Kitabı oku: «Alas! A Novel», sayfa 29

Poor Miss Le Marchant needs his encouragement, for, indeed, it is in a very frightened spirit that she sets forth on her pleasuring. But before the horse-bells have jingled to the bottom of Mustapha Supérieur, her spirits are rising. The sun shines, and he has shone so seldom in Elizabeth's life that a very few of his beams, whether real or metaphorical, suffice to send up her quicksilver. She does not consciously admit for a second the hope that in the present overture on the part of her companion lies any significance. But yet a tiny trembling bliss now and then taps at her heart's door, and she pushes it away but feebly.

Before they have reached the Amirauté, where they are to get out, she has thanked Mrs. Byng with such pretty and unsuspecting gratitude for bringing her, and has made her laugh so irrepressibly by her gay and naïve comments upon the motley passers-by, that the latter is filled with a compunctious regret that a person with such lovely manners, and such a sense of a joke, should have made so disastrous a fiasco of her life as renders necessary the extremely distasteful errand on which she herself is at present bound. At the Amirauté, as I say, they get out; and, turning under a groined roof that looks as if it were the crypt of a church, find themselves presently upon the long stone breakwater that runs out into the bay. It was built, they tell us, in old days by the wretched Christian captives; but the sea has taken care that not much of the original labour of blood and tears has survived.

The wind is high, and the sunshine ardent and splendid. On their right as they walk, with the wind officiously helping them from behind, is a world of dancing sapphire, each blue billow white-tipped. On their left are great blocks of masonry, built strong and square, with narrow intervals between to break the might of the water. How little their strength has availed against that of their tremendous opponent is seen at every step, since nearly half the blocks are overthrown or in semi-ruin; though the date engraved upon them shows for how few seasons they have been exposed to the ravages of the tempestuous sea. They walk on to the end, till they can go no further, since, just ahead of them, the waves are rolling in half-fierce play – though the day is all smiles – over the breakwater; and even where they stand, their footing is made unsure by lengths of slimy seaweed that set them slipping along. Elizabeth insists upon the elder woman taking her slight arm – insists upon carrying her wraps, and generally waiting upon and ministering to her. From the bottom of her heart Mrs. Byng wishes that she would not, since every instance of her soft helpfulness, so innocent and spontaneous, makes more difficult the answer to that question which she has been asking herself ever since they set foot upon the Mole:

"How shall I begin?"

It is unanswered still, when, retracing their steps a little, they sit down under the lee of one of the half-wrecked blocks to enjoy the view.

From here the sea is a lake, the distant mountains and the breakwater seeming – though in reality parted by how wide a wet waste – to join in embracing it. The mountains are dim and filmy to-day, Cape Matifou scarcely visible; but the Koubah shows white-domed on the hillside, and all the dazzling water is shot through with blinding light. The town, Arab-French, is dazzling too; the arcaded quay, the fortifications, one can scarcely look at any of them. Two or three steamers, with a little vapour issuing from their ugly black and red funnels, lie moored; and other smaller craft lift their spars against the heaven. Near by a man is sitting with his legs dangling over the water, fishing with a line; and two or three Arabs, draped in the dignity of their poetic rags, lie couched round a fire that they have kindled. Beneath and around them is the banging and thundering of the sea. August noise! "A voice like the sound of many waters." Could there be a more awful comparison? Just underneath them, where the sea has made a greater breach than usual, it is boiling as in a caldron. Looking down and in, they see the water comparatively quiet for a moment; then, with a shout of its great jubilant voice, rushing and surging in, tossing its mane. Elizabeth's eyes are resting on the heavenly sapphire plain.

"How blue!" she says, under her breath; "one cannot believe that it is not really blue; one feels that if one took up a little in a spoon it would be just as blue as it is now."

"I dare say it will not feel so blue when we are on it," replies Mrs. Byng, lugging in somewhat awkwardly, as she feels, the subject which she finds it so hard to introduce, "as I suppose we shall be within a week now."

Her charity bids her not glance at her companion as she speaks, so she is not quite sure whether or not she gives a start.

"Mr. Burgoyne thinks that I am sanguine; but I am all for moving him as soon as possible; it cannot be too soon."

She tries to throw as much significance as they are capable of holding into the latter words, and feels that she has succeeded.

"Of course he may refuse to go," continues she, with a rather strained laugh. "Do you remember Victor Hugo's definition of heaven as a place where children are always little and parents are always young? I am continually quoting it. But, unfortunately, one's children will not stay little; they grow big, and get wills of their own, and it is quite possible he may refuse to go."

"Yes?" almost inaudibly.

"But" – reddening slightly at the patently-intended application of her next sentence – "anyone that was fond of him – anyone that liked him really and – and disinterestedly, I mean, must see that the only happy course for him would be to go; that it would be his salvation to get away; they – they would not try to hinder him."

"I should think that no one would do that."

There is not a touch of asperity in the dove-soft voice; but there is a shade of dignity.

"When he was ill – while he was delirious" ("How dreadfully unpleasant it is!" in an anguished internal aside) – "I could not help hearing – gathering – drawing inferences."

The ardour of the chase has vanquished her charity, and she is looking at her victim. But, to do her justice, the success of her labours shocks her. Can this little aged, pinched face, with its dilated eyes, so full of woe and terror, be the same one that dimpled into riotous laughter half an hour ago at the sight of the two dirty old men, in Jewish gaberdines and with gingham umbrellas, kissing each other by the Mosquée de la Pêcherie?

"Of course it was all incoherent," she goes on hurriedly, snatching at the first expression that occurs to her as likely to undo, or at least a little modify, her work – "nothing that one could make sense of. Only your name recurred so incessantly; it was nothing but 'Elizabeth, Elizabeth.' I am sure" – with a remorseful if clumsy attempt to be kind, and a most uneasy smile – "that I do not wonder at it!"

In the narrow interspace between the blocks and the path – not more than a couple of fingers wide – how the sea forces itself! and up race its foam-fountains, throwing their spray aloft in such mighty play, as if they would hit heaven's arch. What exhilaration in its great glad noise, superb and battle-ready!

"I cannot express how distasteful a task this is to me" – in a tone that certainly gives no reason to doubt the truth of her statement; "but, after all, I am his mother; he is all I have in the world, and I am sure that you are the very last person who would wish to do him an injury."

"No; I do not think that I would do him an injury."

How curiously still and slow her voice is! Mrs. Byng has resolutely averted her eyes, so that her purpose may not again be shaken by the sight of the havoc she has wrought, and has fixed them upon some sea gulls that are riding up and down upon the merry waves, making them, with their buoyant motion, even more jocund than they were before.

"It seems an impossible thing to say to you – a thing too bad to apologize for – but yet I must say it" – in a tone of excessive distress, yet firmness. "Under the circumstances, it would – would throw a blight over his whole life."

"Yes, I know that it would; I have always known it; that is why we left Florence."

"And very good it was of you, too! Not that I am quite certain of the judiciousness of the way in which you did it; but, however, I am sure you meant it for the best."

"Yes, I meant it for the best."

The sea-gulls have risen from the billow, and are turning and wheeling in the air. The light is catching their wings, and making them look like whitest silver. It seems as if they were at conscious play with it, trying experiments as to how they can best catch their bright playfellow, and again shake it off, and yet again recapture it.

"What a monster you must think me!" breaks out the elder woman presently.

Now that the impression has somehow been conveyed to her mind that her mission is likely to be completely successful, the full brutality of the method by which she has accomplished it bursts upon her mind.

"How treacherous! luring you out here, under the pretence of friendliness, to say such horrible things to you!"

Elizabeth's narrow hands are clasped upon her knee, and her small heart-broken, white face is looking out straight before her.

"No, I do not think you a monster," she answers – "you are a kind-hearted woman! and it must have been very, very unpleasant to you. I am quite sorry" – with a sort of smile – "for you, having to do it; but you are his mother. If I had been his mother, I should have done the same; at least, I suppose so."

"I am sure, if things had been different, there is no one that I should have – I do not know when I ever saw anyone whom I took such a fancy to. If it had not been for the disparity – I mean, if he had been less young and unfit to take upon himself the serious responsibilities of life – "

How deplorably lame even to Mrs. Byng's ears sound her tardy efforts to place the grounds of her objection on a less cruel basis than that which she has already made so nakedly plain to be the real one! Even the sweet-mannered Elizabeth does not think it necessary to express gratitude for such insulting civilities.

"I do not quite understand what you wish me to do," she says, with quiet politeness; "if you will explain to me – "

"Oh, I do not want to dictate to you; please do not imagine I could think of being so impertinent; but, of course, he will be asking for you. Since he came to himself, he has not mentioned you as yet; but of course he will. I am expecting it every moment; probably he has not felt up to embarking on the subject. He will ask for you – will want to see you."

"And you wish me not to see him?"

Her delicate suffering mouth quivers; but she is perfectly composed.

"Oh, but of course you must see him! you quite, quite misunderstand me! Much chance there would be" – with a wretched stunted laugh – "of getting him away without a sight of you! How little you know him!"

Elizabeth does not dispute the fact of her want of acquaintance with Byng's character, nor does she help his floundering parent by any suggestion. She merely goes on listening to her with that civil white look, while the sportive sea-mews still play at hide-and-seek with the sun-rays on the wide blue fields of heaven.

"It is dreadful that I should have to say these things to you," says Mrs. Byng, in a voice of the strongest revolt and ire against her destiny – "insult you in this unprovoked way; but, in point of fact, you are the only person in the world who can convince him that – that – it is impossible – that it cannot be. Of course he will be very urgent and pressing, and I know how persuasive he is. Do not you suppose that I, his own mother, know how hard it is to refuse him anything? and of course, in his present weak state, it must be very carefully done. He could not stand any violent contradiction. You would have to be very gentle; dear me!" – with a fresh access of angry remorse – "as if you ever could be anything else."

This compliment also its pale object receives in silence.

"You know one has always heard that there are two kinds of 'No,'" goes on Mrs. Byng with another dwarfish laugh, which has a touch of the hysteric in it – "a woman's 'No,' as it is called, that means 'Yes'; and a 'No' which anyone – which even he– must understand to be final. If you could– I dare say I am asking you an impossibility – but if you could make him understand that this time it is final!"

There is a silence between them. An unrulier billow than usual, yet more masterless in its Titan play, is hurling itself with a colossal thud and bang against the causeway; and Elizabeth waits till its clamour is subsided before she speaks.

"Yes," she answers slowly, "I understand; thank you for telling me what you wish. I think I may promise that I shall be able to – that I shall make him understand that it is final."

A moment or two later they are on their way back to the Amirauté. The ocean is at its glorious pastimes all around them; the hill-climbing, shining town smiles upon them from its slope; but upon both has fallen a blindness. The feelings of Mrs. Byng are perhaps the least enviable of the two.

They are nearly back at the beginning of the breakwater, when she stops short. Probably when cool reflection comes, when she is removed from the charm and pathos of Elizabeth's meek white presence, lovely and unreproachful, she will not repent her work; but at the present moment of impulse and remorse she feels as if the expunging of the last half-hour would be cheaply purchased by the sacrifice of six months of her remaining life.

"I suppose it is not the least use my asking you to try and forgive me – to make allowances for me?" she says, with unsteady-toned humility; "oh, how you must hate me! If the case were reversed, how I should hate you! How you will hate me all your life!"

The tears are rolling down her cheeks, and in an instant Elizabeth's hand has gone out to her. As it does so, the grotesque regret flashes across the elder woman's mind that any future daughter-in-law of hers will be most unlikely to be the possessor of such a hand.

"Why should I hate you? you cannot" – with a heart-wrung smile – "possibly think me more undesirable than I do myself; and even if it were not so, I do not think it is in me to hate anyone very much."

On their drive home they meet with one or two little incidents quite as funny as the old Jews kissing each other; but this time they do not move poor Miss Le Marchant to any laughter.

CHAPTER XI

 
"I do remember an apothecary, —
And hereabouts he dwells."
 

Two days later she is called upon to perform the task she has undertaken. Probably she has spent those two days, and also the appertaining nights, in bracing her mind to it, for Jim can plainly see the marks of that struggle, though he is not aware of its existence, graved upon her face, on the third morning after the excursion to the Mole, when he comes in search of her. He does not find her in her accustomed corner of the terrace, but, looking down over the balustrade, sees her sitting below and alone on a small tree-shaded plateau that seems to have been levelled for lawn-tennis or bowls. Probably the giggling and chaffering of the girls on the terrace, and the respectful but persistent importunities of the Omars and Ahmeds to buy their colourful wares outspread on the hot flags have oppressed her spirits.

Fritz has carried down for her an arm-chair, a cane table, and a Persian rug for her feet, and she looks as if she were established for the day.

Since Byng has been out of danger Elizabeth has returned to her embroidery. She is one of those women to whom needlework is unaffectedly dear, like that other sweet woman "who was so delicate with her needle."

Before she catches sight of him he watches for a few moments her bright bent head and flying white fingers, and is able to perceive how many sighs she is sewing into the pattern.

"What a morning!" he says, running down the steps and joining her. "No one has any excuse for being an invalid to-day, has he?"

There is no second seat, so he stands beside her, looking up over her head at the tall trees above her, from which immense garlands of ivy are hanging and swinging in the warm breeze. That potent ivy has killed one tree altogether.

She glances up at him mutely, knowing that he has not come merely to tell her that the day is fine.

"We can hardly keep him on his sofa; he is virtually almost well, so well that he is quite up to seeing people. He would like – he has been asking – to see you."

He had thought her nearly as pale as it was possible for her to be when he had first come upon her. He now realizes how many degrees of colour she then had left to lose. While he speaks she has been mechanically pulling her thread through, and as he ceases, her lifted hand stops as if paralyzed, and remains holding her needle in the air.

It has come, then. For all her two days' bracing, is she ready for it?

"Now?"

The whisper in which this monosyllable is breathed is so stamped with a fear that borders on terror, that his one astonished thought is bow best to reassure her.

"Not if you do not feel inclined, of course – not unless you like. It can perfectly well be put off to another time. I can tell him – there will not be the least difficulty in making him understand – that you do not feel up to it this morning: that you would rather have more notice."

"But I would not," she says, standing up suddenly, and with trembling hands laying her work down upon the table, and beginning from dainty habit to pin it up in its protecting white cloth. "What good would more notice – a year's notice – do me?"

She turns away from him and fixes her unseeing eyes, glassy and dilated, upon a poplar tree that is hanging tasselled catkins out against the sky. Then once again she faces him, and he sees that there are cold beads of agony upon her forehead.

"Wish for me," she says huskily – "wish very hard for me, that I may get through it – that we may both get through it – alive!"

Then, motioning to him with her hand not to follow her, she walks quickly towards the hotel.

It is impossible to him to stay quiet. He wanders restlessly away, straying he knows not whither. The mimosas are out charmingly in the gardens, sending delicious whiffs of perfume from the soft yellow fluff of their flowers. The pinky almond-trees are out too, but not till long afterwards does he know it.

By-and-by he finds himself strolling, unhindered by a gardener placidly digging, through the grounds of a villa to let. Gigantic violets send their messages to his nostrils, the big and innumerable blue blossoms predominating over the leaves, which in England have to be so carefully searched for them. Superabundant oranges tumble about his feet; arum lilies, just discovering the white secret hid in their green sheaths, stand in tall rows on either side of him; a bed of broad beans points out the phenomenon of her February flowers to him. He sees and smells none of them. Have his senses stolen away with his heart into Byng's bedchamber? They must have done so, or he could not see with such extraordinary vividness the scene enacting there. He has himself helped to place it in such astonishing reality before himself. Does not he know the exact position of the chair she is to occupy? Did not he place it for her before he went to fetch her? Nor can his reason prevent his distorted fancy from presenting the interview as one between happy and confessed lovers. Even the recollection of her features, ghastly and with beads of agony dewing them, cannot correct the picture of his mind as he persistently sees it. That she meant, when he parted from her, to renounce Byng, he has no manner of doubt. But does not he know the pliancy of her nature? Is not he convinced that the rock on which her life has split is her inability ever to refuse anyone anything that they ask with sufficient urgency or with enough plausibility to persuade her that she can do them a kindness by yielding?

How much more, then, will she be incapable of resisting the importunate passion of her own heart's chosen one, freshly risen from a bed of death? Presently his restless feet carry him away out of the villa grounds again. He finds himself on the Boulevard Mustapha, and sits down on the low wall by the roadside, staring absently at a broken line of dusky stone-pines, cutting the ardent blue of the African sky on the hill opposite, and at an arcaded campagne throned high up among the verdure. He knows that it belongs to an Englishman who made reels of cotton, and the idle thought saunters across his mind how strange it is that reels of cotton should wind anyone into such a lofty white Eden! Can the interview be lasting all this while? Is not it yet ended? May not his tormented fancy see the chair by Byng's sofa once again empty or occupied by nurse or mother? Will not Mrs. Byng, will not Elizabeth herself; have seen the unfitness of taxing the sick man's faint powers by so extreme a strain upon them? But no sooner has this suggested idea shed a ray of light upon his darkness than an opposing one comes and blows it out. Has not Byng a will of his own? Will he be likely so soon to let her go? Nay, having once recovered her, will he ever let her out of his sight again? The thought restores him to restless action, and, although with sedulous slowness, he begins to retrace his steps towards the hotel. At a point about a quarter of a mile distant from it, the lane which leads to the Villa Wilson debouches into the road, and debouching also into the road he sees the figure of Cecilia, who, catching sight of him, as if unable to wait for him to join her, almost runs to meet him.

"I was coming to call upon you," says she eagerly. "Oh!" – with a laugh – "to-day I really cannot stay to think of the proprieties, and you have not been to see us for such centuries!"

"I have been nursing Byng."

"Oh yes; poor man! How dreadfully ill he must have been! I was so glad to hear he was better."

There is such a flat tepidity in the tone of these expressions of commiseration, something so different from the tender alertness of Cecilia's former interest in their object, that Jim, roused out of his own reflections to regard her more attentively than he has yet done, sees that she is preoccupied by some subject quite alien to the invalid.

"I have a piece of news to tell you" – with a sort of angry chuckle. "Such a piece of news! I am sure you will be delighted at it."

At her words a wonder as idle and slack as his late thought about the reels of cotton crosses him as to what possible piece of news to be told him by the buxom and excited person, before him could give him the faintest pleasure. That wonder sends up his eyebrows, and throws a mild animation into his voice.

"Indeed?"

"Do you like" – still chuckling – "to be told a piece of news or to guess it?"

"I like to be told it."

"Well, then" – with a dramatic pause – "we are going to have a wedding in the family!"

"My dear girl!" cries he, smiling very good-naturedly, and with a sensation that, though not violent, is the reverse of annoyance. "Hurrah! So he has come at last! Who is he? How dark you have kept him!"

Cecilia shakes her head and gives a short and rosy laugh.

"Oh, it is not I! You are wide of the mark."

"Your father?" – in a shocked voice.

He has a confused and illogical feeling that a second marriage on the part of Mr. Wilson would be a slight upon Amelia's memory.

"Father!" – with an accent that plainly shows him he is still further afield than in his first conjecture – "poor father! No, indeed; Heaven forbid! Fancy me with a stepmother!"

She pauses to give a shudder at the idea, while Jim gapes blankly at her, wondering whether she has gone off her head.

"Oh no; it is neither father nor I! No wonder you look mystified. It is —Sybilla!"

"Sybilla!!!!"

Although Mr. Burgoyne has not got it on his conscience that he has ever either expressed or felt anything but the most strenuous and entire disbelief in Sybilla's maladies, yet it has never occurred to him as possible that she should engage in any occupation nearer akin to the ordinary avocations of life than imbibing tonics through tubes and eating beef essences out of cups.

"She is going to marry Dr. Crump!" continues Cecilia, not on the whole dissatisfied with the effect of her torpedo. "When she told father, she said that he had saved her life, and that the least she could do was to dedicate the poor remainder of it to him. She tells other people that she is marrying him because we wish it! You know that that was always her way."

"Sybilla!!"

"I thought that there must be something in the wind, as since the beginning of the month she has never once wished us good-bye; and the housemaid upset the ink-bottle over the book of prescriptions without her ever finding it out; and the clinical thermometer has not appeared for a week!"

"Sybilla!!!"

"I thought I should surprise you; it gives one a disgust for the idea of marrying altogether, does not it? I have come to the conclusion that I do not care now if I never marry. Father and I get on quite happily together; and when one is well off, one can really be very fairly content in a single state; and, at all events, I am sure I do not envy Sybilla."

"Nor I Crump" – with an emphasis so intense that Cecilia bursts out into a laugh of a more genuine character than any she has yet indulged in.

"You will have to give her away!" she cries, as soon as she can again speak distinctly. "Father will marry her, of course, and you must give her away. I am sure she will insist upon it."

"She will have to make haste, then," returns he, recovering enough from his first stupefaction to join Cecilia in her mirth; "for I shall not be here much longer."

"You are not going away?" – raising her eyebrows, and with a tinge of meaningness in her tone which vaguely frets him.

"Why should not I go?" he asks irritably, his short and joyless merriment quite quenched. "What is there for a man to do here? I have stayed already much longer than I meant. I am engaged to meet a friend at Tunis – the man with whom I went to the Himalayas three years ago; we are going to make an excursion into the interior. I am only waiting for some guns and things. Why should not I go?"

"There is no earthly reason," replies she demurely; "only that I did not know you had any such intention. But then, to be sure, it is so long since I have seen you – not, I think," glancing at him for confirmation of her statement rather too innocently, "since the lovers – ha! ha! – and I met you and Miss Le Marchant driving on the quay."