Part 33 (1/2)
”Left! D'you mean gone from Chamouni, mother?” exclaimed Lewis, with a start and a look of anxiety which he did not care to conceal.
”Yes, they went yesterday. Nita had recovered sufficiently to travel, and the medical man who has been attending her urged her removal without delay. She and her father seemed both very sorry to leave us, and left kind messages for you. The Count wanted much to see you, but we would not allow it.”
”Kind messages for me,” repeated Lewis, in a tone of bitterness, ”what sort of messages?”
”Well, really, I cannot exactly remember,” returned Mrs Stoutley, with a slight smile, ”the kind of messages that amiable people might be expected to leave in the circ.u.mstances, you know--regret that they should have to leave us in such a sad condition, and sincere hope that you might soon recover, etcetera. Yes, by the way, Nita also, just at parting, expressed a hope--an earnest hope--that we might meet again.
Poor dear thing, she is an extremely affectionate girl, and quite broke down when saying good-bye.”
”D'you know where they have gone to, mother?”
”No. They mean to move about from place to place, I believe.”
”Nita said nothing about writing to you, did she?”
”Did they leave any address--a _poste restante_--anywhere, or any clew whatever as to their whereabouts?”
”None whatever.”
So then, during the weary days of suffering that he knew full well lay before him, poor Lewis had no consolatory thought in regard to Nita save in her expressed ”earnest hope” that they might meet again. It was not much, but it was better than nothing. Being an ingenious as well as daring architect, Lewis built amazing structures on that slight foundation--structures which charmed his mental eyes to look upon, and which, we verily believe, tended to facilitate his recovery--so potent is the power of true love!
”Captain Wopper,” said Mrs Stoutley one morning, towards the end of their stay in Switzerland, Lewis having been p.r.o.nounced sufficiently restored to travel homeward by easy stages, ”I have sent for you to ask you to do me a favour--to give me your advice--your--”
Here, to the Captain's amazement, not to say consternation, Mrs Stoutley's voice trembled, and she burst into tears. If she had suddenly caught him by the nose, pulled his rugged face down and kissed it, he could not have been more taken aback.
”My dear madam,” he stammered, sitting down inadvertently on Mrs Stoutley's bonnet--for it was to the good lady's private dressing-room that he had been summoned by Gillie White--”hold on! don't now, please!
What ever have I done to--”
”You've done nothing, my dear Captain,” said Mrs Stoutley, endeavouring to check her tears. ”There, I'm very foolish, but I can't help it.
Indeed I can't.”
In proof of the truth of this a.s.sertion she broke down again, and the Captain, moving uneasily on his chair, ground the bonnet almost to powder--it was a straw one.
”You have been a kind friend, Captain Wopper,” said Mrs Stoutley, drying her eyes, ”a very kind friend.”
”I'm glad you think so, ma'am; I've meant to be--anyhow.”
”You have, you have,” cried Mrs Stoutley, earnestly, as she looked through her tears into the seaman's rugged countenance, ”and that is my reason for venturing to ask you now to trouble yourself with--with--”
There was an alarming symptom here of a recurrence of ”squally weather,”
which caused the Captain to give the bonnet an ”extra turn,” but she recovered herself and went on--
”With my affairs. I would not have thought of troubling you, but with poor Lewie so ill, and Dr Lawrence being so young, and probably inexperienced in the ways of life, and Emma so innocent and helpless, and--in short I'm--hee!--that is to say--ho dear! I _am_ so silly, but I can't--indeed I can't--hoo-o-o!”
It blew a regular gale now, and a very rain of straw _debris_ fell through the cane-bottomed chair on which the Captain sat, as he vainly essayed to sooth his friend by earnest, pathetic, and even tender adjurations to ”clap a stopper upon that,” to ”hold hard,” to ”belay”, to ”shut down the dead-lights of her peepers,” and such-like expressive phrases.
At length, amid many sobs, the poor lady revealed the overwhelming fact that she was a beggar; that she had actually come down to her last franc; that her man of business had flatly declined to advance her another sovereign, informing her that the Gorong mine had declared ”no dividend;” that the wreck of her shattered fortune had been swallowed up by the expenses of their ill-advised trip to Switzerland, and that she had not even funds enough to pay their travelling expenses home; in short that she was a miserable boulder, at the lowest level of the terminal moraine!
To all this Captain Wopper listened in perfect silence, with a blank expression on his face that revealed nothing of the state of feeling within.