Alas! Part 63

She looks at him, and sees his wasted face flus.h.i.+ng with fatigue and worry and mental suffering. Oh, what a bitter wave of desolateness rolls over her! But she smiles.

"I still do not understand what I am to forgive you for. I suppose that you could no more help having once thought you loved me, than you can help"--she stops abruptly in compa.s.sion for the look of acute regret, shame and remorse that crosses his sharp features, and, in her mercy to him, gives a different close to her phrase from that which its beginning had seemed to bespeak--"than you can help having been so ill."

Her tone, quite unconsciously to herself is inexpressibly touching; and Byng, weakened by illness, turns his face upon the pillow, and breaks into violent weeping. His mother had cried too. It seems to be in the family.

She has risen--what further is there for her to stay for?--and pauses quietly at his side till the paroxysm is past. Her standing posture tells him that she is going, and he consequently struggles to recover himself in some degree; but having never cultivated self-control when he was in health, it declines to come at his enfeebled bidding now.

"Forgive me! forgive me!" is all he can stammer.

She looks down upon him with a strange and tender smile, in which for the moment the selfless, pitying sweetness has swallowed up the misery.

"Which am I to forgive you for--for having loved me? or for having ceased to love me? For having been mad? or for being sane? Yes, of course I forgive you from the very bottom of my heart! G.o.d bless you!

Make haste and get well!"

She walks cheerfully to the door, and, reaching it, turns, still wearing that smile, that he may see how perfectly friendly is her last look; but he does not see it. He has rolled over on his face, and the whole sofa is shaking with his sobs.

CHAPTER XIII.

"The pity of it, Iago! The pity of it!"

The Byngs are gone, having got off just within the time first suggested by the sick man's mother. But, after all, he has to be carried on board the _Eugene Perrere_. Since his interview with Miss Le Marchant, his progress towards recovery has scarcely been so smooth or so fast as before; and perhaps his mother is right to bear him away with what seems such overhaste, even though it be on men's shoulders that he has to make his exit. At all events, he is gone. The hotel--of which a part of the inmates have seen him only prostrate and bleeding, and the other and larger part have not seen him at all, but have had their curiosity whetted by the tale of his calamitous arrival, only to have it balked by his hurried departure--crowd into the entrance-hall, some on one pretext, some on another, most on no pretext at all, to see him go.

There are only two of the visitors whose faces cannot be seen among the good-naturedly curious and sympathetically pitiful group that watch the exodus of the little party. Who shall say how those two spend the hour of Byng's departure out of their lives? Jim has accompanied the invalid to the quay to see the last of him; has stayed with him till the final bell warns non-pa.s.sengers off the boat; has left him with all the proper requests and adjurations to let him know how the sick man bears the voyage; how they get on, etc. But as Mrs. Byng stands on the upper deck and watches the trail of churned water lengthening between her and the dwindling high white town, she has a feeling that her old friend does not like her as well as he did, and that it will never again be quite the same thing between them.

The Byngs are gone--have been gone a fortnight--and March is here. Over the villa faces the begonias have broken into riotous flower, and the snowy-blossomed fruit-trees, that have put on their snowy garments but lately, stand out in bright fragility against the heavy green that never, even in January, ceases to wrap itself about the lovely Moslem town.

Every day for the last fortnight, Jim, too, has been going, but he is not yet gone. His guns have arrived ten days ago, and his friend has expressed by post and wire his weariness of exploring the bazaars of Tunis alone. But he is not yet gone to join that impatient friend. Why does he still linger in a place where, as he had justly explained to Cecilia, there is nothing for him to do? Why indeed? It is a question that, by night and day, by the insolence of the staring moonlight which slides in upon his restless open eyes by night, under the fires of the great spring sun at noon, he asks himself. All the answer he can give is that it would be hardly friendly to choose this moment, when she is so down in the world, to leave Elizabeth.

She is down in the world; there can be no mistake about that. Even her father, who has returned from his wanderings, must be aware of this fact. Perhaps that is the reason why he no longer snubs her as much as he did; why he even accepts, with some semblance of graciousness, those affectionate and watchful ministrations which she tenders him with as gentle an a.s.siduity as in her brighter days. But he has still no great appet.i.te for her society; and she, unresentfully divining it, gives up to him, without repining, the one great solace of her melancholy--her mother's company. If Jim were gone, the more part of her life would be spent alone. She tells him so--tells him, with a sweet flattering smile, how much his comrades.h.i.+p is to her. Has he any right to rob her of that last prop? It is only to himself that the breathless clamberings up the steep short cut to El Biar, deep and brambly as her own Devons.h.i.+re lanes, that the gazings in common over the pigeon-necked sea and the amaranth hills, can do any harm. They may put a sting into his own after-life--a sting that all the empty years that follow may be powerless to extract; but to her they serve only as a narcotic to numb the intensity of that ache which the cured madness of Byng has left behind it. Some day, of course, he must leave her; he cannot pa.s.s his whole life at her side; some day soon leave her to walk and sit and study her Italian Grammar forlornly alone. But it must not be until she has a little plucked up her spirits.

As soon as he sees any signs of this occurring, he will quit Algiers--quit it comfortably, with the consciousness of having done a good-natured thing, by which n.o.body is the worse. This is the compromise at which he arrives with the inward adviser--conscience, common-sense, what you will--that is hourly admonis.h.i.+ng him to be gone. Does Elizabeth guess that her retention of the companion, to whom she so desolately clings, hangs on her remaining always as crushed as the first ten days after those cruel interviews with the Byngs, mother and son, had left her? If she did, she would probably seek to check the first faint revivings of cheerfulness in her inveterately gay spirit. Instead, while her heart is yet at its sickest, she earnestly tries to foster the tiny seeds of cheerfulness, saying to herself that it is mere selfishness in her to inflict her dismalness upon her one friend; seeking rather to lift his spirits, which seem scarcely less drooping than her own.

Does he enter into her motive? Does not it rather strike him with a species of shock how superficial must be the nature, how on the surface the suffering, of one who can already begin again to take a mischievous interest in the Widow Wadman's amours, and to mimic afresh the c.o.c.kney tw.a.n.g of the French Vicomte's English governess?

It is three weeks to-day since the Byngs left. The weather is fine, and a hot sunbeam is lighting up the painful indecision of Jim's face, as he stands in his bedroom with an open telegram in his hand, which two hours ago was put into it. It is from his friend at Tunis, and is conceived in terms which demonstrate that the indignation of the sender has got the better of his economy. It contains a stringent representation of his inability any longer to dance attendance upon Burgoyne's whims, and a peremptory request, answer paid, to be at once informed either that he will join him immediately, or that the idea of their joint excursion has been entirely abandoned. He is standing holding the paper in miserable uncertainty, torn by doubts, rent in twain by conflicting emotions, when the noise of voices and laughter outside the house draws him to the window.

The room he has occupied since he vacated his own for Byng looks out over the hall-door, and in front of that door a small group is gathered--the Vicomte, his two boys, his girl, her governess, a coal-black negro who serves as kitchenmaid to the establishment, and--Elizabeth. They are all gathered round a tiny donkey, such a _bourriquot_ as the valiant Tartarin slew, which has evidently been brought up for sale by its Arab master. Attached to its head gear are two long reins, and holding these reins is Miss Le Marchant. As Jim looks out, the _bourriquot_, taking some strange freak into its little brown head, sets off galloping at a prodigious rate; and Elizabeth--white gown and blonde hair flying--gallops after it. As she is dragged at racing pace down the drive, her immoderate laughter comes borne back on the wind to the spectator of whom she is unconscious.

The latter has turned away from the window, and sat down to his writing-table, where he is scribbling a hasty answer to the missive which has cost him such long deliberation. It does not take a minute to pen now that he has once made up his mind, nor can it be more than five from the moment of the donkey's start to that when the telegram is on its way to the Post Office in Zameth the porter's hand. The die is cast.

When this is the case after long irresolution, there must always be a sense of relief, and perhaps, therefore, it is relief which Jim's face, thrown down upon his arms rested on the table, expresses. Since no one can see that hidden face, it is impossible to say. He has certainly no wish that Elizabeth should be unhappy. Her patient white misery had filled him with tender pity and ruth; and yet her laugh, sweet and delicate as it was with all its excess of merriment, rings jarringly in his ears. She is incapable of a great constancy. He had promised himself to stay with her until her spirits were restored. Well, he has kept his promise handsomely. He has done with her and her contradictions now. It will be someone else's turn with her next. Whose? The Vicomte's, perhaps.

By-and-by he rouses himself. Only a part of his task is yet done. He must tell them that he is going. As he pa.s.ses the looking-gla.s.s, he sees that his hair is roughened and erected by his late att.i.tude. He pa.s.ses a brush hastily over it. He must not look a Bedlamite like Byng. He finds Mr. and Mrs. Le Marchant sitting under the ficus-tree on the terrace--the terrace which, at this hour, they have to themselves. She is reading aloud to him paragraphs out of the Algerian paper, translating as she goes along, since his French is about on a par with that of most Englishmen of his standing.

He is leaning back in a wicker chair, with an expression of placid good-humour on his face. Across his knees the hotel cat--a plain and ill-natured animal--lies, loudly purring, while he obligingly scratches her judiciously whenever she indicates a wish for that relaxation. As Burgoyne remembers, Mr. Le Marchant had always been on very friendly terms with the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air. About the little group there is such an air of content, of harmony, of completeness in itself, that none can connect the idea of a third person with it in anything but an interloping att.i.tude. And yet there is a third person whose presence must be continually infringing its happy duality, since niche of her own in life has she none.

"Are you looking for Elizabeth?" asks Elizabeth's mother, laying down her paper as the new-comer draws near; "she has walked to Biermandreis."

The intimate friendliness of her smile as she gives him this bit of information--the matter of course taking for granted that he must be seeking her whose society he has so wholly monopolized of late--plants a new sting in Jim's sore heart, and robs him for the moment of the power to make his announcement.

"She has not been gone more than ten minutes"--still with that bright look of kindly confidence that she is answering his thoughts.

"I am looking for you all," he answers abruptly. "I came to tell you that I am off to-morrow."

The shaft is sped. Though he is not looking at Mrs. Le Marchant, he knows that her face has fallen. Upon Mr. Le Marchant's, on the contrary, an added shade of cheerfulness is visible. Mr. Le Marchant has ceased any overt opposition to the young man's intimacy with his family; but none the less is the young man aware that the father has acquiesced but grudgingly in the footing on which he had found Jim on his return from his tour.

"I have had a wire from my friend in Tunis; he is becoming dangerous"--laughing, oh, how forcedly!

"You are going to Tunis?" says Mr. Le Marchant, almost cordially. "You are quite right; it is a very interesting place. One does really see the genuine East there, not the mongrel hotch-potch one has here."

"Is not it rather late for a trip into the interior?" asks the wife. The geniality has gone out of her tone, and the suns.h.i.+ne out of her face.

There is a touch of involuntary wistfulness in both.

"The interior? Oh yes, of course. My dawdling"--more laughter--"has knocked that on the head. I have let the time for that go by. We intend to run over to Spain and see the Alhambra and the Escurial."

There is a general silence. Well, it is done. Neither husband nor wife makes any effort to alter his resolution or detain him. They do not even put any questions to him as to his future projects. He has nothing to do but remove himself and allow them to resume that happy little duet which he had disturbed.

"The train sets off at such an unearthly hour to-morrow morning--six o'clock or thereabouts; it would take three days to get there if it did not--that I must put my things together this afternoon. I shall see you again, of course, before I go."

"Oh, of course," replies Mr. Le Marchant, in the easy and comfortable tone of one to whom it is a matter of supreme indifference whether or not that farewell meeting ever takes place, and Mrs. Le Marchant says nothing at all.

He has adduced his necessary packings as an excuse for leaving them; though, indeed, they neither wished for nor asked any excuse; yet nothing is further from his intentions than to enter at once upon that occupation. She has walked to Biermandreis. In five minutes he is walking thither too. There are a couple of roads that lead there, and of course he takes the wrong one--the same, that is, that she had taken, so that, although he walks fast, yet, thanks to her start of him, he has reached the pretty little flower-shaded French village which, with its white church and its ecole Communale, looks as if it were taken to pieces at night and put to bed in a toy-box--he has reached it, and has, moreover, traced half his homeward way, before he overtakes her. The path by which he returns is a rough Arab track, cut in low steps up the hill, each step a ma.s.s of fossil-sh.e.l.ls--whelk, and scallop and oyster sh.e.l.ls, whose inhabitants died--strange thought!--before Adam saw Eden's fair light. It is a charming road, cut, in part, through the red rock, over which the southern greenery tumbles. He has approached quite close to her before she sees him. She is sitting on a camp-stool by the wayside, looking vacantly before her. Her figure is rather stooped, and her straight back bent, as if it were not worth the trouble to hold it up. Beside her, on the ground, lie a little tin colour-box and water-bottle and a drawing-board. He wishes, with a new pang, that he had not come upon her so suddenly. He is afraid that this is one of the aspects of her that will stick most pertinaciously in his memory.

Catching sight of him, her whole sad, listless face lights up.

"It is you! I was sure you would come. I told them to tell you where I had gone. I meant to sketch"--with a glance at her neglected implements--"but"--with a sigh--"as you see, I did not."

"Are you down on your luck?" he asks, sitting down by her side; "you did not seem so"--trying to harden his heart by forcing a recollection of her extravagant gaiety--"a little while ago, when you were prancing after that jacka.s.s."

"Is not he a darling?" cries she, hurrying up the end of her sigh to make room for a smile of pleasure. "I want to buy him; only I am afraid he might die of sea-sickness going home."

"Perhaps"--scarcely knowing what he is saying.

"I should like to buy a little cart to harness him to--such a one as I saw just now going along the road, drawn by a tiny _bourriquot_ that might have been twin brother to mine. Some Arab children had dressed out both him and his cart with branches of that great yellow fennel--his long ears and his little nose peeped out so pathetically between; another child walked after barefoot, waving a great acanthus-leaf. You never saw anything so pretty! Yes, you must break mine in for me,"

smiling again; "it will not take more than a week, I am sure."

"If it did not take more than a day even, I am afraid I should have to decline the appointment"--seizing this opening to blurt out his news. "I am off at six o'clock to-morrow morning. I--I want to see the Escurial."

She had been almost garrulous about the little donkey, and he had wished to stop her. In that he has undoubtedly succeeded.

How the asphodels cover the banks on either hand! They have come into full flower since last he pa.s.sed this way: tall branching stem, white blossom, and pinky bud; here they are in thousands.

It is a soft day, on which scents lie heavy, and their strong odour--that is scarcely perfume, and yet has an odd, acrid charm--fills the air.

"Everything must come to an end," he says baldly.

She is apparently not going to make any more effort to detain him than had her mother. He has every right to come and go where and when he pleases. Since Amelia died, to no human being is he accountable for his actions, and yet there is both guilt and misery in his voice as he utters his plat.i.tude.