Alas! A Novel

CHAPTER XVII

It is past seven o'clock by the time that the party breaks up at the door of the Anglo-Américain, and the dusk is gaining even upon the red west that, in the upper sky, is insensibly melted into that strange faint green that speaks, in so plain a language, of past and future fine weather.

"Are you coming to look in upon us to-night?" asks Amelia, with a rather wistful diffidence, as her lover holds out his hand in farewell to her.

He hesitates. In his own mind he had planned another disposition of his evening hours to that suggested by her.

"What do you advise?" he asks. "Shall you spend the evening in the usual way?"

"I suppose so," she answers. "I suppose we shall read aloud; you know father likes to make our evenings as like our home ones as possible, and Sybilla – "

"Then it is no use my coming," interrupts he hastily. "I should have no good of you;" then, seeing her face fall at his alacrity in seizing a pretence for escape, he adds, "but, of course, if you wish it, dear – if it would give you any satisfaction – "

"But it would not," cries she precipitately, anxious as usual to be, if possible, beforehand with his lightest wish; "when you are by, I always lose my place" – laughing tremulously – "and father scolds me! No, you had far better not come. I must not be greedy" – in a lower key. "I had quite half an hour, nearly three-quarters, of you this afternoon."

Without trusting herself to any further speech, she disappears, and he, with a sigh that is only half of relief, turns away from the hotel door, and, after a moment's hesitation, a moment's glance at the suave darkening sky, and another at his watch, begins to walk briskly – not in the direction of the Minerva. It is really not late, not much beyond canonical calling hours, and he is almost sure that they dine at eight. His face is set in the direction of the Piazza d'Azeglio, as he addresses these reassuring remarks to himself. This is no case of self-indulgence, or even of friendly civility. It is a question of common humanity. Why should he leave them to endure their suspense for a whole night longer than they need, merely to save himself the trouble of a walk beneath the darkly splendid sky-arch, through the cheerful streets, still full of leisurely foot-passengers, of the sound of cracking whips and rolling carriages?

He reaches No. 12 bis, and finds the porter's wife sitting at the door of her loge, and smiling at him with all her white teeth, as if she knew that he had come on some pleasant errand. He climbs the naked stone stairs, and rings the bell. It is answered by Annunziata, who, smiling too, as if she were saying something very agreeable, conveys to him that the signora and the signorina are out.

The intelligence baffles him, as he had not at all expected it. Probably his disconcertment is written not illegibly on his features, as Annunziata begins at once to inform him that the signore are gone to drive in the Cascine, and that she expects them back every moment. It is a good while before he quite masters her glib explanation, his Italian being still at that stage when, if the careful phrase-book question does not receive exactly the phrase-book answer, the questioner is at fault. But the smiling invitation of the amiable ugly face, and the hospitably open door – so different a reception from what the old bull-dog of an English nurse would have accorded him – need no interpreter. After a moment's hesitation he enters. He will wait for them.

It is not until he has been left alone for a quarter of an hour in the little salon that he has time to ask himself nervously whether the amount of his acquaintance with them, or the importance of the tidings he brings, justifies his thus thrusting himself upon their evening privacy. The table – since they have obviously but one sitting-room – is spread for their simple supper – a coarse white cloth, a wicker-covered bottle of rough Chian wine, and a copper pot full of delicately odorous Freesias. He wanders restlessly about the room, looking at the photographs.

Tom – can it be Tom? – with a moustache, Charles with a beard and a bowie-knife, Rose dandling her baby, Miriam hanging over her new husband – all his little playfellows! How far the wave of time has rolled them away from him! He strolls to the window whence, at sunset, the green shutters have been thrown back, and stares out at the Piazza garden, where the twilight is taking all the colour out of the Judas flowers, thence to the piano upon which Schubert's "Trockne Blumen" stands open. Absently he repeats aloud the song's joyous words:

Is her "Winter aus"? Judging by the look in her eyes, it has been a long and cruel one. If he wishes to put the question to her, she comes in just in time to answer it – enters laggingly, as one tired, blinking a little from the sudden crude lamplight after the soft feather-handed dusk. She is evidently unprepared to find anyone in the room, and gives a frightened jump when she sees a man's figure approaching her. Even when she recognises him the scared look lingers. It is clear that in her sad experience surprises have been always synonymous with bad news. The white apprehension written on her small face makes him so cordially repent of his intrusion, that his explanation of his presence is at first perfectly unintelligible.

"I hope you will excuse my taking such a liberty. I know that I had no business to come in when I was told you were out," he says incoherently, "but – I thought – I hoped – I had an idea – that you might be glad to hear – "

He stops, puzzled how to word his piece of intelligence, whether or not to name the person whose presence, whose very existence had yesterday seemed to inspire with such terror the woman before him. She has sunk down upon a chair, holding her hat, which she had taken off on entering the room, nervously clutched in her hands, the little waves of her hair, straightened out by the night wind, invading her forehead more than their wont and giving her an unfamiliar look.

"To hear what?" asks Mrs. Le Marchant, who, following her daughter more leisurely, has come in just in time to catch the last few words of Burgoyne's speech dissevered from their context. He begins that speech again, still more stammeringly than before.

"I thought you might be glad to hear that the – the inquiries you asked me – I mean that I promised to make – that the person relating to whom I – I made inquiries, leaves Florence to-morrow."

He hears a long sighing breath that may mean relief that may mean only distress at the introduction of the subject, from the chair beside him, while the elder woman says in a low abrupt voice:

"To-morrow? Are you sure? How do you know?"

"He said so himself to-day."

"Have you met him? Have you been talking to him?"

It seems to Jim as if there were a sharp apprehension mixed with the abruptness of her tone, as she puts the two last questions. He makes a gesture of eager denial.

"Heaven forbid! I have taken great care to avoid recalling myself to his memory. I have no desire to renew my acquaintance with him. I – I – hate the sight of him!"

To an uninterested bystander there would have been something ludicrous in the boyish virulence of the expression of hatred coming from so composed and mature a man's mouth as Jim's. But neither of the two persons who now hear it is in a position of mind to see anything ridiculous in it.

"Then how do you know that it is true?"

"He told an – an acquaintance of mine; he was complaining of the discomfort of his hotel, and, on her recommending him to change it, he answered that it was not worth while, as he was leaving Florence to-morrow."

Again from the chair beside him comes that long low sigh. This time there can be no question as to its quality. It is as of a spirit lifting itself from under a leaden load. For a few moments no other sound breaks the stillness. Then Mrs. Le Marchant speaks again in a constrained voice:

"We are extremely obliged to you for having taken so much trouble for us, and it must seem very strange to you that we should be so anxious to hear that this – this person has left Florence; but in so small a place one is sure to be always coming into collision with those whom one would rather avoid, and there are reasons which – which make it very – painful to us to meet him."

So saying, she tums away precipitately, and leaves the room hastily, by another door from that by which they both entered, and which evidently communicates with an adjoining bedroom. Elizabeth remains lying back in her chair, looking as white as the tablecloth. She is always white, but usually it is a creamy white, like meadow-sweet. Out of her eyes, however, has gone the distressed look of fear, and in them is dawning instead a little friendly smile.

"You must have thought us rather impostors when you saw us at the Accademia this morning, after leaving us apparently so shattered overnight," she says, with a somewhat deprecating air.

"I was very glad to find you so perfectly recovered," he replies, but he does not say it naturally. When a person, habitually truthful, slides into a speech not completely true, he does it in a bungling journeyman fashion; nor is Burgoyne any exception to this rule.

"I think we are a little like india-rubber balls, mammy and I," continues Elizabeth; "we have great recovering powers; if we had not" (stopped for a second by a small patient sigh) "I suppose that we should not be alive now."

He does not interrupt her. She must be a much less finely-strung instrument than he takes her for if she does not divine the sympathy of his silence, and sympathy so much in the dark as to what it sympathizes with as his, must needs walk gropingly, if it would escape gins and pitfalls.

"But we should not have gone out sight-seeing this morning – we were not at all in a junketing mood – if it had not been for Mr. Byng; he came in and took us both by storm. It is difficult," her face dimpling and brightening with a much more confirmed smile than the tiny hovering one which is all that Jim has been able to call forth – "it is difficult to resist a person who brings so much sunshine with him – do not you find it so? He is so very sunshiny, your Mr. Byng. We like sunshine; we – we have not had a great deal of it."

It is on the very edge of his lip to tell her that when he had known her she had had and been nothing but sunshine. But he recollects in time her prohibition as to the past, and restrains himself.

"When you look so kind and interested," she cries impulsively, sitting up in her chair, with a transparent little hand on each arm of it, "I feel a fraud."

She stops.

"I look interested because I feel interested," returns he doggedly; "fraud or not – but" (in a distressed voice) "do not, even in joke, call yourself ugly names – fraud or not, you cannot hinder me."

"Do not be interested in me," says she, in her plaintive cooing voice; "we are very bad people to get interested in, we are not repaying people to be interested in. I think – that perhaps" (slowly and dreamily) "under other circumstances we might have been pleasant enough. Mammy has naturally excellent spirits, and so have I; it does not take much to make us happy, and even now I often feel like poor little Prince Arthur —

But then," sighing profoundly, "the moment that we begin to feel a little cheerful, something comes and knocks us down again."

There is such a blank hopelessness in the tone with which she pronounces the last words, and, in his almost total ignorance of the origin of her despair, it is so impossible to put his compassion into fit words, that he can think of nothing better than to pull his chair two inches nearer her, to assure her by this dumb protest of how little inclined he is to accept her warning.

"Are you sure that he is really gone – going, I mean," she asks, in an excited low voice, "going to-morrow morning, as you say? Oh, I wish it were to-morrow morning! But perhaps when to-morrow morning comes, he will have changed his mind. Was he quite, quite sure about it?"

"He said he was going to-morrow morning," replies Jim, repeating Cecilia's quotation from her new friend's conversation with conscientious exactness; "that it was not worth while to change his hotel, as he was leaving Florence to-morrow morning."

"He will not go," she says, shaking her head with restless dejection; "nobody but would be loth to leave this heavenly place" – glancing out affectionately through the open window, even at the commonplace and now almost night-shaded Piazza garden – "we shall find that he is not gone after all."

"Nothing will be easier to ascertain than that fact," says Burgoyne, eagerly catching at so easy an opportunity for help and service; "now that I know which is his hotel, I can inquire there to-morrow morning, and bring you word at once."

"Could you, would you?" cries she, life and light springing back into her dejected eyes at his proposal; "but no," with an accent of remorse, "why should you? Why should we keep you running upon our errands? What right have we to take up your time?"

"My time," repeats he ironically. "I am like the German Prince mentioned by Heine, who spent his leisure hours – hours of which he had twenty-four every day – in – "

"But if we do not rob you," interrupts Elizabeth, looking at him in some surprise, "we rob Miss – Miss Wilson. What will she say to us?"

"She will be only too glad," replies he stiffly, a douche of cold water thrown on his foolish heart by the little hesitation which had preceded her pronunciation of Amelia's name, showing that her interest in him had not had keenness enough even to induce her to master his betrothed's appellation.

"Will she?" rejoins Elizabeth, quite ignorant of having given offence, and with her eyes fixed rather wistfully upon his. "How good of her! and how unlike most very happy people! Happy people are generally rather exacting; but she looks good. She has a dear face!"

He is silent. To hear the one woman's innocent and unconscious encomiums of the other fills him with an emotion that ties his never ready tongue. She mistakes the cause of his muteness.

"I am afraid I have vexed you," she says, sweetly and humbly. "I had no business to praise her to you; it was like praising a person to himself; but do not be angry with me – I did not mean to be impertinent!"

One small fragile hand is hanging over the arm of her hard lodging-house arm-chair, and before he has an idea of what his own intentions are, it is lying, without any asking of its consent, in his.

"I will not – I will not let you say such things," he says, trembling. "She is good: she has a dear face: and I love to hear you say so! May I – may I bring her to see you?"

As he makes this request, he feels the little fingers that are lying in his palm give a nervous start; and at once, quietly but determinedly, the captive hand is withdrawn. It and its fellow fly up to her face, and together quite cover it from his view. Though, as I have said, they are small, yet, it being small too to match them, they conceal it entirely.

"You will not say no?" he cries anxiously. "I am sure you will not say no. I shall feel very much snubbed if you do."

Still no answer. Still that shielded face, and the ominous silence behind it. He rises, a dark red spreading over his features.

"I must apologize for having made the suggestion. I can only beg you to forget that it was ever made. Good-bye!"

He has nearly reached the door, when he hears the frou-frou of her gown, and turning, sees that her unsteady feet have carried her after him, and that her face is changing from crimson to white and back again with startling rapidity.

"I thought you would have understood," she says faintly. "I thought that you were the one person who would not have misunderstood."

His conscience pricks him, but he is never very quick to be able to own himself in the wrong, and before he can bring himself to frame any sentence that smacks of apology and regret, she resumes, with a little more composure and in a conventional voice:

"You know – we told you – even at Genoa – that – that we are not going out, that we do not wish to make any new acquaintances!"

"I know," replies he, with some indignation, "that that is the hollow formal bulletin you issue to the world in general, but I thought – I hoped – "

"Do not bring her to see me," she interrupts, abandoning her effort for composure, and speaking in a broken voice, while her eyes swim in tears. "She – she might be sorry – she – she might not like it – afterwards!"

He looks back at her with an almost terrified air. Is the answer to her sad riddle coming to him thus? Has he had the brutality to force her into giving it?

"You have been so kind in not asking me any questions, you have even given up alluding to old times since you saw that it hurt me; but you must see – of course you do – that – that there is something – in me – not like other people; something that – that prevents – my – having any friends! I have not a friend in the world" (with a low sob) "except my mother – except mammy! Do you think" (breaking into a watery smile) "that it is very silly of me, at my age, to call her 'mammy' still?"

"I think," he says, "that I am one of the greatest brutes out, and that I should be thankful if someone would kick me downstairs."

And with this robust expression of self-depreciation, he takes his hat and departs.

CHAPTER XVIII

It was to German flowers that the above hest was addressed. If they obey it, with how much more alacrity do the Italian ones comply with its glad command. It is a week later, and now no one can say that "the spring comes slowly up this way." Vines, figs, and mulberries, all are emulously racing out, and the corn has added two emerald inches to its juicy blades. The young plane-trees in the Piazza d'Azeglio, so skimpily robed when first Jim had rung the entresol bell of No. 12, are exchanging their "unhandsome thrift" for an apparel of plenteous green, and a wonderful Paulownia is beginning to hold up her clusters of gloccinia bells.

Jim has watched the daily progress of the plane-leaves from the low window of No. 12's entresol. The daily progress? Is it possible that he has been there every day during the past week? He asks himself this, with a species of shock; and it is with a sense of relief that he finds that one whole day has intervened, during which he had not heard the sound of the electric bell thrilling through the apartment under the touch of his own fingers. What can have taken him there, every day but one? He runs over, in his mind, with a misgiving as to their insufficiency, the reasons of his visit. For the first he had had an excellent excuse. Surely it would have been barbarous not to have imparted to the anxiously-watching pair the good news that the object of their mysterious terror had really and authentically gone! On the second day it seemed quite worth while to take the walk, in order to tell them that he had accidentally learned the clergyman's destination to be Venice, and his intention to return viâ Milan and the St. Gothard. On the third day, being as near to them as San Annunziata, it had seemed unfriendly not to inquire after Mrs. Le Marchant's neuralgia. On the fourth – He is pulled up short in his reminiscences. Why had he gone on the fourth day? He can give no answer to the question, and slides off from it to another. Which was the fourth day? Was it – yes, it was the one on which the wind blew as coldly east as it might have done across Salisbury Plain's naked expanse, and he had found Elizabeth sitting on a milking-stool shivering over a poor little fire of green wood, and blowing it with a pair of bellows. He had helped her to blow, and between them they had blown the fire entirely away, as often happens in the case of unskilled handlers of bellows, and Elizabeth had laughed till she cried.