Mike Fletcher Part 29

"There's a sweet girl here, and I'm sure you would like her; she is so slender, so blithe and winsome, and so wayward. She has been sent abroad for her health, and is forbidden to go out after sunset, but will not obey. I am afraid she is dying of consumption.... She has taken a great fancy to me. There is no one in our hotel but a few old maids, who discuss the peerage, and she runs after me to talk about men. I fancy she must have carried on pretty well with some one, for she loves talking about _him_, and is full of mysterious allusions."

The romance of the sudden introduction of this girl into the landscape took him by the throat. He saw himself walking with this dying girl in the beauty of blue mountains toppling into blue skies, and reflected in bluer seas; he sat with her beneath the palm-trees; palms spread their fan-like leaves upon sky and sea, and in the rich green of their leaves oranges grew to deep, and lemons to paler, gold; and he dreamed that the knowledge that the object of his love was transitory, would make his love perfect and pure. Now in his solitude, with no object to break it, this desire for love in death haunted in his mind. It rose unbidden, like a melody, stealing forth and surprising him in unexpected moments. Often he asked himself why he did not pack up his portmanteau and rush away; and he was only deterred by the apparent senselessness of the thought. "What slaves we are of habit! Why more stupid to go than to remain?"

Soon after, he received another letter from Mrs. Byril. He glanced through it eagerly for some mention of the girl. Whatever there was of sweetness and goodness in Mike's nature was reflected in his eyes (soft violet eyes, in which tenderness dwelt), whatever there was of evil was written in the lips and chin (puckered lips and goat-like chin), the long neck and tiny head accentuating the resemblance.

Now his being was concentrated in the eyes as a landscape is sometimes in a piece of sky. He read: "She told me that she had been once to see her lover in the Temple." It was then Lily. He turned to Mrs. Byril's first letter, and saw Lily in every line of the description. Should he go to her? Of course ... When? At once! Should it not prove to be Lily? ... He did not care ... He must go, and in half an hour he touched the swiftly trotting mare with the whip and glanced at his watch. "I shall just do it." The hedges pa.s.sed behind, and the wintry prospects were unfolded and folded away. But as he approached the station, a rumble and then a rattle came out of the valley, and though he lashed the mare into a gallop, he arrived only in time to see a vanis.h.i.+ng cloud of steam.

The next train did not reach London till long after the mail had left Charing Cross.

It froze hard during the night, and next morning his feet chilled in his thin shoes, as he walked to and fro, seeking a carriage holding a conversational-looking person. At Dover the wind was hard as the ice-bound steps which he descended, and the sea rolled in dolefully about the tall cliffs, melting far away into the bleak grayness of the sky. But more doleful than the bleak sea was sullen Picardy. Mike could not sleep, and his eyes fed upon the bleak black of swampy plains, utterly mournful, strangely different from green and gladsome England. And two margins of this doleful land remained impressed upon his mind; the first, a low grange, discoloured, crouching on the plain, and curtained by seven lamentable poplars, and Mike thought of the human beings that came from it, to see only a void landscape, and to labour in bleak fields. He remembered also a marsh with osier-beds and pools of water; and in the largest of these there was a black and broken boat. Thin sterile hills stretched their starved forms in the distance, and in the raw wintry light this landscape seemed like a page of the primitive world, and the strange creature striving with an oar recalled our ancestors.

Paris was steeped in great darkness and starlight, and the cab made slow and painful way through the frost-bound streets. The amble and the sliding of the horse was exasperating, the drive unendurable with uncertainty and cold, and Mike hammered his frozen feet on the curving floor of the vehicle. Street succeeded street, all growing meaner as they neared the Gare de Lyons. Fearing he should miss the express he called to the impa.s.sive driver to hasten the vehicle.

Three minutes remained to take his ticket and choose a carriage, and hoping for sleep and dreams of Lily, he rolled himself up in a rug for which he had paid sixty guineas, and fell asleep.

Ten hours after, he was roused by the guard, and stretching his stiffened limbs, he looked out, and in the vague morning saw towzled and dilapidated travellers, slipping upon the thin ice that covered the platform, striving to reach long, rough tables, spread with coffee, fruit, and wine. Mike drank some coffee, and thinking of Mrs.

Byril's roses, wondered when they should get into the suns.h.i.+ne.

As the train moved out of the platform the twilight vanished into daylight, the sky flushed, and he saw a scant land, ragged and torn with twisted plants, cacti and others, gashed and red, and savage as a negress's lips. So he saw the South through the breath-misted windows. He lay back; he dozed a little, and awoke an hour after to feel soft air upon the face, and to see a bush laden with blossom literally singing the spring. Thenceforth at every mile the land grew into more frequent bloom. The gray-green olive-tree appeared, a crooked, twisted tree--habitual phase of the red land--and between its foliage gray-green brick facades, burnt and re-burnt by the sun.

The roofs of the houses grew flatter and campanile, and the domes rose, silvery or blue, in the dazzling day. A mountain shepherd, furnished with water-gourd, a seven-foot staff, and a gigantic pipe, lingered in the country railway-station. This shepherd's skin was like coffee, and he wore hair hanging far over his shoulders, and his beard reached to his waist.

Nice! A town of cheap fas.h.i.+on, a town of gla.s.s and stucco. The pungent odour of the eucalyptus trees, the light breeze stirred not the foliage, sheared into mathematical lines. It was like yards of baize dwindling in perspective; and between the tall trunks great plate-gla.s.s windows gleamed, filled with _l'article de Londres_.

He drove to the hotel from which Mrs. Byril had written, and learnt that she had left yesterday, and that Mrs. and Miss Young were not staying there. They had no such name on the books. Looking on the sea and mountains he wondered himself what it all meant.

Having bathed and changed his clothes, he sallied forth in a cab to call at every hotel in the town, and after three hours' fruitless search, returned in despair. Never before had life seemed so sad; never had fate seemed so cruel--he had come a thousand miles to regenerate his life, and an accident, the accident of a departure, hastened perhaps only by a day, had thrown him back on the past; he had imagined a beautiful future made of love, goodness, and truth, and he found himself thrown back upon the sterile sh.o.r.e of a past of which he was weary, and of whose fruits he had eaten even to satiety.

After much effort he had made sure that nothing mattered but Lily, neither wealth nor liberty, nor even his genius. In surrendering all he would have gained all--peace of mind, unending love and goodness.

Goodness! that which he had never known, that which he now knew was worth more than gratification of flesh and pride of spirit.

The night was full of tumult and dreams--dreams of palms, and seas, and endless love, and in the morning he walked into the realities of his imaginings.

Pa.s.sing through an archway, he found himself in the gaud of the flower-market. There a hundred umbrellas, yellow, red, mauve and magenta, lemon yellow, cadmium yellow, gold, a multi-coloured ma.s.s spread their extended bellies to a sky blue as the blouses.

The brown fingers of the peasant women are tying and pressing all the miraculous bloom of the earth into the fair fingers of Saxon girls--great packages of roses, pink lilies, clematis, stephanotis, and honeysuckle. A gentle breeze is blowing, rocking the umbrellas, wafting the odour of the roses and honeysuckle, bringing hither an odour of the lapping tide, rocking the immense umbrellas. One huge and ungainly sunshade creaks, swaying its preposterous rotundity.

Beneath it the brown woman slices her pumpkin. Mike scanned every thin face for Lily, and as he stood wedged against a flower-stand, a girl pa.s.sed him. She turned. It was Lily.

"Lily, is it possible? I was looking for you everywhere."

"Looking for me! When did you arrive in Nice? How did you know I was here?"

"Mrs. Byril wrote. She described a girl, and I knew from her description it must be you. And I came on at once."

"You came on at once to find me?"

"Yes; I love you more than ever. I can think only of you.... But when I arrived I found Mrs. Byril had left, and I had no means of finding your address."

"You foolish boy; you mean to say you rushed away on the chance that I was the girl described in Mrs. Byril's letter! ... A thousand miles!

and never even waited to ask the name or the address! Well, I suppose I must believe that you are in love. But you have not heard.... They say I'm dying. I have only one lung left. Do you think I'm looking very ill?"

"You are looking more lovely than ever. My love shall give you health; we shall go--where shall we go? To Italy? You are my Italy.

But I'm forgetting--why did you not answer my letter? It was cruel of you. Deceive me no more, play with me no longer; if you will not have me, say so, and I will end myself, for I cannot live without you."

"But I do not understand, I haven't had any letter; what letter?"

"I wrote asking you to marry me."

They walked out of the flower market on to the _Promenade des Anglais_, and Mike told her about his letters, concealing nothing of his struggle. The sea lay quite blue and still, lapping gently on the spare beach; the horizon floated on the sea, almost submerged, and the mountains, every edge razor-like, hard, and metallic, were veiled in a deep, transparent blue; and the villas, painted white, pink and green, with open loggias and balconies, completed the operatic aspect.

"My mother will not hear of it; she would sooner see me dead than married to you."

"Why?"

"She knows you are an atheist for one thing."

"But she does not know that I have six thousand a year."

"Six thousand a year! and who was the fairy that threw such fortune into your lap? I thought you had nothing."

Vanity took him by the throat, but he wrenched himself free, and answered evasively that a distant cousin had left him a large sum of money, including an estate in Berks.h.i.+re.

"Well, I'm very glad for your sake, but it will not influence mother's opinion of you."

"Then you will run away with me? Say you will."

"That is the best--for I'm not strong enough to dispute with mother.

I dare say it is very cowardly of me, but I would avoid scenes; I've had enough of them.... We'll go away together. Where shall we go? To Italy?"

"Yes, to Italy--my Italy. And do you love me? Have you forgiven me my conduct the day when you came to see me?"

"Yes, I love you; I have forgiven you."

"And when shall we go?"

"When you like. I should like to go over that sea; I should like to go, Mike, with you, far away! Where, Mike?--Heaven?"

"We should find heaven dull; but when shall we go across that sea, or when shall we go from here--now?"

"Now!"

"Why not?"

"Because here are my people coming to meet me. Now say nothing to my mother about marriage, or she will never leave my side. I'm more ill than you think I am--I should have no strength to struggle with her."

Not again that day did Mike succeed in speaking alone with Lily, and the next day she and her mother and Major Downside, her uncle, went to spend the day with some friends who had a villa in the environs of the town. The day after he met mother and daughter out walking in the morning. In the afternoon Lily was obliged to keep her room. Should she die! should the irreparable happen! Mike crushed the instinct, that made him see a poem in the death of his beloved; and he determined to believe that he should possess her, love her and only her; he saw himself a new Mike, a perfect and true husband-lover.

Never was man more weary of vice, more desirous of reformation.

He had studied the train service until he could not pretend to himself there remained any crumb of excuse for further consideration of it. He wandered about the corridors, a miserable man. On Sunday she came down-stairs and drove to church with her mother. Mike followed, and full of schemes for flight, holding a note ready to slip into her hand, he wondered if such pallor as hers were for this side of life. In the note it was written that he would wait all day for her in the sitting-room, and about five, as he sat holding the tattered newspaper, his thoughts far away in Naples, Algiers, and Egypt, he heard a voice calling--

"Mike! Mike! Mother is lying down; I think we can get away now, if there's a train before half-past five."