Alas! Part 48

"He is not ill."

The answer ought to be rea.s.suring; 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 pa.s.sed 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 circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.ses 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 dispa.s.sionate 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 a.s.sure 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 compa.s.sionate 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 halfwhisper; 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 pa.s.sion 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!"