Alas! Part 31

"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 flas.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+rked 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 compa.s.s?"

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 suns.h.i.+ne, 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 pa.s.sage choked by the rus.h.i.+ng 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 alt.i.tude, 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 astonis.h.i.+ng 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 l.u.s.tre, "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 wis.h.i.+ng 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----"