Alas! Part 57

From this logic it is impossible to move him; and although, with some return to his old sweet-natured kindliness of manner, he begs his friend not to think it necessary to keep him company, yet the latter is far too ill at ease as to his condition, both of mind and body, to comply.

The porter, having drawn the natural inference that as soon as the traveller has refreshed his body he will wish to retire to rest, has put out the lights in the smoking-room; the _salle a manger_ is therefore the only room in the hotel where lamps still burn, and in it the two men spend the dreary remaining hours of the night, Byng walking up and down like a captive beast, frequently going to the door, opening it, putting his head out into the darkness, and listening suspiciously if, perchance, he may hear the footfall of Elizabeth fleeing away from him even through the hurricane. As the time goes on, his restlessness increases rather than diminishes. Jim has vainly tried to distract his thoughts by putting questions to him as to his pursuits and companions since their last parting--by inquiries as to the extent and direction of his travels.

Did he get as far as Palestine? How long is it since he left Cairo? etc.

But to all his interrogations Byng gives brief and unsatisfactory answers, putting a final stop to them by breaking out excitedly:

"Why do you go on questioning me as to where I have been, and what I have done? I tell you I have been nowhere, and done nothing; I believe that my body has been here and there, but my soul has been nowhere; it has been lying dead! Would you expect a man who has been lying six months in his coffin to give you a catalogue of his adventures? My soul has been dead, I tell you--dead and putrescent. What is the use of putting me through a catechism about its doings?"

Before the long-delaying dawn shows its pale profile upon the deep obscurity, it seems to Jim as if six midwinter nights must have pieced themselves end to end. But it comes at last; and at last also, by dint of strenuous representations to his companion as to how unfit he is, in his present travel-stained and disordered condition, to offer himself to Elizabeth's eyes, he induces him to let himself be led to the bedroom prepared overnight for him, and to refresh himself with a bath and a change of clothes. Even this concession he obtains only in exchange for an exacted promise to seek out Elizabeth at the earliest possible hour at which she may be presumed accessible, and urgently to entreat of her an instant interview with his friend.

Jim feels that he is keeping his word handsomely when, not a minute later than nine o'clock, he finds himself knocking at the door of the Le Marchants' apartment--that door with which of late his knuckles have grown so pleasantly and friendlily familiar. It is opened to him by Elizabeth herself, and he follows her silently through the ante-room into the little _salon_. Arrived there, he looks mournfully round with a sort of feeling as of taking farewell of the familiar objects.

It is impossible that Elizabeth can have spent the just-past stormy night in gathering flowers, and yet the flowers have a freshened air.

She must have been carefully rearranging them. The bits of brocade, too, the Turkish embroideries, the _haiks_, and the praying-carpets, wear a more festal appearance than usual. The little room looks decked as if for a gala. His jealous fancy cannot but admit that Elizabeth herself is dressed in her ordinary morning gown, but even over it some holiday trans.m.u.tation has pa.s.sed. He cannot trust himself to verify whether that holiday look is on her face too.

"He has come; you know that, I suppose?"

"Yes."

What a catch in her breath! He must steal a glance at her. She will think it unnatural if he does not; and perhaps his eye may not be offended by so much radiance as he feared. In her voice there was something not very distant from a sob. The result of his glance shows itself in what sounds like a reproach.

"I do not believe that you went to bed at all."

"Yes, I did! yes, I did!" hurrying away eagerly from the subject of herself, as from something irrelevant and importunate; "and--he--how is he? How does he look? Had not he a dreadful crossing? Does he want to see me? to see me soon? to-day?"

There is such a breathless pa.s.sion in her tone, coupled with something so apologetic for putting her questions to him, that his heart, hitherto half touched, half angered by the pathos of her little preparations, melts wholly towards her.

"Of course he wants to see you--wants it very, very much," replies he; and, to his credit, replies without any harshness marring the cordial kindness of his tone. "As much as"--with a rather melancholy smile--"you want to see him. No, do not be angry. Why should not you wish to see each other?"

"Oh, there is every reason!" cries she miserably--"the same reason that there always was. But"--with rising agitation--"where is it to be? How soon? When does he wish it?"

"He is waiting outside now."

She starts painfully.

"_Now!_ Oh, poor fellow! we must not keep him waiting; and yet"--stretching out her hand in detention--"tell me, before he comes in--tell me, is he changed? Is he? Is he the same as he was?"

Jim hesitates, and the painful perplexity written on his brow is misread by her.

"You are vexed with me for teasing you with so many tiresome questions.

Oh, forgive me! I ought not to take advantage of your kindness; but we have grown to depend upon you so; and I will promise not to worry you with any other, if you will only answer me this one. Is he changed--much changed?"

"I am afraid," replies Jim, with the slowness of one who is trying to convey unpleasant tidings in the least unpleasant terms, "that you must be prepared to find him a good deal altered."

"Altered! How?"

"I do not quite know how to describe it"--uneasily--"but you must not be shocked if you find him a good deal changed in looks; and he is--he seems, in a very excited state."

She makes a clutch at his hand.

"Do you mean"--her voice has sunk to a horror-struck whisper--"that he is--mad?"

"Mad! Oh, of course not," with a strained laugh; "you must not jump to such conclusions. But I do not think he is quite himself, that is all.

He looks as if he had not eaten or slept for a fortnight; and if you play such tricks as that with yourself, you must expect to get a little off your balance."

She is still terrifiedly clutching his hand, though with no consciousness of doing so, nor that the fingers so tightly gripped by her are not made of dry stick.

"You must not look so frightened," he says soothingly. "I would not have said anything to you, only that I thought it better you should be prepared--that it should not take you quite by surprise; and also because I wanted to give you a hint, that you might be a little careful what you say to him, or, at all events, how you say it."

Still she does not speak, and there is scarcely any diminution of the horror of her look.

"If you do not mind, I think it would be as well to have someone within call, if he--he--became--unreasonable."

"Do you think," she asks, with a sort of scorn, "that I am afraid of him--afraid for myself?"

"No, that I am sure you are not; but I cannot shake off the idea that--poor fellow!--he may be on the verge of some grave illness; and in that sort of case one never knows what may happen. So, if you do not mind----"

"As you please," she answers, docile even now. "Do as you think best; and will you tell him that I am ready to see him?"

The misgivings with which Jim complies with this request are not much allayed by the manner and voice of him who receives it, and who has been raging up and down the narrow corridor.

"She will not see me, I suppose?"

"On the contrary, she will see you now. But stay!" catching him by the arm as he springs past him. "One moment! For G.o.d's sake control yourself! Behave like a gentleman. Do not make her a scene; she is not up to it."

Byng's answer is to fling resentfully away the detaining hand of his Mentor, while he says, with a furious look coming into his bloodshot eyes:

"What do you mean by keeping me here, preaching to me, while _she_ is waiting for me?"

The rudeness of both words and actions is so unlike the real Byng, that it is with an even more sinking spirit than before that Jim follows him with his eyes as he pa.s.ses out of sight into the _salon_. As soon as the door is shut behind him, he himself takes up the position he had suggested in the ante-room.

CHAPTER IX.

There are few things more trying to an active-minded person than to sit occupationless, vaguely waiting. At first, it is true, the keenness of Jim's alarm prevents his feeling the ennui which would be the natural result of his situation. Poignantly anxious questions succeed each other in his mind. Has he had any right to permit the interview at all? How far is Byng accountable for his actions? What chance is there that his already rocking reason will stand the shock of a meeting which, even in his sanest moments, would have so wildly excited him? And if not, what may be the consequences? Grisly headings of newspaper paragraphs write themselves in the air before him--"Homicidal Mania," "Murder and Suicide."

The details of a tragic story which, ill.u.s.trated by sensational woodcuts, he had idly read a day or two ago in a venerable _Police News_, left lying on the smoking-room table, recur to his memory. It was a tale of a groom who, in an access of jealous madness, had shot a scullion sweetheart through the head, and then blown his own brains out.

The tale had made but little impression on him at the time--unhappily, it is scarcely possible to take up a journal without the eye alighting upon some such--but it comes back to him now with terrifying vividness.

What security is there that such tragedies may be confined to grooms and kitchen-maids? How does he know that Byng has not a revolver hidden in his breast-pocket? How can he tell that he is not at this very moment drawing it out? He (Jim) ought to have made sure, before exposing her to such a peril, that the danger was minimized by Byng's being weaponless.

Is it too late to make sure of that even now?

He takes one step towards the _salon_ door, then hastily retraces it.

Pooh! he is growing as mad as Byng. They will come out and find him eavesdropping.

He retreats to the table, which is at the greatest distance allowed by the room's narrow enceinte from the scene of the drama whose _denouement_ he is expecting, and, sitting down, takes up a book. It happens to be Elizabeth's Italian exercise-book, and the sight of it conjures up before his memory her forlorn figure stooping disconsolately over the page, wrapped in her brown furs, as he had seen it on that rainy night that seems now so distant. He had pitied her for being lonely then. Well, whatever else she may be, she is not lonely now.