Alas! A Novel. Broughton Rhoda
as amiably as if he had not been perfectly aware that it was only "cussedness" that had dictated the query.
There is a slight pause. Burgoyne would like to answer that he does not remember—would like still more to answer that he does not see what business it can be of Byng's; but, since he is not destitute of common-sense, a second's reflection shows him that he has no good reason for either the lie or the incivility, so he replies, pretty calmly, with his eyes still on his leading article:
"I believe Miss Le Marchant said 12 bis."
Having obtained the information he wanted, and finding his companion not conversationally disposed, Byng is moving away again, when he is arrested by Jim's voice, adding to the intelligence he has just given the monosyllable:
"Why?"
"Why what?" asks Byng, returning readily, and laughingly mimicking the intentional obtuseness so lately practised on himself by the other.
"Why did you ask?"
"I am thinking of paying my respects there this afternoon, and I did not want to ring at the wrong bell."
A short silence. Jim's head is partly hidden by his Galignani.
"Did Miss or Mrs. Le Marchant ask you to call?"
Byng laughs.
"Both of them are as innocent of it as the babe unborn!"
"You asked yourself then?" (in a snubbing voice).
Byng nods.
"And she said yes?"
The plural pronoun has dropped out of sight, but neither of them perceives it. The younger man shakes his sleek head. Jim lays down his paper with an air of decision.
"If she did not say 'Yes'—if she said 'No,'" he begins, with an accent of severity, "I fail to understand——"
"She did not say 'No,'" interrupts Byng, still half laughing, and yet reddening as well. "She began to say it; but I suppose that I looked so broken-hearted—I am sure I felt it—that she stopped."
As Jim makes no rejoinder, he continues by-and-by:
"After all, she can but send me away. One is always being sent away" (Jim wishes he could think this truer than he does); "but now and again one is not sent, and those are the times that pay for the others! I'll risk it."
There is a hopeful ring in his voice as he ends, and again a pause comes, broken a third time by the younger man.
"Come now, Jim"—looking with a straight and disarming good humour into his friend's overcast countenance—"speak up! Do you know of any cause or impediment why I should not?"
Thus handsomely and fairly appealed to, Burgoyne, who is by nature a just man, begins to put his conscience through her paces as to the real source of his dislike to the idea of his companion's taking advantage of that introduction which he himself has been the means—however unwillingly—of procuring for him. It is true that Byng's mother had adjured him, with tears in her eyes, to preserve her boy from undesirable acquaintances; but can he, Burgoyne, honestly say that he looks upon Elizabeth Le Marchant as an undesirable acquaintance for anyone? The result of his investigations is the discovery of how infinitesimal a share in his motives regard for his young friend's welfare has had. The discovery is no sooner made than he acts upon it.
"My dear boy," he says—and to his credit says it heartily—"I see no earthly reason why you should not go; you could not make nicer friends."
"Then why will not you come too?" asks Byng, with boyish generosity.
The other shakes his head. "They had much rather I stayed away; they have taken me en grippe."
"Pooh! Nonsense! You fancy it."
"I think not"—speaking slowly and thoughtfully—"I am not a fanciful person, nor apt to imagine that my acquaintances bother their heads about me one way or another; but when people try their best, in the first instance, to avoid recognising you at all, and on every subsequent occasion endeavour to disappear as soon as you come in sight, it is not a very forced assumption that they are not exactly greedy for your society."
This reasoning is so close that Byng is for the moment silenced; and it is the other who shortly resumes:
"I think it is because I remind them of the past; they have evidently some unpleasant association of ideas with that past. I wonder what it is."
The latter clause is addressed more to himself than to Byng.
"Perhaps some of them have died, or come to grief, and they are afraid of your asking after them," suggests the younger man.
"On the contrary—they are all—one more flourishing than another."
"Well, I would give them one more trial, anyhow; I am sure they would come round. Give them time, and I am sure they would come round!" cries Byng sanguinely; adding, "What could have been pleasanter than Mrs. Le Marchant's manner when you presented her to Miss Wilson?"
The mention of Miss Wilson recalls to Jim the extremely unpleasant moment of that presentation, thus brought back to him—the moment when Amelia had looked so middle-aged, and Cecilia so flashy; recalls to him also the conviction that has been growing upon him since yesterday, of the more than wisdom, the absolute imperative duty on his part, of avoiding a repetition of that comparison which had forced itself upon his notice in the church of San Miniato.
"You had better come," persists Byng still, like a magnanimous child, holding out half his cake to his friend; whether, like the same child, with a semi-hope that it may be refused, or whether, on the other hand, it may have crossed his mind that, where there are two visitees, the chances of a tête-à-tête are improved by there being also two visitors.
"My dear boy," returns Jim, this time with a testiness handsomely streaked with irony, "you are really too obliging; but, even if I wished it—which I do not—or even if they wished it—which they do not—it is in this case quite impossible, as I am engaged to go shopping with Amelia."
Probably the blow is not a knockdown one to Byng; at all events, he bears the rebuff with his habitual healthy good temper, and goes off to put on a smarter tie. Burgoyne, thinking no such improvement in his toilette necessary, strolls away to the Anglo-Américain. It is true that he has covenanted to escort Amelia to the shop for Cantagalli ware, though there is no particular reason why, had he so wished it, the purchase of the dinner-service that is to grace their Bayswater symposia might not have been deferred for twenty-four hours; and indeed, as things turn out, it has to be so deferred.
As he opens the door of the Wilson sitting-room his future father-in-law brushes past him, with evident signs of discomposure all over his clerical figure and spectacled face; and, on entering, he finds equal, if not superior, marks of upset equanimity on the countenances of the three women that are the room's occupants. Over the wood fire—Sybilla alternately roasts and freezes her family, and this is one of her roasting days—Cecilia is stooping, in evident search for some object that has been committed, or tried to be committed, to the flames. The other two are looking on with an air of vexed interest. Sybilla is the first to address him.
"You have appeared at a not very happy moment," she says, with a sigh; "we have been having a family breeze; it has sent my temperature up nicely! It is 100, 100, Point 2."
The mention of Sybilla's temperature is always enough to put Jim in a rage. It is therefore in no very feeling tone that he returns:
"If it were 1,000, Point 99, I should not be surprised, in this atmosphere! Good Heavens, Cis, are not you hot enough already?"
The young lady thus apostrophised rises, with some precipitation, and with a very heated complexion, from her knees, holding in her hand, however, the object of her quest—a rather charred small parcel, done up in white paper, and with a fragment of white ribbon still adhering here and there to it.
"Father behaves so childishly," she says, with irritated undutifulness.