Mike did not need to consult the time-table. He said, "At last, at last, darling, come! ... Yes, there is a train for the Italian frontier at a few minutes past five. We shall have just time to catch it. Come!"

But in the gardens they met the Major, who would not hear of his niece being out after sunset, and sent her back. Mike overtook Lily on the staircase.

"I can endure this no longer," he said; "you must come with me to-night when every one is in bed. There is a train at two."

"I cannot; I have to pa.s.s through my mother's room. She would be sure to awake."

"Great Scott! what shall we do? My head is whirling. You must give your mother a sleeping potion, will you? She drinks something before she goes to bed?"

"Yes, but----"

"There must be no buts. It is a case of life and death. You do not want to die, as many girls die. To many a girl marriage is life. I will get something quite harmless, and quite tasteless."

She waited for him in the sitting-room. He returned in a few minutes with a small bottle, which he pressed into her hand. "And now, _au revoir_; in a few hours you will be mine for ever."

After leaving her he dined; after dinner went to a gambling h.e.l.l, where he lost a good deal of money, and would have lost more, had the necessity of keeping at least 200 for his wedding-tour not been so imperative. He wandered about the streets talking to and sometimes strolling about with the light women, listening to their lamentable stories--"anything," he thought, "to distract my mind." He was to meet Lily on the staircase at one o'clock, and now it was half-past twelve, and giving the poor creature whose chatter had beguiled the last half-hour a louis, he returned hurriedly to his hotel.

The lift had ceased working, and he ascended the great staircase, three steps at a time. On the second floor he stopped to reconnoitre.

The _gardien_ lay fast asleep on a bench; he could not do better than sit on the stairs and wait; if the man awoke he would have to be bribed. Lily's number was 45, a dozen doors down the pa.s.sage. At one o'clock the _gardien_ awoke. Mike entered into conversation with him, gave him a couple of francs, bade him good-night, and went partly up the next flight of stairs. Listening for every sound, expecting every moment to hear a door open, he waited till the clocks struck the half-hour. Then he became as if insane, and he deemed it would not be enough if she were to disappoint him to set the hotel on fire and throw himself from the roof. Something must happen, if he were to remain sane, and, determined to dare all, he decided he would seek her in her room and bear her away. He knew he would have to pa.s.s through Mrs. Young's room. What should he do if she awoke, and, taking him for a robber, raised the alarm?

Putting aside such surmises he turned the handle of her door as quietly as he could. The lock gave forth hardly any sound, the door pa.s.sed noiselessly over the carpet. He hesitated, but only for a moment, and drawing off his shoes he prepared to cross the room. A night-light was burning, and it revealed the fat outline of a huge body huddled in the bed-clothes. He would have to pa.s.s close to Mrs.

Young. He glided by, pa.s.sing swiftly towards the further room, praying that the door would open without a sound. It was ajar, and opened without a sound. "What luck!" he thought, and a moment after he stood in Lily's room. She lay upon the bed, as if she had fallen there, dressed in a long travelling-cloak, her hat crushed on one side.

"Lily, Lily!" he whispered, "'tis I; awake! speak, tell me you are not dead." She moved a little beneath his touch, then wetting a towel in the water-jug he applied it to her forehead and lips, and slowly she revived.

"Where are we?" she asked. "Mike, darling, are we in Italy? ... I have been ill, have I not? They say I'm going to die, but I'm not; I'm going to live for you, my darling."

Then she recovered recollection of what had happened, and whispered that she had failed to give her mother the opiate, but had nevertheless determined to keep her promise to him. She had dressed herself and was just ready to go, but a sudden weakness had come over her. She remembered staggering a few steps and nothing more.

"But if you have not given your mother the opiate, she may awake at any moment. Are you strong enough, my darling, to come with me?

Come!"

"Yes, yes, I'm strong enough. Give me some more water, and kiss me, dear."

The lovers wrapped themselves in each other's arms. But hearing some one moving in the adjoining room, the girl looked in horror and supplication in Mike's eyes. Stooping, he disappeared beneath a small table; and drew his legs beneath the cloth. The sounds in the next room continued, and he recognized them as proceeding from some one searching for clothes. Then Lily's door was opened and Mrs. Young said--

"Lily, there is some one in your room; I'm sure Mr. Fletcher is here."

"Oh, mother, how can you say such a thing! indeed he is not."

"He is; I am not mistaken. This is disgraceful; he must be under that bed."

"Mother, you can look."

"I shall do nothing of the kind. I shall fetch your uncle."

When he heard Mrs. Young retreating with fast steps, Mike emerged from his hiding.

"What shall I do?"

"You can't leave without being seen. Uncle sleeps opposite."

"I'll hide in your mother's room; and while they are looking for me here, I will slip out."

"How clever you are, darling! Go there. Do you hear? uncle is answering her. To-morrow we shall find an opportunity to get away; but now I would not be found out.... I told mother you weren't here.

Go!"

The morrow brought no opportunity for flight. Lily could not leave her room, and it was whispered that the doctors despaired of her life. Then Mike opened his heart to the Major, and the old soldier promised him his cordial support when Lily was well. Three days pa.s.sed, and then, unable to bear the strain any longer, Mike fled to Monte Carlo. There he lost and won a fortune. Hence Italy enticed him, and he went, knowing that he should never go there with Lily.

But not in art nor in dissipation did he find escape from her deciduous beauty, now divided from the grave only by a breath, beautiful and divinely sorrowful in its transit.

Some days pa.s.sed, and then a letter from the Major brought him back over-worn with anxiety, wild with grief. He found her better. She had been carried down from her room, and was lying on a sofa by the open window. There were a few flowers in her hands, and when she offered them to Mike she said with a kind of Heine-like humour--

"Take them, they will live almost as long as I shall."

"Lily, you will get well, and we shall see Italy together. I had to leave you--I should have gone mad had I remained. The moment I heard I could see you I returned. You will get well."

"No, no; I'm here only for a few days--a few weeks at most. I shall never go to Italy. I shall never be your sweetheart. I'm one of G.o.d's virgins. I belong to my saint, my first and real sweetheart. You remember when I came to see you in the Temple Gardens, I told you about Him then, didn't I! Ah! happy, happy aspirations, better even than you, my darling. And He is waiting for me; I see Him now. He smiles, and opens His arms."

"You'll get well. The sun of Italy shall be our heaven, thy lips shall give me immortality, thy love shall give me G.o.d."

"Fine words, my sweetheart, fine words, but death waits not for love.... Well, it's a pity to die without having loved."

"It is worse to live without having loved, dearest--dearest, you will live."

He never saw her again. Next day she was too ill to come down, and henceforth she grew daily weaker. Every day brought death visibly nearer, and one day the Major came to Mike in the garden and said--

"It is all over, my poor friend!"

Then came days of white flowers and wreaths, and bouquets and baskets of bloom, stephanotis, roses, lilies, and every white blossom that blows; and so friends sought to cover and hide the darkness of the grave. Mike remembered the disordered faces of the girls in church; weeping, they threw themselves on each other's shoulders; and the mournful chant was sung; and the procession toiled up the long hill to the cemetery above the town, and Lily was laid there, to rest there for ever. There she lies, facing Italy, which she never knew but in dream. The wide country leading to Italy lies below her, the peaks of the rocky coast, the blue sea, the gray-green olives billowing like tides from hill to hill; the white loggias gleaming in the sunlight. His thoughts followed the flight of the blue mountain pa.s.ses that lead so enticingly to Italy, and as he looked into the distance, dim and faint as the dream that had gone, there rose in his mind an even fairer land than Italy, the land of dream, where for every one, even for Mike Fletcher, there grows some rose or lily unattainable.

CHAPTER X

In the dreary drawing-room, amid the tattered copies of the _Graphic_ and _Ill.u.s.trated London News_, he encountered the inevitable idle woman. They engaged in conversation; and he repeated the phrases that belong inevitably to such occasions.

"How horrible all this is," he said to himself; "this is worse than peeping and botanizing on a mother's grave."

He desired supreme grief, and grief fled from his lure; and rhymes and images thronged his brain; and the poem that oftenest rose in his mind, seemingly complete in cadence and idea, was so cruel, that Lily, looking out of heaven, seemed to beg him to refrain. But though he erased the lines on the paper, he could not erase them on his brain, and baffled, he pondered over the phenomena of the antagonism of desired aspirations and intellectual instincts. He desired a poem full of the divine grace of grief; a poem beautiful, tender and pure, fresh and wild as a dove crossing in the dawn from wood to wood. He desired the picturesqueness of a young man's grief for a dead girl, an Adonais going forth into the glittering morning, and weeping for his love that has pa.s.sed out of the sun into the shadow. This is what he wrote:

A UNE POETRENAIRE.

We are alone! listen, a little while, And hear the reason why your weary smile And lute-toned speaking is so very sweet To me, and how my love is more complete Than any love of any lover. They Have only been attracted by the gray Delicious softness of your eyes, your slim And delicate form, or some such whimpering whim, The simple pretexts of all lovers;--I For other reasons. Listen whilst I try And say. I joy to see the sunset slope Beyond the weak hours' hopeless horoscope, Leaving the heavens a melancholy calm, Of quiet colour chaunted like a psalm, In mildly modulated phrases; thus Your life shall fade like a voluptuous Vision beyond the sight, and you shall die Like some soft evening's sad serenity ...

I would possess your dying hours; indeed My love is worthy of the gift, I plead For them.