Alas! Part 55

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 eas.e.m.e.nts, 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-b.u.t.ter, 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, pa.s.sed 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 cuira.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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?" a.s.sents 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 dest.i.tute 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, Ma.r.s.eille."

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 n.o.body echoes.

"He must have sailed yesterday," continues the young man, wis.h.i.+ng 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 s.n.a.t.c.h a reluctant glance at her. She is extremely agitated, but underlying the distress and disturbance of her face there is an undoubted light s.h.i.+ning 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.