give you my word +of honour that she is here, under this roof; asleep, I should hope, if +your bellowings have not awoke her." + +The latter clause may perhaps come under the head of a pardonable +fiction; at all events, it has, despite its incivility, the desired +effect of soothing, to some extent, the agitation of him to whom it is +addressed. + +"Asleep!" he repeats, while an ecstatic smile breaks over his handsome, +dissipated face. "Good angels guard her slumbers! But"--with a rather +ominous return of excitement--"are you sure that she _is_ asleep--that +she has gone to bed yet? They used to sit up very late in Florence +sometimes. If she has not gone to bed, why should not I see her; why +should not I fall at her feet _now_--to-night?" + +"My dear boy," rejoins Jim, with a praiseworthy attempt to answer this +modest and sensible proposal with patient good-humour, "have you any +idea what time it is? I should have thought it might have occurred even +to you that 1.30 A.M. is scarcely a suitable hour for paying a morning +call! Do not be a fool! Pull yourself together. I swear to you that she +has every intention of seeing you to-morrow. Come"--trying to +laugh--"you will not have long to wait! It is to-morrow already; and, +meantime, sit down and eat something; you must be as empty as a drum." + +But to this prudent if homely counsel Byng opposes an obstinate +negation, adorned with excited asseverations that food shall never cross +his lips until they have pastured upon his lady's pardoning hand. + +The same prohibition does not, however, apparently apply to drink, as he +pours more than half the bottle of happily not very potent wine, +prepared for his refreshment, into a tumbler, and tosses it off at a +draught. He offers an even stouter refusal to Burgoyne's suggestion that +he should go to bed; and as he utters it a flash of cunning suspicion +comes into his eyes, shocking his friend with a gleam as of possible and +scarcely latent madness. Across the latter's brain darts the query, +which had proposed itself more than once to him last spring at Florence: + +"Is there insanity in Byng's blood" + +Not certainly on the distaff side, the side of his eminently sane and +wholesome mother; but can he be throwing back to some distempered +ancestor? + +"What security have I if I go to bed that she will not steal away from +me in the night? It was in the night--almost in the night--that she +stole away from me before." + +From this logic it is impossible to move him; and although, with some +return to his old sweet-natured kindliness of manner, he begs his friend +not to think it necessary to keep him company, yet the latter is far too +ill at ease as to his condition, both of mind and body, to comply. + +The porter, having drawn the natural inference that as soon as the +traveller has refreshed his body he will wish to retire to rest, has put +out the lights in the smoking-room; the _salle a manger_ is therefore +the only room in the hotel where lamps still burn, and in it the two men +spend the dreary remaining hours of the night, Byng walking up and down +like a captive beast, frequently going to the door, opening it, putting +his head out into the darkness, and listening suspiciously if, +perchance, he may hear the footfall of Elizabeth fleeing away from him +even through the hurricane. As the time goes on, his restlessness +increases rather than diminishes. Jim has vainly tried to distract his +thoughts by putting questions to him as to his pursuits and companions +since their last parting--by inquiries as to the extent and direction of +his travels. + +Did he get as far as Palestine? How long is it since he left Cairo? etc. +But to all his interrogations Byng gives brief and unsatisfactory +answers, putting a final stop to them by breaking out excitedly: + +"Why do you go on questioning me as to where I have been, and what I +have done? I tell you I have been nowhere, and done nothing; I believe +that my body has been here and there, but my soul has been nowhere; it +has been lying dead! Would you expect a man who has been lying six +months in his coffin to give you a catalogue of his adventures? My soul +has been dead, I tell you--dead and putrescent. What is the use of +putting me through a catechism about its doings?" + +Before the long-delaying dawn shows its pale profile upon the deep +obscurity, it seems to Jim as if six midwinter nights must have pieced +themselves end to end. But it comes at last; and at last also, by dint +of strenuous representations to his companion as to how unfit he is, in +his present travel-stained and disordered condition, to offer himself to +Elizabeth's eyes, he induces him to let himself be led to the bedroom +prepared overnight for him, and to refresh himself with a bath and a +change of clothes. Even this concession he obtains only in exchange for +an exacted promise to seek out Elizabeth at the earliest possible hour +at which she may be presumed accessible, and urgently to entreat of her +an instant interview with his friend. + +Jim feels that he is keeping his word handsomely when, not a minute +later than nine o'clock, he finds himself knocking at the door of the Le +Marchants' apartment--that door with which of late his knuckles have +grown so pleasantly and friendlily familiar. It is opened to him by +Elizabeth herself, and he follows her silently through the ante-room +into the little _salon_. Arrived there, he looks mournfully round with a +sort of feeling as of taking farewell of the familiar objects. + +It is impossible that Elizabeth can have spent the just-past stormy +night in gathering flowers, and yet the flowers have a freshened air. +She must have been carefully rearranging them. The bits of brocade, too, +the Turkish embroideries, the _haiks_, and the praying-carpets, wear a +more festal appearance than usual. The little room looks decked as if +for a gala. His jealous fancy cannot but admit that Elizabeth herself is +dressed in her ordinary morning gown, but even over it some holiday +transmutation has passed. He cannot trust himself to verify whether that +holiday look is on her face too. + +"He has come; you know that, I suppose?" + +"Yes." + +What a catch in her breath! He must steal a glance at her. She will +think it unnatural if he does not; and perhaps his eye may not be +offended by so much radiance as he feared. In her voice there was +something not very distant from a sob. The result of his glance shows +itself in what sounds like a reproach. + +"I do not believe that you went to bed at all." + +"Yes, I did! yes, I did!" hurrying away eagerly from the subject of +herself, as from something irrelevant and importunate; "and--he--how is +he? How does he look? Had not he a dreadful crossing? Does he want to +see me? to see me soon? to-day?" + +There is such a breathless passion in her tone, coupled with something +so apologetic for putting her questions to him, that his heart, hitherto +half touched, half angered by the pathos of her little preparations, +melts wholly towards her. + +"Of course he wants to see you--wants it very, very much," replies he; +and, to his credit, replies without any harshness marring the cordial +kindness of his tone. "As much as"--with a rather melancholy smile--"you +want to see him. No, do not be angry. Why should not you wish to see +each other?" + +"Oh, there is every reason!" cries she miserably--"the same reason that +there always was. But"--with rising agitation--"where is it to be? How +soon? When does he wish it?" + +"He is waiting outside now." + +She starts painfully. + +"_Now!_ Oh, poor fellow! we must not keep him waiting; and +yet"--stretching out her hand in detention--"tell me, before he comes +in--tell me, is he changed? Is he? Is he the same as he was?" + +Jim hesitates, and the painful perplexity written on his brow is misread +by her. + +"You are vexed with me for teasing you with so many tiresome questions. +Oh, forgive me! I ought not to take advantage of your kindness; but we +have grown to depend upon you so; and I will promise not to worry you +with any other, if you will only answer me this one. Is he changed--much +changed?" + +"I am afraid," replies Jim, with the slowness of one who is trying to +convey unpleasant tidings in the least unpleasant terms, "that you must +be prepared to find him a good deal altered." + +"Altered! How?" + +"I do not quite know how to describe it"--uneasily--"but you must not be +shocked if you find him a good deal changed in looks; and he is--he +seems, in a very excited state." + +She makes a clutch at his hand. + +"Do you mean"--her voice has sunk to a horror-struck whisper--"that he +is--mad?" + +"Mad! Oh, of course not," with a strained laugh; "you must not jump to +such conclusions. But I do not think he is quite himself, that is all. +He looks as if he had not eaten or slept for a fortnight; and if you +play such tricks as that with yourself, you must expect to get a little +off your balance." + +She is still terrifiedly clutching his hand, though with no +consciousness of doing so, nor that the fingers so tightly gripped by +her are not made of dry stick. + +"You must not look so frightened," he says soothingly. "I would not have +said anything to you, only that I thought it better you should be +prepared--that it should not take you quite by surprise; and also +because I wanted to give you a hint, that you might be a little careful +what you say to him, or, at all events, how you say it." + +Still she does not speak, and there is scarcely any diminution of the +horror of her look. + +"If you do not mind, I think it would be as well to have someone within +call, if he--he--became--unreasonable." + +"Do you think," she asks, with a sort of scorn, "that I am afraid of +him--afraid for myself?" + +"No, that I am sure you are not; but I cannot shake off the idea +that--poor fellow!--he may be on the verge of some grave illness; and in +that sort of case one never knows what may happen. So, if you do not +mind----" + +"As you please," she answers, docile even now. "Do as you think best; +and will you tell him that I am ready to see him?" + +The misgivings with which Jim complies with this request are not much +allayed by the manner and voice of him who receives it, and who has been +raging up and down the narrow corridor. + +"She will not see me, I suppose?" + +"On the contrary, she will see you now. But stay!" catching him by the +arm as he springs past him. "One moment! For God's sake control +yourself! Behave like a gentleman. Do not make her a scene; she is not +up to it." + +Byng's answer is to fling resentfully away the detaining hand of his +Mentor, while he says, with a furious look coming into his bloodshot +eyes: + +"What do you mean by keeping me here, preaching to me, while _she_ is +waiting for me?" + +The rudeness of both words and actions is so unlike the real Byng, that +it is with an even more sinking spirit than before that Jim follows him +with his eyes as he passes out of sight into the _salon_. As soon as the +door is shut behind him, he himself takes up the position he had +suggested in the ante-room. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + + +There are few things more trying to an active-minded person than to sit +occupationless, vaguely waiting. At first, it is true, the keenness of +Jim's alarm prevents his feeling the ennui which would be the natural +result of his situation. Poignantly anxious questions succeed each other +in his mind. Has he had any right to permit the interview at all? How +far is Byng accountable for his actions? What chance is there that his +already rocking reason will stand the shock of a meeting which, even in +his sanest moments, would have so wildly excited him? And if not, what +may be the consequences? Grisly headings of newspaper paragraphs write +themselves in the air before him--"Homicidal Mania," "Murder and +Suicide." + +The details of a tragic story which, illustrated by sensational +woodcuts, he had idly read a day or two ago in a venerable _Police +News_, left lying on the smoking-room table, recur to his memory. It was +a tale of a groom who, in an access of jealous madness, had shot a +scullion sweetheart through the head, and then blown his own brains out. +The tale had made but little impression on him at the time--unhappily, +it is scarcely possible to take up a journal without the eye alighting +upon some such--but it comes back to him now with terrifying vividness. +What security is there that such tragedies may be confined to grooms and +kitchen-maids? How does he know that Byng has not a revolver hidden in +his breast-pocket? How can he tell that he is not at this very moment +drawing it out? He (Jim) ought to have made sure, before exposing her to +such a peril, that the danger was minimized by Byng's being weaponless. +Is it too late to make sure of that even now? + +He takes one step towards the _salon_ door, then hastily retraces it. +Pooh! he is growing as mad as Byng. They will come out and find him +eavesdropping. + +He retreats to the table, which is at the greatest distance allowed by +the room's narrow enceinte from the scene of the drama whose +_denouement_ he is expecting, and, sitting down, takes up a book. It +happens to be Elizabeth's Italian exercise-book, and the sight of it +conjures up before his memory her forlorn figure stooping disconsolately +over the page, wrapped in her brown furs, as he had seen it on that +rainy night that seems now so distant. He had pitied her for being +lonely then. Well, whatever else she may be, she is not lonely now. + +He catches his breath. It is quite a quarter of an hour since he began +his watch. How quiet they are! There is a murmur of voices, but there is +nothing that in the least indicates violence. Before his eyes there +flashes in grotesque recollection the hideous picture in the _Police +News_ which illustrates the high words with which the catastrophe of the +groom and kitchenmaid had been heralded. He has been making a mountain +out of a mole-hill; has been exaggerating his friend's emotional +temperament, naturally further heightened by sleeplessness and want of +food, into incipient insanity. If he were mad, or at all tending that +way, would he be talking in the low rational key which he obviously must +be? It is evident that her presence, her eye, her--yes, what more +likely?--her touch have soothed and conjured away what of excessive or +perilous there was in his emotion. + +They have been together half an hour now. All danger is certainly over. +Why should he any longer continue his officious and needless +watch?--superfluously spying upon them? + +Relieved as to what he had thought his worst fear, and yet with an +uncommon bitterness about his heart, he turns to withdraw, and his hand +is already on the lock of the door which leads into the corridor, when +suddenly, without any warning, there reaches his ear the noise of a +loud, crashing fall, followed--accompanied, rather--by a piercing +scream. + +In infinitely less than a second he finds himself on his knees beside +the prostrate body of Byng, who, with blood pouring from his forehead, +is stretched upon the floor of the _salon_. Even at this second there +flashes upon him, ludicrous and dreadful, the memory of the _Police +News_. This scene has a grotesque likeness to the final one of the groom +and kitchenmaid series, only that in the present case the heroine, +instead of staggering backward with the top of her head flying up to the +ceiling, is hanging unharmed over her fallen lover. + +"Are you hurt?" cries Jim in frantic anxiety, looking at her across the +prostrate figure, and unable to eradicate from his mind the revolver +idea. "Did he hit you? I did not hear a shot." + +"Oh no, no! but he," fetching her breath in terrible gasps, and hanging +over the bleeding man with that utter abandonment of all disguise, in +which a great naked grief sweeps away our sophistications--"he is dead!" + +"Oh no, he is not," answers Jim hastily, tearing open Byng's waistcoat +and laying his hand upon his heart. "He has only fainted. Get some +water! Have you got any salts? No; do not lift his head"--seeing that +she is agonizedly trying to raise his prone head and rest it upon her +knees--"he had better be as flat as he can. Quick, some water!" + +She does not need to be twice told. In an instant she has sprung to the +table, and brought thence the china jug out of which she is wont to +water her flowers, and also the big cut-glass bottle of smelling-salts +with which Jim has often seen poor Mrs. Le Marchant solacing herself +when racked with that neuralgic headache which means worry. He splashes +water out of the one upon Byng's ashy face, and holds the other to his +pale nostrils; while Elizabeth, once more flinging herself upon her +knees, wipes the blood from his temples with her little useless gossamer +inch of handkerchief. + +"How did it happen?" asks Jim rapidly. "What did he do to himself?" + +The heads of the two ministrants are very close to each other as they +bend together over the swooned youth. Jim can see a little smear of +Byng's blood upon one of her white cheeks. The sight gives him a +shudder. Byng seems to have made her more his own by that gory baptism +than by all his frenzied vows and tears. + +"Oh, I do not know," she answers, still fetching both breath and words +with difficulty. "He was standing up, and he seemed quite right; and +then, all of a sudden, in a minute, he went down like a log, and hit his +forehead against the sharp corner of the table"--with a convulsive +shiver at the recollection. "I ought to have saved him! I ought; but I +was not quick enough. I stood stock-still, and now he is dead! You say +that he is not; but I am sure he is dead!" + +"Oh no, nonsense! he is not," replies Jim brusquely, thinking a certain +harshness of manner the best recipe for her. "He is alive, sure enough; +and as for the cut on his forehead, now that you have wiped the blood +away, you can see for yourself that it is not at all a deep one. It is +merely a big scratch. I have often had a worse out hunting from a +bramble, in jumping through a hedge. Oh, Mrs. Le Marchant, here you are! +That is all right. We have had an accident, you see. He has fallen down +in a faint, and given himself a bit of a knock. That is all; do not be +frightened. It looks worse than it is--Oh, M. Cipriani, vous voila! +Envoyez chercher un medecin tout de suite! Il y a un M. Crump"--catching +in his destitution at the thought of even Sybilla's objectionable +friend. + +But hereupon half a dozen voices--for by this time even more than that +number of inmates of the hotel have thronged into the little room--raise +themselves to pronounce another name--the name of one who both stands +higher in medical fame and is more quickly procurable. In search of him +Zameth, the porter, is instantly despatched, and meanwhile about the +inanimate body sympathizers stand three deep, until reluctantly +dispersed by a hint of a nature so broad as not to be misunderstood from +Jim, to the effect that the patient would have a better chance of coming +to himself if he were allowed to have a breath of air. By the time the +doctor arrives--there is some small delay before he appears--all are got +rid of, and, Mrs. Le Marchant having gone to give directions for having +Jim's room arranged for the sick man, both because it is on the +ground-floor and also of a better size than that allotted to him, Jim +and Elizabeth are once again left _tete-a-tete_. + +Once again they kneel on either side of the prone figure. How dreadfully +dead and how extravagantly long it looks! Once again he sees that +blood-smear on her face. It is just above her one dimple, and stands out +in ghastly incongruity over that little pitfall for love and laughter. +How passionately he wishes that he might ask her to go and wash it off! +If he did she would not hear him. She has no ears left, no eyes, no +sense, save for that livid face, splashed with the water which has not +brought him back to life, and with the red drops still slowly trickling +from the wound on his brow, and which have stained here and there the +damp tendrils of his hair--for that livid face and for the flaccid +hands, which she rubs between her own with an ever more terrified +energy, as he still gives no sign of returning consciousness. + +By-and-by he is taken out of her custody. She is robbed even of the +wretched satisfaction of chafing his poor senseless fingers. On the +arrival of the doctor he is carried off, and laid upon the bed that has +been made ready for him. She follows them miserably as they bear him +staggeringly across the hall--a powerfully-built young man of over six +feet high, in the perfect inertness of syncope, is no light weight--and +looks hungrily over the threshold of the bedroom; but when she attempts +to cross it Jim puts her gently back. + +"No, dear, no!" he says. (He is almost sure afterwards that for that +once in his life he calls her "dear.") "You had better not. We think he +is coming round, and if you are the first person he sees when he comes +to himself it might be bad for him--might hurt him. You would not hurt +him, would you?" + +"No, I would not hurt him," she answers slowly. And so turns in her +utter tractableness, and goes away meekly without a word. + + * * * * * + +It is evening again now, almost the same hour at which Jim and Elizabeth +were beheading photographs twenty-four hours ago. Twenty-four hours! It +feels more like twenty-four years. This is what he says to himself as he +once again opens the door of the Le Marchants' apartment. It is the +first time during the whole day, except to snatch a couple of mouthfuls +of food, that he has left Byng's side; and it is only due to the fact +that Mrs. Le Marchant is supplying his place, and has sent him on a +message to her daughter, that he has quitted his post. He knows that she +has meant to do him a kindness in despatching him upon this errand; but +he is not sure that it is one. + +Elizabeth is not in the _salon_, but the screen that masks the door +separating that room from the little alcove beyond is folded back. Over +the doorway is a hanging of Eastern embroidery--as to the meaning of the +strange gold scrolls that look like Arab letters on whose red ground +Elizabeth and he have often idly speculated. He pushes it aside, and +sees her standing with her back towards him, the flimsy muslin +window-curtains drawn back as she looks out on the night. The alcove is +on ordinary occasions scarcely ever occupied, and there is something +uneasy and uncomfortable that matches the wretchedness of her other +circumstances in finding her standing there alone and idle. + +The elements have long finished their raging, and fallen to boisterous +play. It has been a fine day, and though the sun has long laid down his +sceptre, he has passed it on with scarcely diminished, though altered, +radiance to his white imitator. It is broad moonlight--startlingly +broad. The moon hangs overhead, with never a cloud-kerchief about her +great disk. The winds that, loudly sporting, are up and abroad have +chased every vapour from the sky, which is full of throbbing white +stars. Before he reaches her side she has heard him, and turned to meet +him, with a mixed hunger and pitiful hope in her wan face. She thinks +that he has come to fetch her. He must kill that poor hope, and the +quicklier the more mercifully. + +"Mrs. Le Marchant sent me. I came to tell you that he has recovered +consciousness. You see, you were wrong"-with an attempt at a reassuring +smile--"he is not dead, after all. He is conscious; that is to say, he +is not insensible; but I am afraid he is not quite himself yet, and you +must not--must not mind--must not be frightened, I mean--if he begins to +shout out and talk nonsense by-and-by: the doctor says it is what we +must expect." + +"And may I--mayn't I--will not you let me?" + +What a quivering voice the hope has, and yet how alive it is! However +clumsily, and with whatever bitter yearnings over the pain he is causing +her, he must knock it on the head at once. + +"Go to him?--impossible! quite out of the question! The great object is +to keep him perfectly quiet, and if once he caught sight of you--" + +"But if he is not himself," interrupts she, with a pathetic pertinacity, +"he would not know me. I could not do him any harm if he did not know +me, and I might do something--oh, ever such a little thing for him! If +you knew what it was to stand here and do nothing--_do nothing_ +indeed!"--with a change of tone to one of agonized self-reproach;--"have +not I done enough already? Oh, would anyone have believed that it would +be I that should kill him!" + +She turns back to the window again, and dashes her forehead with +violence against the frame. Outside the tall date-palm is shaken through +all its plumes by the loud breeze; it is swaying and waving and blowing, +and not less is its solid shadow cut out by the moonshine's keen knife +on the terrace, wavering and shaking too, as if convulsed by laughter. +The porch of the hotel--mere whitewash and plaster, as memory and reason +tell one that it is--stands out in glorified ivory like the portals of +such a palace as we see in vision, when + + "Good dreams possess our fancy." + +"I can't have you talking such nonsense," says Jim, in an exceedingly +kind and not very steady voice, for his own feelings are horribly +harrowed; and on thinking over the scene afterwards, he cannot swear +that, at this point, he did not pass a most brotherly arm for one moment +round the poor little heaving shoulder, which is shaking almost as much +as the palm-tree's shadow. "He is not going to die; he is not thinking +of dying. Nobody has killed him--least of all you." + +She makes him no answer, nor lifts her stricken head, over which he +looks out, while the ghostly mirth shakes the landscape; at his wits' +end, in search of consolation. Below waves a sea of foliage, out of +which the strong elfin light has stolen all the colour. From that +colourless dark ocean rises far away to the right the dazzling little +snowy dome of a mosque, showing like a transfigured mushroom; and down +below the rounding bay is seen laying its foam-lips in white glory on +the land. + +"Dr. Stephens feels sure that he must have had a sunstroke. You know +that he has been in the East. He was a month in Cairo; the sun has great +power there, even in winter, and he is sure to have exposed himself +recklessly. He was on his way home--had got as far as Paris, it +seems--when he accidentally heard that you were here. Since then, no +doubt, he has neither eaten nor slept; so you see how little you are to +blame. You know that I told you how odd he was before you even saw him. +Do not you remember?"--trying to recall every circumstance that may tend +to reassure her--"I warned you that you would have to be careful what +you said to him?" + +His words have a very different effect from that intended by him. + +"Oh, that is why I cannot forgive myself!" says she, with what sounds +almost like a cry of physical pain. "You _did_ warn me; I had no excuse. +In his state I ought never--it was murdering him to tell him--" + +She breaks off. To tell him what? Jim bites his lips hard to hinder +himself from putting this question, as he again, in mercy to her, looks +away from her out into the night. + +The moon has swum over the housetop by now; but one can see her +handiwork as plainly as ever in the broad argent fringe, like the border +of a cloak, that marks where the waves are breaking on the beach. + +One often talks of a fringe without really meaning that there is much +likeness to one; but to-night the moon-washed breakers really do wear +that aspect--a fringe of silver with long silver tags and ends. + +"But I was so deceived," she continues, with that wail still in her +voice; "he was not violent. After what you had told me, I expected him +to be violent; but he was not: he was quite gentle and quiet, and he did +beg so hard, and I was so glad to see him again, that I felt I was +giving in--that I should give way altogether if I did not tell him--tell +him at once, without giving myself time to think; and so I did"--growing +very breathless and incoherent--"and in a second; and then all in a +minute, without any warning, just as if I had shot him through the head, +he went down with a crash. I did not see it, for I was not looking at +him. I could not bear to look at him while I told him. I had both hands +over my face, and then--and then--I heard him fall." + +What can Jim say to her? Fear lest any dastardly unchivalrous curiosity +may seem to pierce through whatever sympathetic question he might put to +her keeps him dumb, and stupidly staring at the bowing, ironically merry +palm. + +"And now," she goes on, lifting her face, and he is shocked to see how +livid it is in the moonlight, "he will go out of the world thinking me +much worse than I really am, for I had not time to tell him all. He +heard only the bare fact; he did not hear what excuse I had--that I was +not really so wicked as--as--he will die thinking me." + +The sob with which she ends alarms him by its kinship to a convulsion. + +"I do not know what to say to you," he says, desperately making a snatch +at her two hands, as if by the violence of his grip he could convey to +her some little portion of the deep compassion that is swelling up in +his heart for her; "I am so much in the dark. No, no, no!" with a return +of that terror lest this ejaculation should seem the outcome of any +inquisitiveness; "I do not want you to tell me anything! What is more, I +will not listen to you if you attempt it; but what there is not the +least manner of doubt about is that his fainting had no sort of +reference to what you said to him: he would have fainted whatever you +had said to him, or if you had said nothing at all. He was as mad as a +hatter when he went in to you. It is all part of the same +thing--over-fatigue, sunstroke. But he is not going to die"--with a +hurried trip back to his former strain of consolation--"he is not +thinking of it; I promise you, I give you my word of honour"--becoming +perfectly reckless and completely insensate--"that he shall not!" + +But she is too strangled with sobs to make any rejoinder. + +"He shall have the best of nursing," goes on Jim. "I have telegraphed +for a nurse to Nice. How astonishing it is that in a place of this size +you cannot get a decent sick-nurse! I hoped we might have caught the one +who nursed General Smith before----" + +He stops abruptly, with a too tardy recollection that the allusion is +not a happy once, since the General died two days ago. Unfortunately, +she also remembers, as is evidenced by the strong shudder that passes +over her. + +"If he dies, will he be buried in that deep narrow, red grave that they +showed us in the Protestant cemetery, and which they said that they +always kept open for English visitors? If he dies! if he dies! Oh, if I +could but have told him! if he would but have waited for me to tell him +how it really was!" + + + + +CHAPTER X. + + +Though "February Fill-dyke" was never and nowhere truer to her name than +this year, and in Algiers--coming laden with wet days to make the green +Sahel, if possible, greener than it was before; yet the inhabitants of +the Grand Hotel do not again, for a matter of three weeks, relieve their +ennui or let off their energies in far from Dumb Crambo, or loud +charade. The voice of the battledore is silent in the entrance-hall, and +the shuttlecock sleeps. M. Cipriani has scarcely had to do more than +mention his request that they would lay aside their more noisy pastimes, +for they are, most of them, rather good-natured persons than otherwise, +since, indeed, it is quite as uncommon to be very ill-natured as to be +very selfless, or very foolish, or very wise. Those of them who have +been fortunate enough to be present at the catastrophe have carried away +such a moving image of a wounded Adonis, apparently several yards long, +stretched upon Mrs. Le Marchant's Persian carpet, that they have +infected those less happy persons who know of him only by hearsay with a +compassionate interest scarcely inferior to their own. + + +The only person in the hotel who makes much noise is poor Byng himself, +and for awhile he falls it with clamour enough to furnish two or three +of those bump suppers of which, not so long ago, he was a conspicuous +ornament. + +There had never, even when he was in his wits, been much disguise as to +the state of his feelings; now that he is out of them, the whole house +rings with his frantic callings upon the name of Elizabeth, uttered in +every key of rage, expostulation, tenderness, and appeal. These cries +reach Elizabeth herself as she sits cowering in that one of the little +suite of rooms which is nearest the door of entrance--sits there +cowering, and yet with the door, through which those dreadful sounds +penetrate to her, ajar, in order the better to hear them--cowering, and +for several days alone. + +Owing to various accidents, similar in their results, though differing +in character, almost a week elapses from the first breaking out of +Byng's malady before the arrival of either the hospital nurse or of Mrs. +Byng. When the latter event occurs, Mrs. Le Marchant retires from her +post at the sick man's bedside with the same unostentatious +matter-of-factness with which she had assumed it, and Elizabeth is no +longer alone. But to set against this advantage is the counterbalancing +evil that, after the arrival of Byng's mother, she can no longer steal +out, as she had before done a hundred times a day, to his door, to glean +fragments of tidings from any outcomer thence. She is never able to +repeat those little surreptitious excursions after that occasion when +Mrs. Byng, coming suddenly out upon her, passes her with such speaking, +if silent, hostility and scorn in her tired and grief-stricken eyes, +that the luckless spy slinks back sobbing to her own tender mother; and +there Jim, flying out a while after to carry them a crumb of +reassurance, finds them, to his indignation, mingling their bitter +tears. + +Whatever else his faults may be, Mr. Burgoyne is a man of his word; he +certainly keeps his promise to Elizabeth that Byng shall be well nursed. +He keeps his other promise, too--though that is more by good luck than +good management--that Byng shall not die. Whether to hinder his friend +from being made a liar, or because he himself is loth to leave a world +which he has found so pretty, cruel, and amusing, Byng does not +die--Byng lives. + +By her 25th day February has dried her tears, though they still hang on +her green lashes, and a great galleon of a sun steers through a +tremendous sea of blue, as Jim persuades Byng's mother to go out for her +first delicious drive in that fresh and satin-soft air of the Algerian +February, which matches our best poets' May. He takes her along the +Route des Aqueduques, that lovely route which runs high along the +hillside among the villas above the town, so high as to be on a level +with the roofs of the lofty-standing Continental and Orient Hotels. It +is a most twisting road, which in curves and loops winds about the head +of narrow deep gorges, full of pale olive-trees, caroubiers, and ilex. +Below lies the red-roofed white town. Slowly they trot past the campagne +of the "English Milor," "L'Epicier Anglais," and many others, over whose +high walls bougainvillias light their now waning purple fires, and big +bushes of fleurs de Marie stoop their milky stars. + +Mrs. Byng's eyes, sunk and diminished by watching and weariness, have +been lying restfully on the delightful spring spectacle--on the great +yellow sorrels by the wayside; she now turns them tear-brimmed to her +companion. + +"I could jump out of my skin!" she says shakily. "What a sun! what a +sea! And to think that, after all, we have pulled him through." + +Jim's only answer is a sympathetic pressure of the extremely +well-fitting glove nearest him. If Willy had died instead of lived, her +gloves would have fitted all the same. + +"But we are not out of the wood yet," continues she, with a shake of the +head. "He is cured, or nearly cured, of one disease, but what about the +other?" + +"What other?" inquires he, obstinately stupid, and with somewhat of a +heart-sinking at the prospect of the engagement which he sees ahead of +him. + +How many elbows the road makes! It seems to have been cut in places +right through the wet red rock, now overhung by such a torrent of +vegetation. + +At the head of one of the deep clefts that run up from the sea they +pause, and look down upon a second sea of greenery that would seem to +belong to no month less leafy than June. To June, too, belong the murmur +and hum and summer trickle of running water at the ravine bottom. + +"I do not see why, if he goes on as swimmingly as he is now doing," says +Mrs. Byng in a restless voice--"why we should not get him off in a week, +even if he were carried on board the boat." + +"A week? Is not that rather sanguine?" + +"I do not think so, the sooner the better; and during that week I should +think she could hardly make any attempt to see him." + +"Has she shown any signs of making one hitherto?" + +"Well, no"--rather grudgingly. "In fact, between you and me, considering +that it is they who have brought him into this plight, I think they +might have shown a little more solicitude about him. In the last ten +days I do not believe that they have been once to the door to inquire." + +"You do not seem to be aware," says Jim, in a voice which, though quiet, +is not pacific, "and that is odd, considering how often I told you, that +until you came Mrs. Le Marchant nursed him like a mother; not like a +mother, indeed"--correcting himself with a somewhat malicious +intention--"for mothers grow flurried, and she never did." + +"You mean that she nursed him better than I do," in a jealous tone. +"Well"--more generously--"how shabby of me to mind, if she did! I do not +mind. God bless her for it! I always thought"--compunctiously--"that +she looked a nice woman." + +"She _is_ nice--as nice"--descending into a slang unworthy of his ripe +years--"as they make 'em." + +"And the girl--I suppose one can hardly call her a girl--_looks_ nice +too." + +They are passing the Casbah, the solid Moorish fortifications, about +which now hang only a few gaitered, sunburnt, baggy Zouaves. + +Jim has a silly hope that, if he maintains an entire silence, the +current of his companion's ideas may drift into another channel; but he +is soon undeceived. + +"I suppose that she must have been quite, _quite_ young when--when those +dreadful things happened that Willy talked about in his delirium?" + +"Is it possible"--indignantly--"that you take the ravings of a +fever-patient au pied de la lettre?" + +"No, I do not; but"--with an obstinate sticking to her point--"there was +a substratum of truth in them; that was only too evident." + +Jim shuts his teeth tight together. His vow of silence is harder to keep +than he had thought. + +"Since he came to himself he has never mentioned her to me," continues +his companion anxiously; "has he to you?" + +"No." + +"I quite tremble whenever he opens his lips, lest he should be going to +begin the subject, and one could not contradict him yet awhile; he is so +quixotic, it is quite likely that he may have some distorted idea that +her being--how shall I say?--_fletrie_--is an additional reason for +standing by her, rehabilitating her, marrying her. He is so chivalrous." + +They have left the Prison Civile and the Zouave Barracks behind them. A +longer interval than that usually supposed to elapse between a remark +and its rejoinder has passed, before Jim can bring himself to utter the +following sentence with the calmness which he wishes: + +"Has it never occurred to you that she may be chivalrous too?" + +Perhaps Mrs. Byng does not readily find a response to this question; +perhaps it sets her off upon a train of speculation which does not +conduce to garrulity. Certain it is that, for the rest of the drive, she +is as silent as Jim could wish her. It is a sharp surprise to him two +days later to be mysteriously called outside the sick man's door by her, +in order to be informed that she has invited Miss Le Marchant to +accompany her on a drive. + +"I went to call upon them," she says, avoiding--or so he fancies it--his +eye as she speaks; "and I asked the girl to drive with me to the Mole, +and get a good blowing about." + +"How kind of you!" cries Jim, a flash of real pleasure in his serious +look; "how like you--like your real self, that is!" + +And he takes her hand to thank it by a friendly pressure. But she draws +it away rather hastily. + +"Oh, it was nothing so very wonderful--nothing to thank me for." + +She seems confused and a little guilty, and escapes with some +precipitation from his gratitude. Mrs. Byng is not a woman addicted to +double-dealing, and if she ever makes any little essays in that +direction, she does them, as on this present occasion, villainously. + +Burgoyne is not at the hall-door to help the ladies into the carriage +when they set off. Perhaps this may be because he is in attendance upon +the invalid. Perhaps because--glad as he had at first felt and expressed +himself at their friendliness--some misgiving may, upon reflection, have +beset him at so strange a conjunction. At all events, it is only Fritz +who throws the light Arab rug over their knees and gives them his +encouraging parting smile. + +Poor Miss Le Marchant needs his encouragement, for, indeed, it is in a +very frightened spirit that she sets forth on her pleasuring. But before +the horse-bells have jingled to the bottom of Mustapha Superieur, her +spirits are rising. The sun shines, and he has shone so seldom in +Elizabeth's life that a very few of his beams, whether real or +metaphorical, suffice to send up her quicksilver. She does not +consciously admit for a second the hope that in the present overture on +the part of her companion lies any significance. But yet a tiny +trembling bliss now and then taps at her heart's door, and she pushes it +away but feebly. + +Before they have reached the Amiraute, where they are to get out, she +has thanked Mrs. Byng with such pretty and unsuspecting gratitude for +bringing her, and has made her laugh so irrepressibly by her gay and +naive comments upon the motley passers-by, that the latter is filled +with a compunctious regret that a person with such lovely manners, and +such a sense of a joke, should have made so disastrous a fiasco of her +life as renders necessary the extremely distasteful errand on which she +herself is at present bound. At the Amiraute, as I say, they get out; +and, turning under a groined roof that looks as if it were the crypt of +a church, find themselves presently upon the long stone breakwater that +runs out into the bay. It was built, they tell us, in old days by the +wretched Christian captives; but the sea has taken care that not much of +the original labour of blood and tears has survived. + +The wind is high, and the sunshine ardent and splendid. On their right +as they walk, with the wind officiously helping them from behind, is a +world of dancing sapphire, each blue billow white-tipped. On their left +are great blocks of masonry, built strong and square, with narrow +intervals between to break the might of the water. How little their +strength has availed against that of their tremendous opponent is seen +at every step, since nearly half the blocks are overthrown or in +semi-ruin; though the date engraved upon them shows for how few seasons +they have been exposed to the ravages of the tempestuous sea. They walk +on to the end, till they can go no further, since, just ahead of them, +the waves are rolling in half-fierce play--though the day is all +smiles--over the breakwater; and even where they stand, their footing is +made unsure by lengths of slimy seaweed that set them slipping along. +Elizabeth insists upon the elder woman taking her slight arm--insists +upon carrying her wraps, and generally waiting upon and ministering to +her. From the bottom of her heart Mrs. Byng wishes that she would not, +since every instance of her soft helpfulness, so innocent and +spontaneous, makes more difficult the answer to that question which she +has been asking herself ever since they set foot upon the Mole: + +"How shall I begin?" + +It is unanswered still, when, retracing their steps a little, they sit +down under the lee of one of the half-wrecked blocks to enjoy the view. + +From here the sea is a lake, the distant mountains and the breakwater +seeming--though in reality parted by how wide a wet waste--to join in +embracing it. The mountains are dim and filmy to-day, Cape Matifou +scarcely visible; but the Koubah shows white-domed on the hillside, and +all the dazzling water is shot through with blinding light. The town, +Arab-French, is dazzling too; the arcaded quay, the fortifications, one +can scarcely look at any of them. Two or three steamers, with a little +vapour issuing from their ugly black and red funnels, lie moored; and +other smaller craft lift their spars against the heaven. Near by a man +is sitting with his legs dangling over the water, fishing with a line; +and two or three Arabs, draped in the dignity of their poetic rags, lie +couched round a fire that they have kindled. Beneath and around them is +the banging and thundering of the sea. August noise! "A voice like the +sound of many waters." Could there be a more awful comparison? Just +underneath them, where the sea has made a greater breach than usual, it +is boiling as in a caldron. Looking down and in, they see the water +comparatively quiet for a moment; then, with a shout of its great +jubilant voice, rushing and surging in, tossing its mane. Elizabeth's +eyes are resting on the heavenly sapphire plain. + +"_How_ blue!" she says, under her breath; "one cannot believe that it is +not really blue; one feels that if one took up a little in a spoon it +would be just as blue as it is now." + +"I dare say it will not _feel_ so blue when we are on it," replies Mrs. +Byng, lugging in somewhat awkwardly, as she feels, the subject which she +finds it so hard to introduce, "as I suppose we shall be within a week +now." + +Her charity bids her not glance at her companion as she speaks, so she +is not quite sure whether or not she gives a start. + +"Mr. Burgoyne thinks that I am sanguine; but I am all for moving him as +soon as possible; it cannot be too soon." + +She tries to throw as much significance as they are capable of holding +into the latter words, and feels that she has succeeded. + +"Of course he may refuse to go," continues she, with a rather strained +laugh. "Do you remember Victor Hugo's definition of heaven as a place +where children are always little and parents are always young? I am +continually quoting it. But, unfortunately, one's children will not stay +little; they grow big, and get wills of their own, and it is quite +possible he may refuse to go." + +"Yes?" almost inaudibly. + +"But"--reddening slightly at the patently-intended application of her +next sentence--"anyone that was fond of him--anyone that liked him +_really_ and--and _disinterestedly_, I mean, must see that the only +happy course for him would be to go; that it would be his salvation to +get away; they--they would not try to hinder him." + +"I should think that no one would do that." + +There is not a touch of asperity in the dove-soft voice; but there is a +shade of dignity. + +"When he was ill--while he was delirious" ("How dreadfully unpleasant it +is!" in an anguished internal aside)--"I could not help +hearing--gathering--drawing inferences." + +The ardour of the chase has vanquished her charity, and she is looking +at her victim. But, to do her justice, the success of her labours shocks +her. Can this little aged, pinched face, with its dilated eyes, so full +of woe and terror, be the same one that dimpled into riotous laughter +half an hour ago at the sight of the two dirty old men, in Jewish +gaberdines and with gingham umbrellas, kissing each other by the Mosquee +de la Pecherie? + +"Of course it was all incoherent," she goes on hurriedly, snatching at +the first expression that occurs to her as likely to undo, or at least a +little modify, her work--"nothing that one could make sense of. Only +your name recurred so incessantly; it was nothing but 'Elizabeth, +Elizabeth.' I am sure"--with a remorseful if clumsy attempt to be kind, +and a most uneasy smile--"that I do not wonder at it!" + +In the narrow interspace between the blocks and the path--not more than +a couple of fingers wide--how the sea forces itself! and up race its +foam-fountains, throwing their spray aloft in such mighty play, as if +they would hit heaven's arch. What exhilaration in its great glad noise, +superb and battle-ready! + +"I cannot express how distasteful a task this is to me"--in a tone that +certainly gives no reason to doubt the truth of her statement; "but, +after all, I am his mother; he is all I have in the world, and I am sure +that you are the very last person who would wish to do him an injury." + +"No; I do not think that I would do him an injury." + +How curiously still and slow her voice is! Mrs. Byng has resolutely +averted her eyes, so that her purpose may not again be shaken by the +sight of the havoc she has wrought, and has fixed them upon some sea +gulls that are riding up and down upon the merry waves, making them, +with their buoyant motion, even more jocund than they were before. + +"It seems an impossible thing to say to you--a thing too bad to +apologize for--but yet I _must_ say it"--in a tone of excessive +distress, yet firmness. "Under the circumstances, it would--would throw +a blight over his whole life." + +"Yes, I know that it would; I have always known it; that is why we left +Florence." + +"And very good it was of you, too! Not that I am quite certain of the +judiciousness of the way in which you did it; but, however, I am sure +you meant it for the best." + +"Yes, I meant it for the best." + +The sea-gulls have risen from the billow, and are turning and wheeling +in the air. The light is catching their wings, and making them look like +whitest silver. It seems as if they were at conscious play with it, +trying experiments as to how they can best catch their bright +playfellow, and again shake it off, and yet again recapture it. + +"What a monster you must think me!" breaks out the elder woman +presently. + +Now that the impression has somehow been conveyed to her mind that her +mission is likely to be completely successful, the full brutality of the +method by which she has accomplished it bursts upon her mind. + +"How treacherous! luring you out here, under the pretence of +friendliness, to say such horrible things to you!" + +Elizabeth's narrow hands are clasped upon her knee, and her small +heart-broken, white face is looking out straight before her. + +"No, I do not think you a monster," she answers--"you are a kind-hearted +woman! and it must have been very, very unpleasant to you. I am quite +sorry"--with a sort of smile--"for you, having to do it; but you are his +mother. If I had been his mother, I should have done the same; at least, +I suppose so." + +"I am sure, if things had been different, there is no one that I should +have--I do not know when I ever saw anyone whom I took such a fancy to. +If it had not been for the disparity--I mean, if he had been less young +and unfit to take upon himself the serious responsibilities of life----" + +How deplorably lame even to Mrs. Byng's ears sound her tardy efforts to +place the grounds of her objection on a less cruel basis than that which +she has already made so nakedly plain to be the real one! Even the +sweet-mannered Elizabeth does not think it necessary to express +gratitude for such insulting civilities. + +"I do not quite understand what you wish me to do," she says, with quiet +politeness; "if you will explain to me----" + +"Oh, I do not want to dictate to you; please do not imagine I could +think of being so impertinent; but, of course, he will be asking for +you. Since he came to himself, he has not mentioned you as yet; but of +course he will. I am expecting it every moment; probably he has not felt +up to embarking on the subject. He will ask for you--will want to see +you." + +"And you wish me not to see him?" + +Her delicate suffering mouth quivers; but she is perfectly composed. + +"Oh, but of course you must see him! you quite, _quite_ misunderstand +me! Much chance there would be"--with a wretched stunted laugh--"of +getting him away without a sight of you! How little you know him!" + +Elizabeth does not dispute the fact of her want of acquaintance with +Byng's character, nor does she help his floundering parent by any +suggestion. She merely goes on listening to her with that civil white +look, while the sportive sea-mews still play at hide-and-seek with the +sun-rays on the wide blue fields of heaven. + +"It is dreadful that I should have to say these things to you," says +Mrs. Byng, in a voice of the strongest revolt and ire against her +destiny--"insult you in this unprovoked way; but, in point of fact, you +are the only person in the world who can convince him that--that--it is +impossible--that it cannot be. Of course he will be very urgent and +pressing, and I know how persuasive he is. Do not you suppose that I, +his own mother, know how hard it is to refuse him anything? and of +course, in his present weak state, it must be very carefully done. He +could not stand any violent contradiction. You would have to be very +gentle; dear me!"--with a fresh access of angry remorse--"as if you ever +could be anything else." + +This compliment also its pale object receives in silence. + +"You know one has always heard that there are two kinds of 'No,'" goes +on Mrs. Byng with another dwarfish laugh, which has a touch of the +hysteric in it--"a woman's 'No,' as it is called, that means 'Yes'; and +a 'No' which anyone--which even _he_--must understand to be final. If +you _could_--I dare say I am asking you an impossibility--but if you +_could_ make him understand that this time it is final!" + +There is a silence between them. An unrulier billow than usual, yet more +masterless in its Titan play, is hurling itself with a colossal thud and +bang against the causeway; and Elizabeth waits till its clamour is +subsided before she speaks. + +"Yes," she answers slowly, "I understand; thank you for telling me what +you wish. I think I may promise that I shall be able to--that I shall +make him understand that it is final." + +A moment or two later they are on their way back to the Amiraute. The +ocean is at its glorious pastimes all around them; the hill-climbing, +shining town smiles upon them from its slope; but upon both has fallen a +blindness. The feelings of Mrs. Byng are perhaps the least enviable of +the two. + +They are nearly back at the beginning of the breakwater, when she stops +short. Probably when cool reflection comes, when she is removed from the +charm and pathos of Elizabeth's meek white presence, lovely and +unreproachful, she will not repent her work; but at the present moment +of impulse and remorse she feels as if the expunging of the last +half-hour would be cheaply purchased by the sacrifice of six months of +her remaining life. + +"I suppose it is not the least use my asking you to try and forgive +me--to make allowances for me?" she says, with unsteady-toned humility; +"oh, _how_ you must hate me! If the case were reversed, _how_ I should +hate you! How you will hate me all your life!" + +The tears are rolling down her cheeks, and in an instant Elizabeth's +hand has gone out to her. As it does so, the grotesque regret flashes +across the elder woman's mind that any future daughter-in-law of hers +will be most unlikely to be the possessor of such a hand. + +"Why should I hate you? you cannot"--with a heart-wrung smile--"possibly +think me more undesirable than I do myself; and even if it were not so, +I do not think it is in me to hate anyone very much." + +On their drive home they meet with one or two little incidents quite as +funny as the old Jews kissing each other; but this time they do not move +poor Miss Le Marchant to any laughter. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + + "I do remember an apothecary,-- + And hereabouts he dwells." + + +Two days later she is called upon to perform the task she has +undertaken. Probably she has spent those two days, and also the +appertaining nights, in bracing her mind to it, for Jim can plainly see +the marks of that struggle, though he is not aware of its existence, +graved upon her face, on the third morning after the excursion to the +Mole, when he comes in search of her. He does not find her in her +accustomed corner of the terrace, but, looking down over the balustrade, +sees her sitting below and alone on a small tree-shaded plateau that +seems to have been levelled for lawn-tennis or bowls. Probably the +giggling and chaffering of the girls on the terrace, and the respectful +but persistent importunities of the Omars and Ahmeds to buy their +colourful wares outspread on the hot flags have oppressed her spirits. + +Fritz has carried down for her an arm-chair, a cane table, and a Persian +rug for her feet, and she looks as if she were established for the day. + +Since Byng has been out of danger Elizabeth has returned to her +embroidery. She is one of those women to whom needlework is unaffectedly +dear, like that other sweet woman "who was so delicate with her needle." + +Before she catches sight of him he watches for a few moments her bright +bent head and flying white fingers, and is able to perceive how many +sighs she is sewing into the pattern. + +"What a morning!" he says, running down the steps and joining her. "No +one has any excuse for being an invalid to-day, has he?" + +There is no second seat, so he stands beside her, looking up over her +head at the tall trees above her, from which immense garlands of ivy are +hanging and swinging in the warm breeze. That potent ivy has killed one +tree altogether. + +She glances up at him mutely, knowing that he has not come merely to +tell her that the day is fine. + +"We can hardly keep him on his sofa; he is virtually almost well, so +well that he is quite up to seeing people. He would like--he has been +asking--to see _you_." + +He had thought her nearly as pale as it was possible for her to be when +he had first come upon her. He now realizes how many degrees of colour +she then had left to lose. While he speaks she has been mechanically +pulling her thread through, and as he ceases, her lifted hand stops as +if paralyzed, and remains holding her needle in the air. + +It has come, then. For all her two days' bracing, is she ready for it? + +"_Now?_" + +The whisper in which this monosyllable is breathed is so stamped with a +fear that borders on terror, that his one astonished thought is bow best +to reassure her. + +"Not if you do not feel inclined, of course--not unless you like. It can +perfectly well be put off to another time. I can tell him--there will +not be the least difficulty in making him understand--that you do not +feel up to it this morning: that you would rather have more notice." + +"But I would not," she says, standing up suddenly, and with trembling +hands laying her work down upon the table, and beginning from dainty +habit to pin it up in its protecting white cloth. "What good would more +notice--a year's notice--do me?" + +She turns away from him and fixes her unseeing eyes, glassy and dilated, +upon a poplar tree that is hanging tasselled catkins out against the +sky. Then once again she faces him, and he sees that there are cold +beads of agony upon her forehead. + +"Wish for me," she says huskily--"wish very hard for me, that I may get +through it--that we may both get through it--alive!" + +Then, motioning to him with her hand not to follow her, she walks +quickly towards the hotel. + +It is impossible to him to stay quiet. He wanders restlessly away, +straying he knows not whither. The mimosas are out charmingly in the +gardens, sending delicious whiffs of perfume from the soft yellow fluff +of their flowers. The pinky almond-trees are out too, but not till long +afterwards does he know it. + +By-and-by he finds himself strolling, unhindered by a gardener placidly +digging, through the grounds of a villa to let. Gigantic violets send +their messages to his nostrils, the big and innumerable blue blossoms +predominating over the leaves, which in England have to be so carefully +searched for them. Superabundant oranges tumble about his feet; arum +lilies, just discovering the white secret hid in their green sheaths, +stand in tall rows on either side of him; a bed of broad beans points +out the phenomenon of her February flowers to him. He sees and smells +none of them. Have his senses stolen away with his heart into Byng's +bedchamber? They must have done so, or he could not see with such +extraordinary vividness the scene enacting there. He has himself helped +to place it in such astonishing reality before himself. Does not he know +the exact position of the chair she is to occupy? Did not he place it +for her before he went to fetch her? Nor can his reason prevent his +distorted fancy from presenting the interview as one between happy and +confessed lovers. Even the recollection of her features, ghastly and +with beads of agony dewing them, cannot correct the picture of his mind +as he persistently sees it. That she meant, when he parted from her, to +renounce Byng, he has no manner of doubt. But does not he know the +pliancy of her nature? Is not he convinced that the rock on which her +life has split is her inability ever to refuse anyone anything that they +ask with sufficient urgency or with enough plausibility to persuade her +that she can do them a kindness by yielding? + +How much more, then, will she be incapable of resisting the importunate +passion of her own heart's chosen one, freshly risen from a bed of +death? Presently his restless feet carry him away out of the villa +grounds again. He finds himself on the Boulevard Mustapha, and sits down +on the low wall by the roadside, staring absently at a broken line of +dusky stone-pines, cutting the ardent blue of the African sky on the +hill opposite, and at an arcaded campagne throned high up among the +verdure. He knows that it belongs to an Englishman who made reels of +cotton, and the idle thought saunters across his mind how strange it is +that reels of cotton should wind anyone into such a lofty white Eden! +Can the interview be lasting all this while? Is not it yet ended? May +not his tormented fancy see the chair by Byng's sofa once again empty or +occupied by nurse or mother? Will not Mrs. Byng, will not Elizabeth +herself; have seen the unfitness of taxing the sick man's faint powers +by so extreme a strain upon them? But no sooner has this suggested idea +shed a ray of light upon his darkness than an opposing one comes and +blows it out. Has not Byng a will of his own? Will he be likely so soon +to let her go? Nay, having once recovered her, will he ever let her out +of his sight again? The thought restores him to restless action, and, +although with sedulous slowness, he begins to retrace his steps towards +the hotel. At a point about a quarter of a mile distant from it, the +lane which leads to the Villa Wilson debouches into the road, and +debouching also into the road he sees the figure of Cecilia, who, +catching sight of him, as if unable to wait for him to join her, almost +runs to meet him. + +"I was coming to call upon you," says she eagerly. "Oh!"--with a +laugh--"to-day I really cannot stay to think of the proprieties, and you +have not been to see us for such centuries!" + +"I have been nursing Byng." + +"Oh yes; poor man! How dreadfully ill he must have been! I was so glad +to hear he was better." + +There is such a flat tepidity in the tone of these expressions of +commiseration, something so different from the tender alertness of +Cecilia's former interest in their object, that Jim, roused out of his +own reflections to regard her more attentively than he has yet done, +sees that she is preoccupied by some subject quite alien to the invalid. + +"I have a piece of news to tell you"--with a sort of angry chuckle. +"Such a piece of news! I am sure you will be delighted at it." + +At her words a wonder as idle and slack as his late thought about the +reels of cotton crosses him as to what possible piece of news to be told +him by the buxom and excited person, before him could give him the +faintest pleasure. That wonder sends up his eyebrows, and throws a mild +animation into his voice. + +"Indeed?" + +"Do you like"--still chuckling--"to be told a piece of news or to guess +it?" + +"I like to be told it." + +"Well, then"--with a dramatic pause--"we are going to have a wedding in +the family!" + +"My dear girl!" cries he, smiling very good-naturedly, and with a +sensation that, though not violent, is the reverse of annoyance. +"Hurrah! So he has come at last! Who is he? How dark you have kept him!" + +Cecilia shakes her head and gives a short and rosy laugh. + +"Oh, it is not I! You are wide of the mark." + +"Your father?"--in a shocked voice. + +He has a confused and illogical feeling that a second marriage on the +part of Mr. Wilson would be a slight upon Amelia's memory. + +"_Father!_"--with an accent that plainly shows him he is still further +afield than in his first conjecture--"poor father! No, indeed; Heaven +forbid! Fancy me with a stepmother!" + +She pauses to give a shudder at the idea, while Jim gapes blankly at +her, wondering whether she has gone off her head. + +"Oh no; it is neither father nor I! No wonder you look mystified. It +is--_Sybilla!_" + + +"SYBILLA!!!!" + +Although Mr. Burgoyne has not got it on his conscience that he has ever +either expressed or felt anything but the most strenuous and entire +disbelief in Sybilla's maladies, yet it has never occurred to him as +possible that she should engage in any occupation nearer akin to the +ordinary avocations of life than imbibing tonics through tubes and +eating beef essences out of cups. + +"She is going to marry Dr. Crump!" continues Cecilia, not on the whole +dissatisfied with the effect of her torpedo. "When she told father, she +said that he had saved her life, and that the least she could do was to +dedicate the poor remainder of it to him. She tells other people that +she is marrying him because we wish it! You know that that was always +her way." + +"SYBILLA!!" + +"I thought that there must be something in the wind, as since the +beginning of the month she has never once wished us good-bye; and the +housemaid upset the ink-bottle over the book of prescriptions without +her ever finding it out; and the clinical thermometer has not appeared +for a week!" + +"SYBILLA!!!" + +"I thought I should surprise you; it gives one a disgust for the idea of +marrying altogether, does not it? I have come to the conclusion that I +do not care now if I never marry. Father and I get on quite happily +together; and when one is well off, one can really be very fairly +content in a single state; and, at all events, I am sure I do not envy +Sybilla." + +"Nor I Crump"--with an emphasis so intense that Cecilia bursts out into +a laugh of a more genuine character than any she has yet indulged in. + +"You will have to give her away!" she cries, as soon as she can again +speak distinctly. "Father will marry her, of course, and you must give +her away. I am sure she will insist upon it." + +"She will have to make haste, then," returns he, recovering enough from +his first stupefaction to join Cecilia in her mirth; "for I shall not be +here much longer." + +"You are not going away?"--raising her eyebrows, and with a tinge of +meaningness in her tone which vaguely frets him. + +"Why should not I go?" he asks irritably, his short and joyless +merriment quite quenched. "What is there for a man to do here? I have +stayed already much longer than I meant. I am engaged to meet a friend +at Tunis--the man with whom I went to the Himalayas three years ago; we +are going to make an excursion into the interior. I am only waiting for +some guns and things. Why should not I go?" + +"There is no earthly reason," replies she demurely; "only that I did not +know you had any such intention. But then, to be sure, it is so long +since I have seen you--not, I think," glancing at him for confirmation +of her statement rather too innocently, "since the lovers--ha! ha!--and +I met you and Miss Le Marchant driving on the quay." + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + + +Elizabeth's feeble tap at Byng's door is instantly answered by the +nurse, who, opening it smilingly to admit her, the next moment, +evidently in accordance with directions received, passes out herself and +shuts it behind her. Elizabeth, deprived of the chaperonage of her cap +and apron, and left stranded upon the threshold, has no resource but to +cross the floor as steadily as a most trembling pair of legs will let +her. + +The room is a square one, two of its thick walls pierced by Moorish +windows. Drawn up to one of those windows--the one through which Jim had +caught his first glimpse of Elizabeth on the night of his arrival--is +the sick man's sofa. At the side of that sofa his visitor has, all too +soon, arrived. She had prepared a little set speech to deliver at +once--a speech which will give the keynote to the after-interview; but, +alas! every word of it has gone out of her head. Unable to articulate a +syllable, she stands beside him, and if anyone is to give the keynote, +it must be he. + +"This is very, _very_ good of you. It seems a shame to ask you to come +here, with all this horrid paraphernalia of physic about; but I really +could not wait until they let me be moved into another room." + +She has not yet dared to lift her eyes to his face, in terror lest the +sight of the change in it shall overset her most unsure composure. +Already, indeed, she has greedily asked and obtained every detail of the +alteration wrought in him. She knows that his head is shaved, that his +features are sharp, and that his voice is faint; and when, as he ceases +speaking, she at last wins resolution enough to look at him, she sees +that she has been told the truth. His head is shaven, his nose is as +sharp as a pen, and his voice is faint. She has been told all this; but +what is there that she has not been told? What is his voice besides +faint? + +"Will not you sit down? It seems monstrous that I should be lying here +letting you wait upon yourself. Will you try that one?" pointing to the +chair which is figuring at the same moment so prominently in Jim's +tormented fancy. "I am afraid you will not find it very comfortable. I +have not tried it yet, but it looks as hard as a board." + +She sits down meekly as he bids her, glad to be no longer obliged to +depend upon her shaky limbs, and answers: + +"Thank you; it is quite comfortable." + +"Would not it be better if you had a cushion?"--looking all round the +room for one. + +His voice is courteous, tender almost, in its solicitude for her ease. +But is she asleep or awake? Can this be the same voice that poured the +frenzy of its heartrending adjurations into her ear scarce a month ago? +Can this long, cool, white saint--he looks somehow like a young saint in +his emaciation and his skull-cap--be the stammering maniac who, when +last she saw him, crashed down nigh dead at her feet, slain by three +words from her mouth? + +At the stupefaction engendered by these questions, her own brain seems +turning, but she feebly tries to recover herself. + +"I--I am so glad you are better." + +"Thank you so much. Yes, it _is_ nice; nice to be + + "'Not burnt with thirsting, + Nor with hot fingers, nor with temples bursting.' + +Do you remember Keats?" + +After all, there is something of the original Byng left, and the ghost +of his old spouting voice in which he recites the above couplet gives +her back a greater measure of composure than could almost anything else. + +"It is nice, only one would like to be able to jump, not 'the life to +come'--ha! ha!--but the convalescence to come. My mother is even more +impatient than I am. She has made up her mind that we are to be off in +three days, even if I am carried on board on a shutter." + +She can see now that he is very much embarrassed--that his fluency is +but the uneasy cover of some emotion--and the discovery enables her yet +further to regain possession of herself. + +"I should think," she says in her gentle voice, "that you would be very +glad to get out of this room, where--where you have suffered so much." + +"Well, yes; one does grow a little tired of seeing + + "'The casement slowly grow a glimmering square;' + +but"--with a rather forced laugh--"at least, I have had cause to be +thankful that there is no wall-paper to count the pattern of. I have +blessed the white wall for its featureless face." + +She moves a little in her chair, as if to assure herself that she is +really awake. That stupefaction is beginning to numb her again--that +hazy feeling that this is not Byng at all, this polite invalid, making +such civil conversation for her; this is somebody else. + +"But I must not tire myself out before I have said what I want to say to +you," he continues, his embarrassment perceptibly deepening, while his +transparent hand fidgets uneasily with the border of the coverlet thrown +over him, "or"--laughing again--"I shall have that tyrant of a nurse +down upon me, and--and I do wish--I have wished so much--so +unspeakably--to see you, to speak to you." + +She sits immovable, listening, while a ray of something--can it be hope? +why should it be hope?--darts across her heart. After all, this may be +Byng--her Byng; this strange new manner may be only the garment in which +sickness has dressed his passion--a worn-out garment soon to drop away +from him in rags and tatters, and in which cannot she already discern +the first rent? After all, she may have need for her armour--that armour +which, so far, has seemed so pitifully needless. + +"I knew that it would be no use asking leave to send for you any sooner; +they would have told me I was not up to it--would have put me off with +some excuse; so I kept a 'still sough.' Do you know that I never +mentioned your name until to-day? But it has been hard work, I can tell +you; for the last two days I have scarcely been able to bear it, I have +so _hungered_ to see you." + +Her eyelids tremble, and she instinctively puts up her hand to cover her +tell-tale mouth. Surely this is the old language. Surely there is, at +all events, a snatch of it in his last words; and again that prick of +illogical joy quickens the beats of her fainting heart, though she tries +to chide it away, asking herself why she should be in any measure glad +that the love which she has come here for no other purpose than to +renounce, still lives and stirs. + +"You may think I am exaggerating, but in point of fact I cannot by any +expression less strong than the gnaw of downright hunger convey the +longing I have had to see you." + +He pauses with a momentary failure of his still feeble powers. + +She catches her breath. Now is the time for her to strike in, to arrest +him before he has time to say anything more definite. Now is the time +for her to fulfil her promise, her inhuman promise, which yet never for +one instant strikes her as anything but irrevocably binding. Does he see +her intention, that he plunges, in order to anticipate it, into so +hurried a resumption of his interrupted sentence? + +"To see you, in order to beg--to supplicate you to forgive me for my +conduct to you." + +She gives an almost imperceptible start. This ending is not what she had +expected, not the one to defend herself against which she has been +fastening on her buckler and grasping her shield. The words that it +demands in answer are not those with which she has been furnishing +herself, and it is a moment or two before she can supply herself with +others. He must be referring, of course, to his last meeting with +her--that one so violently broken off by the catastrophe of his +collapse. + +"I do not know what I am to forgive," she says, half bewildered. "You +were not accountable for your actions. You were too ill to know what you +were doing." + +"Oh, you think I am alluding to that last time," cries he, precipitately +correcting her. "No, no; you are right. I was not accountable then. You +might as well have reasoned with a wild beast out of a menagerie. I was +a perfect Bedlamite then. No"--going on very rapidly, as it in desperate +anxiety to make her comprehend with the least possible delay--"what I am +asking you--asking you on my knees--to forgive me for, is my whole +conduct to you from the beginning." + +The two white faces are looking breathlessly into each other, and though +of late he has been tussling with death on a bed, and she has been +walking about, and plying her embroidery, and dining at a public table, +hers is far the whiter of the two. It must be the unwonted exertion of +talking so much that makes him bring out his next speech in jerks and +gasps. + +"I forced my acquaintance upon you at the very beginning; I watched you +like a detective; I beset you wherever you went; I pestered you with my +visits. Jim always told me that it was not the conduct of a gentleman, +but I would not believe him--not even when"--how difficult it is! he +finds it almost as hard work as his mother had done upon the Mole--"not +even when, by my importunities, I had driven you away--obliged you to +rush away almost by night from a place you liked--a place you were happy +in--to escape me. And I have no excuse to offer you--none; unless, +indeed, as I sometimes think, my mind was off its balance even then. I +express myself wretchedly!"--in a tone of deep distress--"but you will +overlook that, will not you? You will--will understand what I mean?" + +She makes an assenting motion with her head. At this moment she cannot +speak: she will be able to do so again directly, but she must have just +a minute or two. Yet she must not leave him for an instant in doubt that +she understands him. Oh yes, she understands him--understands that he is +apologizing for having ever loved her; that he is awkwardly trying to +draw the mantle of insanity over even the Vallombrosan wood. It is true +that he does it with every sign of discomfort and pain; and he looks +away from her, as Mrs. Byng, too, had found it pleasanter to do. + +"Do you remember what Schiller said when he was dying? 'Many things are +growing clearer to me.' I thought a good deal of those words as I lay +over there"--glancing towards the now neatly-arranged and empty bed. +"One night they thought it was all up with me--I heard them say so. They +did not think I was conscious, but I was; and it did strike me that I +had made a poor thing of it, and that if ever I was given the chance I +would make a new start." + +Again that little assenting movement of her fair head. How perfectly +comprehensible he still is! How well she understands that he is +renouncing her among the other follies of his "salad days"--college +bear-fights, music-halls, gambling clubs. Well, why should not he? Has +not she come here on purpose to renounce him? Can she quarrel with him +for having saved her the trouble? + +"And I thought that I could not begin better than by falling on my knees +to you. I wish I could fall on my real knees to you!"--with a momentary +expression of extreme impatience at his own bodily weakness--"and ask +you most humbly and tenderly and reverently to pardon me." + +She looks at him, and sees his wasted face flushing with fatigue and +worry and mental suffering. Oh, what a bitter wave of desolateness rolls +over her! But she smiles. + +"I still do not understand what I am to forgive you for. I suppose that +you could no more help having once thought you loved me, than you can +help"--she stops abruptly in compassion for the look of acute regret, +shame and remorse that crosses his sharp features, and, in her mercy to +him, gives a different close to her phrase from that which its beginning +had seemed to bespeak--"than you can help having been so ill." + +Her tone, quite unconsciously to herself is inexpressibly touching; and +Byng, weakened by illness, turns his face upon the pillow, and breaks +into violent weeping. His mother had cried too. It seems to be in the +family. + +She has risen--what further is there for her to stay for?--and pauses +quietly at his side till the paroxysm is past. Her standing posture +tells him that she is going, and he consequently struggles to recover +himself in some degree; but having never cultivated self-control when he +was in health, it declines to come at his enfeebled bidding now. + +"Forgive me! forgive me!" is all he can stammer. + +She looks down upon him with a strange and tender smile, in which for +the moment the selfless, pitying sweetness has swallowed up the misery. + +"Which am I to forgive you for--for having loved me? or for having +ceased to love me? For having been mad? or for being sane? Yes, of +course I forgive you from the very bottom of my heart! God bless you! +Make haste and get well!" + +She walks cheerfully to the door, and, reaching it, turns, still wearing +that smile, that he may see how perfectly friendly is her last look; but +he does not see it. He has rolled over on his face, and the whole sofa +is shaking with his sobs. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + + "The pity of it, Iago! The pity of it!" + + +The Byngs are gone, having got off just within the time first suggested +by the sick man's mother. But, after all, he has to be carried on board +the _Eugene Perrere_. Since his interview with Miss Le Marchant, his +progress towards recovery has scarcely been so smooth or so fast as +before; and perhaps his mother is right to bear him away with what seems +such overhaste, even though it be on men's shoulders that he has to make +his exit. At all events, he is gone. The hotel--of which a part of the +inmates have seen him only prostrate and bleeding, and the other and +larger part have not seen him at all, but have had their curiosity +whetted by the tale of his calamitous arrival, only to have it balked by +his hurried departure--crowd into the entrance-hall, some on one +pretext, some on another, most on no pretext at all, to see him go. +There are only two of the visitors whose faces cannot be seen among the +good-naturedly curious and sympathetically pitiful group that watch the +exodus of the little party. Who shall say how those two spend the hour +of Byng's departure out of their lives? Jim has accompanied the invalid +to the quay to see the last of him; has stayed with him till the final +bell warns non-passengers off the boat; has left him with all the proper +requests and adjurations to let him know how the sick man bears the +voyage; how they get on, etc. But as Mrs. Byng stands on the upper deck +and watches the trail of churned water lengthening between her and the +dwindling high white town, she has a feeling that her old friend does +not like her as well as he did, and that it will never again be quite +the same thing between them. + +The Byngs are gone--have been gone a fortnight--and March is here. Over +the villa faces the begonias have broken into riotous flower, and the +snowy-blossomed fruit-trees, that have put on their snowy garments but +lately, stand out in bright fragility against the heavy green that +never, even in January, ceases to wrap itself about the lovely Moslem +town. + +Every day for the last fortnight, Jim, too, has been going, but he is +not yet gone. His guns have arrived ten days ago, and his friend has +expressed by post and wire his weariness of exploring the bazaars of +Tunis alone. But he is not yet gone to join that impatient friend. Why +does he still linger in a place where, as he had justly explained to +Cecilia, there is nothing for him to do? Why indeed? It is a question +that, by night and day, by the insolence of the staring moonlight which +slides in upon his restless open eyes by night, under the fires of the +great spring sun at noon, he asks himself. All the answer he can give is +that it would be hardly friendly to choose this moment, when she is so +down in the world, to leave Elizabeth. + +She is down in the world; there can be no mistake about that. Even her +father, who has returned from his wanderings, must be aware of this +fact. Perhaps that is the reason why he no longer snubs her as much as +he did; why he even accepts, with some semblance of graciousness, those +affectionate and watchful ministrations which she tenders him with as +gentle an assiduity as in her brighter days. But he has still no great +appetite for her society; and she, unresentfully divining it, gives up +to him, without repining, the one great solace of her melancholy--her +mother's company. If Jim were gone, the more part of her life would be +spent alone. She tells him so--tells him, with a sweet flattering smile, +how much his comradeship is to her. Has he any right to rob her of that +last prop? It is only to himself that the breathless clamberings up the +steep short cut to El Biar, deep and brambly as her own Devonshire +lanes, that the gazings in common over the pigeon-necked sea and the +amaranth hills, can do any harm. They may put a sting into his own +after-life--a sting that all the empty years that follow may be +powerless to extract; but to her they serve only as a narcotic to numb +the intensity of that ache which the cured madness of Byng has left +behind it. Some day, of course, he must leave her; he cannot pass his +whole life at her side; some day soon leave her to walk and sit and +study her Italian Grammar forlornly alone. But it must not be until she +has a little plucked up her spirits. + +As soon as he sees any signs of this occurring, he will quit +Algiers--quit it comfortably, with the consciousness of having done a +good-natured thing, by which nobody is the worse. This is the compromise +at which he arrives with the inward adviser--conscience, common-sense, +what you will--that is hourly admonishing him to be gone. Does Elizabeth +guess that her retention of the companion, to whom she so desolately +clings, hangs on her remaining always as crushed as the first ten days +after those cruel interviews with the Byngs, mother and son, had left +her? If she did, she would probably seek to check the first faint +revivings of cheerfulness in her inveterately gay spirit. Instead, while +her heart is yet at its sickest, she earnestly tries to foster the tiny +seeds of cheerfulness, saying to herself that it is mere selfishness in +her to inflict her dismalness upon her one friend; seeking rather to +lift his spirits, which seem scarcely less drooping than her own. + +Does he enter into her motive? Does not it rather strike him with a +species of shock how superficial must be the nature, how on the surface +the suffering, of one who can already begin again to take a mischievous +interest in the Widow Wadman's amours, and to mimic afresh the Cockney +twang of the French Vicomte's English governess? + +It is three weeks to-day since the Byngs left. The weather is fine, and +a hot sunbeam is lighting up the painful indecision of Jim's face, as he +stands in his bedroom with an open telegram in his hand, which two hours +ago was put into it. It is from his friend at Tunis, and is conceived in +terms which demonstrate that the indignation of the sender has got the +better of his economy. It contains a stringent representation of his +inability any longer to dance attendance upon Burgoyne's whims, and a +peremptory request, answer paid, to be at once informed either that he +will join him immediately, or that the idea of their joint excursion has +been entirely abandoned. He is standing holding the paper in miserable +uncertainty, torn by doubts, rent in twain by conflicting emotions, when +the noise of voices and laughter outside the house draws him to the +window. + +The room he has occupied since he vacated his own for Byng looks out +over the hall-door, and in front of that door a small group is +gathered--the Vicomte, his two boys, his girl, her governess, a +coal-black negro who serves as kitchenmaid to the establishment, +and--Elizabeth. They are all gathered round a tiny donkey, such a +_bourriquot_ as the valiant Tartarin slew, which has evidently been +brought up for sale by its Arab master. Attached to its head gear are +two long reins, and holding these reins is Miss Le Marchant. As Jim +looks out, the _bourriquot_, taking some strange freak into its little +brown head, sets off galloping at a prodigious rate; and +Elizabeth--white gown and blonde hair flying--gallops after it. As she +is dragged at racing pace down the drive, her immoderate laughter comes +borne back on the wind to the spectator of whom she is unconscious. + +The latter has turned away from the window, and sat down to his +writing-table, where he is scribbling a hasty answer to the missive +which has cost him such long deliberation. It does not take a minute to +pen now that he has once made up his mind, nor can it be more than five +from the moment of the donkey's start to that when the telegram is on +its way to the Post Office in Zameth the porter's hand. The die is cast. +When this is the case after long irresolution, there must always be a +sense of relief, and perhaps, therefore, it is relief which Jim's face, +thrown down upon his arms rested on the table, expresses. Since no one +can see that hidden face, it is impossible to say. He has certainly no +wish that Elizabeth should be unhappy. Her patient white misery had +filled him with tender pity and ruth; and yet her laugh, sweet and +delicate as it was with all its excess of merriment, rings jarringly in +his ears. She is incapable of a great constancy. He had promised himself +to stay with her until her spirits were restored. Well, he has kept his +promise handsomely. He has done with her and her contradictions now. It +will be someone else's turn with her next. Whose? The Vicomte's, +perhaps. + +By-and-by he rouses himself. Only a part of his task is yet done. He +must tell them that he is going. As he passes the looking-glass, he sees +that his hair is roughened and erected by his late attitude. He passes a +brush hastily over it. He must not look a Bedlamite like Byng. He finds +Mr. and Mrs. Le Marchant sitting under the ficus-tree on the +terrace--the terrace which, at this hour, they have to themselves. She +is reading aloud to him paragraphs out of the Algerian paper, +translating as she goes along, since his French is about on a par with +that of most Englishmen of his standing. + +He is leaning back in a wicker chair, with an expression of placid +good-humour on his face. Across his knees the hotel cat--a plain and +ill-natured animal--lies, loudly purring, while he obligingly scratches +her judiciously whenever she indicates a wish for that relaxation. As +Burgoyne remembers, Mr. Le Marchant had always been on very friendly +terms with the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air. About the +little group there is such an air of content, of harmony, of +completeness in itself, that none can connect the idea of a third person +with it in anything but an interloping attitude. And yet there is a +third person whose presence must be continually infringing its happy +duality, since niche of her own in life has she none. + +"Are you looking for Elizabeth?" asks Elizabeth's mother, laying down +her paper as the new-comer draws near; "she has walked to Biermandreis." + +The intimate friendliness of her smile as she gives him this bit of +information--the matter of course taking for granted that he must be +seeking her whose society he has so wholly monopolized of late--plants a +new sting in Jim's sore heart, and robs him for the moment of the power +to make his announcement. + +"She has not been gone more than ten minutes"--still with that bright +look of kindly confidence that she is answering his thoughts. + +"I am looking for you all," he answers abruptly. "I came to tell you +that I am off to-morrow." + +The shaft is sped. Though he is not looking at Mrs. Le Marchant, he +knows that her face has fallen. Upon Mr. Le Marchant's, on the contrary, +an added shade of cheerfulness is visible. Mr. Le Marchant has ceased +any overt opposition to the young man's intimacy with his family; but +none the less is the young man aware that the father has acquiesced but +grudgingly in the footing on which he had found Jim on his return from +his tour. + +"I have had a wire from my friend in Tunis; he is becoming +dangerous"--laughing, oh, how forcedly! + +"You are going to Tunis?" says Mr. Le Marchant, almost cordially. "You +are quite right; it is a very interesting place. One does really see the +genuine East there, not the mongrel hotch-potch one has here." + +"Is not it rather late for a trip into the interior?" asks the wife. The +geniality has gone out of her tone, and the sunshine out of her face. +There is a touch of involuntary wistfulness in both. + +"The interior? Oh yes, of course. My dawdling"--more laughter--"has +knocked that on the head. I have let the time for that go by. We intend +to run over to Spain and see the Alhambra and the Escurial." + +There is a general silence. Well, it is done. Neither husband nor wife +makes any effort to alter his resolution or detain him. They do not even +put any questions to him as to his future projects. He has nothing to do +but remove himself and allow them to resume that happy little duet which +he had disturbed. + +"The train sets off at such an unearthly hour to-morrow morning--six +o'clock or thereabouts; it would take three days to get there if it did +not--that I must put my things together this afternoon. I shall see you +again, of course, before I go." + +"Oh, of course," replies Mr. Le Marchant, in the easy and comfortable +tone of one to whom it is a matter of supreme indifference whether or +not that farewell meeting ever takes place, and Mrs. Le Marchant says +nothing at all. + +He has adduced his necessary packings as an excuse for leaving them; +though, indeed, they neither wished for nor asked any excuse; yet +nothing is further from his intentions than to enter at once upon that +occupation. She has walked to Biermandreis. In five minutes he is +walking thither too. There are a couple of roads that lead there, and of +course he takes the wrong one--the same, that is, that she had taken, so +that, although he walks fast, yet, thanks to her start of him, he has +reached the pretty little flower-shaded French village which, with its +white church and its Ecole Communale, looks as if it were taken to +pieces at night and put to bed in a toy-box--he has reached it, and has, +moreover, traced half his homeward way, before he overtakes her. The +path by which he returns is a rough Arab track, cut in low steps up the +hill, each step a mass of fossil-shells--whelk, and scallop and oyster +shells, whose inhabitants died--strange thought!--before Adam saw Eden's +fair light. It is a charming road, cut, in part, through the red rock, +over which the southern greenery tumbles. He has approached quite close +to her before she sees him. She is sitting on a camp-stool by the +wayside, looking vacantly before her. Her figure is rather stooped, and +her straight back bent, as if it were not worth the trouble to hold it +up. Beside her, on the ground, lie a little tin colour-box and +water-bottle and a drawing-board. He wishes, with a new pang, that he +had not come upon her so suddenly. He is afraid that this is one of the +aspects of her that will stick most pertinaciously in his memory. +Catching sight of him, her whole sad, listless face lights up. + +"It is you! I was sure you would come. I told them to tell you where I +had gone. I meant to sketch"--with a glance at her neglected +implements--"but"--with a sigh--"as you see, I did not." + +"Are you down on your luck?" he asks, sitting down by her side; "you did +not seem so"--trying to harden his heart by forcing a recollection of +her extravagant gaiety--"a little while ago, when you were prancing +after that jackass." + +"Is not he a darling?" cries she, hurrying up the end of her sigh to +make room for a smile of pleasure. "I want to buy him; only I am afraid +he might die of sea-sickness going home." + +"Perhaps"--scarcely knowing what he is saying. + +"I should like to buy a little cart to harness him to--such a one as I +saw just now going along the road, drawn by a tiny _bourriquot_ that +might have been twin brother to mine. Some Arab children had dressed out +both him and his cart with branches of that great yellow fennel--his +long ears and his little nose peeped out so pathetically between; +another child walked after barefoot, waving a great acanthus-leaf. You +never saw anything so pretty! Yes, you must break mine in for me," +smiling again; "it will not take more than a week, I am sure." + +"If it did not take more than a day even, I am afraid I should have to +decline the appointment"--seizing this opening to blurt out his news. "I +am off at six o'clock to-morrow morning. I--I want to see the Escurial." + +She had been almost garrulous about the little donkey, and he had wished +to stop her. In that he has undoubtedly succeeded. + +How the asphodels cover the banks on either hand! They have come into +full flower since last he passed this way: tall branching stem, white +blossom, and pinky bud; here they are in thousands. + +It is a soft day, on which scents lie heavy, and their strong +odour--that is scarcely perfume, and yet has an odd, acrid charm--fills +the air. + +"Everything must come to an end," he says baldly. + +She is apparently not going to make any more effort to detain him than +had her mother. He has every right to come and go where and when he +pleases. Since Amelia died, to no human being is he accountable for his +actions, and yet there is both guilt and misery in his voice as he +utters his platitude. + +"It has been great good luck for me that you have stayed so long; I know +that it is out of pure kindness that you have done it, and it has made +all the difference to me. I--I am quite set up again now, thanks to you; +and--and summer is coming on, and I shall do very well--capitally!" + +She has detected--what is, indeed, pretty obvious--the deep distress of +his face and voice, and, in her habitual unselfishness, her one thought +is to relieve him of any self-reproachful misgiving that he is doing +aught cruel in robbing her of the support of his companionship. In her +tone is nothing but the meekest gratitude. It is her misfortune, not her +fault, that in it there is not cheerfulness too. But her "gentle +physic," instead of curing, seems to aggravate his ill. + +"It must come to an end some time or other!" he murmurs wretchedly, as +if to himself. + +"Yes!" + +Dead silence. + +Below the slight eminence where they sit, the road winds white, and upon +the opulent low green hills on its further side, what a banquet of +colour! On one steep slope the plough is driving its difficult furrows, +turning up the rich red earth, shaded with deeper claret and lighter +pink stains. + +Beneath, a square of stone-pines looks like a green velvet handkerchief +spread on the hillside, and over the rest of the upland eucalyptus, and +olive, and cactus hold their riot of various verdure; while, on the +tiptop of everything, against a weirdly pale-blue sky-field, a Moorish +villa lifts its white flank. + +How long have they both been staring dully at that fair prospect before +Elizabeth again speaks!-- + +"You were a very good friend to me!" + +She had not meant that past tense as an arrow to shoot into his heart; +but it sticks there, barbed. + +"I do not know how." + +"And friends--real, good friends--should not have concealments from each +other, should they? They should tell one another about themselves?" + +"Yes." + +A pause. + +"I have often wished--often tried to tell you about myself; but I could +not. I never could! I can tell you to-day if you wish, if you care to +hear. Do you care?" + +"_Do I care?_" + +What a small battlefield those three words make for the anger and agony +they express to fight upon! + +Another longer pause. + +She has taken off her hat, and now passes her handkerchief over her damp +forehead. + +"I shall be all right when I have once begun, but it is bad to make a +start." + +"Do not make it! do not tell me! I adjure you not to tell me! it hurts +you too much!" + +"It would hurt me more to let you go without telling you. Do you +remember"--rushing desperately into her subject--"at the time you stayed +with us at the Moat, that there was a great talk among us of my having +my portrait painted?" + +He knits his brow in an eager straining of his memory. + +"Yes, I recollect." + +"Father was wonderfully proud of me in those days; it seems impossible +to believe it now"--with a passing look of incredulity at her own +statement--"but he was." + +"Yes, yes." + +"Do you remember all the arranging and planning as to who was to be the +artist, and that he was to come and stay in the house to paint it?" + +Jim has put his hand up to his forehead as if to quicken the return of +those faint and distant impressions which are coming out in stronger and +stronger colours on memory's surface. + +"Yes, yes; he was not an Englishman, was he? We used to laugh about +him"--adding stroke to stroke in order to convince her of the accuracy +of his recollections--"used to call him the 'distinguished foreigner.'" + +"Did we? Yes"--slowly--"I remember now that we did. Well"--gathering +herself up for a supreme effort, panting painfully, and turning her head +quite aside so that he may have no glimpse of her face--"he came, and he +stayed two months, and at the end of those two months I--I--ran away +with him!" + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +VALE? + + +One would have thought that Jim had been in some measure prepared for +the just-fallen blow, both by the overheard fragments of Mr. Greenock's +conversation with the Devonshire clergyman at Florence last year; by the +accumulated evidence of there being some blight upon Elizabeth's life; +and, lastly and chiefly, by the ravings of Byng. But there is something +so different from all these, so infinitely more dreadful, in hearing +this naked statement from her own lips, that it stuns him as much as if +he had never received any hint of that ruinous secret in the background +of her life. + +Having now uttered it, she stops, either to pick up her own spent +strength or to give him the opportunity for some question or comment. + +He makes neither. + +"I thought--I hoped--that you had guessed, from what Mr. Byng said. I +believed that when he was not himself----" + +Again she breaks off, but still no sound comes from Jim. + +"You understand, of course, that that was what I told him. I wanted to +tell him the rest, but that time he could not hear it, and the last time +he--he--did not care to hear it." + +His continued muteness must daunt her, for she here makes a longer pause +than before. Indeed, it is only the fear lest she should mean it for a +final one that enables him to force out the two husky monosyllables: + +"Go on." + +She is always most obedient, and she now obeys. + +"He came only two days after you left us; that was why the sight of you +was so--so painful to us at first. It was not your fault, but we could +not help mixing you up with him. You remember how we tried to avoid +you--how discourteous we were? You forgave us afterwards, but you must +have observed it." + +The listener makes a slight motion of assent. + +"He was a Hungarian, and had been recommended to father by Sir ----, +who, as you know, is always so extraordinarily kind to struggling +artists, and who thought highly of his talent, and wished to get him +commissions. He was almost starving in London; that was one great +reason, I think, why father employed him." + +Even at this moment the thought darts across Jim's mind that he has +never known Elizabeth miss an opportunity of implying some praise of +that father whose harshness towards herself he has so often had an +opportunity of witnessing. + +"He was quite young--not more than twenty-three--and he looked very ill +when he first came; indeed, he was really half starved. It has always +been the surest passport to mammy's heart to be poor and sick and down +in the world, and nothing could have been kinder than they both were to +him." + +"And well he repaid their kindness," says Jim, indignation at last +giving him words. + +She puts out her hand, as if to stop him. + +"Wait, wait!" she says, almost authoritatively; "do not abuse him. He +seemed very grateful to them, and they all--we all--became quite fond of +him. When he grew stronger, he turned out to be very lively and +light-hearted--almost as light-hearted as we." + +She pauses, pulled up by a deep sigh, at the reminiscence of that young +gaiety, then hurries on, as if afraid of his again breaking in upon her +narrative with some scathing ejaculation. + +"Before three weeks were over--you know how cheerful and easy-going we +were--he was quite one of us--quite as--as intimate as you were." + +Jim stirs uneasily, galled by the comparison. + +"He was a long time painting my picture--could not satisfy himself with +the likeness--and began it over again several times. At first there was +always someone in the room with us when I sat to him, but by-and-by, as +he became more and more one of us--as his presence among us grew to be a +matter of course--we were allowed often to be _tete-a-tete_." + +She stops to let pass two Frenchmen and a Frenchwoman of the _petit +bourgeois_ class who are sauntering homewards, frisked about by two +little cheerful curs, and with armfuls of hawthorn--yes; real English +hawthorn--in their embrace. They look inquisitively, but not rudely, at +the pale couple, and now they are out of sight. + +"It was a very fine autumn, as you may remember, and we used to go out +sketching together. He was supposed to give us sketching lessons--the +children and me. The governess was by way of always being there, but she +was a sentimental creature, generally straying away by herself with a +poetry-book, and we were virtually alone." + +Jim sees how increasingly, how horribly difficult of relation is the +tale as it nears its catastrophe; but he is quite incapable of helping +her. + +"We fell in love with one another"--almost brusquely--"and he asked me +to marry him. What did his miserable poverty matter to us? He knew +almost as little of the practical business of life as I, and he was full +of hope and ambition. He was convinced that he had a future before him. +Perhaps he had. Who knows?" + +There is mixed with the hurry and shame and anguish of her tone such an +element of almost regretful compassion as she pronounces these last +words, that Jim's jealous wrath awakes. Does she, then, love him still? +In her heart for how many is there lodging at once? For Byng? For this +unknown? For how many more? + +"Even he, high-flown as he was, knew that it was impossible that father +could permit our marriage if we asked his consent; but what he laboured +to convince me of was, that if the thing were once done and irrevocable, +father would soon, doting as he did on me--you know he _did_ dote on me, +poor father!--he would soon forgive us; and I, after awhile--oh! it was +after awhile; do not think it was at once"--with a piteous effort to +mitigate the severity of her silent judge--"and I have always all my +life been terribly easily persuaded--I gave in." + +Far away a dull cloud, rain-charged, is settling over the Kabyle +mountains, rubbing out their toothed ridge. Can she hold out to the end? + +She has not reached the worst yet. + +"We were soon given an opportunity. Father and mother went away for a +couple of nights upon a visit, and left us under the nominal chaperonage +of a deaf old aunt of mother's, and of the governess, who, as I have +told you, was worse than useless. You know that our railway-station was +not more than a mile from the lodge gates; we had, therefore, no +difficulty in slipping away from the others while we were all out +walking, making our way there, and getting into the little branch-line +train which caught the London express at Exeter." + +She has repeatedly put up her handkerchief, and passed it over her brow, +but it is useless. The cold sweat breaks out afresh and afresh. + +"That journey! I did not know that it was the end of my life. We both +set off laughing and saying to each other what a good joke it was. That +was at the beginning, but long and long before we reached London--it was +not till very late that we did so--I would have given all the world to +go back. I did not tell him so, because I thought it would hurt him, but +I have often thought since that perhaps he was feeling the same." + +Again that touch of almost tender ruth in her voice makes her auditor +writhe. + +"We went to an hotel. I think it must have been in some very +out-of-the-way part of the town, probably the only one he knew of, and +at first they would not take us in because we had no luggage; but they +consented at last. I heard him telling the landlady that I was his +sister. I suppose she did not believe it, as she looked very oddly at +me. I did not understand why she should; but it made me feel very +wretched--so wretched that I could scarcely swallow a mouthful of the +supper he ordered. I do not think that he had much more appetite than I; +but we tried very hard to laugh and keep up each other's spirits. They +gave me a very dismal bedroom--I can see it now"--shuddering--"and as I +had no change of clothes I lay all night outside my bed. It took a great +deal to keep me awake in those days, and, wretched as I was, I slept a +good deal. The next morning I awoke, feeling more cheerful. We should be +married in the forenoon, return home in the afternoon, to spring our +surprise upon the children and Fraeulein, and be ready to receive and be +pardoned by father and mother on their return to-morrow. It had not +occurred to either of us that there would be the slightest difficulty in +pursuing this course. We had decided upon at once inquiring the name and +address of the clergyman in whose parish the hotel was--going together +to ask for an interview, and beg him to marry us at once. We had a vague +idea that a licence might be needed, but relied upon the clergyman also +to inform us where that might be got. In one respect our plans had to be +at once modified. When I came down I found that there was such a dense +fog that he would not hear of my venturing out into it, particularly, he +said, as my staying behind would entail no delay; since, when he had +obtained the licence and engaged the clergyman, he would, of course, at +once come back to fetch me to church. I gave in, though I had rather +have gone with him, and fought my way through the fog than stayed +behind, alone in that dreary sitting-room. I was there nearly all day by +myself until late in the afternoon. The fog was so thick that I could +not see a finger's length beyond the window, nor even across the room. I +had neither book nor work. I had nothing to do but walk up and down by +the flickering light of the bad gas, which was burning all day, and look +at a wretched little dead aucuba in a pot. Sometimes I went out on the +landing to see if there were any signs of his return. I had done this +for the fiftieth time, when at last I saw him through the gas and the +fog, coming up the staircase. I could not wait till he had reached me, +but called out over the banisters, 'Well? Well?' His only answer was a +sort of sign to me to go back into the room; but I did not understand it +at first. Not until I saw, coming up the stairs too, a little behind +him, the face of--of--that clergyman you saw at Certosa--our clergyman +whom we used to make fun of. Oh, why did we?" + +She breaks off with a low moan, but at once resumes as if she could not +trust herself to pause: + +"As soon as I caught sight of him I ran back; but it was too late. I +knew that he had recognised me. I do not, to this day, understand how he +came to be in that out-of-the-way place; whether it was a most +unfortunate coincidence, or whether he had seen us in the train or at +Paddington, and tracked us there. I ran back, as I have said, into the +room; but I did not really mind much his having seen me; it would all be +explained so soon, and I was too much taken up with the bitter +disappointment in store for me to give him more than a passing thought. +Of course you will understand that it was not in the power of any +clergyman to marry us, as neither of us had lived in the parish for the +requisite time beforehand, nor could we be married at a registry office, +as our names had not been entered in the registrar's book for the legal +time. I think I should have broken down altogether when I heard this if +I had not had to comfort him. He was so overwhelmed with the fear that I +should think that it was his fault--that he had not done his best. +Heaven knows I had no such hard thought of him! Although we consulted +together all that evening, and till late into the night, we could not +hit upon any expedient. He had been told vaguely that the Scotch +marriage law differed from the English, and that in Edinburgh we might +be married at once. But we had not enough money to take us there. Our +whole stock would only just buy an ordinary licence, keep us one day +more at the hotel, and take us home third class. What _should_ we do? We +did not even try to laugh that evening--that last evening!" + +In her voice is the same echo of some pitying sorrow that had before +offended him; but his interest is now too strung up for him to notice +it. + +"I did not once close my eyes that night, and when I came down next +morning I had made up my mind to beg him to let me go home and ask +father to make everything right. I had such confidence that father could +set everything right. When I came into the sitting-room he was not +there. I waited for him, and after awhile the breakfast was brought up; +but still he did not come. I waited on. It seemed to me odd that, at +such a crisis, when we were both so miserable, he should be able to +oversleep himself I am afraid"--with an accent of most regretful +remorse--"that I did think hardly of him then. I looked at the clock; I +had been down an hour. I rang for the waiter, and asked him to go and +tell the gentleman this. He was so long in coming back that I lost +patience, and went out into the passage. I saw a little group of people +gathered round a door some way down it. They seemed to be whispering and +speaking excitedly, and one chambermaid was crying. In an instant I was +among them, through them, in the room. It was his bedroom. He was lying +half on, half off the bed. He had evidently not undressed all night, and +had taken off nothing but his coat. Before they could stop me--I believe +that they humanely tried--I had caught a glimpse of his face, and had +heard someone, as if at a great distance off, pronounce the word +'_dead_'! Then everything went away. I believe I crashed down like a +log, as Mr. Byng did. When next I came to myself mammy was leaning over +me. The people in the hotel had found a letter in my pocket, with my +address, and had telegraphed for her and father. They took me home. I do +not remember anything about that, but so I was told afterwards, as I was +also told that he had died of deep-seated heart-disease, aggravated by +his anxiety about me. I have never brought good-luck to anyone that had +to do with me!" + +She is crying quietly now. Is it her tale or her tears that have +softened Jim's heart? He no longer grudges her that tribute to the lover +of her youth. + +"For the first few days after I came home I did not feel anything at +all, and I saw nobody but mammy. At the end of a week she came to me, +and told me that I must pull myself together, for that my father wished +me to go with him to an agricultural meeting at Exeter, which we were +always in the habit of attending. She said that there were reports about +me in the county, which nothing but my appearing in public would +contradict She said she knew how hard it was for me, but that she knew, +too, that I would try to make the effort for their sakes. _For their +sakes!_"--in a heart-wrung voice--"was not it the least I could do, _for +their sakes_? I got up; my legs felt as if they did not belong to me. +She dressed me herself--darling mammy!--and she tied on my veil, +and--put some rouge on my cheeks! Think of mammy rouging anyone! If you +remember, we had had some charades while you were with us, and had +bought some rouge for them. And then she took me down to father, and we +went--he and I." + +Her breath has grown shorter, and her narrative more disjointed; but she +perseveres. Is not she near the end? + +"We went--and we walked about--among the shorthorns--and the prize +poultry--and the tents--father and I--and we met a great many people +whom we knew--the whole county was there--but we were too late. Our +Rector had been before us with them--and not one of them would speak to +me! Not one of them would have anything to say to me! And then we went +home. Oh, poor father!" + +She has covered her face with her transparent hands. The emotion that +she would not permit herself for herself has mastered her at the +recollection of that father's abasement and agony. + +"He was quite right--it was quite natural that he should not allow me to +live at home, after that. He said I must not blight the children's +lives--must not stand in the light of the others. So I was sent away to +live with some old friends of mammy's--two kind old ladies--with whom +she had been at school; and they were very good to me, and I lived with +them until, as Miriam and Rose were married, father thought I could not +do anyone any more harm, and he let me come home again. There! that is +all!" + +She stops, her tale ended, sighing with the inexpressible relief of that +lifted load. Speech from him now would be no interruption--would be +kindly, rather, and welcome. Yet he still stares blankly before him. Why +has she told him that painful tale? Is it that he may carry a more +lenient judgment of her through the rest of his life--that life to be +finally severed from hers? Or is it with some hope that that told tale +may keep him for ever beside her? She does not love him. She loves Byng. +But, as he has often told himself, she is not of the stuff of which +great constancies are made. And, since Byng has forsaken her, whom has +this pliant creature, that nature made so clinging and circumstances so +lonely, left to throw her tendrils round, except him? She does not love +him, and yet in the depth of his heart he knows that, if he wished it, +he could make her love him. Shall he wish it? Shall he stay--stay to +have those exquisite eyes, tear-washed, and yet laughing, watching for +his lightest wish; that tripping step keeping time to his up the hills +and through the valleys of life; that delicate sympathy, soaring with +his highest thoughts, and yet playing with his lightest fancies? Shall +he? + +Elizabeth is looking down upon the asphodels, stooping to stroke, as if +it were a sentient thing, a great plumy plant, like a sort of glorified +fennel, out of whose fluthery breast a puissant sheath rises, from which +an unfamiliar flower is pushing. What a fascination there is in this +alien vegetation, in which every shut calyx holds a delightful secret! + +Shall he? For himself, he believes her story implicitly, feeling, +indeed, with a shock of mixed surprise and remorse, what a past want of +faith in her is evidenced by his unspeakable relief at its being no +worse a one. But who else will believe it? And the more penetratingly +sweet, the more poignantly dear she is to him, the sharper to him will +be the agony of the eye averted from her, the suspicious whisper, or the +contemptuous smile. Is his heart stout enough, is his courage high +enough, to support and uphold her through her life's long contumely? +Dares he undertake that hard task? Dares he? + +Elizabeth is never one apt to take offence, or she might resent his +delay in making any observation on her ended story. Probably she divines +that whatever may be the cause of his slowness, it is certainly not want +of emotion. + +At length his tardy speech makes itself heard. + +"I do not know how--I have not words strong enough with which to thank +you for telling me." + +"I did not want my one friend to go away thinking more hardly of me than +he need," she answers, with a poor, small smile. + +This is one of the bitterest cups to which her lips have ever been set +in the course of her sad history. + +His next sentence is almost inaudible. + +"I could not well think much better of you than I have done all along." + +He knows, without seeing it, that her trembling hand makes a half-motion +to go out to him at those kind-sounding words, but it is drawn back +again before the action has passed much beyond the stage of a project. + +The wind has fallen. With how almost disagreeable a strength does the +sharp and pungent smell of the innumerable asphodels assail the +nostrils. The light grows lower. Dares he? Has he the steady selfless +valour that will be needed to fight through many years by the side of +this forlorn creature against an enemy uglier--and, oh! how much more +potent!--than any of the fierce forest creatures in contest with which +he has so often lightly perilled his life? Dares he? He has never been +lacking in self-reliance--been, perhaps, too little apt to blench at the +obstacles strewn in his life-path. Is he going to blench now? Whether it +be to his credit or his shame, the answer does not come all at once. +Dares he? The response comes at last--comes slowly, comes solemnly, yet +comes certainly: + +"Yes." + +He can never again laugh at Byng for his tears, for he is undoubtedly +crying himself now. + +"Elizabeth! Elizabeth!"--he cannot get further than that at +first--"you--you are the worst-used woman in the world! and I--I have +not the least desire to see the Escurial!" + + + +THE END. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Alas!, by Rhoda Broughton + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALAS! *** + +***** This file should be named 34428.txt or 34428.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/4/4/2/34428/ + +Produced by Meredith Bach, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +book was produced from scanned images of public domain +material from the Google Print project.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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