Alas! A Novel

CHAPTER XIV

Presently they pass into the still, cloistered garden, in whose unmown grass-squares gray-blue flowers are blowing, beside whose walks pale pink peonies are flushing, and round whose well the grave rosemary bushes are set. Through the whole place is an atmosphere of deep peace, of silence, leisure, dignity. It is virtually a tête-à-tête, as their tonsured guide, seeing their evident harmlessness, has left them to their own devices; and Mrs. Le Marchant has sat down to rest upon a camp-stool which Elizabeth has been carrying ever since they left the carriage. It has fidgeted Jim to see her burdened with it; for let a man be ever so little in love with a woman, his tendency always is to think her as brittle as spun glass, to believe that any weight, however light, will bruise her arm – any pebble, however tiny, wound her tender foot. He has offered to relieve her of it, but she has refused – playfully at first – telling him she is sure that he will lose it; and afterwards, when he insists, more gravely, though with gentle gratitude, saying that it would never do for her to get into the habit of being waited upon, and that she always carries mammy's things. It is perhaps absurd that a woman of six-and-twenty should speak of her mother as "mammy," yet the homely and childish abbreviation seems to him to come "most fair and featously" from her lips.

They stay a long time in the sun-kissed garden, considering that there is after all not very much to see there. But Elizabeth's light steps, that to-day seem set to some innocent dancing-tune, are loath to leave it; she must smell the great new peonies, monthly-rose-coloured, faintly perfumed; she must steal a sprig of rosemary "to put into her coffin when she dies," at which he catches his breath, shuddering; she must peep into the well. He insists on her holding his hand for safety as she leans over to do so; her little fingers grip his tight as she cranes her neck and bends her lissom body. But what a small handful they are, compared to those other fingers – those kind, useful, but undoubtedly solid fingers – which he has held perfunctorily through many a matter-of-fact hour. By-and-by they stray away together out of the bounteous air of the hilltop into a semi-underground church, to see the fifteenth and sixteenth century monuments, which look as fresh as if their marble had left its home in Carrara but yesterday. They stand looking down at those three kin who lie side by side before the high altar, each with head dropped a little sideways on the shoulder, as if overcome by sudden sleep. They step on into the side chapel, where that yet nobler mitred figure, fashioned by Donatello's hand, stretches his prone length above his border of fruit and flowers, among which lies a carved skull, through whose empty eye-holes – strange and grisly fancy contrasting with so much beauty – a mocking ribbon runs. Elizabeth is perfectly silent the whole time, but no flood of talk could make Jim half so conscious of her presence, palpitating with sympathy and feeling, could give half the confidence he enjoys that she will introduce no allusion to either Kensal Green or Woking, as it is but too probable that the excellent companion of most of his Florentine rambles would have done.

Elizabeth has been perfectly silent, yet at last she speaks. It is in the Chapter House, where, as most of us have done, they have suddenly come upon another tomb, the tomb of one lying full-length on the pavement before the altar, with no separating edge of marble or wrought-iron railing to keep him from the foot of the passer-by. He lies there, portrayed with such an extraordinary vividness of life about his prostrate figure and his severe, powerful face, that one feels inclined to speak low, lest he should lift his white lids and look rebuke at us. In the lines about his mouth there is a hint of sardonic mirth. Is he – hearing our foolish chatter – touched with a grave contemptuous amusement at it? Or is he keeping in his sleep the memory of some four hundred years old jest? Elizabeth has involuntarily crept close to Burgoyne's side, with the gesture of a frightened child.

"Are you sure that he did not stir?" she asks tremulously under her breath. Her next thought is that her mother must see him too, this wonderful living dead man, and they presently set forth to return to the garden to fetch her. But apparently she has grown tired of waiting for them, for, as they enter the cloistered enceinte, they see her advancing to meet them.

"I would not be left alone with him at night for the wealth of the Indies," Elizabeth is saying, with a half-nervous laugh. "Oh, mammy, you would never have forgiven me if I had let you go without seeing him! Why, what is this?" – with a sudden change of key – "what has happened?" For as they draw near to Mrs. Le Marchant they see that her walk is a staggering one, and that the usually healthy, clear pallor of her face is exchanged for a livid whiteness. "What is it, darling?" cries Elizabeth in an accent of terror. "Oh, Jim, she is going to faint!" In the agitation of the moment she has unconsciously returned to the familiar address which she used always to employ towards him in their boy-and-girl days. "Put your arm round her on that side, I can hold her up on this. Let us get her back to the camp-stool."

A camp-stool is neither an easy nor a luxurious seat upon which to deposit a half-swooning woman, but the joint exertions of her daughter and of Burgoyne presently succeed in replacing her on her rickety resting-place; their arms interlace each other behind her back, and their anxious eyes look interrogation at one another above her head, half dropped on Elizabeth's slight shoulder.

"Does she often faint? Is she apt to do it?" asks Jim, in a whisper.

"Never – never!" replies the girl in a heart-rent voice, raining kisses on her mother's white face. "Oh, darling, darling, what has happened to you?"

Perhaps it is through the vivifying rain of those warm kisses, but a little colour is certainly beginning to steal back into the elder woman's cheek, and she draws a long breath.

"Oh, if she could have a glass of water!" cries Elizabeth, greedily verifying these slight signs of returning consciousness. "Get her a glass of water! Oh, please get her a glass of water – quick! quick!"

Burgoyne complies, though it is not without reluctant misgivings that he withdraws the efficacious support of his own solid arm, and leaves Elizabeth's poor little limb to bear the whole weight of her mother's inert body.

Their guide has, as before mentioned, disappeared; and Jim has not the slightest idea in which direction to seek him. It is five good minutes before he discovers him, standing near the door of the monastery, in conversation with a visitor who is apparently just in the act of departure. The stranger is in clerical dress; and, as he turns to nod farewell to the monk, Jim recognises in his features those of the Devonshire clergyman, whom he had last seen, and so unwillingly heard, by the well-brim of the Bellosguardo villa. In a second a light has flashed into his mind. Mrs. Le Marchant, too, has seen that stranger – has seen him for the first time for ten years, since it is evident that the recognition of mother and daughter in the Via Tornabuoni, to which the Moat's late rector had referred, could not have been reciprocal. It is to the fact of her having been brought suddenly and unpreparedly face to face with that mysterious past, which seems to be always blocking his own path to her friendship, that is to be attributed the poor woman's collapse. A rush of puzzled compassion flows over him as he realizes the fact, and his one impatient wish is to return with all the speed he may to the forlorn couple he has left, to reassure them as to the removal (even though it may only be a temporary one) out of their path of the object of their unexplained terror. Will the mother have imparted to her child the cause of her fainting, or will she have tried to keep it from her?

The first glimpse he gets when, having at length procured the desired glass of water, he comes into sight of them, answers the question for him. Mrs. Le Marchant is evidently partially recovered. She is sitting up, no longer supported by her daughter's arm, and that daughter is lying on her knees, with her head buried in her mother's lap. As he nears them, he sees the elder woman hurriedly pressing her daughter's arm to warn her of his approach, and Elizabeth obediently lifts her face. But such a face! He can scarcely believe it is the same that laid itself – hardly less bloomily fair than they – against the faint peony buds half an hour ago; a face out of which the innocent glad shining has been blown by some gust of brutal wind – scared, blanched, miserable.

"Oh, yes, I am better, much better – quite well, in fact," says Mrs. Le Marchant, pushing away the offered glass, and speaking with a ghastly shadow of her former even cheerfulness. "Give it to Elizabeth, she needs it more than I do! You see, I gave her a terrible fright!"

He silently holds out the water to Elizabeth, and she, without attempting to take the tumbler into her own trembling hand, drinks. He looks with impotent pity from the bent blonde head to the prematurely snow-white one. How can he word his reassurance to them without appearing to thrust himself with officious insolence into their confidence? It seems to himself that he solves the problem very clumsily.

"I am afraid you must have thought me but slow," he says, feeling that he is dragging in the piece of information he is anxious to give them with an awkward head-and-shoulder-ness: "but at first I couldn't find our monk, and when I did, he was engaged – he was talking to a visitor – a clergyman."

He pauses, conscious that at the last word a tremulous shiver has passed over the kneeling figure.

"Yes, a clergyman," he goes on with nervous haste, hurrying to put them out of their pain; "an elderly, gray-haired, English clergyman, who was just in the act of going away; indeed, before I left, he had gone. I saw him drive off!"

Ere he has finished his sentence, he is seized by the apprehension that there must appear to his listeners something suspicious in the laboured details into which he is entering; presupposing, as they do, that he is aware of there being for them an interest attaching to the fact of the stranger's departure. And indeed, as he speaks, he is conscious that Mrs. Le Marchant's frightened eyes, which have been taking surreptitious trips round the peaceful garden, now come home with a no less alarmed look to his face.

"Was he – was he – an acquaintance of yours?" she asks, with an attempt at a laugh – "this clergyman, I think you said he was – that you noticed him so particularly?"

"An acquaintance?" repeats Jim doubtfully; "what is an acquaintance? a man whom one knew very little, and disliked a good deal, ten years ago; and who passes one by without a gleam of recognition now – is that an acquaintance?"

Elizabeth's hat has fallen on the ground, and hitherto she has seemed unconscious of the evening sunbeams smiting her uncovered head; now she stoops and picks it up.

"And you did not make yourself known to him then?" continues Mrs. Le Marchant, still with that painful effort at lightness of tone. "You let him drive off without telling him who you were? or asking him where he was staying? or how long his visit to Florence is to last? or – or anything?"

Jim's eyes are fixed on her as she speaks with a compassionate steadiness, under which hers quail waveringly. Is it possible that she can imagine that she is deceiving him by this miserable pretence of indifference?

"I have no doubt that I shall be able to find out if you wish to know," he answers gravely; "for I think he must be as much an acquaintance of yours as of mine, since it was only at the Moat that I ever met him."

He had thought that Mrs. Le Marchant was already as colourless as a woman could be; but as he speaks, he sees her face take on a new degree of pallor. She struggles unsteadily to her feet.

"It is – it is getting late!" she says indistinctly; "we – ought – to be – going home!"

Even as she speaks she makes an uncertain step forward, but it is so uncertain that he catches her by the arm.

"You are not fit to move yet," he says with kind imperativeness; "rest five minutes longer; it is not late, really – the sun is quite high still."

Convinced, either by the young man's eloquence, or, as is more likely, by the shaking of her own limbs, Mrs. Le Marchant sits down again. Elizabeth has risen to her feet, and now stands beside her mother. She has said nothing, but he can see her trembling from head to heel. He hears her voice now addressing him, but in so subdued a key that her words are almost lost in the low blowing of the faint south wind that is fondling the blades of the unshorn grass.

"Did you say that he was gone? Are you sure of it?"

"Yes, yes, quite sure! I saw him go."

"Did you – did you happen to hear where he was staying?"

"No, but" – with the greatest eagerness – "I can easily find out; nothing can be simpler."

Elizabeth is standing quite close to him, so close that he can see her poor little heart leaping under the thin white gown, whose simple finery had piqued him earlier in the day. She has apparently, in her new terror, forgotten that there is any cause for concealing from him the occasion of it. She turns instinctively to him, as a hurt child to the nearest bystander. It seems to him the most natural thing in the world that she should. They are both recalled to themselves by her mother's voice.

"You must think that we have lost our wits," she says with a sickly smile; "but even if we have, I do not know what right we have to impose upon a – a comparative stranger like you, the task of helping us to gratify our – our idle curiosity."

"But I am not a comparative stranger!" cries Jim vehemently; by this time – he does not know how – he is holding a hand of each of the trembling women in his. "I am not a stranger at all! I am a friend! Why will not you treat me as one? Why will not you let me help you?"

He glances with pitying, affectionate eagerness from one to other of the woebegone faces on either side of him. The tears have come in sudden flood to the elder woman, and are pouring over her white cheeks, stopping the passage of her voice; but Elizabeth's fair eyes are drearily dry, and speech comes clear and hopeless from her.

"You are very good to us!" she says, giving the hand that holds hers a little pressure, which he feels to be as cold as it is grateful; "at least, I see that you want to be very good to us if we would let you; but as to helping us" – with a slight despairing shrug – "no one can do that; no one but God, and sometimes" – drawing a long, half-sobbing breath – "I think that it would pass even His power."

CHAPTER XV

There are few things more difficult than when one's mind is full of the interests, cares, and sorrows of one set of friends, to have to empty it suddenly of them, and refill it as suddenly with the entirely different, and perhaps discrepant interests, cares, and sorrows of an altogether alien set.

Seldom in the course of their old and tried friendship has Jim Burgoyne felt less disposed for the company and conversation of his valued ally, Mrs. Byng, than when he knocks at the door of her sitting-room on the morning following the excursion to Certosa. He cannot talk to her about the Le Marchants, seeing that she has never even heard of their existence; and if out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh, his talk upon any other topic must be scant and jejune indeed. The only cheerful side which his prospective visit turns to him is, that if he were not with Mrs. Byng, he would be with Amelia; and that the friendlily indifferent eyes of the former will, at all events, be less likely than the hungrily loving ones of the latter to detect that he has not slept a wink, and that he has not the remotest idea what he is talking about. If he were to follow his inclination, he would be bestowing his company this morning upon neither friend nor sweetheart, but would be ransacking Florence for the piece of information he had yesterday promised those two woebegone women to procure for them. Even into the very midst of his heartfelt sore compassion for them, there pierces a shamed unwilling flash of elation at the thought of what a stride to intimacy his being entrusted with this commission implies, of what an opening to indefinitely numerous future visits it affords. His determination to conduct the search is at present a good deal more clearly defined than the method in which that search is to be effected. He can consult Galignani as to the names and whereabouts of new arrivals; but they could do that much for themselves. He could examine the visitors' books of the different hotels; but Florence, though a little city, is rich in hostelries, and this course would take time. He could consult Mr. Greenock, the head and fount of all Florentine gossip, and who, since he had seen him in conversation with the object of his inquiries, would probably be able to satisfy them; but his acquaintance with the good-natured newsmonger is not sufficiently intimate for him to be able to pay him a morning visit with any air of probability of having been impelled thereto by a desire for his company; and, moreover, he shrinks with a morbid fear from any action which may lead, however obliquely, to his being himself apprised of the terrible secret which – it is no longer mere matter of conjecture – lies couched somewhere in those two poor creatures' past.

And meanwhile he knocks at Mrs. Byng's door, and is quickly bidden enter by a cheerful English voice, the welcoming alacrity of whose tones shames his own want of pleasure in the meeting. But he is too unfortunately honest to express a joy he does not experience, and only says, with a slight accent of reproach as he takes her ready hand, heartily held out:

"You should not spring these surprises upon us."

She laughs a little guiltily.

"It – it was a sudden thought; you see I – I had never seen Perugia."

He laughs too. "Poor Perugia! I think it would have blushed unseen for a good many more years if you had not begun to doubt the efficiency of my chaperonage. Confess! you have come to look after the precious baby-boy, have not you?"

His tone is, as he himself feels, not quite a pleasant one; but the mother is scarcely more prone to take offence than the son; and she answers with an amiably hasty disclaimer:

"It was not that I felt the least want of confidence in you – you must not think that; but – but I had one of my presentiments! you know that I am always a little superstitious; and three nights running an owl came and hooted quite close under my window!"

"As long as I have known your wood, it has had owls; and as long as I have known them, they have hooted."

"In the wood, yes, of course, and I like to hear them; but this one was close under my window."

Jim's only answer is to lift his hands and shoulders in protest against his friend's weak-mindedness.

"I had quite made up my mind that something had happened," continues she, not much abashed by his scorn; "and it was the greatest relief when I first caught sight of him at the station yesterday, looking just as usual, a little thinner perhaps – does not he strike you as a little thin? Has he been weighed lately? He gives me the idea of having lost a pound or two since I last saw him. Is there a weighing-machine in the hotel?"

"It will be very easy to ascertain."

"And how is Amelia?" – her cheerful eyes resting in friendly and half-inquisitive interest on his sombre face.

"Amelia is very well, thank you."

"Amelia Wilson still?"

"Yes."

"For how long?" – laughing – "another ten years, I suppose?"

"For three months, I believe; we are to be married as soon as they return to England."

"You do not say so?" – with an accent of lively and delighted incredulity – "hurrah! poor Amelia! 'Tout vient à point à qui sait attendre;' and she has su attendre with a vengeance, has not she?"

"She is not going to attendre any more," replies Jim dryly.

"Then I shall have to give you a present, I suppose!" cries Mrs. Byng, still with that delighted accent. "Something useful, I have no doubt. I feel sure that Amelia would like something useful; why should not we choose it to-day? Florence is an ideal place for buying presents; do you think that Amelia would spare you to me for a whole morning?"

Jim hesitates. It is not that he has any doubt as to Amelia's cheerful renunciation of any portion of his time that he may see fit to abstract from her; but the occupation suggested – that of squiring Mrs. Byng – is not that to which he had purposed devoting his forenoon. She sees his unreadiness to answer, and attributes it to a wrong cause.

"Amelia will not?" cries she in a tone of surprise and disappointment. "Well, I could not have believed it of her! Not even if you told her that it is on purpose to buy her a present?"

Jim breaks into an unavoidable smile. "How frightfully quickly your mind moves! It leaps like a kangaroo! I never said that she would not resign the precious boon of my society; on the contrary, I am sure that nothing would give her greater pleasure, but – but – what will Willy say to my monopolizing you?"

At the excessive disingenuousness of this speech his conscience gives him a severe prick, recalling to his mind the attitude of prostrate affliction – stretched face downwards on his bed – in which his young friend had received the news of his parent's prospective approach. A light cloud passes over that parent's sunny face.

"Willy has an engagement this morning," she answers more slowly, and with less radiance than has hitherto marked her utterances; "nothing could be sweeter and dearer than he was, and he is going to take me somewhere this afternoon – to Fiesole or Petraia, or somewhere else delightful; but this morning he has an engagement. He did not tell me what it was, and I did not like to tease him with questions. You" – with a rather wistful glance of interrogation at her companion – "do not happen to know what it is?"

Jim shakes his head, while a rather deeper shade than habitually lies upon it settles on his careworn forehead. It is perfectly true that he knows nothing of young Byng's engagement, but yet he has a shrewd suspicion to what quarter of the town that engagement will lead him.

"So that I rather counted upon you," continues Mrs. Byng, turning with a somewhat crestfallen air to the window.

"And you did not count in vain," replies Burgoyne, with a sort of forced gallantry. It has flashed upon him that he will have to consent under penalty of giving a detailed account of the reasons for his inability, and that therefore he had better make a virtue of necessity, and do it with a good grace. After all, the deferring for a couple of hours of his researches cannot be of any great consequence to the persons in whose behalf those researches are set on foot. To a suspicious ear there might be something dubious in the sudden and galvanized alacrity of his assent; but not a shadow of doubt crosses Mrs. Byng's mind as to her old and tried ally being as pleased to avail himself of an opportunity for enjoying her society as he has always showed himself during the twenty years and more of their acquaintance.