Alas! Part 7

"I know that you are apt to think I fancy things," says Cecilia, sitting down on a third hard chair, "but there could be no fancy in this case; I am sure I was as much engaged as any girl ever was. I had chosen the drawing-room paper and bought the dining-room grate!"

"That is further than we ever got, is not it, Amelia?" says Jim, breaking, at the relation of this prosaic fact, into the laugh he has been with difficulty swallowing; "but, Cis, if I were you, I should keep the grate; one does not know how soon its services may be required again!"

"It is all very well for you to joke," returns Cecilia, with an offended air; "it may be play to you, but it is----"

"Not death, not quite death to you!" interrupts Burgoyne, glancing with an expressive smile at her buxom outline. "I think you will live to fight another day, will not you? But I really am extremely sorry; tell me all about it."

"He was perfectly right when we left England," says Cecilia, mollified at once, and apparently relieved by the invitation to unbosom herself of her woes; "n.o.body could have been more so; he came to see us off at Folkestone, and the tears were in his eyes; they were really, it was not my imagination, was it, Amelia? And at first he wrote all right, and said all the usual things; but then his letters gradually grew fewer and fewer, and after I had written and telegraphed a great many times--I do not know how many times I did not telegraph to ask whether he was ill, and you know how expensive foreign telegrams are--he sent me a few lines, oh, such cruel lines, were not they, Amelia? to say that, on reflection, he feared that the feeling he had for me was not such as to justify his entering on so sacred an engagement as marriage with me; but he ought to have thought of that before, ought not he?"

"Undoubtedly!"

"I will never engage myself to a clergyman again," says Cecilia pensively.

Burgoyne's thoughts have strayed at the mention of the cloth of his sister-in-law elect's truant admirer, to that member of the same profession who has lately robbed him of his heritage, and he replies with a good deal of feeling:

"They do play one dirty turns now and then, do not they? Yes, Cis, stick to laymen for the future!"

Cecilia receives this counsel with a melancholy sigh, fixing her large eyes on the carpet, but presently resumes the conversation in a livelier key.

"Let us talk about something pleasanter," she says. "Had you a good journey? Do you like your travelling companion? Why did not you bring him with you? Is he nice?"

"At all events, he is not a clergyman," replies Jim, with a rather malicious smile; "but no, my dear, do not let your thoughts turn in that direction! You must look at him as poor women look at diamonds!"

"I am sure I do not know what you mean!" replies Cecilia, reddening. "I have not the slightest wish to look at him! I am not in spirits to 'look,' as you call it, at anyone!"

A moment later, she adds, with a suspicion of malice in her tone:

"We are certainly an unlucky family in our loves! I, heartlessly thrown over, and Amelia engaged for eight years!"

Burgoyne smiles. "Amelia is not going to be engaged any longer," he says, putting his arm round his betrothed. "Amelia is going to be married at once!"

CHAPTER VII.

It would seem natural that, after so long a separation, Burgoyne should dine and spend the evening with his betrothed; but such is not the case.

For this, however, he is not to blame; he is quite prepared to stay with her until she turns him out. Had he not better school himself to domestic habits, since he is so soon to a.s.sume them for life? But in consideration for Sybilla he is dismissed undined. It is not that she ever shares the family dinner at their table _a part_ in the _salle a manger_, but the thought of their entertaining a guest with a conviviality far greater in her imagination than would be the case in reality, while she herself lies lonely on her couch of suffering, preys upon her spirits so much that her family have to abandon the idea. So, towards sunset, Jim is dismissed. He has no opportunity for any parting endearments to his lady-love, as the whole family are in the room, and it is Cecilia, not Amelia, who volunteers to walk across the hotel courtyard with him, for the advantage of a last word. What that last word is he is not slow to learn.

"You will take us some excursions, will not you?" she says, with a persuasive air, putting her arm through his. "Father is so unenterprising, we have really seen scarcely anything; but you will take us some excursions now, will not you?"

"Are you sure that your spirits are equal to them?" inquires Burgoyne unkindly.

"I do not know about that, I am sure," replies she, growing pink at his tone; "but one must make an exertion sometime, and I think a little distraction would do me good, and so I am sure it would to poor Amelia!"

"Poor Amelia will shortly have the distraction of being married,"

rejoins the young man, who feels as if he could not repeat the statement of this fact too often to himself and others.

"And I think it would be only civil," continues Cecilia persistently, "in fact, I do not see how you could avoid it, if you invited your friend to join us."

But Jim escapes without having committed himself to this promise, and wanders about the town in the lovely, lowering light; finds himself on the Lung Arno, strolling along with the leisurely loiterers, among whom, for every two soft Tuscan voices, there is a loud metallic Anglo-Saxon one. He watches the carriages rolling back from their drive on the Cascine; the river falling over the weir; the river yellow as Tiber yesterday, and to day shot with blue and green and silver, as it tumbles with a pleasant noise. The houses on either side of the Arno, the domes and roofs, are all clothed in a strange serenity of yellow light; a golden air so transparent and line and crystal clear, so free from the soft blur of mist--lovely too--through which we see objects in our wet green home, that Jim feels as if he could stretch out his hand and touch the hill that backs gold towers and bridges, and see whether it really is made out of one whole amethyst, as it looks. The beauty of the world has always been very much to Burgoyne, though hitherto it has been chiefly in the austerity of her high and desert places that he has bowed the knee before the Universal Mother. This little gold evening city, sunset clad in the colours of the New Jerusalem, lifting her heavenly campanile to as heavenly a sky, is to him a new and wonderful thing. Her loveliness sinks into his soul, and with it a companion sadness as deep.

From henceforth the sight of earth's fair shows will be, for the most part, forbidden him. He has always loved to look and adore in silence and alone; henceforth he will never have the right to be alone; henceforth he will never have the right to go anywhere without his wife.

Strange and terrible word to which he tries in vain to accustom his mental ears; and, thanks to the narrowness of their means, neither of them will be able to stir from the strait precincts of their pinched home.

He comes back to his hotel, through the Piazza of the Duomo. All the infinite richness of cupola and arch, high up, are still wrapped in the fiery rose cloak of sunset, while below the body of the great church, with all its marbles and traceries and carved wonders, is clad in the sobriety of twilight.

On reaching the Minerva, he finds that Byng has not yet returned, or rather that he has been in and gone out again. He waits dinner half-an-hour for him, and then dines without him; dines in solitude, since it is not till his cup of coffee is before him, and his cigarette between his lips, that his young friend appears. It is evidently no unpleasant errand that has detained him, for he arrives beaming, and too excited even to perceive the _menu_ which a waiter offers him.

"They have arrived!" he cries. Oddly enough it never occurs to Burgoyne to inquire who "they" may be; it seems as much a matter-of-course to him as to the handsome pink and white boy before him, that the p.r.o.noun must relate to Elizabeth Le Marchant and her mother.

His only answer, however, is an "Oh!" whose tone is rather more eagerly interested than he could have wished.

"I thought that they could not stay more than another day in Genoa,"

continues Byng, at length becoming aware of the _menu_ at his elbow; but only to wave it impatiently away. "So I thought I would just run down to the station to meet the evening train, the one we came by last night; however, it must have been more punctual than yesterday, for before I reached the station, I met them; I mean they pa.s.sed me in a fiacre. I only caught a glimpse of her face, but I saw her hand; it was lying on the carriage door like a snow-flake."

"Like my grandmother!" cries Burgoyne in a rage, for which he cannot quite account to himself, at this ingenious and novel simile.

Byng laughs; the laugh of a thoroughly sweet-natured person, who, in addition, has some special cause for good-humour.

"I do not know what colour your grandmother was; but she must have been very unlike most people's if she was like a snow-flake."

Jim's cross mouth unbends into a reluctant smile. It is not the first time that he has discovered how useless, and also impossible, it is to be out of humour with Byng.

"I had a good mind to tell my fiacre man to follow them," continued Byng, in an excited voice; "but, in the first place, I did not know how to say it--really, Jim, we must get up a little of the lingo--and, in the second place, I thought it would perhaps be rather too much in the private detective line."

"I think it would have been extremely ungentlemanlike!" rejoins Jim severely.

Byng reddens; but still without losing his temper.

"That is coming it rather strong, is not it? but anyhow, I did not do it." And then, by tacit agreement, they both drop the subject.

During the next three or four days it is not named between them, nor indeed do they see much of each other. Burgoyne spends the greater part of his days with Amelia. Whatever cause for the accusation he may have given during the previous eight years, n.o.body can say that he neglects her now. He pa.s.ses long hours at her side, on the same hard chair that had supported him on their first interview, in the little dismal dining-room; going into calculations of house-rent and taxes, drawing up lists of necessary furniture. He even makes a bid for Cecilia's drawing-room grate; but that young lady, whose forecasting mind can look beyond present grief to future suns.h.i.+ne, refuses to part with it. The lovers are not always, however, studying Maple's and Oetzmann's lists.

Sometimes Jim varies the diversion by taking his future wife to picture-galleries and churches, to the Uffizi, the Accademia, San Lorenzo. It is doubtful whether Amelia enjoys these excursions as much as she does the selection of bedsteads and saucepans, her pleasure being in some degree marred by a feverish anxiety to say what she thinks her lover expects of her as they stand before each immortal canvas. In her heart she thinks the great statues in the Medici Chapel frightful, a heresy in which she is kept in countenance by no less a light than George Eliot, who in one of her letters dares to say of them, "they remained to us as affected and exaggerated in the original, as in copies and casts." To Amelia many of the frescoes appear lamentably washed out, nor are her efforts to hide these sentiments attended with any conspicuous success, since nothing is more hopeless than for one utterly dest.i.tute of a feeling for works of art to feign it, without having the imposture at once detected.

Burgoyne's mind during these expeditions is a battle-ground for pity and rage; pity at the pathos of his poor love's endeavours; rage at their glaring failure. Cecilia sometimes accompanies the lovers, but this does not make matters much better. Cecilia devotes but a very cursory notice to the pictures; her attention being almost wholly centred on the visitors, and on finding resemblances for them among the inhabitants of her own village at home, for the accuracy of which she appeals at every moment to her sister. Every day she asks Burgoyne to fulfil his promise--a promise which he as punctually a.s.sures her that he never made--to introduce his friend to her. He has a strangely strong reluctance to comply with this simple request, which yet, he knows, will have to be complied with some day. When Amelia is his wife, Byng will have to know Cecilia, for she will probably spend a great deal of her time with them--make their house a second home, in fact.

And meanwhile Jim is keenly, and for some reason sorely, conscious of the fact that, during the hours in which he is stooping his weary head over catalogues of fenders and fire-irons, carving-knives and fish-slices, blankets and ticking, Byng is searching Florence through her length and breadth for their two countrywomen. It is not indeed necessary to credit his friend with any special quest to account for his wanderings through the "adorable little city," as Henry James most truly calls it, since he is a young man of a wide and alert curiosity, with a large appet.i.te for pleasure both intellectual and the reverse. Jim, whose acquaintance with him has chiefly been with his rowdy undergraduate side, bear-fighting, and proctor-defying, is astonished at his almost tremulous appreciation of the Ghirlandajos, the Lorenzo di Credis, the Giottos, that in a hundred chapels, from a hundred walls, s.h.i.+ne down in their mixed glory of nave piety and blinding colour upon him.

One day the elder man is sitting in his bedroom with a despatch-box and a sheet of paper before him. He is embarked upon a dreary calculation as to what his guns will fetch. He has made up his mind to sell them. Of what further use can they be to him? He will not be allowed to shoot at the Bayswater omnibuses, which will be the only game henceforth within his reach. While he is thus employed upon an occupation akin to, and about as cheerful as, that of Rawdon Crawley before Waterloo, Byng enters.

"You look as if you had a headache, old chap," he says, sitting down upon his friend's bed.

"If you had been going through as many kitchen-ranges as I have this morning, perhaps you would have a headache," replies Jim gravely. "You know that I am going to be married as soon as I get home."

Byng nods; and Burgoyne, while inwardly blessing the tact that spares him any congratulations, takes himself to task for having made the announcement so lugubriously as to render felicitation obviously inapplicable.

"When are you going to introduce me to Miss Wilson?" asks Byng presently. "If you s.h.i.+rk it much longer, I shall think that you are ashamed of me."