Whatever else his faults may be, Mr. Burgoyne is a man of his word; he certainly keeps his promise to Elizabeth that Byng shall be well nursed. He keeps his other promise, too—though that is more by good luck than good management—that Byng shall not die. Whether to hinder his friend from being made a liar, or because he himself is loth to leave a world which he has found so pretty, cruel, and amusing, Byng does not die—Byng lives.
By her 25th day February has dried her tears, though they still hang on her green lashes, and a great galleon of a sun steers through a tremendous sea of blue, as Jim persuades Byng's mother to go out for her first delicious drive in that fresh and satin-soft air of the Algerian February, which matches our best poets' May. He takes her along the Route des Aqueduques, that lovely route which runs high along the hillside among the villas above the town, so high as to be on a level with the roofs of the lofty-standing Continental and Orient Hotels. It is a most twisting road, which in curves and loops winds about the head of narrow deep gorges, full of pale olive-trees, caroubiers, and ilex. Below lies the red-roofed white town. Slowly they trot past the campagne of the "English Milor," "L'Epicier Anglais," and many others, over whose high walls bougainvillias light their now waning purple fires, and big bushes of fleurs de Marie stoop their milky stars.
Mrs. Byng's eyes, sunk and diminished by watching and weariness, have been lying restfully on the delightful spring spectacle—on the great yellow sorrels by the wayside; she now turns them tear-brimmed to her companion.
"I could jump out of my skin!" she says shakily. "What a sun! what a sea! And to think that, after all, we have pulled him through."
Jim's only answer is a sympathetic pressure of the extremely well-fitting glove nearest him. If Willy had died instead of lived, her gloves would have fitted all the same.
"But we are not out of the wood yet," continues she, with a shake of the head. "He is cured, or nearly cured, of one disease, but what about the other?"
"What other?" inquires he, obstinately stupid, and with somewhat of a heart-sinking at the prospect of the engagement which he sees ahead of him.
How many elbows the road makes! It seems to have been cut in places right through the wet red rock, now overhung by such a torrent of vegetation.
At the head of one of the deep clefts that run up from the sea they pause, and look down upon a second sea of greenery that would seem to belong to no month less leafy than June. To June, too, belong the murmur and hum and summer trickle of running water at the ravine bottom.
"I do not see why, if he goes on as swimmingly as he is now doing," says Mrs. Byng in a restless voice—"why we should not get him off in a week, even if he were carried on board the boat."