The thought is no sooner formed than he follows whither it leads him; but she is not on the terrace; and though a moment ago his nerves were tingling at the thought of speech with her, yet he is conscious of a feeling of relief that their meeting is, for the moment, deferred. What can he say to her? What can she say to him?
He stands looking down on the green sea of richly-clothed dark trees beneath him—ilex and eucalyptus, and all the unfamiliar verdure of the soft South. From the fiercely-blazing red purple of a Bougainvillia, so unlike the pale, cold lilac blossom, to which in our conservatories we give that name, his eye travels over tree-tops and snowy villas, cool summer palace and domy mosque, to the curving bay, round which the Atlas Mountains are gently laying their arms; and Cape Matifou, with the haze of day's young prime about it, is running out into the Mediterranean.
He is alone at first, but presently other people come forth; the old valetudinarian, for once delivered from his fostering widow, sits down with a pile of English newspapers to enjoy himself in the sun, which does not yet ride so high as to be sun-strokey. Jim's last night's neighbour in the red shirt comes out too, bonneted and prayer-booked. She is going to church; so is he: but he does not tell her so, for fear she should offer to accompany him. She observes to him that the climate is a fraud; that this is the first day for three weeks in which she is able to go out without a mackintosh and umbrella.
"We are not so green for nothing, I can tell you," says she, with a laugh, and a rather resentful glance at the splendid verdure around her, and so leaves him.
He, too, as I have said, is going to church, and is presently asking his way to the English chapel. The Wilson family will certainly be there, and it has struck him that the dreaded meeting will be robbed of half its painful awkwardness if it takes place in public. At a church-porch, crowded with issuing congregation, Sybilla cannot fall into hysterics—it is true that Sybilla never attends divine service—nor can Cecilia weepingly throw her arms about his neck. But whatever means he may take to lessen the discomfort and smart of that expected encounter, the thought of it sits like lead upon his spirits, as he walks quickly—it is difficult to descend slowly so steep a hill—down the precipitous lane, which is the only mode of approach for man or labouring beast to the high-perched hotel he has chosen. But he is young, and presently the cheerful, clean loveliness of the day and the sight of Nature's superb vigour work their natural effect upon him. It must, indeed, be an inveterate grief that refuses to be soothed by the influences of this green Eden.
What a generosity of vegetation, as evidenced by the enormous garlands of great-leaved ivy, waving from tree to tree as for some perpetual fête! Along the high hill bank that skirts this steep by-road, eucalyptus rear their lofty heads and their faintly-scented blossoms, aloe draws her potent sword, and thick-fleshed prickly pear displays her uncouth malignity. Beneath, what a lush undergrowth of riotous great-foliaged plants—acanthus, and a hundred other green sisters, all flourishing and waxing, so unstinted, so at large! He has reached the main road—the shady road that leads by a three-mile descent from Mustapha Supérieur to the town.
How shady it is! Pepper-trees hang their green hair, so thick and fine, over it; and ilexes hold the thatch of their little dark leaves. Past the Governor's summer palace, with its snowy dome and Moorish arcades gleaming through its iron gates. From a villa garden a flowering shrub sends a mixed perfume of sweet and bitter, as of honey and hops, from its long yellow flower-tassels to his pleased nostrils.
At a sharp turn, where the hill falls away more precipitously than before, the bay, the mole, the shipping, the dazzling little city, burst upon him—the little city swarming up her hill, from where the French town bathes its feet in the azure ripples, to where the Arab town loses the peak of its triangle, in the Casbah and the fort of the now execrated Emperor. Blinding white, ardent blue, profound green—what a pleasant picture for a summer Sunday morning! And how gay the road is too, as the East and the West step along it together!
Here is a tram tearing down the steep incline with five poor little thin horses abreast. It is full of English church-goers, and yet, oh anomaly! standing up in the vulgarest of modern vehicles, with his slight dark hands grasping the tramrail, is a tall Arab, draped with the grave grace of the Vatican Demosthenes. But alas! alas! even upon him the West has laid its claw, for, as the tram rushes past, Jim's shocked eyes realize that he, who in other respects might have fed the flocks of Laban in Padan-aram, wears on his feet a pair of old elastic-sided boots.
Here come clattering a couple of smart Chasseurs d'Afrique, in blue and red, followed by a woman dressed as Rachel was at the palmy well—so dressed, that is to say, as to her white-shrouded upper woman, for, indeed, there is no reason for supposing that Rachel wore a pair of Rob Roy Tartan trousers! Past the Plateau Saulière, where, in the lichen-roofed lavoir Frenchwomen are sousing their linen in water that—oh, hideous thought!—is changed but once a week; along an ugly suburb, and past a little wood; through the arch in the fortifications, the Porte d'Isly, till at length the Episcopal chapel—why are the Protestant places of worship scattered over the habitable globe everywhere so frightful?—stands before him.