Alas! Part 18

"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 b.u.t.ton-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 pa.s.sion 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 Devons.h.i.+re 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 pa.s.sed, 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 rea.s.surance 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 gra.s.s.

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: 'G.o.d made the country, and man made the----'

Ah!"

The subst.i.tution of this e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n 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 _ba.n.a.l_ 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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.sure 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 Devons.h.i.+re. I a.s.sure 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 a.s.severations 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 p.r.o.nounces 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 s.h.i.+vers. 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 s.h.i.+ver?"

He pulls himself together. "I was s.h.i.+vering," he says, compelling himself to a.s.sume 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.