The Mission of Mr. Eustace Greyne | Page 6

uttered a sudden cry.
Upon the table of Mademoiselle Verbena lay the diary, open at the
following entry:--
On Thursday next poor Eustace will be on board the Général Bertrand,
sailing for Algiers. I shall be here thinking of myself, and of him in
relation to myself. God help us both. Duty is sometimes stern. Mem.
The corner house in Park Lane, next the Duke of Ebury's, has sixty
years still to run; the lease, that is. Thursday--poor Eustace!
"What does this portend?" cried Mrs. Greyne.
"My darling, it passes my wit to imagine," replied her husband.

III
The parting of Mr. and Mrs. Greyne on the following morning was very
affecting. It took place at Victoria Station, in the midst of a small
crowd of admiring strangers, who had recognised the commanding
presence of the great novelist, and had gathered round to observe her
manifestations.
Mrs. Greyne was considerably shaken by the event of the previous
night. Although, on the discovery of the diary, the house had been
roused, and all the servants closely questioned, no light had been
thrown upon its migration from the locked drawer to the schoolroom
table. Adolphus and Olivia, jerked from sleep by the hasty hands of a
maid, could only weep and wan. The powdered footmen, one and all,
declared they had never heard of a diary. The butler gave warning on
the spot, keeping on his nightcap to give greater effect to his
pronunciamento. It was all most unsatisfactory, and for one wild
moment Mrs. Greyne seriously thought of retaining her husband by her
as a protection against the mysterious thief who had been at work in
their midst. Could it be Mademoiselle Verbena? The dread surmise
occurred, but Mr. Greyne rejected it.
"Her father was a count," he said. "Besides, my darling, I don't believe
she can read English; certainly not unless it is printed."
So there the matter rested, and the moment of parting came.
There was a murmur of respectful sympathy as Mrs. Greyne clasped
her husband tenderly in her arms, and pressed his head against her
prune-coloured bonnet strings. The whistle sounded. The train moved
on. Leaning from a reserved first-class compartment, Mr. Greyne
waved a silk pocket-handkerchief so long as his wife's Roman profile
stood out clear against the fog and smoke of London. But at last it
faded, grew remote, took on the appearance of a feebly-executed
crayon drawing, vanished. He sank back upon the cushions--alone.
Darrell was travelling second with the dressing-case.
It was a strange sensation, to be alone, and en route to Algiers. Mr.

Greyne scarcely knew what to make of it. A schoolboy suddenly
despatched to Timbuctoo could hardly have felt more terribly
emancipated than he did. He was so absolutely unaccustomed to
freedom, he had been for so long without the faintest desire for it, that
to have it thrust upon him so suddenly was almost alarming. He felt
lonely, anxious, horribly unmarried. To divert his thoughts he drew
forth a Merrin's exercise-book and a pencil, and wrote on the first page,
in large letters, "African Frailty, Notes for" Then he sat gazing at the
title of his first literary work, and wondering what on earth he was
going to see in Algiers.
Vague visions of himself in the bars of African public-houses, in
mosques, in the two-pair-backs of dervishes, in bazaars--which he
pictured to himself like those opened by royalties at the Queen's
Hall--in Moorish interiors surrounded by voluptuous ladies with large
oval eyes, black tresses, and Turkish trousers of spangled muslin,
flitted before his mental gaze. When the train ran upon Dover Pier, and
the white horses of the turbulent Channel foamed at his feet, he started
as one roused from a Rip Van Winkle sleep. Severe illness occupied his
whole attention for a time, and then recovery.
In Paris he dined at the buffet like one in a dream, and, at the appointed
hour, came forth to take the rapide for Marseilles. He looked for
Darrell and the dressing-case. They were not to be seen. There stood
the train. Passengers were mounting into it. Old ladies with agitated
faces were buying pillows and nibbling biscuits. Elderly gentlemen
with yellow countenances and red ribands in their coats were
purchasing the Figaro and the Gil Blas. Children with bare legs were
being hauled into compartments. Rook's agent was explaining to a
muddled tourist in a tam-o'-shanter the exact difference between the
words "Oui" and "Non" The bustle of departure was in the air, but
Darrell was not to be seen. Mr. Greyne had left him upon the platform
with minute directions as to the point from which the train would start
and the hour of its going. Yet he had vanished. The most frantic search,
the most frenzied inquiries of officials and