The Mission of Mr. Eustace Greyne | Page 4

the dependant's emotion, and made her scramble up.
"Where is your poor mother?"
"In Paris, madame. In the Rue St. Honoré, where I was born. Oh, if she
should die there! If she should----"
Mrs. Greyne raised her hand, commanding silence.

"You wish to go there?"
"If madame permits."
"When?"
"To-morrow, madame."
"To-morrow? This is decidedly abrupt."
"Mais la bronchite, madame, she is abrupt, and death, she may be
abrupt."
"True. One moment!"
There was an instant's silence for Mrs. Greyne to let loose her brain in.
She did so, then said:
"You have my permission. Go to-morrow, but return as soon as
possible. I do not wish Adolphus to lose his still uncertain grasp upon
the irregular verbs."
In a flood of grateful tears Mademoiselle Verbena retired to make her
preparations. On the morrow she was gone.
The morrow was a day of much perplexity, much bustle and excitement
for Mr. Greyne and the valet, Darrell. They were preparing for Algiers.
In the morning, at an early hour, Mr. Greyne set forth in the barouche
with Mrs. Greyne to purchase African necessaries: a small but
well-supplied medicine chest, a pith helmet, a white-and-green
umbrella, a Baedeker, a couple of Smith & Wesson Springfield
revolvers with a due amount of cartridges, a dozen of Merrin's
exercise-books--on mature reflection Mrs. Creyne thought that two
would hardly contain a sufficient amount of African frailty for her
present purpose--a packet of lead pencils, some bottles of a remedy for
seasickness, a silver flask for cognac, and various other trifles such as
travellers in distant continents require.
Meanwhile Darrell was learning French for the journey, and packing

his own and his master's trunks. The worthy fellow, a man of
twenty-five summers, had never been across the Channel--the Greynes
being by no means prone to foreign travel--and it may, therefore, be
imagined that he was in a state of considerable expectation as he laid
the trousers, coats, and waistcoats in their respective places, selected
such boots as seemed likely to wear well in a tropical climate, and
dropped those shirts which are so contrived as to admit plenty of
ventilation to the heated body into the case reserved for them.
When Mr. Greyne returned from his shopping excursion the barouche,
loaded almost to the gunwale--if one may be permitted a nautical
expression in this connection--had to be disburdened, and its contents
conveyed upstairs to Mr. Greyne's bedroom, into which Mrs. Greyne
herself presently entered to give directions for their disposing. Nor was
it till the hour of sunset that everything was in due order, the straps set
fast, the keys duly turned in the locks--the labels--"Mr. Eustace Greyne:
Passenger to Algiers: via Marseilles"--carefully written out in a full,
round hand. Rook's tickets had been bought; so now everything was
ready, and the last evening in England might be spent by Mr. Greyne in
the drawing-room and by Darrell in the servants' hall quietly, socially,
perhaps pathetically.
The pathos of the situation, it must be confessed, appealed more to the
master than to the servant. Darrell was very gay, and inclined to be
boastful, full of information as to how he would comport himself with
"them there Frenchies," and how he would make "them pore, godless
Arabs sit up." But Mr. Greyne's attitude of mind was very different. As
the night drew on, and Mrs. Greyne and he sat by the wood fire in the
magnificent drawing-room, to which they always adjourned after
dinner, a keen sense of the sorrow of departure swept over them both.
"How lonely you will feel without me, Eugenia," said Mr. Greyne. "I
have been thinking of that all day."
"And you, Eustace, how desolate will be your tale of days! My mind
runs much on that. You will miss me at every hour."
"You are so accustomed to have me within call, to depend upon me for

encouragement in your life-work. I scarcely know how you will get on
when I am far across the sea."
"And you, for whom I have labored, for whom I have planned and
calculated, what will be your sensations when you realize that a
gulf--the Gulf of Lyons--is fixed irrevocably between us?"
So their thoughts ran. Each one was full of tender pity for the other.
Towards bedtime, however, conscious that the time for colloquy was
running short, they fell into more practical discourse.
"I wonder," said Mr. Greyne, "whether I shall find any difficulty in
gaining the information you require, my darling. I suppose these
places"--he spoke vaguely, for his thoughts were vague--"are somewhat
awkward to come at. Naturally they would avoid the eye of day."
Mrs. Greyne looked profound.
"Yes. Evil ever seeks the darkness. You will have to do the same."
"You think my investigations must take place at night?"
"I should certainly suppose