Alas! Part 47

The sun has nearly touched the sea-line by this time, and he sees, or thinks he sees, her s.h.i.+ver.

"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 s.h.i.+vered! I saw you s.h.i.+ver."

"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 bra.s.swork, 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, tw.a.n.ging 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 bal.u.s.trade, 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 bal.u.s.trade, through whose pierced brickwork little boughs of Bougainvillia are pus.h.i.+ng.

"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 gla.s.s," 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 repet.i.tion 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 s.p.a.ce 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 bal.u.s.trade 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 s.h.i.+fts 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 suns.h.i.+ne; carpets, embroidered jackets, flas.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 flas.h.i.+ng 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 const.i.tutional 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?"