Part 29 (2/2)
”You are looking more lovely than ever. My love shall give you health; we shall go--where shall we go? To Italy? You are my Italy.
But I'm forgetting--why did you not answer my letter? It was cruel of you. Deceive me no more, play with me no longer; if you will not have me, say so, and I will end myself, for I cannot live without you.”
”But I do not understand, I haven't had any letter; what letter?”
”I wrote asking you to marry me.”
They walked out of the flower market on to the _Promenade des Anglais_, and Mike told her about his letters, concealing nothing of his struggle. The sea lay quite blue and still, lapping gently on the spare beach; the horizon floated on the sea, almost submerged, and the mountains, every edge razor-like, hard, and metallic, were veiled in a deep, transparent blue; and the villas, painted white, pink and green, with open loggias and balconies, completed the operatic aspect.
”My mother will not hear of it; she would sooner see me dead than married to you.”
”Why?”
”She knows you are an atheist for one thing.”
”But she does not know that I have six thousand a year.”
”Six thousand a year! and who was the fairy that threw such fortune into your lap? I thought you had nothing.”
Vanity took him by the throat, but he wrenched himself free, and answered evasively that a distant cousin had left him a large sum of money, including an estate in Berks.h.i.+re.
”Well, I'm very glad for your sake, but it will not influence mother's opinion of you.”
”Then you will run away with me? Say you will.”
”That is the best--for I'm not strong enough to dispute with mother.
I dare say it is very cowardly of me, but I would avoid scenes; I've had enough of them.... We'll go away together. Where shall we go? To Italy?”
”Yes, to Italy--my Italy. And do you love me? Have you forgiven me my conduct the day when you came to see me?”
”Yes, I love you; I have forgiven you.”
”And when shall we go?”
”When you like. I should like to go over that sea; I should like to go, Mike, with you, far away! Where, Mike?--Heaven?”
”We should find heaven dull; but when shall we go across that sea, or when shall we go from here--now?”
”Now!”
”Why not?”
”Because here are my people coming to meet me. Now say nothing to my mother about marriage, or she will never leave my side. I'm more ill than you think I am--I should have no strength to struggle with her.”
Not again that day did Mike succeed in speaking alone with Lily, and the next day she and her mother and Major Downside, her uncle, went to spend the day with some friends who had a villa in the environs of the town. The day after he met mother and daughter out walking in the morning. In the afternoon Lily was obliged to keep her room. Should she die! should the irreparable happen! Mike crushed the instinct, that made him see a poem in the death of his beloved; and he determined to believe that he should possess her, love her and only her; he saw himself a new Mike, a perfect and true husband-lover.
Never was man more weary of vice, more desirous of reformation.
He had studied the train service until he could not pretend to himself there remained any crumb of excuse for further consideration of it. He wandered about the corridors, a miserable man. On Sunday she came down-stairs and drove to church with her mother. Mike followed, and full of schemes for flight, holding a note ready to slip into her hand, he wondered if such pallor as hers were for this side of life. In the note it was written that he would wait all day for her in the sitting-room, and about five, as he sat holding the tattered newspaper, his thoughts far away in Naples, Algiers, and Egypt, he heard a voice calling--
”Mike! Mike! Mother is lying down; I think we can get away now, if there's a train before half-past five.”
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