Part 28 (1/2)

We were gathered round the wood fire after dinner (for the October evenings grew chilly as they closed in); I don't know how it was that Forrester began telling us about their flight.

”You ought to have seen Bella's baggage,” he said, at last; ”it was so compact. You can't fancy any thing so tiny as the _sac de nuit_. A courier's moneybag would make two of it. Then a vast cloak, and that's all. Quite in light marching order.”

”I wonder you are not ashamed to talk about baggage,” his wife retorted.

”When we got to Dover, there was his servant with four immense portmanteaus and a dressing-case nearly as large, waiting for us. Was it not romantic?”

”Bah!” Charley said. ”A man must have his comforts, even if he is eloping. I am sure I arranged every thing superbly. I don't know how I did it--an undeveloped talent for intrigue, I suppose.”

”Was it not kind of him to take so much trouble?” Isabel asked, quite innocently, and in perfect good faith, I am sure; but her husband pinched the little pink ear that was within his reach.

”She means to be sarcastic,” he said. ”You've spoiled her, Guy. If I had had time to deliberate, though, I don't think I should ever have come to the post. I wonder how any one stands the training.”

”I'll tell you what would have suited you exactly,” Livingstone remarked--”to have been one of those men in the Arabian Nights, who wake and find themselves at a strange city's gate, 10,000 leagues from home, to whom there comes up a venerable vizier, saying, 'My son, heaven has blessed me with one daughter, a very pearl of beauty; many have sought her in marriage, but in vain. Your appearance pleases me, and I would have you for my son-in-law.'”

”Exactly,” said Forrester. ”I should not have minded turning out somebody else's child eventually--(they all did that, didn't they?)--for such a piece of luck as to be taken in and done for off-hand, without the trouble of thinking about it.”

Instead of looking vexed, Isabel laughed merrily, and her eyes glittered as they rested on him, full of a proud, loving happiness.

”The best of it was,” Charley went on, ”she was in the most dreadful state of alarm and excitement all the way to Dover, looking out at every station, under the impression that she should see the bridegroom there, 'dangling his bonnet and plume' (though how he was to have got ahead of us, unless he came by electric telegraph, does not appear). What sport it would have been! I should have liked so to have seen the 'laggard in love' once more.”

”He was not quite _that_,” Isabel interrupted, rather mischievously.

”Ah! I dare say you kept him up to the traces,” her husband remarked, languidly. ”You have a talent that way. What 'pa.s.sages,' as Varney called them, there must have been, eh! Guy? We won't hear your confession now, Puss. In pity to Mademoiselle Aglae's eyes (which are very fine), if not to your own (which are very useful), I think you had better go to bed. That ferocious vetturino will have us up at unholy hours, and is not to be mitigated.”

We sat talking for a little while after Isabel left us; then Forrester rose and strolled to the window. The flood of light that poured in when he drew the curtain was quite startling, making the three beaked oil lamps look smoky and dim.

”I shall smoke my last cigar _al fresco_,” Charley said; ”I suppose it's the correct thing to do, with such a moon as that. Won't you come, Guy?

I must not tempt you out into the night air, Hammond.”

”Not to-night,” Livingstone answered. ”I am not in the humor for admiring any thing. I should be rather in your way.”

One of his gloomy fits was coming over him, at which times he always chose to be alone.

”Well, I shall go and consume the 'humble, but not wholly heart-broken weed of every-day life,' as Tyrrell used to say. (Don't you remember his double-barreled adjectives?) If you hear any one singing _very_ sweetly, don't be alarmed; you'll know it is the harmless lunatic who now addresses you; the fit won't last more than an hour. We shall be in Rome to-morrow. The only thing on my mind now is whether I shall find any thing there to carry me across the Campagna. K---- has a very fair pack, I understand, and no end of foxes.”

Have you ever watched the completion of a photograph, when the nitrate of silver (or whatever the last lotion may be) is applied? First one feature comes out, that you may indulgently mistake for a tree, or a gable-end, or a mountain top; then another, till the whole picture stands out in clear, brilliant relief.

Just so when I recall that scene--little heed as I took at the time of them--every gesture, and look, and tone of Forrester's becomes as distinct as if he stood in the body before me now. I can see him standing in the shadow of the doorway, the red glare from the blazing wood with which he was lighting his cigar falling over his delicate features and bright chestnut hair--I can hear his kind soft voice as he speaks these last two words, ”_Al rivederci_.”

Whether that wish will be accomplished hereafter, G.o.d alone can tell; if so, it must be beyond the grave. In life we never saw him any more.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

”But time at length makes all things even, And if we do but bide the hour, There never yet was human power That could evade, if unforgiven, The patient search and vigil long Of him who treasures up a wrong.”

Three quarters of an hour later, Guy was sitting in his room, gazing at the embers on the hearth, in the att.i.tude of moody thought that of late he was apt to fall into. Suddenly there came a timid knock at his door.

When he opened it, his cousin stood on the threshold--ghost-like, against the background of darkness, with her white dressing-gown, pale cheeks, and long hair unbound.