It seems to Jim as if his disagreeable tussle with the elements had lasted a long time, and yet, on his return to the hotel, he finds that it is only half-past two. He thinks at first that the clocks must have stopped, but finds, on examination, that they are all ticking, and all unanimous. His drenched condition is at least a resource, necessitating an entire and fundamental change of raiment; but even this expedient, though dragged out to its utmost possible limit, does not carry him further than three. How is he to dispose of the seven or eight hours that must elapse before he can seek refuge in bed? He has exhausted his correspondence, which is never a large one, and he has seldom in his life been so short of books.
He makes his way through the hall, which is crammed with young people playing battledore, and noisily counting; with elder persons, dreadfully short of a job, looking on and applauding; to the salon, in hopes of there finding a Tauchnitz novel, or even a superannuated Pall Mall or World. But half a dozen other weather-bound sufferers have been before him, and the tables are swept clean of all literature save a three-months-old Court Journal.
Miss Strutt and the pert votary of Whiteley are sitting shawled, and with their heads close together. By their titters, and the fragments he catches of their talk, they seem to be concocting a practical joke of some kind. The widow Wadman, shawled too, and her valetudinarian in a comforter, are stopping over a wood-fire, which refuses to burn, the souches being wringing wet. Jim rather injudiciously approaches them, and offers his assistance in piling the damp logs; but he is so evidently de trop, that he retires discomfited. On the other hand, the invitation in Miss Strutt's and her coadjutor's eye is so apparent that he beats a hasty retreat out of the room, in dread lest he should be drawn into their mysterious pleasantry.
He never is quite clear afterwards how he gets over the hours that intervene before dinner—whether sleep comes to his aid, or whether he is after all reduced to perusing in the Court Journal the narrative of which direction the Queen and Princess Henry of Battenburg took their walk in, in October. But at length the welcome bell rings, drowning even, for two minutes, the banging of the wind; and the whole hotel, unwontedly punctual, rushes in answer to its summons. People who have hitherto scarcely exchanged words, have eyed each other with hardly veiled distrust, now show a feverish desire to enter into conversation, to detain one another after dinner on the steps of the salle à manger.
As the evening advances, Jim sees an intention among the younger portion of the company to launch out into noisy, romping games, to institute a Dumb Crambo. He feels it is far from impossible that he himself may fall so low as to be drawn into it. Miss Strutt's eye is on him, but before he succumbs he will make one effort on his own behalf. He embraces a desperate resolution. He has seen the Le Marchants eating their dinner near, and yet hopelessly far from him. Elizabeth had given him one furtive smile, and her mother a hurried bow; this is, to tell the truth, all the encouragement he has to go upon—all that he can find to keep his courage up as he knocks at their door, telling himself that his excuse—that of asking them to lend him a book—is a quite sufficient and legitimate one. He knocks, and Elizabeth's voice at once answers:
"Herein!"
It is clear that she takes him for the German waiter, Fritz. She remains in this belief even after he has opened the door, since she does not at first look up. She is alone—not in the pretty flowered room in which she had yesterday received him, but in the first and less adorned of the little series—one that he had, on his former visit, cursorily supposed to be chiefly used as an ante-room—sitting alone at a table, and before her are spread writing-materials, over which she is stooping. An odious and ridiculous thought darts, with a prick, across his mind.
Is she sitting here, all alone, in order to write to Byng?
"I came——" he begins; and at the unexpected voice she looks up with a start:
"Oh, it is you!" she says, in a low key, glancing rather apprehensively at the closed door, which separates them from the inner room, in a manner which tells him that her parents are within.