SOMEHOW GOOD

BY

WILLIAM DE MORGAN

AUTHOR OF "JOSEPH VANCE"AND "ALICE-FOR-SHORT"

[Publisher's Device: Ou polla, alla polu]

NEW YORKHENRY HOLT AND COMPANY1908

COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

_Published February, 1908_

CONTENTS

 CHAPTER I. PAGE A RETURNED TRAVELLER. NEMESIS IN LIVERMORE'S RENTS, 1808. EXTRAVAGANCE, AND NO CASH. A PAWNED WATCH, AND A RESIDUUM OF FOURPENCE 1

 CHAPTER II. 

 A JOURNEY IN THE TWOPENNY TUBE. A VERY NICE GIRL, AND A NEGOTIATION. AN EXPOSED WIRE, AND AN ELECTROCUTION 10

 CHAPTER III. 

 KRAKATOA VILLA, AND HOW THE ELECTROCUTED TRAVELLER WENT THERE IN A CAB. A CURIOUS WELCOME TO A PERFECT STRANGER. THE STRANGER'S LABEL. A CANCELLED MEMORY. BACK LIKE A BAD SHILLING 16

 CHAPTER IV. 

 HOW THE STRANGER STOPPED ON AT KRAKATOA VILLA. OF THE FREAKS OF AN EXTINGUISHED MEMORY. OF HOW THE STRANGER GOT A GOOD APPOINTMENT, BUT NONE COULD SAY WHO HE WAS, NOR WHENCE 35

 CHAPTER V. 

 THE CHRISTMAS AFTER. OF THE CHURCH OF ST. SATISFAX, AND A YOUNG IDIOT WHO CAME THERE 44

 CHAPTER VI. 

 OF BOXING DAY MORNING AT KRAKATOA VILLA, AND WHAT OBSERVANT CREATURES FOSSILS ARE 53

 CHAPTER VII. 

 CONCERNING PEOPLE'S PASTS, AND THE SEPARATION OF THE SHEEP FROM THE GOATS. OF YET ANOTHER MAJOR, AND HOW HE GOSSIPPED AT HURKARU CLUB. SOME TRUSTWORTHY INFORMATION ABOUT AN ALLEGED DIVORCE 60

 CHAPTER VIII. 

 THE ANTECEDENTS OF ROSALIND NIGHTINGALE, SALLY'S MOTHER. HOW BOTH CAME FROM INDIA TO ENGLAND, AND TOOK A VILLA ON A REPAIRING LEASE. SOMEWHAT OF SALLY'S UPBRINGING. SOME MORE ROPER GOSSIP, AND A CAT LET OUT OF A BAG. A PIECE OF PRESENCE OF MIND 68

 CHAPTER IX. 

 HOW THOSE GIRLS DO CHATTER OVER THEIR MUSIC! MRS. NIGHTINGALE'S RESOLUTION. BUT, THE RISK! A HARD PART TO PLAY. THERE WAS ONLY MAMMA FOR THE GIRL! THE GARDEN OF LONG AGO 82

 CHAPTER X. 

 THE DANGERS OF AN UNKNOWN PAST. NETTLE-GRASPING, AND A RECURRENCE. WHO AMONG US COURTS CATECHISM ABOUT HIMSELF? A UNIVERSALLY PROVIDED YOUNG MAN. HOW ABOUT THE POOR OLD FURNITURE? 95

 CHAPTER XI. 

 MORE GIRLS' CHATTER. SWEEPS AND DUSTMEN. HOW SALLY DISILLUSIONED MR. BRADSHAW. OUT OF THE FRYING-PAN 105

 CHAPTER XII. 

 WHAT FENWICK AND SALLY'S MOTHER HAD BEEN SAYING IN THE BACK DRAWING-ROOM. OP. 999. BACK IN THAT OLD GARDEN AGAIN, AND HOW GERRY COULD NOT SWIM. THE OLD TARTINI SONATA 113

 CHAPTER XIII. 

 OF A SLEEPLESS NIGHT MRS. NIGHTINGALE HAD, AND HOW SALLY WOKE UP AND TALKED 131

 CHAPTER XIV. 

 HOW MILLAIS' "HUGUENOT" CAME OF A WALK IN THE BACK GARDEN. AND HOW FENWICK VERY NEARLY KISSED SALLY 139

 CHAPTER XV. 

 CONCERNING DR. VEREKER AND HIS MAMMA, WHO HAD KNOWN IT ALL ALONG. HOW SALLY LUNCHED WITH THE SALES WILSONS, AND GOT SPECULATING ABOUT HER FATHER. HOW TISHY LET OUT ABOUT MAJOR ROPER. HOW THERE WAS A WEDDING 150

 CHAPTER XVI. 

 OF A WEDDING-PARTY AND AN OLD MAN'S RETROSPECT. A HOPE OF RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE HEREAFTER. CHARLEY'S AUNT, AND PYRAMUS AND THISBE. HOW SALLY TRIED TO PUMP THE COLONEL AND GOT HALF A BUCKETFUL 166

 CHAPTER XVII. 

 SALLY'S LARK, AND HOW SHE TOOK HER MEDICAL ADVISER INTO HER CONFIDENCE AFTER DIVINE SERVICE 178

 CHAPTER XVIII. 

 OF A SWIMMING-BATH, "ET PRĘTEREA EXIGUUM" 186

 CHAPTER XIX. 

 HOW FENWICK KNEW ALL ABOUT THE MASS. AND HOW BARON KREUTZKAMMER RECOGNISED MR. HARRISSON. LONDON AGAIN! 191

 CHAPTER XX. 

 MERE DAILY LIFE AT KRAKATOA. BUT SALLY IS QUITE FENWICK'S DAUGHTER BY NOW. OF HER VIEWS ABOUT DR. VEREKER, AND OF TISHY'S AUNT FRANCES 203

 CHAPTER XXI. 

 OF JULIUS BRADSHAW'S INNER SOUL. AND OF THE HABERDASHER BATTLE AT LADBROKE GROVE ROAD. ON CARPET-STRETCHING, AND VACCINATION FROM THE CALF. AN AFTER-DINNER INTERVIEW, AND GOOD RESOLUTIONS. EVASIVE TRAPPISTS 217

 CHAPTER XXII. 

 IT WAS THAT MRS. NIGHTINGALE'S FAULT. A SATISFACTORY CHAP, GERRY! A TELEGRAM AND A CLOUD. BRONCHITIS AND ASTHMA AND FOG. SALLY GOES TO MAYFAIR. THE OLD SOLDIER HAS NOTICE TO QUIT 236

 CHAPTER XXIII. 

 OF A FOG THAT WAS UP-TO-DATE, AND HOW A FIRE-ENGINE RELIEVED SALLY FROM A BOY. HOW SALLY GOT IN AT A GENTLEMEN'S CLUB, AND HOW VETERANS COULD RECOLLECT HER FATHER. BUT THEY KNOW WHAT SHE CAN BE TOLD, AND WHAT SHE CAN'T. HOW MAJOR ROPER WOULD GO OUT IN THE FOG 245

 CHAPTER XXIV. 

 HOW MAJOR ROPER MET THAT BOY, AND GOT UPSTAIRS AT BALL STREET. AN INTERVIEW BETWEEN ASTHMA AND BRONCHITIS. HOW SALLY PINIONED THE PURPLE VETERAN, AND THERE WAS NO BOY. HOW THE GOVERNOR DONE HOARCKIN', AND GOT QUALIFIED FOR A SUBJECT OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 260

 CHAPTER XXV. 

 ABOUT SIX MONTHS, AND HOW A CABMAN SAW A GHOST. OF SALLY'S AND THE DOCTOR'S "MODUS VIVENDI, " AND THE SHOOSMITH FAMILY. HOW SALLY MADE TEA FOR BUDDHA, AND HOW BUDDHA FORESAW A STEPDAUGHTER. DELIRIUM TREMENS 283

 CHAPTER XXVI. 

 MORNING AT LADBROKE GROVE ROAD, AND FAMILY DISSENSION. FACCIOLATI, AND A LEGACY. THE LAST CONCERT THIS SEASON. THE GOODY WILL COME TO IGGULDEN'S. BUT FANCY PROSY IN LOVE! 300

 CHAPTER XXVII. 

 ST. SENNANS-ON-SEA. MISS GWENDOLEN ARKWRIGHT. WOULD ANY OTHER CHILD HAVE BEEN SALLY? HOW MRS. IGGULDEN'S COUSIN SOLOMON SURRENDERED HIS COUCH 310

 CHAPTER XXVIII. 

 HOW SALLY PUT THE FINISHING TOUCH ON THE DOCTOR, WHO COULDN'T SLEEP. OF THE GRAND DUKE OF HESSE-JUNKERSTADT. AND OF AN INTERVIEW OVERHEARD 323

 CHAPTER XXIX. 

 OF A MARRIAGE BY SPECIAL LICENCE. ROSALIND'S COMPARISONS. OF THE THREE BRIDESMAIDS, AND HOW THE BRIDE WAS A GOOD SAILOR 331

 CHAPTER XXX. 

 HOW A FORTNIGHT PASSED, AND THE HONEYMOONERS RETURNED. OF A CHAT ON THE BEACH, AND MISS ARKWRIGHT'S SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE. ALMOST THE LAST, LAST, LAST--MAN'S HEAD! 337

 CHAPTER XXXI. 

 HOW SALLY DIDN'T CONFESS ABOUT THE DOCTOR, AND JEREMIAH CAME TO ST. SENNANS ONCE MORE 349

 CHAPTER XXXII. 

 HOW SALLY DIVED OFF THE BOAT, AND SHOCKED THE BEACH. OF THE SENSITIVE DELICACY OF THE OCTOPUS. AND OF DR. EVERETT GAYLER'S OPINIONS 357

 CHAPTER XXXIII. 

 OF AN INTERMITTENT CURRENT AT THE PIER-END, AND OF DOLLY'S FORTITUDE. HOW FENWICK PUT HIS HEAD IN THE JAWS OF THE FUTURE UNAWARES, AND PROSY DIDN'T COME. HOW SALLY AND HER STEP SAW PUNCH, AND OF A THIN END OF A FATAL WEDGE. BUT ROSALIND SAW NO COMING CLOUD 366

 CHAPTER XXXIV. 

 OF THE REV. SAMUEL HERRICK AND A SUNSET. THE WEDGE'S PROGRESS. THE BARON AGAIN, AND THE FLY-WHEEL. HOW FENWICK KNEW HIS NAME RIGHT, AND ROSALIND DIDN'T. HOW SALLY AND HER MEDICAL ADVISER WERE NOT QUITE WET THROUGH. HOW HE HAD MADE HER THE CONFIDANTE OF A LOVE-AFFAIR. OF A GOOD OPENING IN SPECIALISM. MORE PROGRESS OF THE WEDGE. HOW GERRY NEARLY MADE DINNER LATE 377

 CHAPTER XXXV. 

 HOW A STONE THROWN DROVE THE WEDGE FURTHER YET. OF A TERRIBLE NIGHT IN A BIG GALE, AND A DOOR THAT SLAMMED. THE WEDGE WELL IN 392

 CHAPTER XXXVI. 

 HOW FENWICK AND VEREKER WENT FOR A WALK, AND MORE MEMORIES CAME BACK. HOW FENWICK WAS A MILLIONAIRE, OR THEREABOUTS. OF A CLUE THAT KILLED ITSELF. HARRISSON'S AFFAIR NOW! BOTHER THE MILLIONS! IS NOT LOVE BETTER THAN MONEY? ONLY FENWICK'S NAME WASN'T HARRISSON NEITHER 399

 CHAPTER XXXVII. 

 OF THE DOCTOR'S CAUTIOUS RESERVE, AND MRS. FENWICK'S STRONG COMMON-SENSE. AND OF A LADY AT BUDA-PESTH. HOW HARRISSON WAS ONLY PAST FORGOTTEN NEWSPAPERS TO DR. VEREKER. OF THE OCTOPUS'S PULSE. HOW THE HABERDASHER'S BRIDE WOULD TRY ON AT TWO GUAS. A WEEK, AND OF A PLEASANT WALK BACK FROM THE RAILWAY STATION 416

 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

 OF AN EXPEDITION AGAINST A GOODY, AND THE WALK BACK TO LOBJOIT'S. AND THE WALK BACK AGAIN TO IGGULDEN'S. HOW FENWICK TOOK VEREKER'S CONFIDENCE BY STORM. OF A COLLIER THAT PUT TO SEA. SUCCESSFUL AMBUSCADE OF THE OCTOPUS. PROVISIONAL EQUILIBRIUM OF FENWICK'S MIND. WHY BOTHER ABOUT HORACE? WHY NOT ABOUT PICKWICK JUST AS MUCH? THE KITTEN WASN'T THERE--CERTAINLY NOT! 431

 CHAPTER XXXIX. 

 HOW MEMORY CREPT BACK AND BACK, AND FENWICK KEPT HIS OWN COUNSEL. ROSALIND NEED NEVER KNOW IT. OF A JOLLY BIG BLOB OF MELTED CANDLE, AND SALLY'S HALF-BROTHER. OF FENWICK'S IMPROVED GOOD SPIRITS 448

 CHAPTER XL. 

 BATHING WEATHER AGAIN, AND A LETTER FROM TISHY BRADSHAW. THE TRIUMPH OF ORPHEUS. BUT WAS IT EURYDICE OR THE LITTLE BATTERY? THE REV. MR. HERRICK. OF A REVERIE UNDER A BATHING-MACHINE, AND OF GWENDOLEN'S MAMMA'S CONNECTING-LINK. OF DR. CONRAD'S MAMMA'S DONKEY-CHAIR, AND HIS GREAT-AUNT ELIZA. HOW SALLY AND HE STARTED FOR THEIR LAST WALK AT ST. SENNANS 457

 CHAPTER XLI. 

 OF LOVE, CONSIDERED AS A THUNDERSTORM, AND OF AGUR, THE SON OF JAKEH (PROV. XXX. ). OF A COUNTRY WALK AND A JUDICIOUSLY RESTORED CHURCH. OF TWO CLASPED HANDS, AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES. NOTHING SO VERY REMARKABLE AFTER ALL! 471

 CHAPTER XLII. 

 OF A RECURRENCE FROM "AS YOU LIKE IT, " AND HOW FENWICK DIDN'T. WHY A SAILOR WOULD NOT LEARN TO SWIM. THE BARON AGAIN. OF A CUTTLE-FISH AND HIS SQUIRT. OF THE POWER OF _A PRIORI_ REASONING. OF SALLY'S CONFESSION, AND HOW FENWICK WENT TO A FIRST-CLASS HOTEL 489

 CHAPTER XLIII. 

 OF AN OBSERVANT AND THOUGHTFUL, BUT SNIFFY, WAITER; AND HOW HE OPENED A NEW BOTTLE OF COGNAC. HOW THE BARON SAW FENWICK HOME, WITHOUT HIS HAT. AN OLD MEMORY FROM ROSALIND'S PAST AND HIS. AND THEN FACE TO FACE WITH THE WHOLE. SLEEP UPON IT! BUT WHAT BECAME OF HIS HORRIBLE BABY? 498

 CHAPTER XLIV. 

 OF A CONTRACT JOB FOR REPAIRS. HOW FENWICK HAD ANOTHER SLEEPLESS NIGHT AFTER ALL. WHICH IS WHICH, NOW OR TWENTY ODD YEARS AGO? HOW SALLY FOLLOWED JEREMIAH OUT. WHAT A LOT OF TALK ABOUT A LIFE-BELT! 513

 CHAPTER XLV. 

 OF CONRAD VEREKER'S REVISION OF PARADISE, AND OF FENWICK'S HIGH FEVER. OF AN ENGLISH OFFICER WHO WAVERED AT BOMBAY, AND OF FENWICK'S SURPRISE-BATH IN THE BRITISH CHANNEL. WHY HE DID NOT SINK. THE "ELLEN JANE" OF ST. SENNANS. ONLY SALLY IS IN THE WATER STILL. MORE BOATS. FOUND! 524

 CHAPTER XLVI. 

 AN ERRAND IN VAIN, AND HOW DR. CONRAD CAME TO KNOW. CONCERNING LLOYD'S COFFEE-HOUSE, AND THE BATTLE OF CAMPERDOWN. MARSHALL HALL'S SYSTEM AND SILVESTER'S. SOCIAL DISADVANTAGES. A CHAT WITH A CENTENARIAN, AND HOW ROSALIND CAME TO KNOW. THOMAS LOCOCK OF ROCHESTER. ONE O'CLOCK! 531

 CHAPTER XLVII. 

 WAS IT THE LITTLE GALVANIC BATTERY? THE LAST CHAPTER RETOLD BY THE PRESS. A PROPER RAILING. BUT THEY _WEREN'T_ DROWNED. WHAT'S THE FUSS? MASTER CHANCELLORSHIP APPEARS AND VANISHES. ELECTUARY OF ST. SENNA. AT GEORGIANA TERRACE. A LETTER FROM SALLY. ANOTHER FROM CONRAD. EVERYTHING VANISHES! 554

SOMEHOW GOOD

SOMEHOW GOOD

CHAPTER I

A RETURNED TRAVELLER. NEMESIS IN LIVERMORE'S RENTS, 1808. EXTRAVAGANCE, AND NO CASH. A PAWNED WATCH, AND A RESIDUUM OF FOURPENCE

An exceptionally well-built man in a blue serge suit walked into abank in the City, and, handing his card across the counter, asked ifcredit had been wired for him from New York. The clerk to whom hespoke would inquire. 

As he leaned on the counter, waiting for the reply, his appearance wasthat of a man just off a sea voyage, wearing a suit of clothes wellknocked about in a short time, but quite untainted by London dirt. Hisget-up conveyed no information about his social position or means. Hisgarments had been made for him; that was all that could be said. Thatis something to know. But it leaves the question open whether theirwearer is really only a person in decent circumstances--_one_ decentcircumstance, at any rate--or a Duke. 

The trustworthy young gentleman in spectacles who came back from anauthority in the bush to tell him that no credit had been wired sofar, did not seem to find any difficulty in affecting confidence thatthe ultimate advent of this wire was an intrinsic certainty, likethe post. Scarcely, perhaps, the respectable confidence he would haveshown to a real silk hat--for the applicant's was mere soft felt, though it looked new, for that matter--and a real clean shirt, oneinclusive of its own collar and cuffs. Our friend's answered thisdescription; but then, it was blue. However, the confidence wouldhave wavered under an independent collar and wristbands. Cohesivenessin such a garment means that its wearer may be an original genius:compositeness may mean that he has to economize, like us. 

"Did you expect it so early as this?" says the trustworthy younggentleman, smiling sweetly through his spectacles. "It isn't teno'clock yet. " But he only says this to show his confidence, don't yousee? Because his remark is in its nature meaningless, as there isno time of day telegrams have a penchant for. No doubt there is atime--perhaps even times and half-a-time--when you cannot send them. But there is no time when they may not arrive. Except the smallesthours of the morning, which are too small to count. 

"I don't think I did, " replies the applicant. "I don't think I thoughtabout it. I wired them yesterday from Liverpool, when I left the boat, say four o'clock. "

"Ah, then of course it's a little too early. It may not come till latein the afternoon. It depends on the load on the wires. Could you callin again--well, a little before our closing time?"

"All right. " The speaker took out a little purse or pocket-book, andlooked in it. "I thought so, " said he; "that was my last card. " Butthe clerk had left it in the inner sanctum. He would get it, anddisappeared to do so. When he came back with it, however, he found itsowner had gone, saying never mind, it didn't matter. 

"Chap seems in a great hurry!" said he to his neighbour clerk. "What'she got that great big ring on his thumb for?" And the other replying:"Don't you know 'em--rheumatic rings?" he added: "Doesn't look arheumatic customer, anyhow!" And then both of them pinned up cheques, and made double entries. 

The chap didn't seem in a great hurry as he sauntered away alongCornhill, looking in at the shop-windows. He gave the idea of a chapwith a fine June day before him in London, with a plethora of choicesof what to do and where to go. Also of being keenly interested ineverything, like a chap that had not been in London for a long time. After watching the action of a noiseless new petroleum engine longerthan its monotonous idea of life seemed to warrant, he told a hansomto take him to the Tower, for which service he paid a careless twoshillings. The driver showed discipline, and concealed his emotions. _He_ wasn't going to let out that it was a double fare, and impaira fountain of wealth for other charioteers to come. Not he!

The fare enjoyed himself evidently at the Tower. He saw everythinghe could be admitted to--the Beauchamp Tower for sixpence, and theJewel-house for sixpence. And he gave uncalled-for gratuities. Whenhe had thoroughly enjoyed all the dungeons and all the torture-relics, and all the memories of Harrison Ainsworth's romance, read in youthand never forgotten, he told another hansom to drive him across theTower Bridge, and not go too fast. 

As he crossed the Bridge he looked at his watch. It was half-pasttwelve. He would have time to get back before half-past one to arestaurant he had made a mental note of near the Bank, and still toallow the cabby to drive on a bit through the transpontine andinteresting regions of Rotherhithe and Cherry Garden Pier. It was sounlike anything he had been seeing lately. None the worse for thelatter, in some respects. So, at least, thought the fare. 

For he had the good, or ill, fortune to strike on a rich vein ofso-called life in a London slum. Shrieks of fury, terror, painwere coming out of an archway that led, said an inscription, intoLivermore's Rents, 1808. Public opinion, outside those Rents, ascribedthem to the fact that Salter had been drinking. He was on to that porewife of his again, like last week. Half killed her, he did, then! Buthe was a bad man to deal with, and public opinion wouldn't go downthat court if I was you. 

"But you're not, you see!" said the fare, who had sought thisinformation. "You stop here, my lad, till I come back. " This to thecabman, who sees him, not without misgivings about a source of income, plunge into the filthy and degraded throng that is filling the court, and elbow his way to the scene of excitement. 

"_He's_ all right!" said that cabby. "I'll put a tenner on him, anySunday morning"--a figure of speech we cannot explain. 

From his elevation above the crowd he can see a good deal of what goeson, and guess the rest. Of what he hears, no phrase could be writtenwithout blanks few readers could fill in, and for the meaning of whichno equivalent can even be hinted. The actual substance of theoccurrence, that filters through the cries of panic and of some womanor child, or both, in agony, the brutal bellowings and threats of apredominant drunken lout, presumably Mr. Salter, the incessant appealsto God and Christ by terrified women, and the rhetorical use of thenames of both by the men, with the frequent suggestion that some oneelse should go for the police--this actual substance may be drilystated thus: Mr. Salter, a plumber by trade, but at present out ofwork, had given way to ennui, and to relieve it had for two days pastbeen beating and otherwise maltreating his daughter, aged fourteen, and had threatened the life of her mother for endeavouring to protecther. At the moment when he comes into this story (as a mere passingevent we shall soon forget without regret) he is engaged in thefulfilment of a previous promise to his unhappy wife--a promise wecannot transcribe literally, because of the free employment of apopular adjective (supposed to be a corruption of "by Our Lady")before or after any part of speech whatever, as an expletive to drivehome meaning to reluctant minds. It is an expression unwelcome on thedrawing-room table. But, briefly, what Mr. Salter had so sworn to dowas to twist his wife's nose off with his finger and thumb. And hedid not seem unlikely to carry out his threat, as Livermore's tenantrylacked spirit or will to interpose, and did nothing but shriek inpanic when feminine, and show discretion when masculine; mostlyaffecting indifference, and saying they warn't any good, them Salters. The result seemed likely to turn on whether the victim's back hairwould endure the tension as a fulcrum, or would come rippin' out likeso much grarse. 

"Let go of her!" half bellows, half shrieks her legal possessor, inanswer to a peremptory summons. "Not for a swiney, soap-eatin'Apoarstle--not for a rotten parson's egg, like you. Not for a.... "

But the defiance is cut short by a blow like the kick of a horse, thatlands fairly on the eye-socket with a cracking concussion that can beheard above the tumult, and is followed by a roar of delight from themale vermin, who see all the joys before them of battle unshared anddangerless--the joys bystanders feel in foemen worthy of each other'ssteel, and open to be made the subject of wagers. 

The fare rejects all offers to hold his coat, but throws his felt hatto a boy to hold. Self-elected seconds make a kind of show of gettinga clear space. No idea of assisting in the suppression of a dangerousdrunken savage seems to suggest itself--nothing but what is called"seeing fair. " This is, to wit, letting him loose on even terms on theonly man who has had the courage to intervene between him and hisvictim. Let us charitably suppose that this is done in the hope thatit means prompt and tremendous punishment before the arrival of thepolice. The cabman sees enough from his raised perch to justify hisanticipating this with confidence. He can just distinguish in thecrowd Mr. Salter's first rush for revenge and its consequences. "He'sgot it!" is his comment. 

Then he hears the voice of his fare ring out clear in a lull--sucha one as often comes in the tense excitement of a fight. "Give him aminute.... Now stick him up again!" and then is aware that Mr. Salterhas been replaced on his legs, and is trying to get at his antagonist, and cannot. "He's playin' with him!" is his comment this time. Buthe does not play with him long, for a swift _finale_ comes to theperformance, perhaps consequent on a cry that heralds a policeman. It causes a splendid excitement in that cabman, who gets as high ashe can, to miss none of it. "That's your sort!" he shouts, quite wildwith delight. "That's the style! Foller on! Foller on!" And then, subsiding into his seat with intense satisfaction, "Done his job, anyhow! Hope he'll be out of bed in a week!"--the last with aninsincere affectation of sympathy for the defeated combatant. 

The fare comes quickly along the court and out at the entry, whoseoccupants the cabman flicks aside with his whip suggestively. "Letthe gentleman come, can't you!" he shouts at them. They let him come. "Be off sharp!" he says to the cabby, who replies, "Right you are, governor!" and is off, sharp. Only just in time to avoid threepolicemen, who dive into Livermore's Rents, and possibly convey Mr. Salter to the nearest hospital. Of all that this story knows no more;Mr. Salter goes out of it. 

The fare, who seems very little discomposed, speaks through the littletrap to his Jehu. "I never got my new hat again, " he says. "You mustdrive back; there won't be any decent hatter here. "

"Ask your pardon, sir--the Bridge is histed. Vessel comingthrough--string of vessels with a tug-boat. "

"Oh, well, get back to the Bank--anywhere--the nearest way you can. "And after a mysterious short cut through narrow ways that recall oldLondon, some still paved with cobbles, past lofty wharves orwarehouses daring men lean from the floors of at dizzy heights, andcapture bales for, that seem afloat in the atmosphere till one detectsthe thread that holds them to their crane above--under unexplainedrialtos and over inexplicable iron incidents in paving that ringsuddenly and waggle underfoot--the cab finds its way across LondonBridge, and back to a region where you can buy anything, from pennypuzzles to shares in the power of Niagara, if you can pay for them. 

Our cab-fare, when he called out, "Hold hard here!" opposite to apromising hat-shop, seemed to be in doubt of being able to pay forsomething very much cheaper than Niagara. He took out his purse, stillsitting in the cab, and found in it only a sovereign, apparently. Hefelt in his pockets. Nothing there beyond five shillings and somecoppers. He could manage well enough--so his face and a slight nodseemed to say--till he went back to the Bank after lunch. And so, nodoubt, he would have done had he been content with a common humanbillycock or bowler, like the former one, at four-and-six. But man isborn to give way to temptation in shops. No doubt you have noticed thecurious fact that when you go into a shop you always spend more--morethan you mean to, more than you want to, more than you've got--one orother of them--but always _more_. 

Inside the shop, billycocks in tissue-paper came out of band-boxes, and then out of tissue-paper. But, short of eight shillings, theybetrayed a plebeian nature, and lacked charm. Now, those beautifulwhite real panamas, at twenty-two shillings, were exactly the thingfor this hot weather, especially the one the fare tried on. His richbrown hair, that wanted cutting, told well against the warmstraw-white. He looked handsome in it, with those strong cheek-bonesand bronzed throat Mr. Salter would have been so glad to get at. Hepaid for it, saying never mind the receipt, and then went out to paythe cabby, who respectfully hoped he didn't see him any the worse forthat little affair over the water. 

"None the worse, thank you! Shan't be sorry for lunch, though. " Then, as he stands with three shillings in his hand, waiting for a recipienthand to come down from above, he adds: "A very one-sided affair! Didyou hear what he said about his daughter? That was why I finished himso thoroughly. "

"No, sir, I did _not_ hear it. But he was good for the gruel he's got, Lord bless you! without that ... I ask your pardon, sir--no! _Not_from a gentleman like you! Couldn't think of it! Couldn't _think_ ofit!" And with a sudden whip-lash, and a curt hint to his horse, thatcabman drove off unpaid. The other took out a pencil, and wrote thenumber of the cab on his blue wristband, close to a little redspot--Mr. Salter's blood probably. When he had done this he turnedtowards the restaurant he had taken note of. But he seemed embarrassedabout finances--at least, about the three shillings the cabby hadrefused; for he kept them in his hand as if he didn't know what to dowith them. He walked on until he came to a hidden haven of silencesome plane-trees and a Church were enjoying unmolested, and noticingthere a box with a slot, and the word "Contributions" on it, droppedthe three shillings in without more ado, and passed on. But he had nointention of lunching on the small sum he had left. 

An inquiry of a City policeman guided him to a pawnbroker's shop. Whatwould the pawnbroker lend him on that--his watch? Fifteen shillingswould do quite well. That was his reply to an offer to advance thatsum, if he was going to leave the chain as well. It was worth more, but it would be all safe till he came for it, at any rate. "You'llfind it here, any time up to twelve months, " said the pawnbroker, whoalso nodded after him knowingly as he left the shop. "Coming back forit in a week, of course! All of 'em are. Name of Smith, _as_ usual!Most of 'em are. " Yet this man's honouring Mr. Smith with a commentlooked as if he thought him unlike "most of 'em. " _He_ never indulgedin reflections on the ruck--be sure of that!

Mr. Smith, if that was his name, didn't seem uneasy. He found hisway to his restaurant and ordered a very good lunch and a bottle ofPerrier-Jouet--not a half-bottle; he certainly was extravagant. Hetook his time over both, also a nap; then, waking, felt for his watchand remembered he had pawned it; looked at the clock and stretchedhimself, and called for his bill and paid it. Most likely the wire hadcome to the Bank by now; anyhow, there was no harm in walking round tosee. If it wasn't there he would go back to the hotel at Kensingtonwhere he had left his luggage, and come back to-morrow. It was abore. Perhaps they would let him have a cheque-book, and save hishaving to come again. Much of this is surmise, but a good deal was thesubstance of remarks made in fragments of soliloquy. Their maker gavethe waiter sixpence and left the restaurant with three shillings inhis pocket, lighting a cigar as he walked out into the street. 

He kept to the narrow ways and little courts, wondering at the oddcorners Time seems to have forgotten about, and Change to havedeserted as unworthy of her notice; every door of every house anextract from a commercial directory, mixed and made unalphabetical bythe extractor; every square foot of flooring wanted for Negotiation tostand upon, and Transactions to be carried out over. No room here foranything else, thought the smoker, as, after a quarter of an hour'ssaunter, he threw away the end of his cigar. But his conclusion waspremature. For lo and behold!--there, in a strange little wedge-shapedcorner, of all things in the world, _a barber's shop_; maybe a relicof the days of Ben Jonson or earlier--how could a mere loafer tell?Anyhow, his hair wanted cutting sufficiently to give him an excuse tosee the old place inside. He went in and had his hair cut--but underspecial reservation; not too much! The hairdresser was compliant; but, said he, regretfully: "You do your 'ed, sir, less than justice. " Itsowner took his residuum of change from his pocket, and carelesslyspent all but a few coppers on professional remuneration and a largebottle of eau-de-Cologne. Perhaps the reflection that he could cab allthe way back to the hotel had something to do with this easy-going wayof courting an empty pocket. 

When he got to the Bank another young gentleman, with no spectaclesthis time, said _he_ didn't know if any credit was wired. He was verypreoccupied, pinning up cheques and initialling some importantcustomer's paying-in book. But _he_ would inquire in a moment, if youwould wait. And did so, with no result; merely expression of abstractcertainty that it was sure to come. There was still an hour--over anhour--before closing time, said he to a bag with five pounds of silverin it, unsympathetically. If you could make it convenient to look inin an hour, probably we should have received it. The person addressedbut not looked at might do so--wouldn't commit himself--and went away. 

The question seemed to be how to while away that hour. Well!--therewas the Twopenny Tube. At that time it was new, and an excitement. Ourfriend had exactly fourpence in his pocket. That would take him toanywhere and back before the Bank closed. And also he could put someof that eau-de-Cologne on his face and hands. He had on him still asense of the foulness of Livermore's Rents and wanted something tocounteract it. Eau-de-Cologne is a great sweetener. 

CHAPTER II

A JOURNEY IN THE TWOPENNY TUBE. A VERY NICE GIRL, AND A NEGOTIATION. AN EXPOSED WIRE, AND AN ELECTROCUTION

He took his fare in the Twopenny Tube. It was the last twopence butone that he had in his pocket. Something fascinated him in the idea ofcommanding, in exchange for that twopence, the power of alighting atany point between Cheapside and Shepherd's Bush. Which should it be?

If he could only make up his mind to _not_ alighting at Chancery Lane, he would have two whole minutes for consideration. If British Museumhe would have four. If Tottenham Court Road, six--and so on. For thetime being he was a sort of monarch, in a small way, over Time andSpace. He would go on to the Museum, at any rate. 

What little things life hangs on, sometimes! If he had foolishly gotout at either Chancery Lane or British Museum, there either would havebeen no reason for writing this story; or, if written, it would havebeen quite different. For at the Museum Station a girl got into thecarriage; and, passing him on her way to a central haven of rest, trodon his foot, with severity. It hurt, so palpably, that the girl beggedhis pardon. She was a nice girl, and sorry. 

He forgave her because she was a nice girl, with beautiful rows ofteeth and merry eyebrows. He might have forgiven her if she had beena dowdy. But he liked forgiving those teeth, and those eyebrows. 

So when she sat down in the haven, close to his left shoulder, hewasn't sorry that his remark that _he_ ought to beg _her_ pardon, because it was all his fault for sticking out, overlapped her comingto an anchor. If it had been got through quicker, the incident wouldhave been regarded as closed. As it was, the fag-end of it wasunexhausted, and she didn't quite catch the whole. It was in no wayunnatural that she should turn her head slightly, and say: "I begyour pardon. " Absolute silence would have been almost discourteous, after plunging on to what might have been a bad corn. 

"I only meant it was my fault for jamming up the whole gangway. "

"Oh yes--but it was my fault all the same--for--for----"

"Yes--I beg your pardon? You were going to say--for----?"

"Well--I mean--for standing on it so long, then! If you had calledout--but indeed I didn't think it was a foot. I thought it wassomething in the electricity. "

Two things were evident. One was that it was perfectly impossible tobe stiff and stodgy over it, and not laugh out. The other, the obviousabsurdity of imputing any sort of motive to the serene frankness andabsolute candour of the speaker. Any sort of motive--"of _that_sort"--said he to himself, without further analysis. He threw himselfinto the laugh, without attempting any. It disposed of the discussionof the subject, but left matters so that stolid silence would havebeen priggish. It seemed to him that not to say another word wouldalmost have amounted to an insinuation against the eyebrows and theteeth. He would say one--a most impersonal one. 

"Do they stop at Bond Street?"

"Do you want to stop at Bond Street?"

"Not at all. I don't care where I stop. I think I meant--is therea station at Bond Street?"

"The station wasn't opened at first. But it's open now. "

What an irritating thing a conversation can be! Here was this one, just as one of its constituents was beginning to wish it to go on, must needs exhaust its subject and confess that artificial nourishmentwas needed to sustain it. And she--(for it was she, not he:--did youguess wrong?)--had begun to want to know, don't you see, why the manwith the hair on the back of his browned hand and the big plain goldring on his thumb did not care where he stopped. If he had had aholiday look about him she might have concluded that he was seeingLondon, and then what could be more natural than to break loose, as itwere, in the Twopenny Tube? But in spite of his leisurely look, he hadnot in the least the seeming of a holiday-maker. His clothes were notright for the part. What he was could not be guessed without a clue, and the conversation had collapsed, clearly! It was irritating to begravelled for lack of matter--and he was such a perfect stranger! Thegirl was a reader of Shakespeare, but she certainly didn't see herway to Rosalind's little expedient. "Even though my own name _is_Rosalind, " said she to herself. 

It was the readiness and completeness with which the man dropped thesubject, and recoiled into himself, that gave the girl courage to makean attempt to satisfy her curiosity. When a man harks back, palpably, on some preoccupation, after exchanging a laugh and an impersonal wordor two with a girl who does not know him, it is the best confirmationpossible of his previous good faith in seeming more fatherlike thanmanlike. Rosalind could risk it, surely. "Very likely he has adaughter my age, " said she to herself. Then she saw an opening--thethumb-ring. 

"Do pray excuse me for asking, but do you find it does good? Mymother was recommended to try one. "

"This ring? It hasn't done _me_ any good. But then, I have hardlyanything the matter. I don't know about other people. I'm sorry Ibought it, now. It cost four-and-sixpence, I think. I would soonerhave the four-and-sixpence.... Yes, decidedly! I would sooner havethe four-and-sixpence. "

"Can't you sell it?"

"I don't believe I could get sixpence for it. "

"Do please excuse me--I mean, excuse the liberty I take--but I shouldso much like to--to.... "

"To buy it for sixpence? Certainly. Why not? Much better than payingfour-and-six for a new one. Your mother _may_ find it do her good. Idon't care about it, and I really have nothing the matter. "

He drew the ring off his thumb, and Rosalind took it from him. Sheslipped it on her finger, over her glove. Naturally it slipped off--aman's thumb-ring! She passed it up inside the glove-palm, through thelittle slot above the buttons. Then she got out her purse, and lookedin to see what its resources were. 

"I have only got half-a-crown, " said she. The man flushed slightly. Rosalind fancied he was angry, and had supposed she was offeringbeyond her bargain, which might have implied liberality, orbenevolence, or something equally offensive. But it wasn't that atall. 

"I have no change, " said he. "Never mind about the sixpence. Send mestamps. I'll give you my card. " And then he recollected he had nocard, and said so. 

"It doesn't matter being very exact, " said she. 

"I have no money at all. Except twopence. "

Rosalind hesitated. This man must be very hard up, only he certainlydid not give that impression. Still, "no money at all, excepttwopence!" Would it be safe to try to get the half-crown into hispocket? That was what she wanted to do, but felt she might easilyblunder over it. If she was to achieve it, she must be quick, for thepublic within hearing was already feeling in its pocket, in order tooblige with change for half-a-crown. She _was_ quick. 

"_You_ send it _me_ in stamps, " she said, pressing the coin on him. "Take it, and I'll get my card for the address. It will beone-and-eleven exactly, because of the postage. It ought to be apenny for stationery, too.... Oh, well! never mind, then.... "

She had got the card, and the man, demurring to the stationerysuggestion, and, indeed, hesitating whether to take the coin at all, looked at the card with a little surprise on his face. He read it:

 +------------------------------------+ | | | MRS. NIGHTINGALE. | | | | MISS ROSALIND NIGHTINGALE. | | | | | | KRAKATOA, GLENMOIRA ROAD, | | | | SHEPHERD'S BUSH, W. | | | +------------------------------------+

"I'm not Mrs. Nightingale, " said the girl. "That's my mother. "

"Oh no!" said he. "It wasn't that. It was only that I knew the nameonce--years ago. "

The link in the dialogue here was that she had thought the surprisewas due to his crediting her with matrimony and a visiting-carddaughter. She was just thinking could she legitimately inquire intothe previous Nightingale, when he said some more of his own accord, and saved her the trouble. 

"Rosalind Nightingale was the name, " said he. "Do you know anyrelation----"

"Only my mother, " answered the girl, surprised. "She's Rosalind, too, like me. I mean, _I'm_ Rosalind. I am always called Sally, though. "

The man was going to answer when, as luck would have it, the cardslipped from his fingers and fluttered down. In pursuing it he missedthe half-crown, which the young lady released, fancying he was aboutto take hold of it, and stooped to search for it where it had rolledunder the seat. 

"How idiotic of me!" said he. 

"Next station Uxbridge Road, " thus the guard proclaimed; and then, seeing the exploration that was going on after the half-crown, headded: "I should let it go at that, mister, if I was you. "

The man asked why?

"There was a party tried that game last week. He's in the horspitalnow. " This was portentous and enigmatical. The guard continued: "If aparty gets electrocuted, it's no concern of the employees on the line. It lies between such parties and the Company. I shouldn't myself, ifI was you! But it's between you and the Company. I wash _my_ hands. "

"If the wires are properly insulated"--this was from an importantelderly gentleman, of a species invariable under the circumstances--"_if_the wires are properly insulated, there is not the slightest cause forapprehension of any sort or kind. "

"Very good!" said the guard gloomily. "Then all I say is, insoolate'em yourselves. Don't try to put it on me! Or else keep your handswell outside of the circuit. " But the elderly gentleman was not readyto acquiesce in the conditions pointed at. 

"I repeat, " said he, "that the protection of the public is, or oughtto be, amply secured by the terms of the Company's charter. If anyloophole exists for the escape of the electric current, all I can sayis, the circumstances call for public inquiry. The safety of thepublic is the concern of the authorities. "

"Then, " said the guard pointedly, "if I was the public, I should putmy hands in my pocket, and not go fishing about for ambiguous propertyin corners. There!--what did I tell you? Now you'll say that was me, I suppose?"

The thing that hadn't been the guard was a sudden crackle that leapedout in a blue flame under the seat where the man's hand was exploringfor the half-crown. It was either that, or another like it, at theman's heel. Or both together. A little boy was intensely delighted, and wanted more of the same sort. The elderly gentleman turned purplewith indignation, and would at once complain to the authorities. Theywould take the matter up, he doubted not. It was a disgrace, etc. , etc. , etc. 

Rosalind, or Sally, Nightingale showed no alarm. Her merry eyebrowswere as merry as ever, and her smile was as unconscious a frame to herpearly teeth as ever, when she turned to the mother of the delightedlittle boy and spoke. 

"There now! It's exactly like that when I comb my hair in very dryweather. " And the good woman was able to confirm this from her ownexperience, narrating (with needless details) the strange phenomenaattendant on the head of a young person in quite a good situation atWoollamses, and really almost a lady, stating several times what shehad said to the young person, Miss Ada Taylor, and what answer shehad received. She treated the matter entirely with reference to thebearings of the electric current on questions of social status. 

But the man did not move, remaining always with his arm under theseat. Rosalind, or Sally, thought he had run the half-crown home, butin some fixed corner from which detachment was for a moment difficult. Wondering why the moment should last so long, she spoke. 

"Have you got it?" said she. 

But the man spoke never a word, and remained quite still. 

CHAPTER III

KRAKATOA VILLA, AND HOW THE ELECTROCUTED TRAVELLER WENT THERE IN A CAB. A CURIOUS WELCOME TO A PERFECT STRANGER. THE STRANGER'S LABEL. A CANCELLED MEMORY. BACK LIKE A BAD SHILLING

Krakatoa was a semi-detached villa, a few minutes' walk fromShepherd's Bush Station. It looked like a showily dressed wife of ashabby husband; for the semi-detached other villa next door had beenstanding to let for years, and its compo front was in a state ofdecomposition from past frosts, and its paint was parched and thinin the glare of the present June sun, and peeling and drippingspiritlessly from the closed shutters among the dead flies behindthe cracked panes of glass that had quite forgotten the meaning ofwhitening and water, and that wouldn't hack out easy by reason ofthe putty having gone 'ard. One knew at a glance that if the turncockwas to come, see, and overcome the reluctance of the allottedcock-to-be-turned, the water would burst out at every pore of theservice-pipes in that house, except the taps; and would know alsothat the adept who came to soften their hearts and handles would haveto go back for his tools, and would be a very long time away. 

Krakatoa, on the other hand, was resplendent with stone-colour, andsmelt strongly of it. And its door you could see through the glass ofinto the hall, when its shutters were not thumb-screwed up over thepanes, was painted a green that staggered the reason, and smelt evenmore strongly than the stone-colour. And all the paint was so thickthat the beadings on the door were dim memories, and all the executionon the sculptured goblets on pedestals flanking the steps in the frontgarden was as good as spoiled. And the paint simmered in the sun, andhere and there it blistered and altogether suggested that Krakatoa, like St. Nicholas, might have halved its coats with the beggar nextdoor--given him, suppose, one flat and one round coat. Also, thateither the job had been 'urried, and not giv' proper time to dry, orthat the summer had come too soon, and we should pay for it later on, you see if we didn't!

The coatless and woe-begone villa next door had almost lost its name, so faded was the lettering on the gate-post that was putting out itsbell-handle to the passer-by, even as the patient puts out his tongueto the doctor. But experts in palimpsests, if they had penetrated thesuperscriptions in chalk and pencil of idle authorship, would havefound that it was The Retreat. Probably this would have been revealedeven if the texts had been merely Bowdlerised with Indian-rubber ora sponge, because there were a good many objectionable passages. 

But The Retreat _was_ a retreat, and smelt strong of the Hermits, whowere cats. Krakatoa was not a volcano, except so far as eruptions onthe paint went. But then it had become Krakatoa through a mistake; forthe four coats of paint at the end of the first seven years, as peragreement, having completely hidden the first name, Saratoga, and thebuilders' retention of it having been feeble--possibly even affectedby newspaper posters, for it was not long after the date of the greateruption--the new name had crept in in the absence of those who couldhave corrected it, but had gone to Brighton to get out of the smell ofthe paint. 

When they returned, Mr. Prichard, the builder, though shocked andhurt at the discovery that the wrong name had been put up, wasstrongly opposed to any correction or alteration, especially as itwould always show if altered back. You couldn't make a job of it; notto say a proper job. Besides, the names were morally the same, andit was absurd to allow a variation in the letters to impose on ourimagination. The two names had been applied to very differentturns-out abroad, certainly; but then they did all sorts of thingsabroad. If Saratoga, why not Krakatoa? Mr. Prichard was entrenched ina stronghold of total ignorance of literary matters, and his position, that mere differences of words ought not to tell upon a healthy mind, was difficult to shake, especially as he had the coign of vantage. Hehad only to remain inanimate, and what could a (presumably) widow ladywith one small daughter do against him? So at the end of the firstseven years, what had been Saratoga became Krakatoa, and remained so. 

And it was in the back garden of the again newly painted villa, sevenyears later, that the lady of the house, who was watering the gardenin the cool of the afternoon, asked her excited daughter, who had justcome home in a cab, what on earth could have prompted her to do sucha mad thing, such a perfectly _insane_ thing! We shall see what it wasimmediately. 

"Oh, Sally, Sally!" exclaimed that young person's still young and veryhandsome mother. "What _will_ the child do next?"

"Oh, mamma, mamma!" answers Sally, just on the edge of a burst of tears;"what _was_ I to do? What _could_ I do? It was all my fault from thebeginning. You _know_ I couldn't leave him to be taken to thepolice-station, or the hospital, or----"

"Yes, of course you could! Why not?"

"And not know what became of him, or anything? Oh, mother!"

"You silly child! Why on earth couldn't you leave him to the railwaypeople?"

"And run away and leave him alone? Oh, _mother_!"

"But you don't even know his name. "

"Mamma, dear, how _should_ I know his name? Don't you see, it was justlike this. " And then Miss Sally Nightingale repeats, briefly andrapidly, for the second time, the circumstances of her interview inthe railway-carriage and its tragic ending. Also their sequel on therailway platform, with the partial recovery of the stunned orstupefied man, his inability to speak plainly, the unsuccessful searchin his pockets for something to identify him, and the final decisionto put him in a cab and take him to the workhouse infirmary, pendingdiscovery of his identity. The end of her story has a note of reliefin it:

"And it was then I saw Dr. Vereker on the platform. "

"Oh, you saw Dr. Vereker?"

"Of course I did, and he came with me. He's always so kind, you know, and he knew the station people, so.... "

"Where is he now?"

"Outside in the cab. He stopped to see after the man. We couldn't bothcome away, so I came to tell you. "

"You stupid chit! why couldn't you tell me at first? There, don't cryand be a goose!"

But Sally disclaims all intention of crying. Her mother discards thewatering-pot and an apron, and suppresses appearances of gardening;then goes quickly through the house, passes down the steps betweenthe scarlet geraniums in the over-painted goblets, through the gateon which Saratoga ought to be, and Krakatoa is, written, and findsa four-wheeled cab awaiting developments. One of its occupants alightsand meets her on the pavement. A rapid colloquy ensues in undertones, ending in the slightly raised voice of the young man, who is clearlyDr. Vereker. 

"Of course, you're perfectly right--perfectly right. But you'll haveto make my peace with Miss Sally for me. "

"A chit of a girl like that! Fancy a responsible man like you lettinghimself be twisted round the finger of a young monkey. But you men areall alike. "

"Well, you know, really, what Miss Sally said was quite true--that itwas only a step out of the way to call here. And she had got this ideathat it was all her fault. "

"Was it?"

"I can only go by what she says. " The girl comes into the conversationthrough the gate. She may perhaps have stopped for a word or two withcook and a house-and-parlourmaid, who are deeply interested, in therear. 

"It _was_ my fault, " she said. "If it hadn't been for me, it wouldnever have happened. Do see how he is now, Dr. Vereker. "

It is open to surmise that the first strong impulse of generosityhaving died down under the corrective of a mother, our young lady isgradually seeing her way to interposing Dr. Vereker as a bufferbetween herself and the subject of the conversation, for she does notgo to the cab-door to look in at him. The doctor does. The motherholds as aloof as possible, not to get entangled into any obligations. 

"Get him away to the infirmary, or the station at once, " she says. "That's the best thing to be done. They'll take care of him till hisfriends come to claim him. Of course, they'll come. They always do. "The doctor seems to share this confidence, or affects to do so. 

"Sure to. His friends or his servants, " says he. "But he can't giveany account of himself yet. Of course, I don't know what he'll be ableto do to-morrow morning. "

He resumes his place in the cab beside its occupant, who, exceptfor an entire want of animation, looks much like what he did in therailway-carriage--the same strong-looking man with well-markedcheek-bones, very thick brown hair and bushy brows, a skin rathertanned, and a scar on the bridge of the nose; very strong hands witha tattoo-mark showing on the wrist and an abnormal crop of hair on theback, running on to the fingers, but flawed by a scar or two. Add tothis the chief thing you would recollect him by, an Elizabethan beard, and you will have all the particulars about him that a navy-blue sergesuit, with shirt to match, allows to be seen of him. But you will havean impression that could you see his skin beyond the sun-mark limit onhis hands and neck, you would find it also tattooed. Yet you would notat once conclude he was a sailor; rather, your conclusion might go onother lines, but always assigning to him a rough adventurous outdoorlife. 

When the doctor got into the cab and shut the door himself, he tooktoo much for granted. He assumed the driver, without whom, if yourhorse has no ambition at all beyond tranquillity and an empty nosebag, your condition is that of one camping out; or as one in a ship mooredalongside in dock, the kerbstone playing the part of the quay. Boyswill then accumulate, and undervalue your appearance and belongings. And impossible persons, with no previous or subsequent existence, willendeavour to see their way to the establishment of a claim on you. Andyou will be rather grateful than otherwise that a policeman withoutactive interests should accrue, and communicate to them the virus ofdispersal, however long its incubation may be. You will then probablydo as Dr. Vereker did, and resent the driver's disappearance. Theboys, mysteriously in his, each other's, and the policeman'sconfidence (all to your exclusion), will be able to quicken hismovements, and he will come trooping from the horizon, on or beyondwhich is Somebody's Entire. 

All this came to pass in due course, and the horse, deprived of hisnosebag, returned to his professional obligations. But it was a shabbyhorse in a shabby cab, to which he imparted movement by fallingforwards and saving himself just before he reached the ground. Hisreins were visibly made good with stout pack-thread, and he had awell-founded contempt for his whip, which seemed to come to an endtoo soon, and always to hit something wooden before it reached anysensitive part of his person. But he did get off at last, and showedthat, as Force is a mode of motion, so Weakness is a mode of slowness, and one he took every advantage of. 

The mother and daughter stood looking after the vanishing label, thatstated that the complication of inefficiencies in front of it was oneof twelve thousand and odd--pray Heaven, more competent ones!--in theMetropolis, and had nearly turned to go into the house, when the verymuch younger sister (that might have been) addressed the very much, but not impossibly, older one thus:

"Mamma, he said he knew somebody of our name!"

"Well, Miss Fiddlestick!"--with an implication of what of that? Werethere not plenty of Nightingales in the world? Miss Sally is perceptiveabout this. 

"Yes, but he said Rosalind. "

"Where?"

"He didn't say where. That's all he said--Rosalind. "

As the two stand together watching the retreating cab we are able tosee that our first impression of them, derived perhaps from theirrelative ages only, was an entirely false one as far as size went. Thedaughter is nearly as tall as her mother, and may end by being as biga woman when she has completely graduated, taken her degree, inwomanhood. But for all that we, who have looked at both faces, knowthat when they turn round we shall see on the shoulders of the oneyouth, inexperience, frankness, and expectation of things to come; onthose of the other a head that keeps all the mere physical freshnessof the twenties, if not quite the bloom of the teens, but--expressedHeaven knows how!--experience, reserve, and retrospect on things thathave been once and are not, and that we have no right to assume to beany concern of ours. Equally true of all faces of forty, do weunderstand you to say? Well, we don't know about that. It was all verystrong in this face. 

We can look again, when they turn round. But they don't; for numbertwelve thousand and odd has come to a standstill, and its energumenonhas come down off its box, and is "fiddlin' at something on the'orse's 'ed. " So cook says, evidently not impressed with that cab. Thedoctor looks out and confers; then gets out and comes back towards thehouse. The girl and her mother walk to meet him. 

"Never saw such a four-wheeler in my life! The harness is tied up withstring, and the rein's broken. The idiot says if he had a stout bit ofwhipcord, he could make it square. " No sooner have the words passedthe doctor's lips than Miss Sally is off on a whipcord quest. 

"I wish the child wouldn't always be in such a hurry, " says hermother. "Now she won't know where to get it. "

She calls after her ineffectually. The doctor suggests that he shallfollow with instructions. Yes, suppose he does? There is precisely thething wanted in the left-hand drawer of the table in the hall--thedrawer the handle comes off. This seems unpromising, but the doctorgoes, and transmission of messages ensues, heard within the house. 

Left alone, Mrs. Nightingale, the elder Rosalind, seems reflective. "A funny thing, too!" she says aloud to herself. She is thinking, clearly, of how this man in the cab, who can't give any account ofhimself, once knew a Rosalind Nightingale. 

Probably the handle has come off the drawer, for they are a long timeover that string. Curiosity has time to work, and has so much effectthat the lady seems to determine that, after all, she would like tosee the man. Now that the cab is so far from the door, even if shespoke to him, she would not stand committed to anything. It is allsettled, arranged, ratified, that he shall go to the police-station, or the infirmary, "or somewhere. "

When the string, and Dr. Vereker, and Sally the daughter come out ofthe house, both exclaim. And the surprise they express is that themother of the latter should have walked all the way after the cab, and should be talking to the man in it! It is not consistent with herprevious attitude. 

"Now, isn't that like mamma?" says Sally. If so, why be so astonishedat it?--is a question that suggests itself to her hearer. Butself-confutation is not a disorder for his treatment. Besides, thedoctor likes it, in this case. His own surprise at mamma's conduct isunqualified by any intimate acquaintance with her character. She maybe inconsistency itself, for anything he knows. 

"Is she going to turn the cab round and bring him to the house, afterall?" It looks like it. 

"I'm so glad, " Sally replies to the doctor. 

"I hope you won't repent it in sackcloth and ashes. "

"I shan't. Why do you think I shall?"

"How do you know you won't?"

"You'll see!" Sally pinches her red lips tight over her two rows ofpearls, and nods confirmation. Her dark eyes look merry under themerry eyebrows, and the lip-pinch makes a dimple on her chin--a dimpleto remember her by. She is a taking young lady, there is no doubt ofit. At least, the doctor has none. 

"Yes, Sally, it's all quite right. " Thus her mother, arriving a littleahead of the returning cab. "Now, don't dispute with me, child, but dojust as I tell you. We'll have him in the breakfast-room; there'sfewer steps. " She seems to have made up her mind so completely thatneither of the others interposes a word. But she replies, moved by abrain-wave, to a question that stirred in the doctor's mind. 

"Oh yes; he has spoken. He spoke to me just now. I'll tell you presently. Now let's get him out. No, never mind calling cook. You take him on thatside, doctor.... That's right!"

And then the man, whose name we still do not know, found himself halfsupported, half standing alone, on the pavement in front of a littlewhite eligible residence smelling of new paint. He did not the leastknow what had happened. He had only a vague impression that if someone or something, he couldn't say what, would only give up hinderinghim, he would find something he was looking for. But how could hefind it if he didn't know what it was? And that he was quite in thedark about. The half-crown and the pretty girl who had given it tohim, the train-guard and his cowardice about responsibility, thepublic-spirited gentleman, the railway-carriage itself, to say nothingof all the exciting experiences of the morning--all, all had vanished, leaving behind only the trace of the impulse to search. Nothing else!He stood looking bewildered, then spoke thickly. 

"I am giving trouble, " said he. Then the two ladies and the gentleman, whom he saw dimly and did not know, looked at one another, eachperhaps to see if one of the others would speak first. In the end thelady who was a woman nodded to the gentleman to speak, and then thelady who was a girl confirmed her by what was little more than anintention to nod, not quite unmixed with a mischievous enjoyment atthe devolution of the duty of speech on the gentleman. It twinkled inher closed lips. But the gentleman didn't seem overwhelmed withembarrassment. He spoke as if he was used to things. 

"You have had an accident, sir.... On the railway.... In the TwopennyTube.... Yes, you'll remember all about it presently.... Yes, I'm adoctor.... Yes, we want you to come in and sit down and rest tillyou're better.... No, it won't be a long job. _You'll_ soon comeround.... What?... Oh no, no trouble at all! It's this lady's house, and she wants you to come in. " The speaker seems to guess at the rightmeanings, as one guesses in the jaws of the telephone, perhaps withmore confidence. But there was but little audible articulation on theother's part. 

He seemed not to want much support--chiefly guidance. He was takendown the half-dozen steps that flanked a grass slope down to a stonepaving, and through a door under the more numerous steps he hadescaped climbing, and into a breakfast-room flush with the kitchen, opening on a small garden at the back. There was the marriage of QueenVictoria and Prince Albert over the chimney-piece, and a tortoiseshellcat with a collar on the oilskin cover of a square table, who rose asthough half resenting strange visitors; then, after stretching, decided on some haven less liable to disturbance, and went through thewindow to it without effort, emotion, or sound. There was a clockunder a glass cover on the chimney-piece whose works you could seethrough, with a fascinating ratchet movement of perfect grace andpunctuality. Also a vertical orange-yellow glass vase, twisted to aspiral, and full of spills. Also the leaning tower of Pisa, done smallin alabaster. He could see all these things quite plainly, and butthat his tongue seemed to have struck work, could have described them. But he could not make himself out, nor how and why he came to be thereat all. Where ought he to have been, he asked himself? And, to hishorror, he could not make that out either. Never mind. Patience wasthe word, clearly. Let him shut his eyes as he sat there, in thelittle breakfast-room, with the flies continually droning in theceiling, and an especially large bluebottle busy in the window, whomight just as easily have gone out and enjoyed the last hour of a longevening in a glorious sunshine, but who mysteriously preferred to beathimself for ever against a closed pane of glass, a self-constitutedprisoner between it and a gauze blind--let him shut his eyes, and tryto think out what it all meant, what it was all about. 

All that he was perfectly certain of, at that moment, was that he wasawake, with a contused pain all over, and a very stiff left hand andfoot. And that, knowing he had been insensible, he was striving hardto remember what something was that had happened just before he becameinsensible. He had nearly got it, once or twice. Yes, now he _had_ gotit, surely! No, he hadn't. It was gone again. 

A mind that is struggling to remember some particular thing does notdeal with other possibilities of oblivion. We all know the painfulphenomenon of being perfectly aware what it is we are trying toremember, feeling constantly close to it, but always failing to graspit. We know what it will sound like when we say it, what it will mean, where it was on the page we read it on. Oh dear yes!--quite plainly. The only thing we can't remember for the life of us is--what it _was_!

And while we are making stupendous efforts to recapture some suchthing, does it ever occur to any of us to ask if we may not bemistaken in our tacit assumption that we are quite certain to remembereverything else as soon as we try? That, in fact, it may be ourmemory-faculty itself that is in fault and that we are only failing torecall one thing because at the moment it is that one sole thing, andno other, that we are trying our brains against. 

It was so in the pause of a few minutes in which this man we write of, left to himself and the ticking of the clock, and hearing, through theactivity of the bluebottle and the monotony of the ceiling flies, themurmur of a distant conversation between his late companions, who forthe moment had left him alone, tried in vain to recover his particularthread of memory, without any uneasiness about the innumerable skeinsthat made up the tissue of his record of a lifetime. 

When the young doctor returned, he found him still seated where he hadleft him, one hand over his eyes, the other on his knee. As hesat--for the doctor watched him from the door for a moment--he movedand replaced either hand at intervals, with implied distress in themovements. They gave the impression of constant attempt constantlybaffled. The doctor, a shrewd-seeming young man with an attentive paleeye, and very fair hair, seemed to understand. 

"Let me recommend you to be quiet and rest. Be quite quiet. You willbe all right when you have slept on it. Mrs. Nightingale--that's thelady you saw just now; this is her house--will see that you areproperly taken care of. "

Then the man tried to speak; it was with an effort. 

"I wish to thank--I must thank----"

"Never mind thanks yet. All in good time. Now, what do you think youcan take--to eat or drink?"

"Nothing--nothing to eat or drink. "

"Well, you know best. However, there's tea coming; perhaps you'll goso far as a cup of tea? You would be the better for it. "

 * * * * *

Rosalind junior, or Sally, slept in the back bedroom on thefirst-floor--that is to say, if we ignore the basement floor and callthe one flush with the street-door step the ground-floor. We believewe are right in doing so. Rosalind senior, the mother, slept in thefront one. It wasn't too late for tea, they had decided, and thereuponthey had gone upstairs to revise and correct. 

After a certain amount of slopping and splashing in the back room, uncorroborated by any in the front, Sally called out to her mother, onthe disjointed lines of talk in real life:

"I like this soap! Have you a safety-pin?" Whereto her mother replied, speaking rather drowsily and perfunctorily:

"Yes, but you must come and get it. "

"It's so nice and oily. It's not from Cattley's?"

"Yes, it is. "

"I thought it was. Where's the pin?" At this point she came into hermother's room, covering her slightly _retroussé_ nose with herfresh-washed hands, to enjoy the aroma of Cattley's soap. 

"In the little pink saucer. Only don't mess my things about. "

"Headache, mammy dear?" For her mother was lying back on the bed, withher eyes closed. The speaker left her hands over her nostrils as shespoke, to do full justice to the soap, pausing an instant in hersafety-pin raid for the answer:

"I've been feeling the heat. It's nothing. You go down, and I'llcome. "

"Have some eau-de-Cologne?" But, alas! there was no eau-de-Cologne. 

"Never mind. You go down, and I'll follow. I shall be all rightafter a cup of tea. " And Sally, after an intricate movement with asafety-pin, an openwork lace cuff that has lost a button, and a whitewrist, goes down three accelerandos of stair-lengths, with landingpauses, and ends with a dining-room door staccato. But she isn't longgone, for in two minutes the door reopens, and she comes upstairs asfast, nearly, as she went down. In her hand she carries, visibly, Johann Maria Farina. 

"Where on earth did you find that?" says her mother. 

"The man had it. Wasn't it funny? He heard me say to Dr. Vereker thatI was so sorry I'd not been able to eau-de-Cologne your forehead, andhe began speaking and couldn't get his words. Then he got this out ofhis pocket. I remember one of the men at the station said somethingabout his having a bottle, but I thought he meant a pocket-flask. Helooks the sort of man that would have a pocket-flask and earrings. "

Her mother doesn't seem to find this inexplicable, nor to needcomment. Rather the contrary. Sally dabs her brow with eau-de-Cologne, beneficially, for she seems better, and says now go; she won't beabove a couple of minutes. Nor is she, in the sense in which herstatement has been accepted, for she comes downstairs within seven bythe clock with the dutiful ratchet movement. 

 * * * * *

When she came within hearing of those in the room below, she hearda male voice that was not Dr. Vereker's. Yes, the man (whom we stillcannot speak of by a name) was saying something--slowly, perhaps--butfairly articulately and intelligibly. She went very deliberately, andlistened in the doorway. She looked very pale, and very interested--aface of fixed attention, of absorption in something she was irresoluteabout, rather than of doubt about what she heard; an expression ratherout of proportion to the concurrent facts, as we know them. 

"What is so strange"--this is what the man was saying, in his slowway--"is that I could find words to tell you, if I could remember whatit is I have to tell. But when I try to bring it back, my head fails. Tell me again, mademoiselle, about the railway-carriage. " Sallywondered why she was mademoiselle, but recognised a tone of deferencein his use of the word. She did as he asked her, slightly interruptingher narrative to make sure of getting the tea made right as she didso. 

"I trod on your foot, you know. (One, two, three spoonfuls. ) Surelyyou must remember that? (Four, and a little one for the pot. )"

"I have completely forgotten it. "

"Then I was sorry, and said I would have come off sooner if I hadknown it was a foot. You _must_ remember that?" The man half smiled ashe shook a slow-disclaiming head--one that would have remembered sogladly, if it could. "Then, " continues Sally, "I saw your thumb-ringfor rheumatism. "

"My thumb-ring!" He presses his fingers over his closed eyes, asthough to give Memory a better chance by shutting off the visiblepresent, then withdraws them. "No, I remember no ring at all. "

"How extraordinary!"

"I remember a violent concussion _somewhere_--I can't say where--andthen finding myself in a cab, trying to speak to a lady whose faceseemed familiar to me, but who she could be I had not the slightestidea. Then I tried to get out of the cab, and found I could notmove--or hardly. "

"Look at mamma again! Here she is, come. " For Mrs. Nightingale hascome into the room, looking white. "Yes, mother dear, I have. Quitefull up to the brim. Only it isn't ready to pour yet. " This lastconcerns the tea. 

Mrs. Nightingale moves round behind the tea-maker, and comes full-facein front of her guest. One might have fancied that the hand that heldthe pocket-handkerchief that caused the smell of eau-de-Cologne thatcame in with her was tremulous. But then that very eau-de-Cologne waseloquent about the recent effect of the heat. Of course, she was alittle upset. Nothing strikes either the doctor or Mademoiselle Sallyas abnormal or extraordinary. The latter resumes:

"Surely, sir! Oh, you must, you _must_ remember about the nameNightingale?"

"This young gentleman said it just now. _Your_ name, madame?"

"Certainly, my name, " says the lady addressed. But Sallydistinguishes:

"Yes, but I didn't mean that. I meant when I took the ring from you, and was to pay for it. Sixpence. And you had no change forhalf-a-crown. And then I gave you my mother's card to send it to ushere. One-and-elevenpence, because of the postage. Why, surely you canremember that!" She cannot bring herself to believe him. Dr. Verekerdoes, though, and tells him not to try recollecting; he will only puthimself back. "Take the tea and wait a bit, " is the doctor's advice. For Miss Sally is transmitting a cup of tea with studied equilibrium. He receives it absently, leaving it on the table. 

"I do not know if you will know what I mean, " he says, "but I havea sort of feeling of--of being frightened; for I have been trying toremember things, and I find I can remember almost nothing. PerhapsI should say I cannot remember _at all_--can't do any recollecting, if you understand. " Every one can understand--at least, each says so. Sally goes on, half _sotto voce_: "You can recollect your own name, I suppose?" She speaks half-way between soliloquy and dialogue. Thedoctor throws in counsel, aside, for precaution. 

"You'll only make matters worse, like that. Better leave him quitealone. "

But the man's hearing doesn't seem to have suffered, for he catchesthe remark about his name. 

"I can't tell, " he says. "I am not so sure. Of course, I can't haveforgotten my own name, because that's impossible. I will tell it youin a minute.... Oh dear!... "

The young doctor seemed to disapprove highly of these efforts, and towish to change the conversation. "Let it alone now, " said he. "Onlyfor a little. Would you kindly allow me to see your arm again?"

"Let him drink his tea first. " This is from Miss Sally, thetea-priestess. "Another cup?" But no; he won't take another cup, thanks. 

"Now let's have the coat off, and get another look at the arm; nevermind apologizing. " But the patient had not contemplated apology. Itwas the stiffness made him slow. However, he got his coat off, anddrew the blue shirt off his left arm. He had a fine hand and arm, butthe hand hung inanimate, and the fingers looked scorched. Dr. Verekerbegan feeling the arm at intervals all the way up, and asking eachtime questions about the degree of sensibility. 

"I couldn't say whether it's normal or not up there. " So the patienttestified. And Mrs. Nightingale, who was watching the examinationintently, suggested trying the other arm in the same place forcomparison. 

"You didn't see the other arm at the station, doctor?" she said. 

"Didn't I?"

"I was asking. "

"Well, no. Now I come to think of it, I don't think I did. We'll havea look now, anyhow. "

"_You're_ a nice doctor!" This is from Miss Sally; a littleconfidential fling at the profession. She is no respecter of persons. Her mother would, no doubt, check her--a pert little monkey!--only sheis absorbed in the examination. 

The doctor, as he ran back the right-arm sleeve, uttered anexclamation. "Why, my dear sir, " cried he, "here we have it! What morecan we want?"--and pointed at the arm. And Sally said, as thoughrelieved: "He's got his name written on him plain enough, anyhow!" Hermother gave a sigh of relief, or something like it, and said, "Yes. "The patient himself seemed quite as much perplexed as pleased at thediscovery, saying only, in a subdued way: "It _must_ be my name. " Buthe did not seem to accept at all readily the name tattooed on his arm:"A. Fenwick, 1878. "

"Whose name can it be if it is not yours?" said Mrs. Nightingale. Shefixed her eyes on his face, as though to watch his effort of memory. "Try and think. " But the doctor protested. 

"Don't do anything of the sort, " said he. "It's very bad for him, Mrs. Nightingale. He _mustn't_ think. Just let him rest. "

The patient, however, could not resign himself without a struggle tothis state of anonymous ambiguity. His bewilderment was painful towitness. "If it were my name, " he said, speaking slowly and not veryclearly, "surely it would bring back the first name. I try to recallthe word, and the effort is painful, and doesn't succeed. " His hostessseemed much interested, even to the extent of ignoring the doctor'sinjunctions. 

"Very curious! If you heard the name now, would you recollect it?"

"I _wish_ you wouldn't try these experiments, " says the doctor. "Theywon't do him _any_ good. _Rest's_ the thing. "

"I think I would rather try, " says Fenwick, as we may now call him. "I will be quiet if I can get this right. "

Mrs. Nightingale begins repeating names that begin with A. "Alfred, Augustus, Arthur, Andrew, Algernon----"

Fenwick's face brightens. "That's it!" says he. "Algernon. I knew itquite well all the time, of course. But I couldn't--couldn't.... However, I don't feel that I shall make myself understood. "

"I can't make out, " said Sally, "how you came to remember the bottleof eau-de-Cologne. "

"I did not remember it. I do not now. I mean, how it came to be in thepocket. I can remember nothing else that was there--would have been, that is. There is nothing else there now, except my cigar-case anda pocket-book with nothing much in it. I can tell nothing about mywatch. A watch ought to be there. "

"There, there!" says the doctor; "you will remember it all presently. Do take my advice and be quiet, and sit still and don't talk. "

But half an hour or more after, although he had taken this advice, Fenwick remembered nothing, or professed to have remembered nothing. He seemed, however, much more collected, and except on thememory-point nearly normal. 

When the doctor, looking at his watch, referred to his obligation tokeep another engagement, Fenwick rose, saying that he was nowperfectly well able to walk, and he would intrude no longer on hishostesses' hospitality. This would have been perfectly reasonable, butfor one thing. It had come out that his pockets were empty, and he wasevidently quite without any definite plan as to what he should donext, or where he should go. He was only anxious to relieve his newfriends of an encumbrance. He was evidently the sort of person onwhom the character sat ill; one who would always be most at ease whenshifting for himself; such a one as would reply to any doubt thrown onhis power of doing so, that he had been in many a worse plight thanthis before. Yet you would hardly have classed him on that account asan adventurer, because that term implies unscrupulousness in the wayone shifts for oneself. His face was a perfectly honourable one. Itwas a face whose strength did not interfere with its refinement, andthere was a pleasant candour in the smile that covered it as hefinally made ready to depart with the doctor. He should never, hesaid, know how to be grateful enough to madame and her daughter fortheir kindness to him. But when pressed on the point of where heintended to go, and how they should hear what had become of him, heanswered vaguely. He was undecided, but, of course, he would write andtell them as they so kindly wished to hear of him. Would mademoisellegive him the address written down?

They found themselves--at least, the doctor and Sally did--inferring, from his refreshed manner and his confidence about departing, that hismemory was coming back, or would come back. It might have seemedneedless inquisitiveness to press him with further questions. Theyleft the point alone. After all, they had no more right to catechizehim about himself than if he had been knocked down by a cart outsidethe door, and brought into the house unconscious--a thing which mightquite well have happened. 

Mrs. Nightingale seemed very anxious he should not go away quiteunprovided with money. She asked Dr. Vereker to pass him on a loanfrom her before he parted with him. He could post it back when it wasquite convenient, so the doctor was to tell him. The doctor asked, Wasn't a sovereign a large order? But she seemed to think not. "Besides, " said she, "it makes it certain we shall not lose sight ofhim. I'm not sure we ought to let him go at all, " added she. Sheseemed very uneasy about it--almost exaggeratedly so, the doctorthought. But he was reassuring and confident, and she allowed hisjudgment to overrule hers. But he must bring him back without scrupleif he saw reason to do so. He promised, and the two departed together, the gait and manner of Fenwick giving rise to no immediateapprehension. 

"How rum!" said Sally, when they had gone. "I never thought I shouldlive to see a man electrocuted. "

"A man what?"

"Well, half-electrocuted, then. I say, mother----"

"What, dear?" She is looking very tired, and speaks absently. Sallymakes the heat responsible again in her mind, and continues:

"I don't believe his name's Algernon at all! It's Arthur, or Andrew, or something of that sort. "

"You're very wise, poppet. Why?"

"Because you stopped such a long time after Algernon. It was likecheating at Spiritualism. You _must_ say the alphabet quitesteady--A--B--C--D----" Sally sketches out the proper attitude forthe impartial inquirer. "Or else you're an accomplice. "

"You're a puss! No, _his_ name's Algernon, right enough.... I mean, I've no doubt it's Algernon. Why shouldn't it be?"

"No reason at all. Dr. Vereker's is Conrad, so, of course, there's noreason why his shouldn't be Algernon. " Satisfactory and convincing! Atleast, the speaker thinks so, and is perfectly satisfied. Her motherdoesn't quarrel with the decision. 

"Kitten!" she says suddenly. And then in reply to her daughter's, "What's up, mammy dear?" she suggests that they shall walk out infront--it is a quiet, retired sort of cul-de-sac road, ending in afence done over with tar, with nails along the top like the letter_L_ upside down--in the cool. "It's quite delicious now the sun'sgone down, and Martha can make supper another half-hour late. " Agreed. 

The mother pauses as they reach the gate. "Who's that talking?" sheasks, and listens. 

"Nobody. It's only the sparrows going to bed. "

"No, no; not that! Shish! be quiet! I'm sure I heard Dr. Vereker'svoice----"

"How could you? He's home by now. "

"Do be quiet, child!" She continues listening. 

"Why not look round the corner and see if it isn't him?"

"Well, I was going to; only you and the sparrows make such achattering.... There, I knew it would be that! Why doesn't he bringhim back here, at once?" For at the end of the short road are Dr. Vereker and Fenwick, the latter with his hand on the top of a post, as though resting. They must have been there some minutes. 

"Fancy their having got no further than the fire-alarm!" says Sally, who takes account of her surroundings. 

"Of course, I ought never to have let him go. " Thus her mother, withdecision in her voice. "Come on, child!"

She seems greatly relieved at the matter having settled itself--soSally thinks, at least. 

"We got as far as this, " Dr. Vereker says--rather meaninglessly, ifyou come to think of it. It is so very obvious. 

"And now, " says Mrs. Nightingale, "how is he to be got back again?That's the question!" She seems not to have the smallest doubt aboutthe question, but much about the answer. It is answered, however, withthe assistance of the previous police-constable, who reappears likea ghost. And Mr. Fenwick is back again within the little white villa, much embarrassed at the trouble he is giving, but unable to indicateany other course. Clearly, it would never do to accept the only onehe can suggest--that he should be left to himself, leaning on thefire-alarm, till the full use of his limbs should come back to him. 

Mrs. Nightingale, who is the person principally involved, seems quitecontent with the arrangement. The doctor, in his own mind, is ratherpuzzled at her ready acquiescence; but, then, the only suggestion hecould make would be that he should do precisely the same good officehimself to this victim of an electric current of a good deal toomany volts--too many for private consumption--or cab him off to thepolice-station or the workhouse. For Mr. Fenwick continues quiteunable to give any account of his past or his belongings, and can onlylook forward to recollecting himself, as it were, to-morrow morning. 

CHAPTER IV

HOW THE STRANGER STOPPED ON AT KRAKATOA VILLA. OF THE FREAKS OF AN EXTINGUISHED MEMORY. OF HOW THE STRANGER GOT A GOOD APPOINTMENT, BUT NONE COULD SAY WHO HE WAS, NOR WHENCE

We must suppose that the personal impression produced by the man sostrangely thrown on the hands of Mrs. Nightingale and her daughter wasa pleasant one. For had the reverse been the case, the resources ofcivilisation for disposing of him elsewhere had not been exhaustedwhen the decision was come to that he should remain where he was;till next morning, at any rate. The lady of the house--of course theprincipal factor in the solution of the problem--appeared, as we haveseen, to have made up her mind on the subject. And probably herdaughter had been enough influenced by the stranger's manner andappearance, even in the short period of the interview we have justdescribed, to get rid of a feeling she had of self-reproach for herown rashness. We don't understand girls, but we ask this question ofthose who do: Is it possible that Miss Sally was impressed by thesplendid arm with the name tattooed on it--an arm in which everymuscle told as in a Greek statue, without infringing on itsroundness--the arm of Theseus or Ilissus? Or was it the tone of hisvoice--a musical one enough? Or merely his generally handsome faceand courteous manner?

He remained that night at the house, but next day still rememberednothing. He wished to go on his way--destination not known; but_somewhere_--and would have done so had it not been for Mrs. Nightingale, whose opposition to his going was, thought Dr. Vereker, almost more decisive than the case called for. So he remained on, thatday and the next, slowly regaining the use of his right hand. But hismemory continued a blank; and though he was not unable to converseabout passing events, he could not fix his attention, or only witha great effort. What was very annoying to Sally was that he wasabsolutely unable to account for his remark about her name and hermother's in the railway-carriage. He could not even remember makingthis. He could recall no reason why he should have made it, from anyof the few things that came back to his mind now--hazily, like ghosts. Was he speaking the truth? Why not? Mrs. Nightingale asked. Why notforget that as readily as anything else?

His distress at this inability to remember, to account for himself, to himself or any one else, was almost painful to witness. The onlyconsolatory circumstance was that his use and knowledge of wordsremained intact; it was his memory of actual incidents and peoplein the past that was in fault. Definite effort to follow slightclues remaining in his mind ended in failure, or only served toshow that their origin was traceable to literary fiction. But hislanguage-faculty seemed perfectly in order. It came out that he spokeFrench fluently, and a little Spanish, but he was just as ready withGerman. It seemed as if he had been recently among French people, ifone could judge from such things as his calling his hostess "Madame"when he recovered. These facts came to light in the course of nextday, the second of his stay in the house. The favourable impression hehad produced on Miss Sally did not diminish, and it seemed much easierand more natural to acquiesce in his remaining than to cast about fora new whereabouts to transfer him to. So his departure wasdeferred--for a day, at least, or perhaps until the room he occupiedshould be wanted for other purposes. The postponements on the daysthat followed were a natural sequence so long as there remained anydoubt of his ability to shift for himself. 

But in about a month's time the effects of the nervous shock hadnearly disappeared, and he had almost recovered the use of hishand--could, in fact, write easily. Besides, as long as he remained, it would be impossible for an old friend of Mrs. Nightingale's, whofrequently stayed the night, when he came on an evening visit, tofollow a custom which was in the winter almost invariable. In thesummer it was less important; and as soon as this friend, an oldmilitary gentleman spoken of as "the Major, " could be got tounderstand exactly what had taken place, he readily gave up hisquarters at Krakatoa Villa, and returned to his own, at the top ofa house in Ball Street, Mayfair. 

Nevertheless, the inevitable time came for looking Fenwick's future inthe face. It was difficult, as he was unable to contribute a solutionof the question, except by his readiness to go out and find work forhimself, promising not to come back till he found it. 

"You'll see I shall come back to dinner, " said he. "I shan't make youlate. "

Sally asked him what sort of work he should look for. 

"I have a sort of inner conviction, " he replied, "that I could doalmost anything I turned my hand to. Probably it is only a diseasedconfidence bred of what you might call my artificial inexperience. Every sharp young man's _bona fide_ inexperience lands him in thatdelusion. "

"But you must have _some_ kind of preference for _something_, howevermuch you forget. "

"If I were to choose, I think I should like horse-training.... Oh no, of course I can't recall the training of any specific horse. But Iknow I know all about it, for all that. I can feel the knowledge of ititching in my finger-ends. Yes--I could train horses. Fruit-farmingwould require capital. "

"Who said anything about fruit-farming?"

Fenwick laughed aloud. It was a great big laugh, that made Rosalind, who was giving directions in the kitchen, just across the passage, call out to know what they were laughing at. 

"I'll be hanged if I know, " said he, "_why_ I said fruit-farming--Imust have had something to do with it. It's all very odd. "

"But the horses--the horses, " said Sally, who did not want him towander from the point. "How should you go about it? Should you walkinto Tattersall's without a character, and ask for a place?"

"Not a bit of it! I should saunter into Tat's' like a swell, and askthem if they couldn't find me a raw colt to try my hand on for awager. Say I had laid a hundred I would quiet down the most viciousquadruped they could find in an hour. "

"But that would be fibs. "

"Oh no! I could do it. But I don't know why I know.... "

"I didn't mean that. I meant you wouldn't have laid the wager. "

"Yes, I should. I lay it you now! Come, Miss Sally!--a hundred poundsto a brass farthing I knock all the vice out of the worst beast theycan find in an hour. I shouldn't say the wager had been accepted, youknow. "

"Well, anyhow, I shan't accept it. You haven't got a hundred poundsto pay with. To be sure, I haven't got a brass farthing that I knowof. It's as broad as it is long. "

"Yes, it's that, " he replied musingly--"as broad as it is long. I_haven't_ got a hundred pounds, that I know of. " He repeated thistwice, becoming very absent and thoughtful. 

Sally felt apologetic for reminding him of his position, andimmediately said so. She was evidently a girl quite incapable of anyreserves or concealments. But she had mistaken his meaning. 

"No, no, dear Miss Sally, " said he. "Not that--not that at all!I spoke like that because it all seemed so strange to me. Do youknow?--of all the things I can't recollect, the one I can't recollect_most_--can you understand?--is ever being in want of money. I _must_have had plenty. I am sure of it. "

"I dare say you had. You'll recollect it all presently, and whata lark that will be!" Sally's ingenious optimism made matters verypleasant. She did not like to press the conversation on these lines, lest Mr. Fenwick should refer to a loan she knew her mother had madehim; indeed, had it not been for this the poor man would have beenhard put to it for clothes and other necessaries. All such littlematters, which hardly concern the story, had been landed on acomfortable footing at the date of this conversation. 

But Mr. Fenwick did not lend himself to the agreeable anticipation ofSally's "lark. " There was a pained distraction on his handsome face ashe gave his head a great shake, tossing about the mass of brown hair, which was still something of a lion's mane, in spite of the recentministrations of a hairdresser. He walked to the window-bay thatlooked out on the little garden, shaking and rubbing his head, andthen came back to where he had been sitting--always as one wrestlingwith some painful half-memory he could not trace. Then he spoke again. 

"Whether the sort of flash that comes in my mind of writing my namein a cheque-book is really a recollection of doing so, or merelythe knowledge that I _must_ have done so, I cannot tell. But it isdisagreeable--thoroughly disagreeable--and _strange_ to the lastdegree. I cannot tell you how--how torturing it is, always to becompelled to stop on the threshold of an uncompleted recollection. "

"I have the idea, though, quite!" said Sally. "But of course one neverremembers signing one's name, any particular time. One does itmechanically. So I don't wonder. "

"Yes! But the nasty part of the flash is that I always know that it isnot _my_ name. Last time it came--just now this minute--it was a namelike Harrington or Carrington. Oh dear!" He shook and rubbed his headagain, with the old action. 

"Perhaps your name isn't Fenwick, but Harrington or Carrington?"

"No! That cock won't fight. In a flash, I know it's not my _own_ nameas I write it. "

"Oh, but I see!" Sally is triumphant. "You signed for a firm youbelonged to, of course. People _do_ sign for firms, don't they?" addedshe, with misgivings about her own business capacity. But Mr. Fenwickdid not accept this solution, and continued silent and depressed. 

The foregoing is one of many similar conversations between Fenwickand Sally, or her mother, or all three, during the term of his stayat Krakatoa Villa. They were less encouraged by the older lady, whocounselled Fenwick to accept his oblivion passively, and await thenatural return of his mental powers. They would all come in time, shesaid; and young Dr. Vereker, though his studious and responsible facegrew still more studious and responsible as time went on, and the mindof this case continued a blank, still encouraged passivity, and spokeconfidently--whatever he thought--of an early and complete recovery. 

When, in Fenwick's absence, Sally reported to Dr. Vereker and hermother the scheme for applying to "Tat's" for a wild horse to breakin, the latter opposed and denounced it so strongly, on the ground ofthe danger of the experiment, that both Sally and the doctor promisedto support her if Fenwick should broach the idea again. But when hedid so, it was so clear that the disfavour Mrs. Nightingale showed forsuch a risky business would be sufficient to deter him from trying itthat neither thought it necessary to say a word in her support; andthe conversation went off into a discussion of how it came about thatFenwick should remember Tattersall's. But, said he, he did notremember Tattersall's even now. And yet hearing the name, he hadautomatically called it "Tat's. " Many other instances showed that hispower of imagery, in relation to the past, was paralysed, while hislanguage-faculty remained intact, just as many fluent speakers andwriters spell badly. Only it was an extreme case. 

A fortunate occurrence that happened at this time gave its quietus tothe unpopular horse-breaking speculation. It happened that, as Mrs. Nightingale was shopping at a big "universal providing" stores not faraway, one of the clerks had some difficulty in interpreting a Frenchphrase in a letter just received from abroad. No one near him lookedmore likely to help than Mrs. Nightingale, but she could do nothingwhen applied to; although, she said, she had been taught French in heryouth. But she felt certain Mr. Fenwick could be of use--at her house. French idiom was evidently unfamiliar in the neighbourhood, for theyoung gentleman from the office jumped at the opportunity. He wentaway with Mrs. Nightingale's card, inscribed with a message, and cameback before she had done shopping (not that that means such a veryshort time), not only with an interpretation, but with an exhaustivedraft of an answer in French, which she saw to be both skilful andscholarly. It was so much so that a fortnight later an inquiry came toknow if Mr. Fenwick's services would be available for a firm in theCity, which had applied to be universally provided with a man havingexactly his attainments and no others. In less than a month he wasinstalled in a responsible position as their foreign correspondent andin receipt of a very respectable salary. The rapidity of phrasing inthis movement was abnormal--_prestissimo_, in fact, if we indulge ourmusical vocabulary. But the instrumentation would have seemed lesssurprising to Sally had she known the lengths her mother had gone inthe proffer of a substantial guarantee for Fenwick's personal honesty. This seeming rashness did not transpire at the time; had it done so, it might have appeared unintelligible--to Sally, at any rate. Shewould not have been surprised at herself for backing the interests ofa man nearly electrocuted over her half-crown, but why should hermother endorse her _protégé_ so enthusiastically?

It is perhaps hardly necessary for us to dwell on the unsuccessfulattempts that were made to recover touch with other actors on thestage of Fenwick's vanished past. Advertisement--variously worded--inthe second column of the "Times, " three times a week for a month, produced no effect. Miss Sally frequently referred with satisfactionto the case of John Williams, reported among the Psychical Researchesof the past years, in which a man who vanished in England was foundyears after carrying on a goods-store in Chicago under another name, with a new wife and family, having utterly forgotten the first half ofhis life and all his belongings. Her mother seemed only languidlyinterested in this illustration, and left the active discussion of thesubject chiefly to Sally, who speculated endlessly on the whole of thestory; without, however, throwing any fresh light on it--unlessindeed, the Chicago man could be considered one. And the questionnaturally arose, as long as his case continued to hold out hopes ofa sudden return of memory, and until we were certain his condition waschronic, why go to expense and court publicity? By the time he wassafely installed in his situation at the wine-merchant's, the idea ofa police-inquiry, application to the magistrates, and so forth, hadbecome distasteful to all concerned, and to none more so than Fenwickhimself. 

When Dr. Vereker, acting on his own account, and unknown to Mrs. Nightingale and Fenwick, made confidential reference to Scotland Yard, that Yard smiled cynically over the Chicago storekeeper, and expressedthe opinion that probably Fenwick's game was a similar game, and thatthings of this sort were usually some game. The doctor observed thathe knew without being told that nine such cases out of ten had humanrascality at the bottom of them, but that he had consulted that Yardin the belief that this might be a tenth case. The Yard said veryproper, and it would do its best, and no doubt did, but nothing waselucidated. 

It is just possible that had Mr. Fenwick communicated _every_ clue hefound, down to the smallest trifle, Dr. Vereker might have been ableto get at something through the Criminal Investigation Department. But it wasn't fair to Sherlock Holmes to keep anything back. Fenwick, knowing nothing of Vereker's inquiry, did so; for he had decided tosay nothing about a certain pawn-ticket that was in the pocket of anotherwise empty purse or pocket-book, evidently just bought. He would, however, investigate it himself, and did so. 

It was quite three weeks, though, before he felt safe to go aboutalone to any place distant from the house, more especially when hedid not know what the expedition would lead to. When at last he gotto the pawnbroker's, he found that that gentleman at the counter didnot recognise him, or said he did not. Fenwick, of course, could notask the question: "Did I pawn this watch?" It would have seemedlunacy. But he framed a question that answered as well, to histhinking. 

"Would you very kindly tell me, " he asked, dropping his voice, "whether the person that pawned this watch was at all like me--likea brother of mine, for instance?" Perhaps he was not a good hand atpretences, and the pawnbroker outclassed him easily. 

"No, sir, " replied he, without looking to see; "that I most certainlycan _not_ tell you. " Fenwick was not convinced that this was true, buthad to admit to himself that it might be. This man's life was one longrecord of an infinity of short loans, and its problem was theadvancing of the smallest conceivable sums on the largest obtainablesecurity. Why _should_ he recollect one drop in the ocean of needyapplicants? The only answer Fenwick could give to this was based onhis belief that he looked quite unlike the other customers. Moreknowledge would have shown him that there was not one of thosecustomers, scarcely, but had a like belief. It is the common form ofhuman thought among those who seek to have pawns broked. They are aclass made up entirely of exceptions. 

Fenwick came away from the shop with the watch that _must have been_his. That was how he thought of it. As soon as he wore it again, itbecame _his_ watch, naturally. But he could remember nothing about it. And its recovery from the pawnbroker's he could not remember leavingit at became an absurd dream. Perhaps in Sherlock Holmes's hands itwould have provided a valuable clue. Fenwick said nothing furtherabout it; put it in a drawer until all inquiries about him had diedinto the past. 

Another little thing that might have helped was the cabman's numberwritten on his wristband. But here Fate threw investigation off herguard. The ciphers were, as it chanced, 3, 600; and an unfortunateshrewdness of Scotland Yard, when Dr. Vereker communicated this clue, spotted the date in it--the third day of the sixth month of 1900. Sono one dreamed of the cabby, who could at least have shown where thehat was lost that might have had a name or address inside it, andwhere he left its owner in the end. And there was absolutely no clueto anything elsewhere among his clothes. The Panama hat might havebeen bought anywhere; the suit of blue serge was ticketless inside thecollar, and the shirt unmarked--probably bought for the voyage only. Fenwick had succeeded in forgetting himself just at a moment when hewas absolutely without a reminder. And it seemed there was nothingfor it but to wait for the revival of memory. 

This, then, is how it came about that, within three months of hisextraordinary accident, Mr. Fenwick was comfortably settled in anapartment within a few minutes' walk of Krakatoa Villa; and all theincidents of his original appearance were getting merged in theinsoluble, and would soon, no doubt, under the influence of a steadyever-present new routine of life, be completely absorbed in the actualpast. 

CHAPTER V

THE CHRISTMAS AFTER. OF THE CHURCH OF ST. SATISFAX, AND A YOUNG IDIOT WHO CAME THERE

When one is called away in the middle of a street-fight, and missesseeing the end of it, how embittered one's existence is, and continuesfor some time after! Think what our friend the cabman would have felthad he missed the _dénouement_! And when one finds oneself againon its site--if that is the correct expression--how one wishes onewas not ashamed to inquire about its result from the permanentofficials on the spot--the waterman attached to the cab-rank, thecrossing-sweeper at the corner, the neolithographic artist who didn'treally draw that half-mackerel himself, but is there all day long, forall that; or even the apothecary's shop over the way, on the chancethat the casualties went or were taken there for treatment after thebattle. One never does ask, because one is so proud; but if one didask, one would probably find that oblivion had drawn a veil over theevent, and that none of one's catechumens had heard speak of any suchan occurrence, and that it must have been another street. Because, ifit had 'a been there, they would have seen to a certainty. And themonotonous traffic rolls on, on, on; and the two counter-streams ofcreatures, each with a story, divide and subdivide over the spot wherethe underneath man's head sounded on the kerbstone, which took nonotice at the time, and now seems to know less than ever about it. 

Are we, in thus moralising, merely taking the mean advantage theauthor is apt to imagine he has established over his reader when heends off a chapter with a snap, and hopes the said reader will notdare to skip? No, we are not. We really mean something, and shall getto it in time. Let us only be clear what it is ourselves. 

It refers, at any rate, to the way in which the contents of ChaptersI. And II. Had become records of the past six months later, when thesnow was on the ground four inches thick on Christmas morning--twoinches, at least, having been last night's contribution--and made itall sweet and smooth all over so that there need be no unpleasantness. As Sally looked out of her mother's bedroom window towards the frontthrough the Venetian blind, she saw the footprints of cats alone onthe snow in the road, and of the milk alone along the pavement. Forthe milk had preferred to come by hand, rather than plough itstricycle through the unknown depths and drifts of Glenmoira Road, W. , to which it had found its way over tracks already palliated by thecourage of the early 'bus--not plying for hire at that hour, but onlyseeking its equivalent of the _carceres_ of the Roman Coliseum, toinaugurate the carriage of twelve inside and fourteen out to manykinds of Divine Service early in the day, and one kind only ofdinner-service late--the one folk eat too much pudding and mince-pieat, and have to take a dose after. During this early introductorymovement of the 'bus its conductor sits inside like a lord, andclassifies documents. But he has nothing to do with our story. Let usthank him for facilitating the milk, and dismiss him. 

"My gracious goodness me!" said Sally, when she saw the snow. She didnot say it quite from the bottom of her heart, and as her own form ofexpression; but in inverted commas, as it were, the primaryresponsibility being cook's or Jane's. "You mustn't think of gettingup, mother. "

"Oh, nonsense! I shall get up the minute the hot water comes. "

"You won't do any good by getting up. You had much better lie in bed. _I_ shouldn't get up, if I was you, " etc. , etc. 

"Oh, stuff! My rheumatism's better. Do you know, I really think thering _has_ done it good. Dr. Vereker may laugh as much as helikes----"

"Well, the proof of the pudding's in the eating. But wait till yousee how thick the snow is. _Come--in!_" This is very staccato. Janewas knocking at the door with cans of really hot water this time. "I said come in before. Merry Christmas and happy New Year, Jane!... Oh, I say! What a dear little robin! He's such a little duck, I hopethat cat won't get him!" And Sally, who is huddled up in a thickdressing-gown and is shivering, is so excited that she goes onlooking through the blind, and the peep-hole she has had to make tosee clear through the frosted pane, in spite of the deadly cold on thefinger-tip she rubbed it with. Her mother felt interested, too, in thefate of the robin, but not to the extent of impairing her last twominutes in bed by admitting the slightest breath of cold air inside awell-considered fortress. She was really going to get up, though, thatwas flat! The fire would blaze directly, although at this moment itwas blowing wood-smoke down Jane's throat, and making her choke. 

Directly was five or six minutes, but the fire did blaze up royally inthe end. You see, it wasn't a slow-combustion-grate, and it burned toomuch fuel, and flared away the coal, and did all sorts of comfortable, uneconomical things. So did Jane, who had put in a whole bundle ofwood. 

But now that the wood was past praying for, and Jane had departed, after thawing the hearts of two sponges, it was just as well to takeadvantage of the blaze while it lasted. And Mrs. Nightingale and herdaughter, in the thickest available dressing-gowns, and pretendingthey were not taking baths only because the bath-room was thrown outof gear by the frost, took advantage of the said blaze to theirheart's content and harked back--a good way back--on the conversation. 

"You never said 'Come in, ' chick. "

"I _did_, mother! Well, if I didn't, at any rate, I always tell hernot to knock. She is the stupidest girl. She _will_ knock!" Her motherdoesn't press the point. There is no bad blood anywhere. Did not Sallywish the handmaiden a merry Christmas?

"The cat didn't get the robin, Sally?"

"Not he! The robin was too sharp by half. Such a little darling! ButI was sorry for the cat. "

"Poor pussy! Not our pussy, was it?"

"Oh no; it was that piebald Tom that lives in at the empty house nextdoor. "

"I know. Horrible beast!"

"Well, but just think of being out in the cold in this weather, withnothing to eat! Oo--oo--oogh!" Sally illustrates, with an intentionalshudder. "I wonder who that is!"

"I didn't hear any one. "

"You'll see, he'll ring directly. I know who it is; it's Mr. Fenwickcome to say he can't come to-night. I heard the click of his skates. They've a sort of twinkly click, skates have, when they're swung bya strap. He'll go out and skate all day. He'll go to Wimbledon. "

The girl's hearing was quite correct. A ring came at thebell--Krakatoa had no knocker--and a short colloquy followed betweenJane and the ringer. Then he departed, with his twinkly click andnoiseless footstep on the snow, slamming the front gate. Jane was ableto include a card he had left in a recrudescence or reinforcement ofhot water. Sally takes the card and looks at it, and her mother says, "Well, Sally?" with a slight remonstrance against the unfairness ofkeeping back information after you have satisfied your owncuriosity--a thing people are odious about, as we all know. 

"_He's_ coming all right, " says Sally, looking at both sides of thecard, and passing it on when she has quite done with it. Sally, we maymention, as it occurs to us at this moment, --though _why_ we have noidea, --means to have a double chin when she is five years older thanher mother is now. At present it--the chin--is merely so much youthfulroundness and softness, very white underneath. Her mother is quite ofa different type. Her daughter's father must have had black hair, forSally can make huge shining coils, or close plaits, very wide, out ofher inheritance. Or it will assume the form of a bush, if indulged, till Sally is almost hidden under it, as the Bosjesman under hisversion of Birnam Wood, that he shoots his assegai from. But themother's is brown, with a tinge of chestnut; going well with her eyes, which have a claret tone, or what is so called; but we believe peoplereally mean pale old port when they say so. She has had--still has, wemight say--a remarkably fine figure, and we don't feel the same faithin Miss Sally's. That young lassie will get described as plump someday, if she doesn't take care. 

But really it is a breach of confidence to get behind the scenes anddescribe two ladies in this way, when they are so very much in_déshabille_--have not even washed! We will look at them again whenthey have got their things on. However, they may go on talking now. The blaze has lost its splendour, and dressing cannot be indefinitelydelayed. But they can and do talk from room to room, confident thatcook and Jane are in the basement out of hearing. 

"We shall do nicely, kitten! Six at table. I'm glad Mr. Fenwick cancome. Aren't you?"

"Rather! Fancy having Dr. And Mrs. Vereker and the dear old fossiland nobody to help out!"

"My dear! You say 'Dr. And Mrs. Vereker' as if he was a married man!"

"Well--him and his mammy, then! He's good--but he's professional. Oh dear--his professional manner! You have to be forming square toreceive cavalry every five minutes to prevent his writing you aprescription. "

"Ungrateful little monkey! You know the last he wrote you did you noend of good. "

"Yes, but I didn't ask him for it. He wrote it by force. I hate beinghectored over and bullied. I say, mother!"

"What, kitten?"

"I hope, as Mr. Fenwick's coming, you'll wear your wedding-ring. "

"Wear _what_?"

"Wear your wedding-ring. _His_ ring, you know! You know what Imean--the rheumatic one. "

"Of course I know perfectly well what you mean, " says her mother, with a shade of impatience in her voice. "But why?"

"Why? Because it gives him pleasure always to see it on yourfinger--he fancies it's doing good to the neuritis. "

"Perhaps it is. "

"Very well, then; why not wear it?"

"Because it's so big, and comes off in the soup, and is a nuisance. And, then, he didn't give it to me, either. He was to have had ashilling for it. "

"But he never _did_ have it. And it wasn't a shilling. It was sixpence. And he says it's the only little return he's ever been able to makefor what he calls our kindness. "

"I couldn't shovel him out into the street. "

"Put his wedding-ring on, mammy, to oblige me!"

"Very well, chick--I don't mind. " And so that point is settled. Butsomething makes the daughter repeat, as she comes into her mother'sroom dry-towelling herself, "You're sure you don't mind, mammy?" towhich the reply is, "No, no! _Why_ should I mind? It's all quiteright, " with a forced decision, equivalent to wavering, about it. Sally looks at her a moment in a pause of dry-towelling, and goesback to her room not quite convinced. Persons of the same blood, living constantly together, are sometimes quite embarrassed by theirown brain-waves, and very often misled. 

Exigencies of teeth and hair cut the talk short about Mr. Fenwick. Buthe gets renewed at breakfast, and, in fact, goes on more or less untilbrought up short by the early service at St. Satisfax, when he isextinguished by a preliminary hymn. But not before his whole story, so far as is known, has been passed in review. So that an attentivelistener might have gathered from their disjointed chat most of theparticulars of his strange appearance on the scene, and of theincidents of the next few weeks, and their result in the foundationof what seemed likely to be a permanent friendship between himself andKrakatoa Villa, and what certainly was (all things considered) that mostlucrative and lucky post in a good wine-merchant's house in the City. For Mr. Fenwick had nothing to recommend him but his address andcapacity, brought into notice by an accidental concurrence ofcircumstances. 

It had been difficult to talk much about him to himself withoutseeming to wish to probe into his past life; and as Mrs. Nightingaleimpressed on Sally for the twentieth time, just as they arrived atSt. Satisfax, they really knew nothing of it. How could they even knowthat this oblivion was altogether genuine? It might easily have beenso at first, but who could say how much of his past had come back tohim during the last six months? An unwelcome past, perhaps, and onehe was glad to help Oblivion in extinguishing. 

As this was on the semi-circular path in front of the Saint's shrine, between two ramparts of swept-up snow, and on a corrective ofcinder-grit, Sally ascribed this speculation to a disposition on hermother's part to preach, she having come, as it were, within the scopeand atmosphere of a pending decalogue. Also, she thought theostentatious way in which Mr. Fenwick had gone away to skate hadsomething to do with it. 

But she was at all times conscious of a certain access of severity inher mother as she approached altars--rather beyond the common attitudeof mind one ascribes to the bearer of a prayer-book when one doesn'tmean to go to church oneself. (We are indebted for this piece ofinformation to an intermittent church-goer; it is on a subject onwhich our own impressions have little value. ) In the present caseSally _was_ going to church, so she had to account to herself for a_nuance_ in her mother's manner--after dwelling on the needlessnessand inadvisability of pressing Mr. Fenwick as to his recollections--byascribing it to the consciousness of some secularism elsewhere; and hewas the nearest case of ungodliness to hand. 

"I wonder whether he believes anything at all!" said Sally, assumingthe consecutiveness of her remark. 

"I don't see why he shouldn't.... Why should he disbelieve morethan... ? All I mean is, I don't know. " The speaker ended abruptly; butthen that may have been because they were at the church door. Possiblyas a protest against having carried chat almost into the precinct, Mrs. Nightingale's preliminary burial of her face in her hands lasteda long time--in fact, Sally almost thought she had gone to sleep, andtold her so afterwards. "Perhaps, though, " she added, "it was me cameup from under the bedclothes too soon. " Then she thought her levitydispleased her mother, and kissed her. But it wasn't that. She wasthoughtful over something else. 

This time, in the church, it may be Sally noticed her mother'sabstraction (or was it, perhaps, devotional tension?) less than shehad done when her attention had been caught once or twice lately bya similar strained look. For Miss Sally had her eyes on a littlegratifying incident of her own--a trifle that would already haveappeared as an incident in her diary, had she kept one, somewhatthus:--"Saw that young idiot from Cattley's Stores again in churchto-day, in a new scarlet necktie. I wonder whether it's me, or MissPeplow that gollops, or the large Miss Baker. " Which would have shownthat she was not always a nun breathless with adoration duringreligious exercises. The fact is, Sally would have made a very poorSt. Teresa indeed. 

The young idiot was the same young man who had brought the difficultFrench idiom to Krakatoa, while Mr. Fenwick was still without ananchorage of his own. Martha the cook, who admitted him, not feelingequal to the negotiation, had merely said--would he mind steppin' inthe parlour, and she would send Miss Sally up? and had departedbearing Mrs. Nightingale's credential-card in a hand as free fromgrease as an apron so deeply committed could make it, and brought MissNightingale in from the garden, where she was gardening--possiblyeffectually, but what do we know? When you are gardening on a summerafternoon, you may look very fetching, if you are nineteen, and theright sex for the adjective. Miss Sally did, being both, and for ourown part we think it was inconsiderate and thoughtless of cook. Sallywas sprung upon that young man like a torpedo on a ship with no guardsout, saying with fascinating geniality through a smile (as oneinterests oneself in a civility that means nothing) that Mr. Fenwickhad just gone out, and she didn't know when he would be back. But whynot ask Mrs. Prince at the school, opposite St. Satisfax, where wewent to church; she was French, and would be sure to know what itmeant. _She_ wouldn't mind! "Say I sent you. " And the youth, whom thetorpedo had struck amidships, was just departing, conscious ofreluctance, when Mr. Fenwick appeared, having come back for hisumbrella. 

Sally played quite fair. She didn't hang about as she might have done, to rub her pearly teeth and merry eyebrows into her victim. She wentback and gardened honourably, while Mr. Fenwick solved the riddle andsupplied the letter. But for all that, the young man appeared nextSunday at St. Satisfax's, with an extremely new prayer-book thatlooked as if his religious convictions were recent, and never tookhis eyes off Sally all through the service--that is, if he did as shesupposed, and peeped all the while that his head ought to have been, as she metaphorically expressed it, "under the clothes. "

Now, this was naturally a little unaccountable to Sally, after sucha very short interview; and on the part, too, of a young gentleman whopassed all the working hours of the day among working houris, as itwere soaked and saturated in their fascinations, and not at libertyto squeeze their hands or ask them for one little lock of hair allthrough shop-time. Sally did not realise the force of sameness, northe amount of contempt familiarity will breed. Perhaps the houris gottired and snappish, poor things! and used up their artificial smileson the customers. Perhaps it had leaked out that the trying-on handscontributed only length, personally, to the loveliness of thetrying-on figures. All sorts of things might have happened toinfluence this young man towards St. Satisfax; and how did Sally knowhow often he had seen the other young lady communicants she hadspeculated about? Her mind had certainly thrown in the large MissBaker with something of derision. But that Sylvia Peplow was just thesort of girl men run after, like a big pale gloire-de-Dijon rose allon one side, with pale golden wavy hair, and great big goggly blueeyes, looking as if she couldn't help it! Now that we have given youdetails, from Sally's inner consciousness, of Miss Peplow'sappearance, we hope you will perceive why she said she "golloped. " Wedon't, exactly. 

However, on this Christmas morning it was made clear whom this youngdonkey was hankering after--this is Sally's way of putting it--as MissPeplow failed to get her usual place through being late, and had tosit in a side-aisle, instead of the opposite of her to the idiot--weare again borrowing from Sally--and now the Idiot would have to glareround over his shoulder at her or go without! It was soon evident thathe was quite content to go without, and that Sally herself had beenhis lode-star. The certainty of this was what prevented her taking somuch notice of her mother as she might otherwise have done. 

Had she done so closely, she would hardly have put down herpreoccupation, or tension, or whatever it was, to displeasure at Mr. Fenwick's going to skate on Christmas morning instead of going tochurch. What concern was it of theirs what Mr. Fenwick did?

CHAPTER VI

OF BOXING DAY MORNING AT KRAKATOA VILLA, AND WHAT OBSERVANT CREATURES FOSSILS ARE

The "dear old fossil" referred to by Miss Sally was one of thoseoccurrences--auxiliaries or encumbrances, as may be--whom one isliable to meet with in almost any family, who are so forcibly takenfor granted by all its members that the infection of their acceptancecatches on, and no new-comer ever asks that they should be explained. If they were relatives, they would be easy of explanation; but theonly direct information you ever get about them is that they are not. This seems to block all avenues of investigation, and presently youfind yourself taking them as a matter of course, like the Lion andUnicorn, or the image on a stamp. 

Fenwick accepted "the Major, " as the old fossil was called, so franklyand completely under that name that he was still uncertain about hisreal designation at the current moment of the story. Nobody evercalled him anything but "the Major, " and he would as soon have asked"Major what?" as called in question the title of the King of Heartsinstead of playing him on the Queen, and taking the trick. So far ashe could conjecture, the Major had accepted him in the same way. Whenthe railway adventure was detailed to him, the fossil said many times, "How _per_fectly extraordinary!" "God bless my soul!" "You don't mean_that_!" and so on; but his astonishment always knocked his doubleeyeglass off, and, when he couldn't find it, it had to be recoveredbefore he could say, "Eh--eh--what was that?" and get in line again;so he made a disjointed listener. 

But these fossils see more than they hear sometimes; and this oldMajor, for all he was so silent, must have noticed many little thingsthat Christmas evening to cause him to say what he did next day toSally. For, of course, the Major couldn't go back to his lodgings inBall Street in weather like this; so he stayed the night in the spareroom, where Mr. Fenwick had been put up tempory, cook said--a roomwhich was, in fact, usually spoken of as "the Major's room. "

Of course, Sally was the sort of girl who would never see anything ofthat sort--you'll see what sort directly--though she was as sharp asa razor in a general way. What made her blind in this case was that, in certain things, aspects, relations of life, she had ruled motherout of court as an intrinsically grown-up person--one to whom somespeculations would not apply. So she saw nothing in the fact that whenMr. Fenwick's knock came at the door, her mother said, "There he is, "and went out to meet him; nor even in her stopping with him outside onthe landing, chatting confidentially and laughing. Why shouldn't she?

She saw nothing--nothing whatever--in Mr. Fenwick's bringing hermother a beautiful sealskin jacket as a Christmas present. Whyshouldn't he? The only thing that puzzled Sally was, where on earthdid he get the money to buy it? But then, of course, he was "in theCity, " and the City is a sort of Tom Tiddler's ground. Sally foundthat enough, on reflection. 

She saw nothing, either, in her mother's carrying her present awayupstairs, and saying nothing about it till afterwards. Nor did shenotice any abnormal satisfaction on Mr. Fenwick's countenance as hecame into the drawing-room by himself, such as one might discern in ahen--if hens had countenances--after a special egg. Nor did she attachany particular meaning to an expression on the elderly face of thedoctor's mother that any student of Lavater would at once have seen tomean that _we_ saw what was going on, but were going to be maternallydiscreet about it, and only mention it to every one we met in the verystrictest confidence. This lady, who had rather reluctantly joined theparty--for she was a martyr to ailments--was somewhat grudginglyadmitted by Sally to be a comfortable sort of old thing enough, ifonly she didn't "goozle" over you so. She had no _locus standi_ forgoozling, whatever it was; for had not Sally as good as told her sonthat she didn't want to marry him or anybody else? If you ask us whatwould be the connecting link between Sally's attitude towards thedoctor and the goozlings of a third party, we have no answer ready. 

No; Sally went to bed as wise as ever--so she afterwards told thefossil Major--at the end of the evening. She had enjoyed herselfimmensely, though the simple material for rapture was only foursquareHalma played by the four acuter intelligences of the six, and draughtsfor the goozler and the fossil. But then Sally had a rare faculty forenjoying herself, and she was perfectly contented with only oneadmirer to torment, though he was only old Prosy, as she called him, but not to his face. She was jolly glad mother had put on hermaroon-coloured watered silk with velvet facings, because you couldn'tdeny that she looked lovely in it. And as for Mr. Fenwick, he lookedjust like Hercules and Sir Walter Raleigh, after being out skating allday long in the cold. And Sally's wisdom had not been in the leastincreased by what was, after all, only a scientific experiment on poorMr. Fenwick's mental torpor when her mother, the goozler and old Prosyhaving departed, got out her music to sing that very old song of hersto him that he had thought the other day seemed to bring back a sortof memory of something. Was it not possible that if he heard it oftenenough his past might revive slowly? You never could tell!

So when, on Boxing Day morning, Sally's mother, who had got down earlyand hurried her breakfast to make a dash for early prayer at St. Satisfax, looked in at her backward daughter and reproached her, andsaid there was the Major coming down, and no one to get him hischocolate, she spoke to a young lady who was serenely unprepared forany revelations of a startling nature, or, indeed, any revelations atall. Nor did getting the Major his chocolate excite any suspicions. 

So Sally was truly taken aback when the old gentleman, having drunkhis chocolate, broke a silence which had lasted since a brief andfossil-like good-morning, with, "Well, missy, and what do _you_ sayto the idea of a stepfather?" But not immediately, for at first shedidn't understand him, and answered placidly: "It depends on who. "

"Mr. Fenwick, for instance!"

"Yes, but who for? And stepfather to step-what? Stepdaughter orstepson?"

"Yourself, little goose! _You_ would be the stepdaughter. "

Sally was then so taken aback that she could make nothing of it, butstood in a cloud of mystification. The major had to help her. "Howwould you like your mother to marry Mr. Fenwick?" He was one of thoseuseful people who never _finesse_, who let you know point-blank whereyou are, and to whom you feel so grateful for being unfeeling. Whileothers there be who keep you dancing about in suspense, while theybreak things gently, and all the while are scoring up a little accountagainst you for considerateness. 

Sally's bewilderment, however, recognised one thing distinctly--thatthe Major's inquiry was not to get, but to give, information. Hedidn't the least want to know what _she_ thought; he was only workingto give her a useful tip. So she would take her time about answering. She took it, looking as grave as a little downy owl-tot. Meanwhile, to show there was no bad feeling, she went and sat candidly on thefossil's knee, and attended to his old whiskers and moustache. 

"Major dear!" said she presently. 

"What, my child?"

"Wouldn't they make an awfully handsome couple?" The Major replied, "Handsome is as handsome does, " and seemed to suggest that questionsof this sort belonged to a pre-fossilised condition of existence. 

"Now, Major dear, why not admit it when you know it's true? You knowquite well they would make a lovely couple. Just fancy them going upthe aisle at St. Satisfax! It would be like medięval Kings andQueens. " For Sally was still in that happy phase of girlhood in whicha marriage is a wedding, _et pręterea aliquid_, but not much. "But, "she continued, "I couldn't give up any of mamma--no, not so much as_that_--if she was to marry twenty Mr. Fenwicks. " As the quantityindicated was the smallest little finger-end that could be checked offwith a thumb-nail, the twenty husbands would have come in for a verypoor allowance of matrimony. The Major didn't seem to think the methodof estimation supplied a safe ground for discussion, and allowed it tolapse. 

"I may be quite wrong, you know, my dear, " said he. "I dare say I'monly an old fool. So we won't say anything to mamma, will us, littlewoman?"

"I don't know, Major dear. I'll promise not to say anything to her_because_ of what you've said to me. But if I suspect it myself on myaccount later on, of course I shall. "

"What shall you say to her?"

"Ask her if it's true! Why not? But what was it made _you_ think so?"Whereon the Major gave in detail his impressions of the littleincidents recorded above, which Sally had seen nothing in. He laida good deal of stress on the fact that her mother had suppressed theChristmas present until after Dr. Vereker and his mother had departed. She wouldn't have minded the doctor, he said, but she would naturallywant to keep the old bird out of the swim. Besides, there was Fenwickhimself--one could see what _he_ thought of it! She could perfectlywell stop him if she chose, and she didn't choose. 

"Stop his whatting?" asked Sally perplexingly. But she admitted thepossibility of an answer by not pressing the question home. Then shewent on to say that all these things had happened exactly under hernose, and she had never seen anything in them. The only concession shewas inclined to make was in respect of the impression her motherevidently made on Mr. Fenwick. But that was nothing wonderful. Anything else would have been very surprising. Only it didn't followfrom that that mother wanted to marry Mr. Fenwick, or Mr. Anybody. Asfar as he himself went, she liked him awfully--but then he couldn'trecollect who he was, poor fellow! It was most pathetic sometimes tosee him trying. If only he could have remembered that he hadn't beena pirate, or a forger, or a wicked Marquis! But to know absolutelynothing at all about himself! Why, the only thing that was known nowabout his past life was that he once knew a Rosalind Nightingale--whathe said to her in the railway-carriage. And now he had forgotten that, too, like everything else. 

"I say, Major dear"--Sally has an influx of a new idea--"it ought tobe possible to find out something about that Rosalind Nightingale heknew. Mamma says it's nonsense her being any relation, because she'dknow. "

"And suppose we did find out who she was?"

"Well, then, if we could get at her, we might get her to tell us whohe was. And then we could tell him. "

Perhaps it is only his fossil-like way of treating the subject, butcertainly the Major shows a very slack interest, Sally thinks, in theidentity of this namesake of hers. He does, however, ask absently, what sort of way did he speak of her in the train?

"Why--he said so little----"

"But he gave you some impression?"

"Oh, of course. He spoke as if she was a person--not a female youknow--a person!"

"A person isn't a female--when? Eh, missy?" This requires a littleconsideration, and gets it. The result, when it comes, seems good inits author's eyes. 

"When they sit down. When you ask them to, you know. In the parlour, I mean--not the hall. They might be a female then. "

"Did he mean a lady?"

"And take milk and no sugar? And pull her gloves on to go? And leavecards turned up at the corner? Oh no--not a lady, certainly!"

As she makes these instructive distinctions, Miss Sally is kneelingon a hassock before a mature fire, which will tumble down and spoilpresently. When it does it will be time to resort to that hearth-broom, and restrict combustion with collected caput-mortuum of Derby-Brights, selected, twenty-seven shillings. Till then, Sally, who deserted theMajor's knee just as she asked what Mr. Fenwick was to stop in, isat liberty to roast, and does so with undisturbed gravity. The Majoris becoming conscious of a smell like Joan of Arc at the beginningof the entertainment, when her mother comes in on a high moral platform, and taxes her with singeing, and dissolves the parliament, and ringsto take away breakfast, and forecasts an open window the minute theMajor has gone. 

Sally doesn't wait for the open window, but as one recalled to theactive duties of life from liquefaction in a Turkish bath, takes acold plunge as far as the front gate without so much as a hat on--tosee if the post is coming, which is absurd--and comes back braced. Butthough she only wonders what can have put such an idea as her mothermarrying Mr. Fenwick in the Major's dear silly old head, she keeps ona steady current of speculation about who that Rosalind Nightingale heknew could possibly have been; and whether she couldn't be got at evennow. It was such a pity he couldn't have a tip given about him who hewas. If he were once started, he would soon run; she was sure of that. But did he want to run?--that was a point to consider. Did he reallyforget as much as he said he did? How came he not to have forgottenhis languages he was so fluent with? And how about his book-keeping?And that curious way he had of knowing about places, and then lookingpuzzled when asked when he had been there. When they talked aboutKlondyke the other day, for instance, and he seemed to know so muchabout it.... But, then, see how he grasped his head, and ruffled hishair, and shut his eyes, and clenched his teeth over his efforts torecollect whether he had really been there himself, or only read itall in the "Century" or "Atlantic Monthly"! Surely he was in earnestthen. 

Sally's speculations lasted her all the way to No. 260, Ladbroke GroveRoad, where she was going to a music-lesson, or rather music-practice, with a friend who played the violin; for Sally was learning theviola--to be useful. 

CHAPTER VII

CONCERNING PEOPLE'S PASTS, AND THE SEPARATION OF THE SHEEP FROM THE GOATS. OF YET ANOTHER MAJOR, AND HOW HE GOSSIPPED AT THE HURKARU CLUB. SOME TRUSTWORTHY INFORMATION ABOUT AN ALLEGED DIVORCE

You who read this may have met with some cross-chance such as we aregoing to try to describe to you; possibly with the same effect uponyourself as the one we have to confess to in our own case--namely, that you have been left face to face with a problem to which you havenever been able to supply a solution. You have given up a conundrumin despair, and no one has told you the answer. 

Here are the particulars of an imaginary case of the sort. You havemade acquaintance--made friends--years ago with some man or womanwithout any special introduction, and without feeling any particularcuriosity about his or her antecedents. No inquiry seemed to becalled for; all concomitants were so very usual. You may have felt amisgiving as to whether the easy-going ways of your old papa, or theinnocent Bohemianisms of his sons and daughters will be welcome toyour new friend, whom you credit with being a little old-fashionedand strait-laced, if anything. But it never occurs to you to doubt orinvestigate; why should you, when no question is raised of any greatintimacy between you and the So-and-sos, which may stand for the nameof his or her family. They ask no certificate from you, of whom theyknow just as little. Why should you demand credentials of a passer-bybecause he is so obliging as to offer to lend you a Chinese vocabularyor Whitaker? Why should your wife try to go behind the cheque-book andthe prayer-book of a married couple when all she has had to do withthe lady was, suppose, to borrow a square bottle of her, marked offin half-inch lengths, to be shaken before taken? Why not accept herunimpeachable Sunday morning as sufficient warranty for talking toher on the beach next day, and finding what a very nice person she is?Because it would very likely be at the seaside. But suppose any sortof introduction of this sort--you know what we mean!

Well, the So-and-sos have slipped gradually into your life; let thisbe granted. We need not imagine, for our purpose, any extremeapproaches of family intimacy, any love affairs or deadly quarrels. A tranquil intercourse of some twenty years is all we need, every yearof which has added to your conviction of the thorough trustworthinessand respectability of the So-and-sos, of their readiness to help youin any little difficulty, and of the high opinion which the rest ofthe world has of Mr. And Mrs. So-and-so--the world which knew themwhen it was a boy, and all their connexions and antecedents, which, you admit, you didn't.... 

And then, after all these years, it is suddenly burst upon you thatthere was a shady story about So-and-so that never was clearedup--something about money, perhaps; or, worse still, one of thosestories your informant really doesn't like to be responsible for theparticulars of; you must ask Smith yourself. Or your wife comes to youin fury and indignation that such a scandalous falsehood should havegot about as that Clara So-and-so was never married to So-and-so atall till ever so long after Fluffy or Toppy or Croppy or Poppy wasborn! We take any names at random of this sort, merely to dwell onyour good lady's familiarity with the So-and-so family. 

Well, then--there you are! And what can you make of it? There you areface to face with the fact that a man who was a black sheep twenty orthirty years ago has been all this time making believe to be a whitesheep so successfully as never was. Or, stranger still, that a womanwho has brought up a family of model daughters--daughters whom itwould be no exaggeration to speak of as on all fours with your own, and who is quite one of the nicest and most sympathetic people yourwife has to go to in trouble--this woman actually--_actually_--if thistale is true, was guilty in her youth ... There--that will do! Supposewe say she was no better than she should be. She hadn't even thedecency to be a married woman before she did it, which always makes itso much easier to talk to strange ladies and girls about it. You cansay all the way down a full dinner-table that Lady Polly Andrews gotinto the Divorce Court without doing violence to any propriety at all. But the story of Mrs. So-and-so's indiscretion while still MissSuch-and-such must be talked of more guardedly. 

And all the while behold the subjects of these stories, in whom, butfor this sudden revelation of a shady past, you can detect no moraldifference from your amiable and respectable self! They puzzle you, asthey puzzle us, with a doubt whether they really are the same people;whether they have not changed their identity since the days of theirdelinquency. If they really are the same, it almost throws a doubt onhow far the permanent unforgiveness of sins is expedient. We ofcourse refer to Human Expediency only--the construction of a workinghypothesis of Life, that would favour peace on earth and good-willtowards men; that would establish a _modus vivendi_, and enable us tobe jolly with these reprobates--at any rate, as soon as they hadserved their time and picked their oakum. We are not intruding on theprovince of the Theologian--merely discussing the problem of how wecan make ourselves pleasant to one another all round, until that finalseparation of the sheep from the goats, when, however carefully theymay have patched up their own little quarrels, they will have to bideach other farewell reluctantly, and make up their minds to thepermanent endurance of Heaven and Hell respectively. 

We confess that we ourselves think there ought to be a Statute ofLimitations, and that after a certain lapse of time any offence, however bad, against morality might be held not to have beencommitted. If we feel this about culprits who tempted us, at the timeof their enormity, to put in every honest hand a whip to lash therascal naked the length of a couple of lamp-posts, how much more whenthe offence has been one which our own sense of moral law (a pervertedone, we admit) scarcely recognises as any offence at all. And how muchmore yet, when we find it hard to believe that they--actually _theythemselves_, that we know now--can have done the things imputed tothem. If the stories are really true, were they not possessed by evilspirits? Or have they since come to be possessed by better ones thantheir normal stock-in-trade?

What is all this prosy speculation about? Well, it's about our friendin the last chapter, Sally's mother. At least, it is suggested by her. She is one of those perplexing cases we have hinted at, and weacknowledge ourselves unable to account for her at the date of thestory, knowing what we do of her twenty years previously. It's littleenough, mind, and much of it inferential. Suppose, instead of givingyou our inferences, we content ourselves with passing on to you thedata on which we found them. Maybe you will see your way to somedifferent life-history for Sally's mother. 

The first insight we had into her past was supplied by a friend ofSally's "old fossil, " who was himself a Major, but with a difference. For he was really a Major, whereas the fossil was only called so byKrakatoa Villa, being in truth a Colonel. This one was Major Roper, ofthe Hurkaru Club, an old schoolfellow of ours, who was giving us a cupof coffee and a cigar at the said Club, and talking himself hoarseabout Society. When the Major gets hoarse his voice rises to a squeak, and his eyes start out of his head, and he appears to swell. I forgethow Mrs. Nightingale came into the conversation, but she did, somehow. 

"She's a very charming woman, that, " squeaked the Major--"a _very_charming woman! I don't mind tellin' _you_, you know, that I knew herat Madras--ah! before the divorce. I wouldn't tell Horrocks, nor thatdam young fool Silcox, but I don't mind tellin' _you_! Only, lookhere, my dear boy, don't you go puttin' it about that _I_ told youanythin'. You know I make it a rule--a guidin' rule--_never to sayanythin'_. You follow that rule through life, my boy! Take the wordof an old chap that's seen a deal of service, and just you _hold yourtongue_! You make a point--you'll find it pay----" An asthmatic coughcame in here. 

"There was a divorce, then?" we said. Terms had to be made with thecough, but speech came in the end. 

"Oh yes, of course--of course! Don't mind repeatin' that--thing wasin the papers at the time. What I was suggestin' holdin' your tongueabout was that story about Penderfield and her.... Well, as I saidjust now, I don't mind repeatin' it to you; you ain't Horrocks norlittle Silcox--you can keep your tongue in your head. Remember, _I_know nothing; I'm only tellin' what was said at the time.... Now, whatever was her name? Was it Rayner, or was it Verschoyle? Pelloo!... Pelloo!... " The Major tried to call the attention of a man who was deepin an Oriental newspaper at the far end of the next room. But when theMajor overstrains his voice, it misses fire like a costermonger's, and only a falsetto note comes on a high register. When this happenshe is wroth. 

"It's that dam noise they're all makin', " he says, as soon as he hasbecome articulate. "That's the man I want, behind the 'DailySunderbund. ' If it wasn't for this dam toe, I'd go across and ask him. No, don't you go. Send one of these dam jumpin' frogs--idlin' about!"He requisitions a passing waiter, gripping him by the arm to givehim instructions. "Just--you--touch the General's arm, and ketch hisattention. Say Major Roper. " And he liquidates his obligations toa great deal of asthmatic cough, while the jumping frog does hisbidding. 

The General (who is now Lord Pellew of Cutch, by-the-bye) came withan amiable smile from behind the journal, and ended a successionof good-evening nods to newcomers by casting an anchor oppositethe Major. The latter, having by now taken the surest steps towardsbringing the whole room into his confidence, stated the case he soughtconfirmation for. 

Oh yes, certainly; the General was in Umballa in '80; remembered theyoung lady quite well, and the row between Penderfield and his wifeabout her. As for Penderfield, everybody remembered _him_! _De mortuisnil_, etc. --of course, of course. For all that, he was one of thedamnedest scoundrels that ever deserved to be turned out of theservice. Ought to have been cashiered long ago. Good job he's gone tothe devil! Yes, he was quite sure he was remembering the right girl. No, no, he wasn't thinking of Daisy Neversedge--no, nor of little MissWrennick: same sort of story, but he wasn't thinking of them at all. Only the name wasn't either Rayner or Verschoyle. General Pellew stoodthoughtfully feeling about in a memory at fault, and looking at anunlighted cigar he rolled in his fingers, as though it might help ifcaressed. Then he had a flash of illumination. "Rosalind Graythorpe, "he said. 

There we had it, sure enough! The Major see-sawed in the air witha finger of sudden corroboration. "Rosalind Graythorpe, " he repeatedtriumphantly, and then again, "Ros-a-lind Graythorpe, " dwelling on thesyllables, and driving the name home, as it were, to the apprehensionof all within hearing. It was so necessary to a complete confidencethat every one should know whom he was holding his tongue about. Wherewould be the merit of discretion else? But the enjoyment of detailsshould be _sotto voce_. The General dropped his voice to a goodsample, suggesting a like course to the more demonstrative secrecyof the Major. 

"I remember the whole story quite well, " said he. "The girl wasgoing out by herself to marry a young fellow up the country atUmballa, I think. They were _fiancés_, and on the way the newscame of the outbreak of cholera. So she got hung up for a while atPenderfield's--sort of cousin, I believe, him or his wife--till thedistrict was sanitary again. Bad job for her, as it turned out! Nobodythere to warn her what sort of fellow Penderfield was--and if therehad been she wouldn't have believed 'em. She was a madcap sort ofa girl, and regularly in the hands of about as bad a couple as you'llmeet with in a long spell--India or anywhere! They used to say outthere that the she Penderfield winked at all her husband's affairs aslong as he didn't cut across _her_ little arrangements--did more thanwink, in fact--lent a helping hand; but only as long as she could relyon his remaining detached, as you might say. The moment she suspectedan _entichement_ on her husband's part she was up in arms. And hewas just the same about her. I remember Lady Sharp saying thatif Penderfield had suspected his wife of caring about any of herco-respondents he would have divorced her at once. They were a rumcouple, but their attitude to one another was the only good thingabout them. " The General lighted his cigar, and seemed to considerthis was chapter one. The Major appended a foot-note, for our benefit. 

"_Leave be_ was the word--the word for Penderfield. _You'll_understand that, sir. No _meddlin'_! A good-lookin' Colonel's wife ingarrison has her choice, good Lard! Why, she's only got to hold herfinger up!" We entirely appreciated the position, and that a siren hasa much easier task in the entanglement of a confiding dragoon thanfalls to the lot of Don Giovanni in the reverse case. But we were moreinterested in the particular story of Mrs. Nightingale than in thegeneral ethics of profligacy. 

"I suppose, " we suggested, "that the young woman threatened to be aformidable rival, as there was a row?" Each of the officers nodded atthe other, and said that was about it. The Major then started ona little private curriculum of nods on his own account, backed by ahalf-closed eye of superhuman subtlety, and added once or twice thatthat _was_ about it. We inferred from this that the row had beenvolcanic in character. The Major then added, repeating the air-sawingaction of his forefinger admonitorily, "But mind you, _I_ say nothin'. And my recommendation to you is to say nothin' neither. "

"The rest of the story's soon told, " said the General, answering ourlook of inquiry. "Miss Graythorpe went away to Umballa to be married. It was all gossip, mind you, about herself and Penderfield. But gossipalways went one way about any girl he was seen with. I have my ownbelief; so has Jack Roper. " The Major underwent a perfect convulsionof nods, winks, and acquiescence. "Well, she went away, and wasmarried to this young shaver, who was very little over twenty. Hewasn't in the service--civil appointment, I think. How long was it, Major, before they parted? Do you recollect?"

"Week--ten days--month--six weeks! Couldn't say. They didn't part atthe church door; that's all I could say for certain. Tell him therest. "

"They certainly parted very soon, and people told all sorts ofstories. The stories got fewer and clearer when it came out that theyoung woman was in the family way. No one had any right _then_ toascribe the child that was on its road to any father except the youngman she had fallen out with. But they did--it was laid at ColonelPenderfield's door, before there was any sufficient warrant. However, it was all clear enough when the child was born. "

"When was the divorce?"

"He applied for a divorce a twelvemonth after the marriage. The childwas then spoken of as being four months old. My impression is he didnot succeed in getting a divorce. "

"Not he, " said the Major, overtopping the General's quiet, restrainedvoice with his falsetto. "I recollect _that_, bless you! The Courtcommiserated him, but couldn't give him any relief. So he made a boltof it. And he's never been heard of since, as far as I know. "

"What did the mother do? Where did she go?" we asked. 

"Well, she might have been hard put to it to know what to do. But shemet with old Lund--Carrington Lund, you know, not Beauchamp; he'da civil appointment at Umritsur--comes here sometimes. You know him?She's his Rosey he talks about. He was an old friend of her father, and took her in and protected her--saw her through it. She came withhim to England. I was with them on the boat, part of the way. Thenshe took the name of Macnaghten, I believe. The young husband's nameI can't remember the least. But it wasn't Macnaghten. "

The Major squeaked in again:

"No--nor hers neither! Nightingale, General--that's the name she goesby. Friend of this gentleman. Very charmin' person indeed! Introdooceyou? And a very charmin' little daughter, goin' nineteen. " The twoofficers interchanged glances over our young friend Sally. "She wasa nice baby on the boat, " said the General; and the Major chuckledwheezily, and hoped she didn't take after her father. 

We left him to the tender mercies of gout and asthma, and theenjoyment of a sherry-cobbler through a straw, looking rather too fatfor his snuff-coloured trousers with a cord outside, and his floweredsilk waistcoat; but very much too fat for the straw, the slendernessof which was almost painful by contrast. 

 * * * * *

Perhaps you will see from this why we hinted at the outset of thischapter why Mrs. Nightingale was a conundrum we had given up indespair, of which no one had told us the answer. We wanted yoursympathy, you see, and to get it have given you an insight into theway our information was gleaned. Having given you this sample, we willnow return to simple narrative of what we know of the true story, andtrouble you with no further details of how we came by it. 

CHAPTER VIII

THE ANTECEDENTS OF ROSALIND NIGHTINGALE, SALLY'S MOTHER. HOW BOTH CAME FROM INDIA TO ENGLAND, AND TOOK A VILLA ON A REPAIRING LEASE. SOMEWHAT OF SALLY'S UPBRINGING. SOME MORE ROPER GOSSIP, AND A CAT LET OUT OF A BAG. A PIECE OF PRESENCE OF MIND

Sally Graythorpe (our Mrs. Nightingale) was the daughter of a widowedmother, also called Sally, the name in both cases being (as in that ofher daughter whom we know) Rosalind, not Sarah. This mother married_en secondes noces_ a former sweetheart; it had been a case of a matchopposed by parents on the ground of the apparent hopelessness of theyoung man's prospects. Mr. Paul Nightingale, however, falsified thedoleful predictions about his future by becoming a successfulleader-writer and war correspondent. It was after the close of theAmerican Civil War, in which he had gained a good deal of distinction, that he met at Saratoga his old flame, Mrs. Graythorpe, then a widowwith a little daughter five or six years old. Having then no wishes toconsult but their own, and no reason to the contrary appearing, theywere married. 

They did not find the States a pleasant domicile in the early daysfollowing the great war, and came to England. The little daughter soonbecame like his own child to Mr. Paul Nightingale, and had his wishbeen complied with she would have taken his name during his life. Buther mother saw no reason, apparently, for extinguishing Mr. Graythorpe_in toto_, and she remained Sally Graythorpe. 

Miss Graythorpe was, at a guess, about fifteen when her stepfatherdied. Her mother, now for the second time a widow, must have beenvery comfortably off, as she had an income of her own as well as alife-interest in her late husband's invested savings, which wasunfettered by any conditions as to her marrying again, or otherwise. She was not long in availing herself of this liberty; for about thetime when her daughter was of an age to be engaged on her own account, she accepted a third offer of marriage--this time from a clergyman, who, like herself, had already stood by the death-beds of two formermates, and was qualified to sympathize with her in every way, including comfortable inheritances. 

But the young Sally Graythorpe kicked furiously against this newarrangement. It was an insult to papa (she referred to Mr. Nightingale; her real papa was a negligible factor), and she wouldn'tlive in the same house with that canting old hypocrite. She would goaway straight to India, and marry Gerry--_he_ would be glad enough tohave her--see how constant the dear good boy had been! Not a weekpassed but she got a letter. She asked her mother flatly what couldshe want to marry again for at her time of life? And such a witheredold sow-thistle as that! Sub-dean, indeed! She would _sub-dean_ him!In fact, there were words, and the words almost went the length oftaking the form known as "language" _par excellence_. The fact is, this Sally and her mother never _did_ get on together well; it wasn'tthe least like her subsequent relation with our special Sally--Sallynumber three--who trod on Mr. Fenwick in the Twopenny Tube. 

The end of the "words" was a letter to Gerry, a liberal trousseau, and a first-class passage out by P. And O. The young lady's luggagefor the baggage-room was beautifully stencilled "Care of Sir OughtredPenderfield, The Residency, Khopal. " Perfectly safe in his keeping nodoubt it would have been. But, then, that might have been true also ofluggage if consigned to the Devil. If the tale hinted at in our lastchapter _was_ true, its poor little headstrong, inexperienced heroinewould have been about as safe with the latter. 

Anyhow, this club gossip supplies all the broad outline of the story;and it is a story we need not dwell on. It gives us no means ofreconciling the like of the Mrs. Nightingale we know now with theamount of dissimulation, if not treachery, she must have practised onan unsuspicious boy, assuming that she did, as a matter of course, conceal her relation with Penderfield. One timid conjecture we haveis, that the girl, having to deal with a subject every accepted phraserelating to which is an equivocation or an hypocrisy, really found itimpossible to make her position understood by a lover who simplyidolized the ground she trod on. Under such circumstances, she mayeither have given up the attempt in despair, or jumped too quickly tothe conclusion that she had succeeded in communicating the facts, andhad been met half-way by forgiveness. Put yourself in her position, and resolve in your mind exactly how you would have gone about it--howyou would have got a story of that sort forced into the mind of awelcoming lover; wedged into the heart of his unsuspicious rapture. Or, if you fancied he understood you, and no storm of despairingindignation came, think how easy it would be to persuade yourself youhad done your duty by the facts, and might let the matter lapse! Whyshould not one woman once take advantage of the obscurities of decorumso many a man has found comforting to his soul during confession ofsin, when pouring his revelations into an ear whose owner's experienceof life has not qualified her to understand them. Think of thedifficulty you yourself have encountered in getting at the absolutefacts in some delicate concurrence of circumstances in this connexion, because of the fundamental impossibility of getting any one, man orwoman, to speak direct truth!

Let us find out, or construct, all the excuses we can for poor MissGraythorpe. Let us imagine the last counsel she had from the only oneof her own sex who would be likely to know anything of the matter--thenefarious partner (if the Major's surmise was true) in the crime ofher betrayer. "You are making a fuss about nothing. Men are not soimmaculate themselves; your Gerry is no Joseph! If he rides the highhorse with you, just you ask him what _he_ had to say to Potiphar'swife! Oh, we're not so strait-laced out here--bless us alive!--as weare in England, or pretend to be. " We can fancy the elegant brutesaying it. 

All our surmises bring us very little light, though. It is not thatwe are at such a loss to forgive poor Sally Graythorpe as a mere humancreature we know nothing about. The difficulty is to reconcile whatshe seems to have been then with what she is now. We give it up. 

Only, we wish to remark that it is her offence against her _fiancé_alone that we find it hard to stomach. As to her relations withColonel Penderfield, we can say nothing without full particulars. Andeven if we had them, and they bore hard upon Miss Graythorpe, our mindwould go back to the Temple in Jerusalem, and a morning nearly twothousand years ago. The voice that said who was to cast the firststone is heard no more, or has merged in ritual. But the Scribes andPharisees are with us still, and quite ready to do the pelting. Weshould be harder on the Colonel, no doubt, with our prejudices; only, observe! he isn't brought up for judgment. He never is, any morethan the other party was that day in Jerusalem. But, then, theScribes and Pharisees were male! And they had the courage of theirconvictions--their previous convictions!--and acted on them in theirselection of the culprit. 

Without further apology for retailing conjecture as certainty, thefollowing may be taken as substantially the story of this lady--we donot know whether to call her a divorced or a deserted wife--and herlittle encumbrance. 

She found a resource in her trouble in the person of this old friendof her stepfather Paul Nightingale, Colonel (at that time Major) Lund. This officer had remained on in harness to the unusual age offifty-eight, but it was a civil appointment he held; he had retiredfrom active service in the ordinary course of things. It was probablynot only because of his old friendship for her stepfather, but becausethe poor girl told him her unvarnished tale in full and he believedit, that he helped and protected her through the critical periodthat followed her parting from her husband; found her a domicile andseclusion, and enlisted on her behalf the sympathies of more than oneofficer's wife at our Sally's birth-place--Umritsur, if Major Roperwas right. He corresponded with her mother as intercessor andmediator, but that good lady was in no mood for mercy: had herdaughter not told her that she was too old to think of marriage? Tooold! And had she not called her venerable sub-dean a withered oldsow-thistle? She could forgive, under guarantees of the sinner'srepentance; for had not her Lord enjoined forgiveness where the bailtendered was sufficient? Only, so many reservations and qualificationsoccurred in her interpretations of the Gospel narrative thatforgiveness, diluted out of all knowledge, left its perpetrator freeto refuse ever to see its victim again. But she would pray for her. A subdiaconal application would receive attention; that was thesuggestion between the lines. 

The kind-hearted old soldier pooh-poohed her first letters. She wouldcome round in time. Her natural good-feeling would get the better ofher when she had had her religious fling. He didn't put it so--astrict old Puritan of the old school--but that was Miss Graythorpe'sgloss in her own mind on what he did say. However, her mother neverdid come round. She cherished her condemnation of her daughter to theend, forgiving her again _morź suo_, if anything with increasedasperity, on her death-bed. 

This Colonel Lund is (have we mentioned this before?) the "old fossil"whom we have seen at Krakatoa Villa. He was usually called "the Major"there, from early association. He continued to foster and shelter his_protégée_ during the year following the arrival of our own particularyoung Sally on the scene, saw her safely through her divorceproceedings, and then, when he finally retired from his post as deputycommissioner for the Umritsur district, arranged that she herself, with her encumbrance and an ayah, should accompany him to England. Hiscompanion travelled as Mrs. Graythorpe, and Sally junior as Mrs. Graythorpe's baby. She was excessively popular on the voyage; Sallywas not suffering from sea-sickness, or feeling apparently the leastembarrassed by the recent bar-sinister in her family. She courtedSociety, seizing it by its whiskers or its curls, and holding on likegrim death. She endeavoured successively to get into the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic, but failed in every attempt, and was finally landed at Southampton insafety, after a resolute effort to drag the captain, who was six feetthree high and weighed twenty stone, ashore by his beard. She wasgreatly missed on the remainder of the voyage (to Bremen--the boat wasa German boat) by a family of Vons, who fortunately never guessed atthe flaw in Sally's extraction, or there's no knowing what might nothave happened. 

But the arrival was too late for her poor mother to utilise herservices towards a reconciliation with her own offended parent. Asudden attack of influenza, followed by low diet on high principles, and uncombated by timely port wine and tonics, had been followed byheart-failure, and the sub-dean was left free to marry again, again. Whether he did so or not doesn't matter to us. The scheme Mrs. Graythorpe had been dwelling on with pleasure through the voyage ofsimply dropping her offspring on its grandmother, and leaving it todrive a coach and six through the latter's Christian forgiveness, wasnot to come to pass. She found herself after a year and a half ofOriental life back in her native land, an orphan with a small--butit must be admitted a very charming--illegitimate family. It washard upon her, for she had been building on the success of thismanoeuvre, in which she had, perhaps, an unreasonable confidence. Ifshe could only rely on Sally not being inopportunely sick over mammajust at the critical moment--that was the only misgiving that crossedher mind. Otherwise, such creases and such a hilarious laugh would betoo much for starch itself. Poor lady! she had thought to herself morethan once, since Sally had begun to mature and consolidate, that ifGerry had only waited a little--just long enough to see what a littleduck was going to come of it all--and not lost his temper, allmight have been made comfortable, and Sally might have had a littlelegitimate half-brother by now. What _had_ become--what would becomeof Gerry? That she did not know, might never know. 

One little pleasant surprise awaited her. It came to her knowledgefor the first time that she was sole heir to the estate of her latestepfather, Paul Nightingale. The singular practice that we believeto exist in many families of keeping back all information abouttestamentary dispositions as long as possible from the persons theyconcern, especially minors, had been observed in her case; and hermother, perhaps resenting the idea that her daughter--a youngchit!--should presume to outlive her, had kept her in ignorance of thecontents of her stepfather's will. It did not really matter much. Hadthe sum been large, and a certainty, it might have procured for her asafer position when a temporary guest at the Residency at Khopal, oreven caused her indignant young bridegroom to think twice before hetook steps to rid himself of her. But, after all, it was only somethree hundred and fifty pounds a year, and depended on the life of alady of forty-odd, who might live to be a hundred. A girl with no morethan that is nearly as defenceless as she is without it. 

A condition was attached to the bequest--not an unwelcome one. She wasto take her stepfather's name, Nightingale. She was really very gladto do this. There was a _faux air_ of a real married name about Mrs. Nightingale that was lacking in Mrs. Graythorpe. Besides, alltroublesome questions about who Sally's father was would get lostsight of in the fact that her mother had changed her name in connexionwith that sacred and glorious thing, an inheritance. A trust-fundwould always be a splendid red-herring to draw across the path of Mrs. Grundy's sleuth-hounds--a quarry more savoury to their nostrils eventhan a reputation. And nothing soothes the sceptical more than beingasked now and again to witness a transfer of stock, especially if itis money held in trust. It has all the force of a pleasant alterativepill on the circulation of Respectability--removes obstructionsand promotes appetite--is a certain remedy for sleeplessness, andso forth. So though there wasn't a particle of reason why Mrs. Nightingale's money should be held by any one but herself, as she hadno intention whatever of marrying, Colonel Lund consented to becomeher trustee; and both felt that something truly respectable had beendone--something that if it didn't establish a birthright and a correctextraction for Miss Sally, at any rate went a long way towards it. 

By the time Mrs. Nightingale had got settled in the little house atShepherd's Bush, that she took on a twenty-one years' lease five orsix years after her return to England, and had christened itSaratoga, after her early recollection of the place where she firstsaw her stepfather, whose name she took when she came into the moneyhe left her--by this time she, with the assistance of Colonel Lund, had quite assumed the appearance of a rather comfortably off youngwidow-lady, who did not make a great parade of her widowhood, butwhose circumstances seemed reasonable enough, and challenged noinquiry. Inquisitiveness would have seemed needless impertinence--justas much so as yours would have been in the case of the hypotheticalSo-and-sos at the beginning of our last chapter. A vague impressiongot in the air that Sally's father had not been altogethersatisfactory--well, wasn't it true? It may have leaked out fromsomething in "the Major's" manner. But it never produced any effecton friends, except that they saw in it a reason why Mrs. Nightingalenever mentioned her husband. He had been a black sheep. Silence abouthim showed good feeling on her part. _De mortuis_, etc.... 

Of one thing we feel quite certain--that if, at the time we made thislady's acquaintance, any chance friend of hers or her daughter's--say, for instance, Lętitia Wilson, Sally's old school-friend and presentmusic-colleague--had been told that Mrs. Nightingale, of KrakatoaVilla, No. 7, Glenmoira Road, Shepherd's Bush, W. , had been theheroine of divorce proceedings under queer circumstances, that herhusband wasn't dead at all, and that that dear little puss Sally wasGoodness-knows-who's child, we feel certain that the information wouldhave been cross-countered with a blank stare of incredulity. Why, themere fact that Mrs. Nightingale had refused so many offers of marriagewas surely sufficient to refute such a nonsensical idea! Who everheard of a lady with a soiled record refusing a good offer of marriage?

But while we are showing our respect for what the man in the streetsays or thinks, and the woman in the street thinks and says, are wenot losing sight of a leading phrase of the symphony, sonata, cantata--whatever you like to call it--of Mrs. Nightingale's life? Aphrase that steals in, just audibly--no more, in the most _strepitoso_passage of the stormy second movement--a movement, however, in whichthe proceedings of the Divorce Court are scarcely more audible, _pianissimo legato_, a chorus with closed lips, all the stringedinstruments _sordini_. But it grows and grows, and in _allegro confuoco_ on the voyage home, and only leaves a bar or two blank, whenthe thing it metaphorically represents is asleep and isn't sufferingfrom the wind. It breaks out again _vivacissimo accelerando_ when MissSally (whom we allude to) wakes up, and doesn't appreciate Nestlé'smilk. But it always grows, and in due course may be said to becomethe music itself. 

More intelligibly, Mrs. Nightingale became so wrapped up in her baby, that had seemed to her at first a cruel embarrassment--a thing to beconcealed and ignored--that very soon she really had no time to thinkabout where she broke her molasses-jug, as Uncle Remus says. The newlife that it had become hers to guard took her out of herself, madeher quite another being from the reckless and thoughtless girl of twoyears ago. 

As time went on she felt more and more the value of the newcomer'sindifference to her extraction and the tragedy that had attended it. A living creature, with a stupendous capacity for ignoring the past, and, indeed, everything except a monotonous diet, naturally gaveher mind a bias towards the future, and hope grew in her heartunconsciously, without reminding her that it might have been despair. A bad alarm, when the creature was six months old, that an entericattack might end fatally, had revealed to its mother how completelyit had taken possession of her own life, and what a power forcompensation there was even in its most imperious and tyrannicalhabits. As it gradually became articulate--however unreasonable itcontinued--her interest in its future extinguished her memories of herown past, and she found herself devising games for baby before thelittle character was old enough to play them, and costumes before shewas big enough to wear them. By the time Saratoga Villa had becomeKrakatoa, Miss Sally had had time to benefit by a reasonableallowance of the many schemes her mother had developed for herduring her infancy. Had all the projects which were mooted for herfurther education at this date been successfully carried out, shewould have been an admirable female Crichton, if her reason hadsurvived the curriculum. Luckily for her, she had a happy facultyfor being plucked at examinations, and her education was consequentlykept within reasonable bounds. 

There was, however, one department of culture in which Sally outshotall competitors. This was swimming. She would give a bath's length atthe Paddington Baths to the next strongest swimmer in the Ladies'Club, and come in triumphant in a race of ten lengths. It was a grandsight to see Sally rushing stem on, cleaving the water with her headalmost as if breath were an affectation, and doubling back at the endwhile the other starters were scarcely half-way. Or shooting throughthe air in her little blue costume straight for the deepest water, andthen making believe to be a fish on the shiny tiles at the bottom. 

Her mother always said she was certain that if that little monkeyhad managed to wriggle through some hole into the sea, on her voyagehome, she would have swum after the ship and climbed up the rudderchains. Possibly, but she was only twelve months old! If, however, shehad met with an early death, her mother's lot would have lacked itsredemption. The joint life of the two supplies a possible answerto the conundrum that has puzzled us. For in a certain sense theabsorption of her own existence in that of another than herself hadmade of Rosalind the woman, at the date of our introduction to her, quite another person from Rosalind the hot-headed and thoughtless girlthat had quarrelled with her natural guardian for doing what she hada perfect right to do, and had steered alone into unknown seas, a shipwithout a rudder or a compass, and very little knowledge of the starsof heaven for her guide. We can see what she is now much better thanwe can judge what she was then. 

It need not be supposed that this poor lady never felt any interest, never made any inquiry, about the sequel of the life she had socompletely _bouleversé_; for, whatever blame we feel bound to express, or whatever exculpation we contrive to concoct for her, there can beno doubt what the result was to the young man who has come into thestory, so far, only under the name of Gerry. We simply record hisdesignation as it has reached us in the data we are now making use of. It is all hearsay about a past. We add what we have been able togather, merely noting that what it seems to point to recommends itselfto us as probable. 

"Nobody knoo, nobody cared, " was our friend Major Roper's brief replyto an inquiry what became of this young man. "Why, good Lard, sir!" hewent on, "if one was to begin fussin' about all the Johnnies that shyoff when there's a row of that sort, one would never get a dam night'srest! Not but what if I could recollect his name. Now, what _was_ hisconfounded name? Thought I'd got it--but no--it wasn't Messiter. Fancyhis Christian name was Jeremiah.... I recollect Messiter I'm thinkin'of--character that looked as if he had a pain in his stomach--cameinto forty thousand pounds. Stop a bit--was it Indermaur? No, itwasn't Indermaur. No use guessin'--give it up. "

Besides, the Major was getting purple with suppressed coughing. Whenhe had given it up, he surrendered unconditionally to the cough, butwas presently anxious to transmit, through its subsidence, an ideathat he found it impossible to shake across the table between us outof an inarticulate forefinger end. It assumed form in time. Why notask the lady herself? We demurred, and the old soldier explained. 

"Not rushin' at her, you know, and sayin', 'Who the dooce wasit married you, ma'am?' I'm not a dam fool. Showin' tact, youknow--puttin' it easy and accidental. 'Who was that young beggarnow?--inspector--surveyor--something of the sort--up at Umballa inseventy-nine? Burrumpooter Irrigation--that's what _he_ was on. ' And, Lard bless you, my dear sir, you don't suppose she'll up and say, 'Isuppose you mean that dam husband of mine. ' Not she! Sensible womanthat, sir--seen the world--knows a thing or two. You'll see she'llonly say, 'That was Foodle or Parker or Stebbins or Jephson, ' as maybe, accordin' to the name. "

We did not see our way to this enterprise, and said so. We drew aline; said there were things you could do, and things you couldn't do. The Major chuckled, and admitted this might be so; his old governorused to say, "Est modus in rebus, sunt certi denique fines. " The lasttwo words remained behind in the cough, unless, indeed, they wereshaken out off the Major's forefinger into a squeezed lemon that wasawaiting its Seltzer. 

"But I can tell you thing, Mr. , " said he, forgetting our name, assoon as he felt soothed by the lemon-squash. "He didn't keep his name, that young man didn't. You may bet he didn't safely! Only, it's no useaskin' me why, nor what he changed it to. If it _was_ him that waslost in the Bush in New South Wales, when I was at Sydney, why, ofcourse that chap's _name_ was the same. I remember that much. Can'tget hold of the name, though. " He appeared to consult the pattern onhis silk pocket-handkerchief as an oracle, and to await its answerwith a thoughtful eye. Presently he blew his nose on the oracle, andreturned it to his pocket, adding: "But it's a speculation--littlespeculation of my own. Don't _ask me_!" We saw, however, that morewould come, without asking. And it came. 

"It made a talk out there at the time. But _that_ didn't bring him tolife. You may talk till you're hoarse, but you won't bring a dead manto--not when he's twenty miles off in a forest of gum-trees, as likeas tallow-candles.... Oh yes, they had the natives put on thescent--black trackers, they call 'em--but, Lard! it was all no use. They only followed the scent of his horse, and the horse came back afortnight after with them on his heels, an hour or so behind.... He'donly just left his party a moment, and meant to come back into theopen. I suppose he thought he was sure to cross a cutting, and gottrapped in the solid woodland. "

"But what was the speculation? You said just now.... "

"Not much to go by, " said the Major, shaking a discouraging head. "Another joker with another name, who turned up a hundred miles off!Harrisson, I fancy--yes, Harrisson. It was only my idea they were thesame. I came away, and don't know how they settled it. "

"But something, Major Roper, must have made you think this man thesame--the same as Jeremiah Indermaur, or whatever his name was--Mrs. Nightingale's man?"

"Somethin' must! What it was is another pair of shoes. " He cogitatedand reflected, but seemed to get no nearer. "You ask Pelloo, " he said. "He might give you a tip. " Then he called for a small glass of cognac, because the Seltzer was such dam chilly stuff, and the dry sherry wasno use at all. We left him arranging the oracle over his face, witha view to a serious nap. 

We got a few words shortly after with General Pellew, who seemed alittle surprised at the Major's having referred to him forinformation. 

"I don't know, " said he, "why our friend Roper shouldn't recollect asmuch about it as I do. However, I do certainly remember that when thisyoung gentleman, whatever his name was, left the station, he did go toSydney or Melbourne, and I have some hazy recollection of some onesaying that he was lost in the Bush. But why old Jack fancies he wasfound again or changed his name to Harrisson I haven't the slightestidea. "

So that all we ourselves succeeded in getting at about Gerry may besaid to have been the trap-door he vanished through. Whether Mrs. Nightingale got at other sources of information we cannot say. Whatever she learned she would be sure to keep her own counsel about. She may have concluded that the bones of the husband who had in a fitof anger deserted her had been picked by white ants, twenty years ago, in an Australian forest; or she may have come to know, by some means, of his resuscitation from the Bush, and his successes or failures ina later life elsewhere. We have had our own reasons for doubting thatshe ever knew that he took the name of Harrisson--if he really did--apoint which seemed to us very uncertain, so far as the Major'snarrative went. If she did get a scrap of tidings, a flying word, about him now and again, it was most likely all she got. And when shegot it she would feel the danger of further inquiry--the difficulty oflaying the reasons for her curiosity before her informant. You can'teasily say to a stranger: "Oh, do tell us about Mrs. Jones or Mr. Smith. She or he is our divorced or separated wife or husband. " AGerman might, but Mrs. Nightingale was not a German. 

However, she _may_ have heard something about that Gerry, wegrant you, in all those twenty long years. But if you ask us ouropinion--our private opinion--it is that she scarcely heard of him, if she heard at all, and certainly never set eyes on him, until oneday her madcap little daughter brought him home, half-killed byan electric shock, in a cab we were at some pains to describeaccurately a few pages ago. And even then, had it not been for theindividualities of that cab, she might have missed seeing him, and lethim go away to the infirmary or the police-station, and probably neverbeen near him again. 

As it was, the face she saw when a freak of chance led to her followingthat cab, and looking in out of mere curiosity at its occupant, was theface of her old lover--of her husband. Eighteen--twenty--years hadmade a man of one who was then little more than a boy. The mark of theworld he had lived in was on him; and it was the mark of a rough, strong world where one fights, and, if one is a man of this sort, maybewins. But she never doubted his identity for a moment. And the way inwhich she grasped the situation--above all, the fact that he had notrecognised her and would not recognise her--quite justified, to ourthinking, Major Roper's opinion of her powers of self-command. 

Nevertheless, these were not so absolute that her demeanour escapedcomment from the cabby, the only witness of her first sight of the"electrocuted" man. He spoke of her afterwards as that squealing partydown that sanguinary little turning off Shepherd's Bush Road he tookthat sanguinary galvanic shock to. 

CHAPTER IX

HOW THOSE GIRLS DO CHATTER OVER THEIR MUSIC! MRS. NIGHTINGALE'S RESOLUTION. BUT, THE RISK! A HARD PART TO PLAY. THERE WAS ONLY MAMMA FOR THE GIRL! THE GARDEN OF LONG AGO

Two parts in a sestet, played alone, may be a maddening torture toa person whose musical imagination is not equal to supplying the otherfour. Perhaps you have heard Haydn, Op. 1704, and rejoiced in thelogical consecutiveness of its fugues, the indisputableness of itswell-classified statements, the swift pertinence of the repartees ofthe first violin to the second, the apt _résumé_ and orderlyreorganization of their epigrammatic interchanges by the 'cello andthe double-bass, the steady typewritten report and summary of thewhole by the pianoforte, and the regretful exception to so many pointstaken by the clarionet. If so, you have no doubt felt, as we have, asense of perfect satisfaction at faultless musical structure, withouthaving to surrender your soul unconditionally to the passionate appealof a Beethoven, or to split your musical brains in conjectures aboutwhat Volkanikoffsky is driving at. You will find at the end that youhave passed an hour or so of tranquil enjoyment, and are mightycontent with yourself, the performers, and every one else. 

But if you only hear the two parts, played alone, and your mentalimage of all the other parts is not strong enough to prevent yourhearing the two performers count the bars while the non-performersdon't do anything at all, you will probably go away and come backpresently, or go mad. 

Nobody else was there when Sally and Lętitia Wilson were countingfour, and beginning too soon, and having to go back and begin all overagain, and missing a bar, and knocking down their music-stands whenthey had to turn over quick. So nobody went mad. Mamma had gone to ananti-vaccination meeting, and Athene had gone to stay over BankHoliday at Leighton Buzzard, and the boys had gone to skate, and papawas in his study and didn't matter, and they had the drawing-room tothemselves. Oh dear, how very often they did count four, to be sure!

Sally was _distraite_, and wasn't paying proper attention to the music. Whenever a string had to be tightened by either, Sally introducedforeign matter. Lętitia was firm and stern (she was twenty-four, ifyou please!), and wouldn't respond. As thus, in a tightening-up pause:

"I like him awfully, you know, Tishy. In fact, I love him. It's apleasure to hear him come into the house. Only--one's _mother_, youknow! It's the _oddity_ of it!"

"Yes, dear. _Now_, are you ready?... It only clickets down because youwill _not_ screw in; it's no use turning and leaving the keysloppy.... "

"I know, Tishy dear--teach your granny! There, I think that's rightnow. But it _is_ funny when it's one's mother, isn't it?"

"One--two--three--four! There--you didn't begin! Remember, you've gotto begin on the demisemiquaver at the end of the bar--only not toostaccato, remember--and allow for the pause. Now--one, two, three, four, and you begin--in the _middle_ of four--_not_ the end. Oh dear!Now once more.... " etc. 

You will at once see from this that Sally had lost no time in findinga confidante for the fossil's communication. 

An hour and a half of resolute practising makes you not at all sorryfor an oasis in the counting, which you inaugurate (or whatever you dowhen it's an oasis) by smashing the top coal and making a great blaze. And then you go ever so close, and can talk. 

"Are you sure it isn't Colonel Lund's mistake? Old gentlemen get veryfanciful. " Thus Miss Wilson. But it seems Sally hasn't much doubt. Rather the other way round, if anything!

"I thought it might be, all the way to Norland Square. Then I changedmy mind coming up the hill. Of course, I don't know about mamma tillI ask her. But I expect the Major's right about Mr. Fenwick. "

"But how does _he_ know? How do you know?"

"I don't know. " Sally tastes the points of a holly-leaf with hertongue-tip, discreetly, to see how sharp they are, and cogitates. "Atleast, " she continues, "I _do_ know. He never takes his eyes off mammafrom the minute he comes into the house. "

"Oh!"

"Besides--lots of things! Oh no; as far as that goes, I should say_he_ was spooney. "

"I see. You're a vulgar child, all the same! But about yourmother--that's the point. "

The vulgar child cogitates still more gravely. 

"I should say _now_, " she says, after thinking it over, "that--onlyI never noticed it at the time, you know----"

"That what?"

"That mamma knows Mr. Fenwick is spooney, and looks up at times to seethat he's going on. "

Lętitia seems to receive this idea with some hesitation or reserve. "Looks up at times to see if he's going on?" she repeats inquiringly. 

"Yes, of course--like we should. Only I didn't say 'see if. ' I said'see that. ' It makes all the difference. "

Miss Wilson breaks into a laugh. "And there you are all the timelooking as if butter wouldn't melt in your mouth, and as grave asa judge. "

Sally has to acquiesce in being kissed by her friend at this point;but she curls up a little as one who protests against beingpatronised. "We-e-e-ell!" she says, lengthening out the word, "whynot? I don't see anything in _that_!"

"Oh no, dear--_that's_ all right! Why shouldn't it be?"

But this isn't candid of Lętitia, whose speech and kiss had certainlyappeared to impute suppressed insight, or penetration, or sly-pussness, or something of that sort to her young friend. But with an impliedclaim to rights of insight, on her own account, from seniority. Sallyis _froissée_ at this, but not beyond jerking the topic into a newlight. 

"Of course, it's their being grown up that makes one stare so. If itwasn't for that.... " But this gives away her case, surrenders allclaim to her equality with Lętitia's twenty-four years. The advantageis caught at meanly. 

"That's only because you're a baby, dear. Wait till you're ten yearsolder, and thirty-eight won't seem so old. I suppose your mother'sabout that?"

"Mother? Why, she's nearly thirty-nine!"

"And Mr. Fenwick?"

"Oh, _he's_ forty-one. _Quite!_ Because we talked it all over, and madeout they were over eighty between them. "

"Who talked it over?"

"Why, him and her and me, of course. Last night. "

"Who did you have, Sally dear?"

"Only ourselves, and Dr. Prosy and his Goody mother. "

"I thought Mr. Fenwick----"

"I counted him in with us--mother and me and the Major. "

"Oh, you counted him in?"

"Why shouldn't I count him in, if I like?"

"Why not? And you do like?" There is an appearance of irritatingsagacity about Sally's friend. "What did Dr. Vereker say, Sally dear?"

"Doc-tor Vereker! Dr. Prosy. Prosy's not a referee--it was no concernof his! Besides--they'd gone. "

"Who'd gone?"

"Dr. Prosy and his old hen of a mother. Well, Tishy dear, she _is_like that. Comes wobbling down on you as if you were a chicken! I hopeyou don't think mother and I and Mr. Fenwick would talk about how oldwe were added together, with old Goody Prosy in it!"

"Of course not, dear!"

"Oh, Tishy dear, how aggravating you are! Now do please don't bepenetrating. You know you're trying to get at something; and there'snothing to get at. It was perfectly natural. Only, of course, weshould never dream of talking about how old before people and theirgossipy old mothers. "

"Of course not, dear!"

"There, now! You're being imperturbable! I knew you would. But you maysay what you like--there really was nothing in it. Nothing whateverthat time! However, of course mother does like Mr. Fenwick verymuch--everybody knows that. "

Lętitia says time will show, and Sally says, "Show what?" For theremark connects with nothing in the conversation. Its maker does notreply, but retires into the fastnesses of a higher philosophy, unknownto the teens, but somehow attainable in the early twenties. She comesdown, however, to ask after Dr. Vereker. Sally has as good as held hertongue about him. Have they quarrelled?

"My dear Tishy! The idea! A _perfect stranger_!"

"I thought you were such good friends. "

"I've nothing against Dr. Vereker. But fancy quarrelling with him!Like bosom friends. Kissing and making it up. What next!" Lętitiaseems to have discovered that Sally, subjected to a fixed amused look, is sure to develop, and maintains one; and Sally follows on:

"One has to be on an intimate footing to fall out. Besides, peopleshouldn't be hen's sons. Not if they expect that sort of thing!"

"Which sort?"

"You know perfectly well, Tishy dear! And they shouldn't be worthy, either, people shouldn't. I'm not at all sure it isn't his worthiness, just as much as his mother. I _could_ swallow his mother, if it cameto that!"

Lętitia, without relaxing the magnetism of her look, is replacinga defective string. But a stimulating word will keep Sally up to themark. It would be a pity she should die down, having got so far. 

"Not at all sure _what_ isn't his worthiness!"

"Now, Tishy dear, what nonsense! As if you didn't understand! You mayjust as well be penetrating outright, if you're going to go on likethat. All I know is that, worthiness or no, if Dr. Vereker expectsI'm going to put him on a quarrelling footing, he's mistaken, and thesooner he gives up the idea the better. I suppose he'll be wanting meto cherish him next. "

And then what does that irritating Lętitia Wilson do but say suddenly, "I'm quite ready for the scherzo, dear, if you are. " Just as if Sallyhad been talking all this for her own private satisfaction andamusement! And she knew perfectly well, Lętitia did, that she had beeneliciting, and that she meant to wait a day or two, and begin againever so far on, and make believe Sally had said heaps of things. AndSally had really said nothing--_nothing_!

However, Miss Wilson was certainly a very fine violin figure, andreally striking in long sostenuto notes, with a fine throat andhandsome fingers on her left hand with broad bones, and a handsomewrist on her bowing-arm where it was wanted. Only now, of course, shehadn't got her Egyptian bracelet that looked so well, and her hairwasn't done in a coronet, but only just twisted up anyhow. Besides, when it's a difficult scherzo and you take it quick, your appearanceof having the concentration of Bonaparte and Julius Cęsar, and thealacrity of a wild cat, doesn't bring out your good points. Give usan _andante maestoso_ movement, or a _diminuendo rallentando_ thatreaches the very climax and acme of slowness itself just before theapplause comes! It was rather as a meditation in contrasts, though, that Sally thought thus to herself; for detached musical jerks ofdiabolical rapidity, that have to be snapped at with the punctualityof the mosquito slayer, don't show your rounded lines to advantage, and make you clench your teeth and glare horribly. 

 * * * * *

Our story is like the scherzo in one respect: it has to be given indetached jerks--literary, not musical--and these jerks don't come atany stated intervals at all. The music was bad enough--so Sally andLętitia thought--but the chronicle is more spasmodic still. However, if you want to know its remaining particulars, you will have to braceyourself up to tolerating an intermittent style. It is the only oneour means of collecting information admits of. 

This little musical interlude, and the accidental chat of our twoyoung performers, gives us a kind of idea of what was the positionof things at Krakatoa Villa six months after Fenwick made his singularreappearance in the life of Mrs. Nightingale. We shall rely on yourdrawing all our inferences. There is only one belief of ours we needto lay stress upon; it is that the lady's scheme to do all she couldto recapture and hold this man who had been her husband was no mereslow suggestion of the course of events in that six months, but aswift and decisive resolution--one that, if not absolutely made atonce, paused only in the making until she was quite satisfied thatthe disappearance of Fenwick's past was an accomplished fact. Oncesatisfied of that, he became to her simply the man she had lovedtwenty years ago--the man who did not, could not, forgive herwhat seemed so atrocious a wrong, but whom she could forgive theunforgiveness of; and this all the more if she had come to know of theruinous effect her betrayal of him had had--must have had--upon hisafter-life. He was this man--this very man--to all appearance witha mysterious veil drawn, perhaps for ever, over the terrible close oftheir brief linked life and its hideous cause--over all that she wouldhave asked and prayed should be forgotten. If only this oblivion couldbe maintained!--that was her fear. If it could, what task could besweeter to her than to make him such amends as lay in her power forthe wrong she had done him--how faultfully, who shall say? And if, inlate old age, no dawn of memory having gleamed in his ruined mind, shecame to be able to speak to him and tell him his own story--the taleof the wreck of his early years--would not that almost, _almost_, carry with it a kind of compensation for what she had undergone?

But her terror of seeing a return of memory now was a hauntingnightmare to her. She could only soothe and alleviate her anxietyby suggesting efforts at recollection to Fenwick, and observing withconcealed satisfaction how utterly useless they all were. She feltguilty at heart in being so happy at his ill-success, and had topractise an excusable hypocrisy, an affectation of disappointment athis repeated failures. On one particular occasion a shudder ofapprehension passed through her; she thought he had got a clue. If hedid, what was to prevent his following it up? She found it hard to sayto him how sorry she was this clue led to nothing, and to forecastfrom it encouragement for the future. But she said to herself afterthat, that she was a good actress, and had played her part well. Thepart was a hard one. 

For what came about was this. It chanced one evening, some threemonths after the railway adventure, when Fenwick had become anaccepted and constant visitor at Krakatoa Villa, that as he took avery late leave of Sally and her mother, the latter came out with himinto the always quiet road, while Sally ran back into the house todirect a letter he was to post, but which had been forgotten for themoment, just as he was departing. 

They had talked a great deal, and with a closer familiarity than everbefore, of the problem of Fenwick's oblivion. Both ladies had gone onthe lines of suggesting clues, trying to recall to him the things that_must_ have been in his life as in others. How about his parents?Well, he remembered that, as a fact, he had a father and mother. Itwas _themselves_ he could not recollect. How about his schooldays? No, that was a blank. He could not even remember having been flogged. Yetthe idea of school was not unfamiliar; how, otherwise, could he laughas he did at the absurdity of forgetting all about it, especiallybeing flogged? But his brothers, his sisters, how _could_ he forget_them_? He _did_, although in their case, as in that of his parents, he somehow knew that some definite identities had existed that he hadforgotten. But any effort to recall any specific person came tonothing, or else he only succeeded in reviving images manifestlyconfused with characters in fiction or history. Then Sally, who wasrather incredulous about this complete vacuity of mind, had said tohim: "But come now, Mr. Fenwick, you don't mean to say you don't knowif you ever had a sweetheart?" And he had replied with a laugh: "Mydear Miss Sally, I'm sure I must have had plenty of sweethearts. Perhaps it's because I had so many that I have forgotten themall--all--all! They are all gone with the rest. I can do sums, and canspeak French, but what school I learned to keep accounts at I can'ttell you; and as to where I lived (as I must have done) among Frenchpeople to speak French, I can tell no more than Adam. " And then he hadbecome rather reserved and silent till he got up to go, and they hadnot liked to press him for more. The pained look they had often beendistressed to see came on his face, and he pressed his fingers on hiseyelids as though shutting out the present world might help him torecall the past; then with a rough head-shake of his thick hair, likea big dog, and a brushing of it about with both hands, as though hewould rouse this useless head of his to some sort of action, he putthe whole thing aside, and talked of other matters till he left thehouse. 

But when he and Mrs. Nightingale found themselves alone in the road, enjoying the delicious west wind that meant before the morning tobecome an equinoctial gale, and blow down chimney-pots and sink ships, he turned to her and went back to what they had been talking of. Shecould see the fine strong markings of his face in the moonlight, thegreat jaw and firm lips, the handsome nose damaged by a scar that laytrue across the bridge of it, and looked white in the gleam of themoon, the sad large eyelids and the grave eyes that had retaken thelook he had shaken off. She could note and measure every changematurity had stamped upon him, and could see behind it the boythat had come to meet her at the station at Umballa twenty yearsbefore--had met her full of hope, met her to claim his reward afterthe long delay through the hideous days of the pestilence, toinaugurate the anticipated hours of happiness he had trembled to dreamof. And the worst of the cholera wards that had filled the last monthsof his life with horror had held nothing for him so bad as the taleshe had to tell or conceal. She could see back upon it as they stoodthere in the moonlight. Do not say she was not a strong woman. 

"Do you know, Mrs. Nightingale, " Fenwick said, "it's always a nightof this sort that brings back one's youth? You know what I mean?"

"I think I understand what you mean, Mr. Fenwick. You mean if"--shehesitated a moment--"if you _could_ recollect. "

He nodded a complete yes. 

"Just that, " said he. "I don't know if it's the millions of dry leavessweeping about, or the moon scudding so quick through the clouds, orthe smell of the Atlantic, or the bark coming off the plane-trees, orthe wind blowing the roads into smooth dust-drifts and hard clear-upsyou could eat your dinner off--I don't know what it is, but somethingor another on a night of this sort does always seem to bring old timesback, when, as you say, they can be got back on any terms. " Hehalf-laughed, not in earnest. She found something to say, also notvery much in earnest. 

"Because we remember nights of the sort when we were small, and thatbrings them back. "

"Come, I say now, Mrs. Nightingale! As if we couldn't remember allsorts of nights, and nothing comes back about them. It's thisparticular sort of night does the job. "

"Did you think you remembered something, Mr. Fenwick?" There wasanxiety in her voice, but no need to conceal it. It would as readilypass muster for anxiety that he _should_ have remembered something asthat he shouldn't. 

"I can hardly go so far as that. But that joke of your little pussycatabout the sweethearts got mixed with the smell of the wind and thechrysanthemums and dahlias and sunflowers. " He pressed his fingershard on his eyes again. "Do you know, there's pain in it--worse thanyou'd think! The half-idea that comes is not painful in itself--ratherthe contrary--but it gives my brain a twist at the point at which Ican recall no more. Yes, it's painful!"

"But there _was_ a half-idea? Forgive me if it gives you pain, anddon't try. Only I'm not sure you ought not to try when the chancecomes, for your own sake. "

"Oh, I don't mind trying. This time it was something about a frontgarden and a girl and a dog-cart. " He had not taken his hands from hiseyes. Now he did so, brushing them on his hair and forehead as before. "I get no nearer, " said he. 

"A front garden and a girl and a dog-cart, " thus Miss Sally saucily, coming out with the letter. "Did you have a very touching parting, Mr. Fenwick? Now, mind you don't forget to post it. I wouldn't trust you!"He took the letter from her, but seemed too _distrait_ to notice herlittle piece of levity; then, still speaking as if in distress orpain, he said:

"It must have been some front garden, long ago. This one brought itback--this and the leaves. Only there was nothing for the dog-cart. "

"And only mamma for the girl"--thus Sally the irrepressible. And thenmamma laughed, but not Mr. Fenwick at all. Only Sally thought hermother's laugh came hard, and said to herself, now she should catchit for chaffing! However, she didn't catch it, although the abruptnesswith which her mother said good-night and went back into the househalf confirmed her impression that she should. 

On the contrary, when she followed her a few minutes later, havingaccompanied Fenwick to near the road end, and scampered back to thehouse, turning to throw Parthian good-nights after him, she found hermother pale and thoughtful, and surely the lips and hands she used tokiss her with were cold. She wasn't even sure that wasn't a tear. Perhaps it was. 

For mamma had had a bad ten minutes--scarcely a _mauvais quartd'heure_--and even that short interim had given her time to see thatthis kind of thing would be incessant with her recovered husband, granting that she could recover him. Only of that she felt nearlysecure--unaccountably, perhaps; certainly not warrantably. But how tobear this kind of thing through a life?--that was the question. 

What was this kind of thing, this bad ten minutes, that had made hertremble, and turn white, and glad to get away, and be alone a minutebefore Sally came up jubilant? But oh, how glad, for all that, to getat her daughter's lips to kiss!--only not too hard, so as to suggestreflection and analysis. 

What had upset Mrs. Nightingale was a counter-memory of twenty yearsago, a clear and full and vivid recollection of the garden and thegirl and the dog-cart. And then also there "had only been mamma forthe girl. " But oh, the relation the lassie who said those words boreto those past days, her place in the drama that filled them out!Little wonder her mother's brain reeled. 

She could see it all vividly now, all over again. A glorious nightlike this; a dazzling full moon sailing in the blue beyond the tumbledchaos of loose cloud so near the earth; the riot of the wind-swepttrees fighting to keep a shred of their old green on their bareness, making new concessions to the blast, and beating their stripped limbstogether in their despair; the endless swirl of leaves at liberty, free now at last to enjoy a short and merry life before becoming foodfor worms. She could see the face she had just parted from, but twentyyears younger--the same bone-structure with its unscarred youth uponit, only a lesser beard with a sunnier tinge, but all the thickness ofthe hair. She could remember the voices in the house, the farewells tothe young man who was just starting for India, and how she slippeddown to say a last good-bye on her own account, and felt grateful tothat old Dean Ireson (the only time in her life) for begging hermother (who, of course, was the Rosalind Nightingale Fenwick spoke ofin the train) on no account to expose herself to the night-air. Why, she might have come down, too, into the garden, and spoiled it all!And then she could remember--oh, how well!--their last words in thewindy garden, and the horse in the dog-cart, fresh from his stall, and officiously anxious to catch the train--as good as saying so, withflings and stamps. And how little she cared if the groom _did_ hearhim call her Rosey, for that was his name for her. 

"Now, Gerry, remember, I've made you _no_ promises; but I'll playfair. If I change my mind, I'll write and tell you. And you may writeto me. "

"Every day?"

"Silly boy, be reasonable! Once a month! You'll see, you'll get tiredof it. "

"Come, Rosey, I say! The idea!"

"Yes, you will! Now go! You'll lose the train. "

"Oh, Rosey dearest!"

"Yes, what?--you'll lose the train. "

"Oh, my dearest, I _can't_! Just think--I may never see you again!"

"You _must_ go, Gerry dear! And there's that blockhead of a boyoutside there. "

"Never mind him; he's nobody! Only one more.... Yes, _dearest love_, I'm really going.... Good-bye! good-bye! God bless you!"

And then how she stood there with the memory of his lips dying onhers, alone by the gate, in the wild wind, and heard the sharp regulartrot of the horse lessen on the hard road and die away, and then therunning of a train she thought was his, and how he would surely missit, and have to come back. And it _would_ be nice just to see himagain! But he was gone, for all that, and he was a dear good boy. Andshe recollected going to her bedroom to do up her hair, which had allcome down, and hiding her face on her pillow in a big burst of tears. 

Her mind harked back on all this as he himself, the same but changed, stood there in the moonlight striving to recollect it all, andmysteriously failing. But at least, he _did_ fail, and that wassomething. But oh, what a wrench it gave to life, thought, reason, to all her heart and being, to have that unconscious chit cut inwith "only mamma for the girl!" What and whence was this littlemalaprop? Her overwrought mind shut away this question--almost inthe asking it--with "Dearer to me, at least, than anything else inthis world, unless----" and then shut away the rest of the answer. 

But she was glad to get at Sally, and feel her there, though shecould not speak freely to her--nor, indeed, speak at all. And as soonas the tension died down, she went back as to a source of peace to thefailure of his powers of memory, obvious, complete. All her hopes layin that. Where would they be if the whole past were suddenly sprung onhim? He _might_ be ready to bury bygones, but----

She woke next day fairly at ease in her mind, but feeling as one doesafter any near-run escape. And then it was she said to herself thatshe was a good actress. But the part _was_ hard to act. 

 * * * * *

The relations between Fenwick and the Nightingales, mother anddaughter, seem to us to have been acquiring cohesion at the time ofthe foregoing interview. It is rather difficult to say why. But itserves to pave the way to the state of things that Sally accepted asthe "spooneyness" of Fenwick, and her mother's observation of his"going on, " without the dimmest idea of the underlying motives of thedrama. Another three months, bringing us on to these discriminationsof Sally's, may also have brought about appearances that justifiedthem. 

CHAPTER X

THE DANGERS OF AN UNKNOWN PAST. NETTLE-GRASPING, AND A RECURRENCE. WHO AMONG US COURTS CATECHISM ABOUT HIMSELF? A UNIVERSALLY PROVIDED YOUNG MAN. HOW ABOUT THE POOR OLD FURNITURE?

We defy the acutest of psychologists to estimate precisely the holdlove has on a man who is diagnosed, in the language of the vulgarchild Sally, as "spooney. " Probably no patient has ever succeeded indoing this himself. It is quite another matter when the eruption hasbroken out, when the crater is vomiting flames and the lava is pouringdown on the little homesteads at the mountain's base, that may standin the metaphor for all that man's duties and obligations. By thattime he _knows_. But, while still within the "spooney" zone he knowsno more than you or I (or that most important _she_) what the morrowmeans to bring. Will it be a step on or a step back? An altogethernew _she_, or the fires of the volcano, let loose beyond recall?

Fenwick was certainly not in a position to gauge his own feelingstowards Mrs. Nightingale. All previous experience was cut away fromhim, or seemed so. He might have been, for anything he knew, a marriedman with a family, a devoted husband. He might have been recentlywedded to an adoring bride, and she might now be heart-broken in herloneliness. How could he tell? The only thing that gave him courageabout this was that he _could_ remember the fact that he had hadparents, brothers, sisters. He could not recollect _anything whatever_about sweetheart, wife, or child. Unearthly gusts of half-ideas cameto him at times, like that of the girl and the dog-cart. But they onlygave him pain, and went away unsolved, leaving him sick and dizzy. 

His situation was an acutely distressing one. He was shackled andembarrassed, so to speak, by what he knew of his relations toexistence. At any moment a past might be sprung on him, bringing himsuddenly face to face with God knows what. So strongly did he feelthis that he often said to himself that the greatest boon that couldbe granted to him would be an assurance of continued oblivion. He wasespecially afflicted by memories of an atrocious clearness that wouldcome to him in dreams, the horror of which would remain on into hiswaking time. They were not necessarily horrible things at all, buttheir clearness in the dream, and their total, if slow, disappearanceas the actual world came back, became sometimes an excruciatingtorment. Who could say that they, or some equivalents, might not reachhim out of the past to-day or to-morrow--any time?

For instance, he had one morning waked up in a perfect agony--a coldperspiration as of the worst nightmares--because of a dream harmlessenough in itself. He had suddenly remembered, in the dream-street hecould identify the houses of so plainly, a first-floor he had occupiedwhere he had left all his furniture locked up years ago. And he hadfound the house and the first-floor quite easily, and had not seenanything strange in the landlord saying that he and his old womanoften wondered when Mr. Fenwick would come for his things. It was notthe accumulation of rent unpaid, nor that of the dirt he knew heshould find on the furniture (all of which he could recollect in thedream perfectly well), but the fact that he had forgotten it all, andleft it unclaimed all those years, that excruciated him. Even hishaving to negotiate for its removal in his shirt did not afflict himso much as his forgetfulness for so long of the actual furniture; hisconviction of the reality of which lasted on after his discovery abouthis costume had made him suspect, in his dream, that he was dreaming. 

To a man whose memory is sound, who feels sure he looks back on anactual past in security, such a dream is only a curiosity of sleep. ToFenwick it was, like many others of the same sort, a possible heraldof an analogous revelation in waking hours, with a sequel of dreadfulverification from some abysm of an utterly forgotten past. 

His worst terror, far and away, was the fear that he was married and afather. It might have been supposed that this arose from a provisionalsense of pity for the wife and children he must have left; that hismind would conceive hypothetical poverty for them, or sorrow, disease, or death, the result direct or indirect of his disappearance. But this was scarcely the case. They themselves were too intenselyhypothetical. In this respect the blank in his intellect was sounqualified that it might never have occurred to him to ask himselfthe question if they existed had it not been suggested to him by Mrs. Nightingale herself. It was, in fact, a question she almost alwaysrecurred to when Miss Sally was out of the way. It was no use tryingto talk seriously when that little monkey was there. She turnedeverything to a joke. But the Major was quite another thing. He wouldback her up in anything reasonable. 

"I wish more could be done to find out, " said she for the twentiethtime to Fenwick one evening, shortly after the musical recital of lastchapter. "I don't feel as if it was right to give up advertising. Suppose the poor thing is in Australia or America. "

"The poor thing is my hypothetical wife?"

"Exactly so. Well, suppose she is. Some people never see any newspapersat all. And all the while she may have been advertising for _you_. "

"Oh no; we should have been sure to see or hear. "

"But why? Now I ask you, Mr. Fenwick, suppose she advertised half adozen times in the 'Melbourne Argus' or the 'New York Sun, ' _would_you have seen it, necessarily?"

"_I_ should not, because I never see the 'Melbourne Argus' or the 'NewYork Sun. ' But those agents we paid to look out go steadily throughthe agony columns--the personal advertisements--of the whole world'spress; they would have found it if it had ever been published. "

"I dare say they only pocketed the money. "

"That they did, no doubt. But they gave me something for it. A hundredand twenty-three advertisements addressed to Fenwicks--none of themto me!"

"But have we advertised enough?"

"Oh, heavens, yes. Think of the answers we've had! I've just receivedthe hundred and forty-second. From a lady in distressed circumstanceswho bought a piano ten years ago from a party of my name andinitials--thought I might be inclined to buy it back at half-price. She proposes to call on me early next week. "

"Poor Mr. Fenwick! It _is_ discouraging, I admit. But, oh dear! fancyif there's some poor thing breaking her heart somewhere! It's easyenough for you--_you_ don't believe in her. "

"That's it; I don't!" He dropped a tone of pleasantry, and spoke moreseriously. "Dear Mrs. Nightingale, if my absence of conviction ofthe existence of this lady did not rise to the height of a definitedisbelief in her altogether--well, I should be wretched. But I feelvery strongly that I need not make myself a poor miserable about her. I _don't_ believe in her, that's the truth!"

"You don't believe a man could forget his wife?"

"I _can't_ believe it, try how I may! Anything--anybody else--but hiswife, no!"

Fenwick had come in late in the evening, as he was in the habit ofdoing, often three or four times in the week. He looked across fromhis side of the hearthrug, where he had been standing watching thefire, but could not see the face opposite to him. Mrs. Nightingale wassitting with her back to the light sheltering her eyes from the blazewith a fire-screen. So Fenwick saw only the aureole the lamp made inher hair--it was a fine halo with a golden tinge. Sally was very proudof mamma's hair; it was much better fun to do than her own, said thevulgar child. But even had she not been hidden by the screen, theexpression on her face might have meant nothing to him--that is, nothing more than the ready sympathy he was so well accustomed to. A little anxiety of eye, a tremor in the lip, the birth of a frownwithout a sequel--these might have meant anything or nothing. Shemight even have turned whiter than she did, and yet not be said toshow the cross-fire of torments in her heart. She was, as we told you, a strong woman, either by nature, or else her life had made her one. 

For, think of what the recesses of her memory held; think of the pastshe looked back on, and knew to be nothing but a blank to him. Thinkof what _she_ was, and _he_ was, as he stood there and said, "Anybodyelse, but his wife;" and then rather shaped the "No" that followedwith his lips than said it; but shook an emphasis into the word withhis head. 

"When are you going to get your hair cut, Mr. Fenwick?" said she;and he did think she changed the subject abruptly, without apparentcause. "It's just like a lion's mane when you shake it like that. "

"To-morrow, if you think it too disreputable. "

"I like it. Sally wants to cut it.... "

The last few words showed the completeness of Fenwick's _tamecattitude_ in the family. It had developed in an amazingly short time. Was it due to the old attachment of this man and woman--an attachment, mind you, that was sound and strong till it died a violent death? Wedo not find this so very incredible; perhaps, because that memory oftheir old parting in the garden went nearer to an actual revival thanany other stirring in his mind. But, of course, there may have beenothers equally strong, only we chance to hear of this one. 

That was not our purpose, however, in recording such seeming trivialchat. It was not trivial on Mrs. Nightingale's part. She had made upher mind to flinch from nothing, always to grasp her nettle. Here wasa nettle, and she seized it firmly. If she identified as clearly asshe did that shaken lion-mane of Fenwick's with that of Gerry, theyoung man of twenty years ago, and seeing its identity was silent, that would be flinching. She would and did say the self-same thing shecould recall saying to Gerry. And she asked Fenwick when he was goingto get his hair cut with a smile, that was like that of the Indianbrave under torture. A knife was through her heart. But it was welldone, so she thought to herself. If she could be as intrepid as that, she could go on and live. She tried experiments of this sort when thewatchful merry eyes of her daughter were not upon her, and even feltglad, this time, that the Major was having a doze underneath a "DailyTelegraph. " Fenwick took it all as a matter of course, mere chaff.... 

Did he? If so, why, after a few words more of chat, did he press hishands on his eyes and shake a puzzled head; then, after an abrupt turnup and down the room, come back to where he stood at first and draw along breath?

"Was that a recurrence, Mr. Fenwick?" she asked. They had come tospeak of these mental discomforts as _recurrences_. They would afflicthim, not seldom, without bringing to his mind any definite image. Andthis was the worst sort. When an image came, his mind felt eased. 

"A sort of one. "

"Can you tell when it came on?" All this was nettle-grasping. She wasgetting used to it. "Was it before or after I said that about yourhair?"

"After. No, before. Perhaps just about then. " Mrs. Nightingale decidedthat she would not tempt Providence any further. Self-discipline wasgood, but not carried to danger-point. 

"Now sit down and be quiet, " she said. "We won't talk any more aboutunpleasant things. Only the worst of it is, " she added, smiling, "that one's topics--yours and mine, I mean--are so limited by theconditions. I should ask any other man who had been about the world, as you _must_ have done, all sorts of questions about all sorts ofplaces--where he had been, whom he had seen. You can't answerquestions, though I hope you will some day.... "

She paused, and he saw the reason. "You see, " said he, with agood-humoured laugh, "one gets back directly to the unpleasantsubject, whether one will or no. But if I could remember all aboutmy precious self, I might not court catechism about it.... "

"_I_ should not about mine. " This was said in a low tone, with asilent look on the unraised eyes that was almost an invitation not tohear, and her lips hardly moved to say it, either. He missed it forthe moment, but finished his speech with the thought in his mind. 

"Still, it's an ill-wind that blows nobody good. See what a clearconscience I have! But what was that _you_ said?"

She dropped the fire-screen and raised her eyes--fine eyes they were, which we might have likened to those of Juno had the eyes of oxen beenblue--turning them full on him. "When?" said she. 

"Just this minute. I ought to have apologized for interrupting you. "

"I said I should not court catechism about myself. I should not. "Fenwick felt he could not assign this speech its proper place in thedialogue without thinking. He thought gravely, looking to all seeminginto the fire for enlightenment; then turned round and spoke. 

"Surely that is true, in a sense, of all mankind--mankind andwomankind. Nobody wants to be seen through. But one's past would needto be a very shaky one to make one wish for an oblivion like mine toextinguish it. "

"I should not dislike it. I have now all that I wish to keep out ofthe past. I have Sally. There is nothing I could not afford to forgetin the past, no one thing the loss of which could alter her in theleast, that little monkey of a daughter of mine! And there are many, many things I should like to see the last of. " From which speechFenwick derived an impression that the little monkey, the vulgarchild, had come back warm and living and welcome to the speaker'smind, and had driven away some mists of night, some uglinesses thathung about it. How he wished he could ask: "Was one of them herfather?" That was not practicable. But it was something of that sort, clearly. His mind could not admit the idea of a haunting remorse, aguilty conscience of an action of her own, in the memory of the womanwho spoke to him. He was too loyal to her for that. Besides, thewording of her speech made no such supposition necessary. Fenwick'sanswer to it fell back on abstractions--the consolation a daughtermust be, and so forth. 

"There she is!" said her mother; and then added, as perturbationwithout heralded Miss Sally's approach: "I will tell you what I meantsome other time. " For there she was, no doubt of it, wild withexcitement to report the splendid success of the great sestet, theproduction of which had been the event of the musical gathering shehad come from. And you know as well as we do how it is when youth andhigh spirits burst in upon the sober stay-at-homes, intoxicated withmusic and lights and supper and too many people talking at once. Sally's eyebrows and teeth alone would have been enough to set all thebirds singing in the dullest coppices decorum ever planted, let alonethe tales she had to tell of all the strange and wonderful things thathad come to pass at the Erskine Peels', who were the givers of theparty, and always did things on such a scale. 

"And where do you think, mother, Mrs. Erskine Peel gets all thosegood-looking young men from that come to her parties? Why, from theStores, of course. Just fancy!... How do I know? Why, because I talkedto one of them for ever so long, and made him tell me all about it. Idetected him, and told him so straight off. How did I recognise him?Why, of course, because he's that young man that came here about theletter. Oh, _you_ know, Mr. Fenwick! Gracious me, how slow you are!The young man that brought you the letter to translate. Rather tall, dark eyes. "

"Oh yes, certainly. I remember him quite well. Well, I expect he madea very good young man for a small tea-party. "

"Of course he did, and it's quite ridiculous. " By which the vulgarchild meant that class distinctions were ridiculous. She had this wayof rushing subjects, eliding the obvious, and relying on her hearers. "He told me all about it. He'd been universally provided, he said; andI promised not to tell. Miss Erskine Peel--that's Orange, you know, the soprano--went to the manager and said her mother said they _must_get more men, though it wasn't dancing, or the rooms looked so bad;only they mustn't be fools, and must be able to say Wagner and Lisztand things. And he hoped I didn't think he was a fool. "

"What did you say?"

"Said I couldn't say--didn't know him well enough. He might be, tolook at. Or not, accordingly. I didn't say _that_, you know, mamma. "

"I didn't know, darling. You're very rude sometimes. "

"Well, he said he could certainly say Wagner and Liszt, and even more, because--it was rather sad, you know, mamma dear----"

"Sally, you've told that young man he may call; you know you have!"

"Well, mamma dear, and if I have, I don't see that anybody's mare'sdead. Because, do listen!" Fenwick interposed a parenthesis. 

"I don't think you need to be apprehensive, Mrs. Nightingale. He wasan educated young man enough. His not knowing a French phrase likethat implies nothing. Not one in a hundred would. " The way in whichthe Major, who, of course, had come out of his doze on the inrush ofMiss Sally, looked across at Fenwick as he said this, implied anacquired faith in the judgment of the latter. Sally resumed. 

"Just let me tell you. His name's Bradshaw. Only he's no relation to_the_ Bradshaw--in a yellow cover, you know. We-e-ell, I don't seeanything in that!" Sally is defending her position against a smile hermother and Fenwick have exchanged. They concede that there is nothingin it, and Sally continues. "Where was I? Oh, Bradshaw; yes. He was anawfully promising violinist--awfully promising! And what do you thinkhappened? Why, the nerves of his head gave way, and he couldn't standthe vibration! So it came to being Cattley's or nothing. " Sallycertainly had the faculty of cutting a long story short. 

She thought the story, so cut, one that her mother and Mr. Fenwickmight have shown a more active interest in, instead of saying it wastime for all of us to be in bed. She did not, however, ascribe to themany external preoccupation--merely an abstract love of Truth; for wasit not nearly one o'clock in the morning?

Nevertheless, a little incident of Mr. Fenwick's departure, notnoticed at the moment, suddenly assumed vitality just as Sally was"going off, " and woke her up. What was it she overheard her mothersay to him, just as he was leaving the house, about something she hadpromised to tell him some time? However, reflection on it with wakingfaculties dissipated the importance it seemed to have half-way todreamland, and Sally went contentedly to sleep again. 

Fenwick, as he walked to his lodgings through the dull February night, did not regard this something, whatever it was, as a thing of slightimportance at all. He may have been only "spooney, " but it was in asense that left him no pretence for thinking that anything connectedwith this beautiful young widow-lady could be unimportant to him. Onthe contrary, she was more and more filling all his waking thoughts, and becoming the pivot on which all things turned. It is true, he"dismissed from his mind"--whatever that means--every presumptuoussuggestion that in some precious time to come she might be willing tothrow in her lot with his own, and asked himself what sort of thingwas he that he should allow such an idea to come even as far ascontradiction-point? He, a poor inexplicable wreck! What was the Selfhe had to offer, and what else had he? But, indeed, the speculationrarely got even to this maturity, so promptly was it nipped in thebud. Only, there were so many buds to nip. He became aware that hewas giving a good deal of attention to this sort of gardening. 

Also, he had a consciousness that he was growing morbidly anxious forthe maintenance of his own oblivion. That which was at first onlya misgiving about what a return of memory might bring to light, wasrapidly becoming a definite desire that nothing should come to lightat all. How _could_ he look forward to that "hypothetical" wife whomhe did not in the least believe in, but who might be somewhere, forall that! He knew perfectly well that his relations with KrakatoaVilla would _not_ remain the same, say what you might! Of course, healso knew that he had no relations there that _need_ change--mostcertainly not! At this point an effort would be made against theoutcrop of his thoughts. Those confounded buds were always bursting. It was impossible to be even with them. 

Perhaps it was on this evening, or rather early morning, as he walkedhome to his lodgings, that Fenwick began to recognise more fully thanhe had done before Mrs. Nightingale's share in what was, if not anabsolute repugnance to a revival of the unknown past, at least a veryready acquiescence in his ignorance of it. But surely, he reasonedwith himself, if this cause is making me contented with my darkness, it is the more reason that it should be penetrated. 

An uncomfortable variation of his dream of the resurrected first-floorcrossed his mind. Suppose he had forgotten the furniture, butremembered the place, and gone back to tenant it with a van-load ofnew chairs and tables. What would he have done with the poor oldfurniture?

CHAPTER XI

MORE GIRLS' CHATTER. SWEEPS AND DUSTMEN. HOW SALLY DISILLUSIONED MR. BRADSHAW. OUT OF THE FRYING-PAN

It is impossible to make Gluck's music anything but a foretaste ofheaven, as long as there is any show of accuracy in the way it isrendered. But, then, you must go straight on, and not go over adifficult phrase until you know it. You must play fair. Orpheus wouldprobably only have provoked Cerberus--certainly wouldn't have put himto sleep--if he had practised, and counted, and gone back six barsand done it again. 

But Cerberus wasn't at 260, Ladbroke Grove Road, on the Tuesdayfollowing Mrs. Erskine Peel's musical party, which was the next timeSally went to Lętitia Wilson. And it was as well that he wasn't, forSally stuck in a passage at the end of one page and the beginning ofthe next, so that you had to turn over in the middle; and it was badenough, goodness knew, without that! It might really have been thenorth-west passage, so insuperable did it seem. 

"I shall never get it right, I know, Tishy, " said the viola. 

And the violin replied: "Because you never pay any attention to thearpeggio, dear. It doesn't begin on the chord. It begins on the Gflat. Look here, now. One--two--three. One--two--three. "

"Yes, that's all very well. Who's going to turn over the leaf, Ishould like to know? I know I shall never do it. Not because thenerves of my head are giving way, but because I'm a duffer. "

"I suppose you know what that young man is, dear?" Sally accepts thisquite contentedly, and immediately skips a great deal of unnecessaryconversation. 

"I'm not in love with him, Tishy dear. "

"Didn't say you were, dear. But I suppose you don't know what he is, all the same. " Which certainly seems inconsecutive, but we reallycannot be responsible for the way girls talk. 

"Don't know, and don't want to know. What is he?"

"He's from Cattley's. " This throws a light on the conversation. Itshows that Sally had told Lętitia who she was going to meet at hermother's next evening. Sally is not surprised. 

"As if I didn't know all about this! As if he didn't tell me hisstory!"

"Like the mock-turtle in Alice?"

"Now, Tishy dear, is that an insinuation, or isn't it? Do be candid!"

"The mock-turtle told his story. Once, he was a real turtle. "

"Very well, Tishy dear. That's as much as to say Julius Bradshaw ismock. I can't see where the mockness comes in myself. He told _me_all about it, plain enough. "

"Yes--and you know what a rage Mrs. Erskine Peel is in, and says itwas an _éclaircissement_. "

"Why can't she be satisfied with English?... What! Of course, thereare _hundreds_ of English equivalents for _éclaircissement_. There'sbust-up. "

"That's only one. "

"Tishy dear, don't be aggravating! Keep to the point. Why mustn'tI have Julius Bradshaw to play with if I like because he's atCattley's?"

"You may, if you _like_, dear! As long as you're satisfied, it'sall right. "

"What fault have you to find with him?"

"I! None at all. It's all perfectly right. "

"You are _the_ most irritating girl. "

"Suppose we take the _adagio_ now--if you're rested. "

But Sally's back was up. "Not until you tell me what you really meanabout Julius Bradshaw. "

So Lętitia had her choice between an explicit statement of hermeaning, and an unsupported incursion into the _adagio_. 

"I suppose you'll admit there _are_ such things as socialdistinctions?"

Sally wouldn't admit anything whatever. If sociometry was to be ascience, it must be worked out without axioms or postulates. Lętitiaimmediately pointed out that if there were no such things as socialdistinctions of course there was no reason why Mr. Julius Bradshawshouldn't take his violin to Krakatoa Villa. "Or here, or anywhere, "concluded Lętitia, with a touch of pride in the status of LadbrokeGrove Road. Whereupon Sally surrendered as much of her case as shehad left. 

"You talk as if he was a sweep or a dustman, " said she. 

"I don't see why you should mind if I do, dear. Because, if there areto be no social distinctions, there's no reason why all the sweeps anddustmen in Christendom shouldn't come and play the violin at KrakatoaVilla.... Now, not _too_ slow, you know. One--two--three--four--that'lldo. " Perhaps Sally felt it would be a feeble line of defence to dwellon the scarcity of good violinists among sweeps and dustmen, and thatwas why she fell into rank without comment. 

This short conversation, some weeks on in the story, lets in one ortwo gleams of side-light. It shows that Sally's permission to theyoung man Bradshaw to call at her mother's had been promptly takenadvantage of--jumped at is the right expression. Also that Miss Wilsonhad stuck-up ideas. Also that Sally was a disciple of what used to becalled Socialism; only really nowadays such a lot of things get calledSocialism that the word has lost all the discriminative force onevalues so much in nouns substantive. Also (only we knew it already)that Sally was no lawyer. We do not love her the less, for our part. 

But nothing in this interchange of shots between Sally and her friend, nor in anything she said to her mother about Mr. Bradshaw, gives itsdue prominence to the fact that, though that young gentleman was adevout worshipper at the shrine of St. Satisfax, he had only become soon the Sunday after Miss Sally had casually mentioned the latter as asaint she frequented. Perhaps she "dismissed it from her mind, " and itwas obliging enough to go. Perhaps she considered she had done herduty by it when she put on record, in soliloquy, her opinion that ifpeople chose to be gaping idiots they might, and she couldn't helpit. She had a happy faculty for doing what she called putting youngwhippersnappers in their proper places. This only meant thatshe managed to convey to them that the lines they might elect towhippersnap on were not to be those of sentimental nonsense. Andperhaps she really dealt in the wisest way with Mr. Bradshaw'sromantic adoration of her at a distance when he fished for leave tocall upon her. The line he made his application on was that he shouldso like to play her a rapid movement by an unpronounceable Slav. Shesaid directly, why not come and bring his violin on Wednesday eveningat nine? That was her mother's address on the card on the fiddle-case. He must recollect it--which he did unequivocally. 

Now, if this young lady had had a fan, she might have tittered withit, or blushed slightly, and said, "Oh, Mr. Bradshaw!" or, "Oh, sir!"like in an old novel--one by Fanny Burney, or the like. But she didnothing of the sort, and the consequence was that he had, as it were, to change the _venue_ of his adoration--to make it a little lessromantic, in fact. Her frank and breezy treatment of the subject hadlet in a gust of fresh air, and blown away all imagination. For therenaturally was a good deal of that in a passion based on a singleinterview and nourished by weekly stimulants at morning services. In fact, when he presented himself at Krakatoa Villa on Wednesdayevening as invited--the day after Lętitia's remarks about his socialposition--he was quite prepared to be introduced to the young woman's_fiancé_, if.... Only, when he got as far as the _if_, he dropped thesubject. As soon as he found there was no such person he came tobelieve he would not have been much disconcerted if there had been. How far this was true, who can say?

He was personally one of those young men about whom you may easilyproduce a false impression if you describe them at all. This isbecause your reader will take the bit in his teeth, and run away withan idea. If you say a nose has a bridge to it, this directly producesin some minds an image like Blackfriars Bridge; that it is straight, the Ęginetan marbles; that it is _retroussé_, the dog in that Hogarthportrait. Suggest a cheerful countenance, and you stamp your subjectfor ever as a Shakespearian clown. So you must be content to know thatMr. Bradshaw was a good-looking young man, of dark complexion, and ofrather over medium height and good manners. If he had not been, hewould never, as an article of universal provision for parties, havepassed muster at Cattley's. He was like many other young men such asone sees in shops; but then, what very nice-looking young men onesometimes sees there! Sally had classed him as a young whippersnapper, but this was unjust, if it impugned his stature. She repeated thedisparaging epithet when, in further justification to Miss Wilson ofher asking him to her mother's house, she sketched a policy of conductto guide inexperienced girls in their demeanour towards new malefriends. "You let 'em come close to, and have a good look, " said thevulgar child. "Half of 'em will be disgusted, and go away in a huff. "

Mrs. Nightingale had known Mr. Bradshaw for a long time as a customerat a shop knows the staff in the background, mere office secretions, who only ooze out at intervals. For Bradshaw was not strictly acounter-jumper, although Miss Wilson more than once spoke of him so, adding, when it was pointed out to her that theoretically he neverwent behind counters, by jumping or otherwise, that that didn't makethe slightest difference: the principle was the same. 

Sally's mother did not share her friend's fancies. But she had notconfidence enough in the stability of the earth's crust to give wayfreely to her liberalism, drive a coach-and-six through the Classes, and talk to him freely about the shop. She did not know what a SocialSeismologist would say on the point. So she contented herself withtreating him as a matter of course, as a slight acquaintance whom shesaw often, merely asking him if that was he. To which the reply wasin the affirmative, like question-time in the Commons. 

"Is this the Strad? Let's have it out, " says Sally. For Mr. Bradshawpossessed a Strad. He brought it out of its coffin with something ofthe solicitude Petrarch might have shown to the remains of Laura, andwhen he had rough-sketched its condition of discord and correctedthe drawing, danced a Hungarian dance on it, and apologized for hispresumption in doing so. He played so very well that it certainly didseem rather a cruel trick of fate that gave him nerves in his head. Sally then said, might she look at it? and played chords and runs, just to feel what it was like. Her comment was that she wished herviola was a Strad. 

We record all this to show what, perhaps, is hardly worth theshowing--a wavering in a man's mind, and that man a young one. Arethey not at it all day long, all of them? Do they do anything butwaver?

When Sally said she wished her viola was a Strad, Mr. Bradshaw's mindshortly became conscious that some passing spook, of a low nature, hadmurmured almost inaudibly that it was a good job _his_ Strad wasn'ta viola. "Because, you see, " added the spook, "that quashes allspeculation whether you, Mr. Bradshaw, are glad or sorry you needn'tlay your instrument at this young lady's feet. Now, if immediatelyafter you first had that overwhelming impression of her--gotmetaphorically torpedoed, don't you know?--such a wish as hers hadbeen expressed, you probably would have laid both your Strad and yourheart at her feet, and said take my all!" But now that he had been sofar disillusioned by Sally's robust and breezy treatment of theposition, he was not quite sure the spook had not something to say forhimself. Mr. Bradshaw was content to come down off his high horse, andto plod along the dull path of a mere musical evening visitor ata very nice house. Pleasant, certainly, but not the aim of hisaspirations from afar at St. Satisfax's. His _amour propre_ was alittle wounded by that spook, too. Nothing keeps it up to the markbetter than a belief in one's stability--in love-matters, especially. 

He was not quite sure of the exact moment the spook intruded hisopinion, so _we_ can't be expected to know. Perhaps about the timeMiss Wilson came in (just as he was showing how carefully he hadlistened to Joachim) and said could _he_ play those? She wished _she_could. She was thrown off her guard by the finished execution, and forthe moment quite forgot Cattley's and the classitudes. Sally instantlyperceived her opening. She would enjoy catching Tishy out in any sortof way. So she said: "Mr. Bradshaw will show you how, Tishy dear; ofcourse he will. Only, not now, because if we don't begin, we shan'thave time for the long quartet. " If you say this sort of thing aboutstrangers in Society, you really ought to give them a chance. Sothought Lętitia to herself, and resolved to blow Sally up at the firstopportunity. 

As for that culprit, she completed her work, from her own position ofperfect security, with complacency at least. And she felt at the endof her evening (which we needn't dwell on, as it was all crotchets, minims, and F sharps and G flats) that her entrenchments had becomespontaneously stronger without exertion on her part. For there wereTishy and Mr. Bradshaw, between whom Sally had certainly understoodthere was a great gulf fixed, sitting on the very same sofa and talkingabout a Stradivarius. She concluded that, broadly speaking, Debrett'sbark is worse than his bite, and that he is, at heart, a veryaccommodating character. 

"I hope you saw Tishy, mamma dear. " So spoke Sally to her mother, after the musicians first, and then Fenwick, had dispersed theirseveral ways. Mrs. Nightingale seemed very _distraite_ andpreoccupied. 

"Saw Tishy what, kitten?"

"Tishy and Mr. Bradshaw on that sofa. "

"No, darling. Oh yes, I did. What about them?"

"After all that rumpus about shop-boys!" But her mother's attentionis not easy to engage this evening, somehow. Her mind seems somewhereelse altogether. But from where it is, it sees the vulgar child veryplainly indeed, as she puts up her face to be kissed with all itsanimation on it. She kisses it, animation and all, caressing the richblack hair with a hand that seems thoughtful. A hand can. Then shemakes a little effort to shake off something that draws her away, andcomes back rather perfunctorily to her daughter's sphere of interestand the life of town. 

"Did Lętitia call Mr. Bradshaw a shop-boy, chick?"

"Very nearly--at least, I don't know what you call not calling anybodyshop-boy if she didn't. " Her mother makes a further effort--comes backa little more. 

"What did she say, child?"

"Said you could always tell, and it was no use my talking, and thenegro couldn't change his spots. "

"She has some old-fashioned ideas. But how about calling him ashop-boy?"

"Not in words, but worse. Tishy always goes round and round. I wishshe'd _say_! However, Dr. Vereker quite agrees with me. _We_ think it_dishonest_!"

"What did Dr. Vereker think of Mr. Bradshaw?" We have failed to notethat the doctor was the 'cello in the quartet. 

"Now, mamma darling, fancy asking Dr. Prosy what he thinks! I wasn'tgoing to. Besides, as if it mattered what they think of each other!... Who? Why, men, of course!"

"Mr. Fenwick's a man, and you asked him. "

"Mr. Fenwick's a man on other lines--absolutely other. He doesn't comein really. " Her mother repeats the last four words, not exactlyderisively--rather, if anything, her accent and her smile may be saidto caress her daughter's words as she says them. She is such a silly, but such a dear little goose--that seems the implication. 

"We-e-ll, " says Sally, as she has said before, and we have tried tospell her. "I don't see anything in that, because, look how reasonable!Mr. Fenwick's ... Mr. Fenwick's ... Why, of course, entirely different. I say, mother dearest.... "

"What, kitten?"

"What were you and Mr. Fenwick talking about so seriously in the backdrawing-room?" The two are upstairs in the front bedroom at thisminute, by-the-bye. 

"Did you hear us, darling?"

"No, because of the row. But one could tell, for all that. " Then Sallysees in an instant that it is something her mother is not going totell her about, and makes immediate concession. "Where was the Majorgoing that he couldn't come?" she asks. "He generally makes a pointof coming when it's music. "

"I fancy he's dining at the Hurkaru, " says her mother. But she hasgone back into her preoccupation, and from within it externalises anopinion that we should be better in bed, or we shall never be up inthe morning. 

CHAPTER XII

WHAT FENWICK AND SALLY'S MOTHER HAD BEEN SAYING IN THE BACK DRAWING-ROOM. OP. 999. BACK IN THAT OLD GARDEN AGAIN, AND HOW GERRY COULD NOT SWIM. THE OLD TARTINI SONATA

As soon as ever Mr. Bradshaw touched his violin, and before ever hebegan to play his Hungarian Dance on all four strings at once, Mrs. Nightingale and Mr. Fenwick went away into the back drawing-room, notto be too near the music. Because there was a fire in both rooms. 

In the interval of time that had passed since Christmas Sally hadcontrived to "dismiss from her mind" Colonel Lund's previsions abouther mother and Mr. Fenwick. Or they had given warning, and gone oftheir own accord. For by now she had again fallen into the frame ofmind which classified her mother and Fenwick as semi-elderly people, and, so to speak, out of it all. So her mind assented readily todistance from the music as a sufficient reason for a secession to theback room. Non-combatants are just as well off the field of battle. 

But a closer observer than Sally at this moment would have noticedthat chat in an undertone had already set in in the back drawing-roomeven before the Hungarians had stopped dancing. Also that the applausethat came therefrom, when they did stop, had a certain perfunctoryair, as of plaudits something else makes room for, and comes backagain after. Not that she would have "seen anything in it" if she had, because, whatever her mother said or did was, in Sally's eyes, rightand normal. Abnormal and bad things were conceived and executedoutside the family. Nor, in spite of the _sotto voce_, was thereanything Sally could not have participated in, whatever exception shemight have taken to something of a patronising tone, inexcusabletowards our own generation even in the most semi-elderly people onrecord. 

Her mother, at Sally's latest observation point, had taken the largearmchair quite on the other side of the rug, to be as far off themusic as possible. Mr. Fenwick, in reply to a flying remark of herown, she being at the moment a music-book seeker, wouldn't bring theother large armchair in front of the fire and be comfortable, thankyou. He liked this just as well. Sally had then commented on Mr. Fenwick's unnatural love of uncomfortable chairs "when he wasn'twalking about the room. " She fancied, as she passed on, that she heardher mother address him as "Fenwick, " without the "Mr. " So she did. 

"You are a restless man, Fenwick! I wonder were you so before theaccident? Oh dear! there I am on that topic again!" But he onlylaughed. 

"It doesn't hurt _me_, " he said. "That reminds me that I wanted toremind _you_ of something you said you would tell me. You know--thatevening the kitten went to the music-party--something you would tellme some time. "

"I know; I'll tell you when they've got to their music, if there isn'ttoo much row. Don't let's talk while this new young man's playing; itseems unkind. It won't matter when they're all at it together. " But inspite of good resolutions silence was not properly observed, and theperfunctory pause came awkwardly on the top of a lapse. Fenwick thensaid, as one who avails himself of an opportunity:

"No need to wait for the music; they can't hear a word we say in there. We can't hear a word _they_ say. "

"Because they're making such a racket. " Mrs. Nightingale paused witha listening eye, trying to disprove their inaudibility. The examinationconfirmed Fenwick. "I like it, " she continued--"a lot of young voices. It's much better when you don't make out what they say. When you can'thear a word, you fancy some sense in it. " And then went on listening, and Fenwick waited, too. He couldn't well fidget her to keep herpromise; she would do it of herself in time. It might be she preferredtalking under cover of the music. She certainly remained silent tillit came; then she spoke. 

"What was it made me say that to you about something I would tell you?Oh, I know. You said, perhaps if you knew your past, you would notcourt catechism about it. And I said that, knowing mine, _I_ shouldnot either. Wasn't that it?" She fixed her eyes on him as though tohold him to the truth. Perhaps she wanted his verbal recognition ofthe possibility that she, too, like others, might have left things inthe past she would like to forget on their merits--cast-off garmentson the road of life. It may have been painful to her to feel his faithin herself an obstacle to what she wished at least to hint to him, even if she could not tell him outright. She did not want too muchdivine worship at her shrine--a ready recognition of her position ofmortal frailty would be so much more sympathetic, really. A feelingperhaps traceably akin to what many of us have felt, that if ourfather the devil--"auld Nickie Ben"--would only tak' a thought andmend, as he aiblins might, he would be the very king of fatherconfessors. If details had to be gone into, we should be sure of _his_sympathy. 

"Yes, that was it. And I suppose I looked incredulous. " Thus Fenwick. 

"You looked incredulous. I would sooner you should believe me. Wouldyou hand me down that fire-screen off the chimney-piece? Thank you. "She was hardening herself to the task she had before her. He gave herthe screen, and as he resumed his seat drew it nearer to her. Mozart'sOp. 999 had just started, and it was a little doubtful if voices couldbe heard unless, in Sally's phrase, they were close to. 

"I shall believe you. Does what you were going to tell me relateto----"

"Go on. "

"To your husband?"

"Yes. " The task had become easier suddenly. She breathed more freelyabout what was to come. "I wish you to know that he may be stillliving. I have heard nothing to the contrary. But I ought to speakof him as the man who was my husband. He is no longer that. " Fenwickinterposed on her hesitation. 

"You have divorced him?" But she shook her head--shook a longnegative. And Fenwick looked up quickly, and uttered a little sharp"Ah!" as though something had struck him. The slow head-shake said asplain as words could have said it, "I wish I could say yes. " Soexpressive was it that Fenwick did not even speculate on the thirdalternative--a separation without a divorce. He saw at once he couldmake it easier for her if he spoke out plain, treating the bygone asa thing that _could_ be spoken of plainly. 

"He divorced you?" She was very white, but kept her eyes steadilyfixed on him over the fire-screen, and her voice remained perfectlyfirm and collected. The music went on intricately all the while. Shespoke next. 

"To all intents and purposes. There was a technical obstacle to alegal divorce, but he tried for one. We parted sorely against my will, for I loved him, and now it is over nineteen years since I saw himlast, or heard of him or from him. But he was absolutely blameless. Unless, indeed, it is to be counted blame to him that he could notbear what no other man could have borne. I cannot possibly give youall details. But I wish you to hear this that I have to tell you frommyself. It is painful to me to tell, but it would be far worse thatyou should hear it from any one else. I feel sure it is safe to tellyou; that you will not talk of it to others--least of all to thatlittle chick of mine. "

"You may trust me--indeed, you may--without reserve. I see you wishto tell me no more, so I will not ask it. "

"And blame me as little as possible?"

"I cannot blame you. "

"Before you say that, listen to as much as I can tell you of thestory. I was a young girl when I went out alone to be married to himin India. We had parted in England eight months before, and he hadremained unchanged--his letters all told the same tale. I quarrelledwith my mother--as I now see most unreasonably--merely because shewished to marry again. Perhaps she was a little to blame not to bemore patient with a headstrong, ill-regulated girl. I was both. Itended in my writing out to him in India that I should come out andmarry him at once. My mother made no opposition. " She remained silentfor a little, and her eyes fell. Then she spoke with more effort, rather as one who answers her own thoughts. "No, I need say nothing ofthe time between. It was no excuse for the wrong I did _him_. I cantell you what that was.... " It did not seem easy, though, when it cameto actual words. Fenwick spoke into the pause. 

"Why tell me now? Tell me another time. "

"I prefer now. It was this way: I kept something back from him tillafter we were married--something I should have told him before. Had Idone so, I believe to this moment we should never have parted. But myconcealment threw doubt on all else I said.... I am telling more thanI meant to tell. " She hesitated again, and then went on. "That was mywrong to him--the concealment. But, of course, it was not the groundof the divorce proceedings. " Fenwick stopped her again. 

"Why tell me any more? You are being led on--are leading yourselfon--to say more than you wish. "

"Well, I will leave it there. Only, Fenwick, understand this: myhusband was young and generous and noble-hearted. Had I trusted him, I believe all might have gone well, even though he.... " She hesitatedagain, and then cancelled something unsaid. "The concealment was myfault--the mistrust. That was all. Nothing else was my _fault_. " Asshe says the words in praise of her husband she finds it a pleasureto let her eyes rest on the grave, handsome, puzzled face that, afterall, really is _his_. She catches herself wondering--so oddly do theundercurrents of mind course about--where he got that sharp white scaracross his nose. It was not there in the old days. 

She looks at him until he, too, looks up, and their eyes meet. "Well, then, " she says, "I will tell you no more. Blame me as little aspossible. " And to this repetition of her previous words he says again, "I cannot blame you, " very emphatically. 

But Mrs. Nightingale felt perplexed at his evident sincerity; wouldrather he should have indulged in truisms, we were not all of usperfect, and so forth. When she spoke again, some bars of the musiclater, she took for granted that his mind, like hers, was stilldwelling on his last words. She felt half sorry she had, so to speak, switched off the current of the conversation. 

"If you will think over what I have told you, Fenwick, you will seethat you cannot help doing so. "

"How can that be?"

"Surely! My husband sought to divorce me, and was himself absolutelyblameless. How can you do otherwise than blame me?"

"Partly--only partly--because I see you are keeping backsomething--something that would exonerate you. I cannot believe youwere to blame. "

"Listen, Fenwick! As I said, I cannot tell you the whole; and theMajor, who is the only man alive who knows all the story, will, Iknow, refuse to tell you anything, even if you ask him, and that Iwish you not to do. "

"I should not dream of asking him. "

"Well, he would refuse. I know it. But I want you to know all I cantell you. I do not want any groundless excuses made for me. I will notaccept any absolution from any one on a false pretence. You see whatI mean. "

"I see perfectly. I am not sure, though, that you see my meaning. Butnever mind that. Is there anything further you would really like meto know?"

She waited a little, and then answered, keeping her eyes always fixedon Fenwick: "Yes, there is. "

But at this moment the first movement of Op. 999 came to a perfectand well thought out conclusion, bearing in mind everything that hadbeen said on six pages of ideas faultlessly interchanged by fourinstruments, and making due allowance for all exceptions each hadcourteously taken to the other. But Op. 999 was going on to thesecond movement directly, and only tolerated a pause for a fewstring-tightenings and trial-squeaks, to get in tune, and the removalof a deceased fly from a piano-candle. The remark from the back-roomthat we could hear beautifully in here seemed to fall flat, thesecond violin merely replying "All right!" passionlessly. Theinstruments then asked each other if they were ready, and answeredyes. Then some one counted four suggestively, for a start, and lifewent on again. 

Mrs. Nightingale and Fenwick sat well on into the music before eitherspoke. He, resolved not to seem to seek or urge any information atall; all was to come spontaneously from her. She, feeling thedifficulty of telling what she had to tell, and always oppressed withthe recollection of what it had cost her to make her revelation tothis selfsame man nineteen years ago. She wished he would give theconversation some lift, as he had done before, when he asked if whatshe had to tell referred to her husband. But, although he would gladlyhave repeated his assistance, he could see his way to nothing, thistime, that seemed altogether free from risk. How if he were toblunder into ascribing to her something more culpable than her actualshare in the past? She half guessed this; then, seeing that speechmust come from herself in the end, took heart and faced the positionresolutely. She always did. 

"You know this, Fenwick, do you not, that when there is a divorce, thehusband takes the children from their mother--always, when she is inthe wrong; too often, when she is blameless. I have told you I was theone to blame, and I tell you now that though my husband's applicationfor a divorce failed, from a technical point of law, all things cameabout just as though he had succeeded. Don't analyse it now; take itall for granted--you understand?"

"I understand. Suppose it so! And then?"

"And then this. That little monkey of mine--that little unconsciousfiddling thing in there"--and as Mrs. Nightingale speaks, the sound ofa caress mixes with the laugh in her voice; but the pain comes back asshe goes on--"My Sallykin has been mine, all her life! My poor husbandnever saw her in her childhood. " As she says the word _husband_she has again a vivid _éclat_ of the consciousness that it ishe--himself--sitting there beside her. And the odd thought that mixesitself into this, strange to say, is--"The pity of it! To think howlittle he has had of Sally in all these years!"

He, for his part, can for the moment make nothing of this part ofthe story. He can give his head the lion-mane shake she knows him byso well, but it brings him no light. He is reduced to mere slowrepetition of her data; his hand before his eyes to keep his brain, that has to think, clear of distractions from without. 

"Your husband never saw her. She has been yours all her life. Had shebeen your husband's child, he would have exercised his so-calledrights--his _legal_ rights--and taken her away. Are those thefacts--so far?"

"Yes--go on. No--stop; I will tell you. At the beginning of this yearI should have been married exactly twenty years. Sally isnineteen--you remember her birthday?"

"Nineteen in August. Now, let me think!" Just at this moment the secondmovement of Op. 999 came to an end, and gave an added plausibility tothe blank he needed to ponder in. The viola in the next room lookedround across her chair-back, and said, "I say, mother"--to a repetitionof which Mrs. Nightingale replied what did her daughter say? Whatshe said was that her mother and Mr. Fenwick were exactly like thecanaries. They talked as hard as they could all through the music, andwhen it stopped they shut up. Wasn't that true? To which her motheranswered affirmatively, adding, "You'll have to put a cloth over us, chick, and squash us out. "

Fenwick was absorbed in thought, and did not notice this interlude. Hedid not speak until the music began again. Then he said abruptly:

"I see the story now. Sally's father was not.... "

"Was not my husband. " There is not a trace of cowardice or hesitationin her filling out the sentence. There is pain, but that again diesaway in her voice as she goes on to speak of her daughter. "I do notconnect him with her now. She is--a thing of itself--a thing of herself!She is--she is Sally. Well, you see what she is. "

"I see she is a very dear little person. " Then he seems to want to saysomething and to pause on the edge of it; then, in answer to a "yes"of encouragement from her, continues, "I was going to say that shemust be very like him--like her father. "

"Very like?" she asks--"or very unlike? Which did you mean?"

"I mean very like as to looks. Because she is so unlike you. "

"She is like enough to him, as far as looks go. It's her only fault, poor chick, and _she_ can't help it. Besides, I mind it less now thatI have more than half forgiven him, for her sake. " The tone of hervoice mixes a sob and a laugh, although she utters neither, and isquite collected. "But she is quite unlike him in character. Sally isnot an angel--oh dear, no!" The laugh predominates. "But----"

"But what?"

"She is not a devil. " And as she said this the pain was all back againin the dropped half-whisper in which she said it. And in that momentFenwick made his guess of the whole story, which maybe went nearerthan we shall do with the information we have to go upon. In thisnarrative, as we tell it now, that story is _known_ only to its chiefactor, and to her old friend who is now dining at the Hurkaru Club. 

 * * * * *

The third movement of Op. 999 was not a very long one, and, comingto an end at this point, seemed to supply a reason for silence thatwas not unwelcome in the back drawing-room. The end of a tryingconversation had been attained. Both speakers could now affectattention to what was going on in the front. This had taken the formof a discussion between Mr. Julius Bradshaw and Miss Lętitia Wilson, who was anxious to transfer her position of first violin to that younggentleman. We regret to have to report that Miss Sally's agreementwith her friend about the desirability had been _sotto voce_'d inthese terms: "Yes, Tishy dear! Do make the shop-boy play the lastmovement. " And Miss Wilson had then suggested it, saying there wasa bit she knew she couldn't play. "And you expect _me_ to!" said theowner of the Strad, "when I haven't so much as looked at it for threeyears past. " To which Miss Sally appended a marginal note, "Stuffand nonsense! Don't be affected, Mr. Bradshaw. " However, aftercompliments, and more protestations from its owner, the Strad wasbrought into hotchpot, and Lętitia abdicated. 

"Won't you come and sit in here, to be away from the music?" said theback-drawing-room. But Lętitia wanted to see Mr. Bradshaw's fingeringof that passage. We are more interested in the back drawing-room. 

Like many other athletic men--and we have seen how strongly thischaracter was maintained in Fenwick--he hated armchairs. Even in theuncomfortable ones--by which we mean the ones _we_ dislike--hisrestless strength would not remain quiet for any length of time. Atintervals he would get up and walk about the room, exasperating thesedate, and then making good-humoured concession to their weakness. Mrs. Nightingale could remember all this in Gerry the boy, twentyyears ago. 

If it had not been for that music, probably he would have walked aboutthe room over that stiff problem in dates he had just grappled with. As it was, he remained in his chair to solve it--that is, if he didsolve it. Possibly, the moment he saw something important turned onthe date of Sally's birth, he jumped across the solution to theconclusion it was to lead to. Given the conclusion, the calculationhad no interest for him. 

But the story his mind constructed to fit that conclusion stunned him. It knitted his brows and clenched his teeth for him. It made the handthat had been hanging loose over the uncomfortable chair-back closesavagely on something--a throat, perhaps, that his imaginationsupplied? How like he looked, thought his companion, to himself on oneoccasion twenty years ago! But his anger now was on her behalf alone;it was not so in that dreadful time she hoped he might never recollect. If only his memory of all the past might remain as now, a book witha locked clasp and a lost key!

She watched him as he sat there, and saw a calmer mood come back uponhim. Each wanted a _raison d'źtre_ for a silent pause, and neither wassorry for the desire each might ascribe to the other of hearing thelast movement of the music undisturbed. Op. 999 was prospering, there was no doubt of it! Lętitia Wilson was a very fair example ofa creditable career at the R. A. M. But she was not quite equal to thisunfortunate victim of a too nervous system, who could play like anangel for half an hour, mind you--not more. This was his half-hour;and it was quite reasonable for Fenwick to take for granted that hishostess would like to pay attention to it, or _vice-versa_. So bothsat silent. 

But as she sat listening to Op. 999, and watching wonderingly thestrange victim of oblivion, of whom she knew--scarcely acknowledgingit always, though--that she had once for a short time called himhusband, her mind went back to an old time when he and she were young:before the tragic memory that she sometimes thought might have beenlived down had come into her life and his. And a scene rose up beforeher out of that old time--a scene of young men, almost boys, and girlswho but the other day were in the nursery, playing lawn-tennis in ahappy garden, with never a thought for anything in this wide world butthemselves, and each other, and the scoring, and how jolly it would bein the house-boat at Henley to-morrow. And then this garden-scenea little later in the moonrise, and herself and one of the players, who was Gerry--this very man--left by the other two to themselves, on a garden-seat his arm hung over, just as it did now over thatchair-back. How exactly he sat then as he sat now, his other hand incharge of the foot he had crossed on his knee, just as now, to keepit from a slip along his lawn-tennis flannels! How well she couldremember the tennis-shoe, with its ribbed rubber sole, in place ofthat highly-polished calf thing! And she could remember every wordthey said, there in the warm moonlight. 

"What a silly boy you are!"

"I don't care. I shall always say exactly the same. I can't help it. "

"All silly boys say that sort of thing. Then they change their minds. "

"I never said it to any girl in my life but you, Rosey. I never thoughtit. I shall never say it again to any one but you. "

"Don't be nonsensical!"

"I'm _not_! It's _true_. "

"Wait till you've been six months in India, Gerry. "

And then the recollection of what followed made it seem infinitelystrange to her that Fenwick should remain, as he had remained, immovable. If the hand she could remember so well, for all it hadgrown so scarred and service-worn and hairy, were to take hers as itdid then, as they sat together on the garden-seat, would it shake nowas formerly? If his great strong arm her memory still felt round herwere to come again now, would she feel in it the tremor of the passionhe was shaken by then; and in caresses such as she half reproved himfor, but had no heart to resist, the reality of a love then young andstrong and full of promise for the days to come? And now--what? Theperished trunk of an uprooted tree: the shadow of a half-forgottendream. 

As he sat silent, only now and then by some slight sign, some newknitting of the brow or closing of the hand, showing the tension of thefeeling produced by the version his mind had made of the story halftold to him--as he sat thus, under a kind of feint of listening tothe music, the world grew stranger and stranger to his companion. Shehad fancied herself strong enough to tell the story, but had hardlyreckoned with his possible likeness to himself. She had thought thatshe could keep the twenty years that had passed clearly in her mind;could deal with the position from a good, sensible, matter-of-factstandpoint. 

The past was past, and happily forgotten by him. The present had stillits possibilities, if only the past might remain forgotten. Surely shecould rely on herself to find the nerve to go through what was, afterall, a mere act of duty. Knowing, or rather feeling, that Fenwick wouldask her to marry him as soon as he dared--it was merely a question oftime--her duty was plainly to forewarn him--to make sure that he wasalive to the antecedents of the woman he was offering himself to. Sheknew _his_ antecedents; as many as she wished to know. If the twentyyears of oblivion concealed irregularity, immorality--well, was she notto blame for it? Was ever a better boy than Gerry, as she knew him, tothe day they parted? It was her fault or misfortune that had casthim all adrift. As to that troublesome question of a possible wifeelsewhere, in the land of his oblivion, she had quite made up her mindabout that. Every effort had been made to find such a one, and failed. If she reappeared, it would be her own duty to surrender Fenwick--if hewished to go back. If he did not, and his other wife wished to be free, surely in the _chicane_ of the law-courts there must be some shufflethat could be for once made useful to a good end. 

Mrs. Nightingale had reasoned it all out in cold blood, and she was, as we have told you, a strong woman. But had she really taken her ownmeasure? Could she sit there much longer; with him beside her, and hiswords of twenty years ago sounding in her ears; almost the feeling ofthe kisses she had so dutifully pointed out the lawlessness, andallowed the repetition of, in that old forgotten time--forgotten byhim, never by her! Was it possible to bear, without crying out, thebewilderment of a mixed existence such as that his presence andidentity forced upon her, wrenching her this way and that, interweavingthe woof of _then_ with the weft of _now_, even as in that labyrinth ofmusical themes and phrases in the other room they crossed and recrossedone another at the bidding of each instrument as its turn came to tellits tale? Her brain reeled and her heart ached under the intolerablestress. Could she still hold on, or would she be, after all, drivento make some excuse, and run for the solitude of her own room to livedown the tension as best she might alone?

The music itself came to her assistance. Its triumphant strength, inan indescribable outburst of hope or joy or mastery of Fate, as it drewnear to its final close, spoke to her of the great ocean that liesbeyond the crabbed limits of our stinted lives, the boundless sea ourrivulets of life steal down to, to be lost in; and while it lasted madeit possible for her to be still. She took her eyes from Fenwick, andwaited. When she raised them again, in the silence Op. 999 came to anend in, she saw that he had moved. His face had gone into his hands;and as she looked up, his old action of rubbing them into his loosehair, and shaking it, had come back, and his strong identity with hisboyhood, dependent on the chance of a moment, had disappeared. He gotup suddenly, and after a turn across the room he was in, walked intothe other one, and contributed his share to the babble of felicitationor comment that followed what was clearly thought an achievement inmusical rendering. 

"Oh dear, oh dear!" said Lętitia Wilson. "Was ever a poor girl so satupon? I feel quite flat!" This was not meant to be taken too much _aupied de la lettre_. It was merely a method of praise of Mr. Bradshaw. 

"But what a jolly shame you had to give it up!" This was Sally inundisguised admiration. But in Mr. Julius Bradshaw's eyes, Sally'sidentity had undergone a change. Her breezy frankness had made hay ofa _grande passion_, and was blowing the hay all over the field. He hadcome close to, and had a good look; but he will hardly go away in ahuff, although he feels a little silly over his public worship of thesepast weeks. Just at this moment of the story, however, he is veryapologetic towards Miss Wilson; on whom, if she reports correctly, hehas sat. He tries no pretences with a view to her reinstatement, evenon a par with himself. He knows, and every one knows, they would beseen through immediately. It is no use assuring her she is a capitalplayer, of her years. Much better let it alone!

"Are you any the worse, Mr. Bradshaw?" says Dr. Vereker. Obviously, asa medical authority, it is his duty to "voice" this inquiry. So hevoices it. 

"N--no; but that's about as much as I can do, with safety. It won't doto spoil my night's rest, and be late at the shop. " It was easy to talkabout the shop with perfect unreserve after such a performance as that. 

"Oh dear! we are so sorry for you!" Thus the two girls. And concurrencecomes in various forms from Vereker, Fenwick, and the pianist, whom wehaven't mentioned before. He was a cousin of Miss Wilson's, and was oneof those unfortunate young men who have no individuality whatever. Butpianists have to be human unless you can afford a pianola. You mayspeak of them as Mr. What's-his-name, or Miss Thingummy, but you mustgive them tea or coffee or cake or sandwiches, or whatever is broughtin on a tray. This young man's name, we believe, was Elsley--NobodyElsley, Miss Sally in her frivolity had thought fit to christen him. You know how in your own life people come in and go out, and you neverknow anything about them. Even so this young man in this story. 

"I was very sorry for myself, I assure you"--it is Bradshaw whospeaks--"when I had to make up my mind to give it up. But it couldn'tbe helped!" He speaks without reserve, but as of an unbearable subject;in fact, Sally said afterwards to Tishy, "it seemed as if he was goingto cry. " He doesn't cry, though, but goes on: "At one time I reallythought I should have gone and jumped into the river. "

"Why didn't you?" asks Sally. "I should have. "

"Yes, silly Sally!" says Lętitia; "and then you would have swum likea fish. And the police would have pulled you out. And you would havelooked ridiculous!"

But Sally is off on a visit to her mother in the next room. 

"Tired, mammy darling?"

She kisses her, and her mother answers: "Yes, love, a little, " andkisses her back. 

"Doesn't he play _beautifully_, mother?" says Sally. 

But her mother says "Yes" absently. Her attention is taken off bysomething else. What is wrong with Mr. Fenwick? Sally doesn't thinkanything is. It's only his way. 

"I'm sure there's something wrong, " says Mrs. Nightingale, and getsup to go into the front-room rather wearily. "I shall go to bed soon, poppet, " she says, "and leave you to do the honours. Is anything wrong, doctor?" She speaks under her voice to Vereker, looking very slightlyround at Fenwick, who, after the movement that alarmed her--a ratherunusually marked head-shake and pressure of his hands on his eyes--isstanding looking down at the fire, on the rug with his back to her, asshe speaks to Vereker. 

"I fancy he's had what he calls a recurrence, " says the doctor. "Nothingto hurt. These half-recollections will go on until the memory comesback in earnest. It may some time. "

"Are you talking about me, doctor?" His attention may have been caughtby a reflection in a glass before him. "Yes, it was a very queerrecurrence. Something about lawn-tennis. Only it had to do with whatMiss Wilson said about the police fishing Sally out of the water. " Helooks round for Miss Wilson, but she is at the other end of the roomon a sofa talking to Bradshaw about the Strad, as recorded once before. Sally testifies:

"Tishy said it wouldn't work--trying to drown yourself if you couldswim. No more it would. "

"But why should that make me think of lawn-tennis? It did. " He looksseriously distressed by it--can make nothing out. 

"Kitten, " says Sally's mother to her suddenly, "I think I shall go awayto bed. I'm feeling very tired. "

She says good-night comprehensively, and departs. But she is so clearlythe worse for something that her daughter follows her to see that thesomething is not serious. Outside she reassures Sally, who returns. Ohno, she is only tired; really nothing else. 

But what drove her out of the room was a feeling that she must be aloneand silent. Could her position be borne at all? Yes, with patience andself-control. But that "why should it make me think of lawn-tennis?"was trying. Not only the pain of still more revived association, butthe fear that his memory might travel still further into the past. Itwas living on the edge of the volcano. 

Her own memory had followed on, too, taking up the thread of that oldinterview in the garden of twenty years ago. She had felt again theclasp of his arm, the touch of his hand; had heard his voice ofpassionate protest--protest against the idea that he could ever forget. And she had then pretended to make a half-joke of his earnestness. Whatwould he do now, really, if she were to tell him she preferred hisgreat friend Arthur Fenwick to him? That was nonsense, he said. Sheknew she didn't. Besides, Arthur wanted Jessie Nairn. Why, didn't theywaltz all the waltzes at the party last week?... Well, so did we, forthat matter, all-but.... And just look how they had run away together!Wasn't that them coming back? Yes, it was; and artificial calm ensued, and more self-contained manners. But then, before the other two younglovers could rejoin them, she had time for a word more. 

"No, dear Gerry, seriously. If I were to write out _no_ to you inIndia--a great big final NO--then what do you think you would do?"

"I know what I _think_ I should do. I should throw myself into theHooghly or the Ganges. "

"You silly boy! You would swim about, whether you liked or no. And thenJemadars, or Shastras, or Sudras, or something would come and pull youout. And then how ridiculous you would look!"

"No, Rosey, because I can't swim. Isn't it funny?"

Then she recollected _his_ friend's voice striking in with: "What'sthat? Gerry Palliser swim! Of course he can't. He can wrestle, or run, or ride, or jump; and he's the best man I know with the gloves on. Butswim he _can't_! That's flat!" Also how Gerry had then told eagerly howhe was nearly drowned once, and Arthur fished him up from the bottom ofAbingdon Lock. The latter went on:

"It was after that we tattooed each other, his name on my arm, myname on his, so as not to quarrel. You know, I suppose, that men whotattoo each other's arms can't quarrel if they try?" Arthur showed"A. Palliser, " tattooed blue on his arm. Both young men were very graveand earnest about the safeguard. And then she remembered a question sheasked, and how both replied with perfect gravity: "Of course, sure to!"The question had been:--Was it invariable that all men quarrelled ifone saved the other from drowning?

She sits upstairs alone by the fire in her bedroom, and dreams againthrough all the past, except the nightmare of her life--_that_ shealways shudders away from. Sally will come up presently, and then shewill feel ease again. Now, it is a struggle against fever. 

She can hear plainly enough--for the house is but a London suburbanvilla--the strains from the drawing-room of what is possibly the mosthackneyed violin music in the world--the Tartini (so-called) DevilSonata--every phrase, every run, every chord an enthralling mysterystill, an utterance none can explain, an inexhaustible thing no age canwither, and no custom stale. It is so soothing to her that it matterslittle if it makes them late. But that young man will destroy hisnerves to a certainty outright. 

Then comes the chaos of dispersal--the broken fragments of theintelligible a watchful ear may pick out. Dr. Vereker won't have a cab;he will leave the 'cello till next time, and walk. Mr. Bradshaw wantsto get to Bayswater. Of course, that's all in our way--we being MissWilson and the cousin, the nonentity. We can give Mr. Bradshaw a liftas far as he goes, and then he can take the growler on. Then moregood-nights are wished than the nature of things will admit of beforeto-morrow, Fenwick and Vereker light something to smoke, with apreposterous solicitude to use only one tandsticker between them, andwalk away umbrella-less. From which we see that "it" is holding up. Then comes silence, and a consciousness of a policeman musing, andsuspecting doors have been left stood open. 

And it was then Sally went upstairs and indited her friend for sittingon that sofa after calling him a shop-boy. And she didn't forget it, either, for after she and her mother were in bed, and presumablybetter, she called out to her. 

"I say, mammy!"

"What, dear?"

"Isn't that St. John's Church?"

"Isn't which St. John's Church?"

"Where Tishy goes?"

"Yes, Ladbroke Grove Road. Why?"

"Because now Mr. Bradshaw will go there--public worship!"

"Will he, dear? Suppose we go to sleep. " But she really meant "you, "not "we"; for it was a long time before she went to sleep herself. Shehad plenty to think of, and wanted to be quiet, conscious of Sally inthe neighbourhood. 

 * * * * *

We hope our reader was not misled, as we ourselves were, when Mrs. Nightingale first saw the name on Fenwick's arm, into supposing thatshe accepted it as his real name. She knew better. But then, how wasshe to tell him his name was Palliser? Think it over. 

CHAPTER XIII

OF A SLEEPLESS NIGHT MRS. NIGHTINGALE HAD, AND HOW SALLY WOKE UP AND TALKED

Was it possible, thought Rosalind in the sleepless night that followed, that the recurrence of the tennis-garden in Fenwick's mind mightgrow and grow, and be a nucleus round which the whole memory of hislife might re-form? Even so she had seen, at a chemical lecture, asupersaturated solution, translucent and spotless, suddenly fill withinnumerable ramifications from one tiny crystal dropped into it. Mightnot this shred of memory chance to be a crystal of the right saltin the solvent of his mind, and set going a swift arborescence topenetrate the whole? Might not one branch of that tree be a terriblebranch--one whose leaves and fruit were poisoned and whose stem wasclothed with thorns? A hideous metaphor of the moment--call it theworst in her life--when her young husband, driven mad with theknowledge that had just forced its way into his reluctant mind, hadalmost struck her away from him, and with angry words, of which theleast was traitress, had broken through the effort of her hands tohold him, and left her speechless in her despair. 

It was such a nightmare idea, this anticipation that next time she metGerry's eyes she might see again the anger that was in them on thatblackest of her few married days, might see him again vanish fromher, this time never to return. And it spread an ever growing horror, greater and greater in the silence and the darkness of the night, tillit filled all space and became a power that thrilled through everynerve, and denied the right of any other thing in the infinite voidto be known or thought of. Which of us has not been left, with noprotection but our own weak resolutions, to the mercy of a dominantidea in the still hours when others were near us sleeping whom wemight not wake to say one word to save us?

What would his face be like--how would his voice sound--when she sawhim next? Or would some short and cruel letter come to say he hadremembered all, and now--for all the gratitude he owed her--he couldnot bear to look upon her face again, hers who had done him such awrong! If so, what should she--what could she do?

There was only one counter-thought to this that brought with it amomentary balm. She would send Sally to him to beg, beseech, implorehim not to repeat his headstrong error of the old years, to swear tohim that if only he could know all he would forgive--nay, more, thatif he could know quite all--the very whole of the sad story--not onlywould he forgive, but rather seek forgiveness for himself for the tooharsh judgment he so rashly formed. 

What should she say to Sally? how should she instruct her to pleadfor her? Never mind that now. All she wanted in her lonely, nervousdelirium was the ease the thought gave her, the mere thought of theforce of Sally's fixed, immovable belief--_that_ she was certainof--that whatsoever her mother had done was right. Never mind the exactamount of revelation she would have to make to Sally. She might surelyindulge the idea, just to get at peace somehow, till--as pray Heaven itmight turn out--she should know that Gerry's mind was still unconsciousof its past. The chances were, so she thought mechanically to herself, that all her alarms were groundless. 

And at the first--strange as it is to tell--Sally's identity was onlythat of the daughter she had now, that filled her life, and gave herthe heart to live. She was the Sally space was full of for her. _What_she was, and _why_ she was, merged, as it usually did, in the broadfact of her existence. But there was always the chance that this _what_and _why_--two bewildering imps--should flaunt their unsolved conundrumthrough her mother's baffled mind. There they were, sure enough in theend, enjoying her inability to answer, dragging all she prayed dailyto be better able to forget out into the light of the memory they hadkindled. There they were, chuckling over her misery, and hiding--soRosalind feared--a worse question than any, keeping it back for afinal stroke to bring her mental fever to its height--how could Sallybe the daughter of a devil and her soul be free from the taint of hisdamnation?

If Rosalind had only been well read in the medięval classics, and hadknown that story of Merlin's birth--the Nativity that was to rewritethe Galilean story in letters of Hell, and give mankind for everto be the thrall of the fallen angel his father! And now the babeat its birth was snatched away to the waters of baptism, and poorSatan--alas!--obliged to cast about for some new plan of campaign;which, to say truth, he must have found, and practised with somesuccess. But Rosalind had never read this story. Had she done so shemight have felt, as we do, that the tears of an absolutely blamelessmother might serve to cleanse the inherited sin from a babe unborn assurely as the sacramental fount itself. 

And it may be that some such thought had woven itself into the storyFenwick's imagination framed for Rosalind the evening before--that timethat she said of Sally, "She is not a devil!" The exact truth, theever-present record that was in her mind as she said this, must remainunknown to us. 

But to return to her as she is now, racked by a twofold mental fever, an apprehension of a return of Fenwick's memory, and a stimulatedrecrudescence of her own; with the pain of all the scars burnt intwenty years ago revived now by her talk with him of a few hours since. She could bear it no longer, there alone in the darkness of the night. She _must_ get at Sally, if only to look at her. Why, that child nevercould be got to wake unless shaken when she was wanted. Ten to one shewouldn't this time. And it would make all the difference just to seeher there, alive and leagues away in dreamland. If her sleep lastedthrough the crackle of a match to light her candle, heard through theopen door between their rooms, the light of the candle itself wouldn'twake her. Rosalind remembered as she lit the candle and found herdressing-gown--for the night air struck cold--how once, when aten-year-old, Sally had locked herself in, and no noise or knockingwould rouse her; how she herself, alarmed for the child, had thereonsummoned help, and the door was broken open, but only to be greetedby the sleeper, after explanation, with, "Why didn't you knock?"

She was right in her forecast, and perhaps it was as well the girl didnot wake. She would only have had a needless fright, to see her mother, haggard with self-torment, by her bedside at that hour. So Rosalindgot her full look at the rich coils of black hair that framed up theunconscious face, that for all its unconsciousness had on it thecontentment of an amused dreamer, at the white ivory skin it set offso well, at the one visible ear that heard nothing, or if it did, translated it into dream, and the faint rhythmic movement that vouchedfor soundless breath. She looked as long as she dared, then moved away. But she had barely got her head back on her pillow when "Was that you, mother?" came from the next room. Her mother always said of Sally thatnothing was certain but the _imprévu_, and ascribed to her a monstrousperversity. It was this that caused her to sleep profoundly throughthat most awakening of incidents, a person determined not to disturbyou, and then to wake up short into that person's self-congratulationson success. 

"Of course it was, darling. Who else could it have been?"

Sally's reply, "I thought it was, " seems less reasonable--mereconversation making--and a sequel as of one reviewing new and morecomfortable positions in bed follows naturally. A decision on the pointdoes not prohibit conversation, rather facilitates it. 

"What did you come for, mammy?"

"Eau-de-Cologne. " The voice has a fell intention of instant sleep in itwhich Sally takes no notice of. 

"Have you got it?"

"Got it? Yes. Go to sleep, chatterbox. "

It was true about the eau-de-Cologne, for Rosalind, with a self-actinginstinct that explanation might be called for, had picked up thebottle on her return journey. You see, she was always practisingwicked deceits and falsehoods, all to save that little chit being mademiserable on her account. But the chit wasn't going to sleep again. Shewas going to enjoy her new attitude awake. Who woke her up? Answer that. 

"I say, mother!"

"What, kitten? Go to sleep. "

"All right--in a minute. Do you remember Mr. Fenwick's bottle ofeau-de-Cologne?"

"Of course I do. Go to sleep. "

"Just going. But wasn't it funny?"

"What funny?--Oh, the eau-de-Cologne!"

Rosalind isn't really sleepy, and may as well talk. "Yes, that was veryfunny. I wonder where he got it. " She seems roused, and her daughter isrepentant. 

"Oh dear! What a shame! I've just spoiled your go-off. Poor mother!"

"Never mind, chick! I like to talk a little. It _was_ funny that heshould have a big bottle of eau-de-Cologne, of all things, in hispocket. "

"Yes, but it was rummer still about Rosalind Nightingale--_his_Rosalind Nightingale, the one he knew. " This is dangerous ground, andRosalind knows it. But a plea of half-sleep will cover mistakes, andconversation about the pre-electrocution period is the nearest approachto taking Sally into her confidence that she can hope for. She is soweary with her hours of wakefulness that she becomes a little reckless, foreseeing a resource in such uncertainty of speech as may easily beascribed to a premature dream. 

"It's not _impossible_ that it should have been your grandmother, kitten. But we can't find out now. And it wouldn't do us any good thatI can see. "

"It would be nice to know for curiosity. Couldn't anything be fishedout in the granny connexion? No documents?"

"Nothing will ever be fished out by me in that connexion, Sallydarling. " Sally knows from her mother's tone of voice that they areapproaching an _impasse_. She means to give up the point the moment itcomes fully in view. But she will go on until that happens. She has tothink out what was the name of the Sub-Dean before she speaks again. 

"Didn't the Reverend Decimus Ireson grab all the belongings?"

"They were left to him, child. It was all fair, as far as that goes. I didn't grudge him the things--indeed, I felt rather grateful to himfor taking them. It would only have been painful, going over them. Different people feel differently about these things. I didn't wantold recollections. "

"Hadn't the Reverend Decimus a swarm of brats?"

"Sal--ly _dar_ling!... Well, yes, he had. There were two families. Oneof six daughters, I forget which. "

"Couldn't they be got at, to see if they wouldn't recollect something?"

"Of course they could. They've married a lawyer--at least, one of themhas. And all the rest, I believe, live with them. " At another time Sallywould have examined this case in relation to the Deceased Wife's SisterBill. She was too interested now to stop her mother continuing: "Butwhat a silly chick you are! Why should _they_ know anything about it?"

"Why shouldn't they?"

Her mother's reply is emphasized. "My dear, do consider! I was withyour grandmother till within a month of her marriage with the Reverend, as you call him, and I should have been ten times more likely to hearabout Mr. Fenwick than ever they would afterwards. Your grandmother hadnever even seen them when I went away to India to be married. "

"What's the lawyer's name?"

"Bearman, I think, or Dearman. But why?--Oh, no, by-the-bye, I thinkit's Beazley. "

"Because I could write and ask, or call. Sure to hear something. "

"My dear, you'll hear nothing, and they'll only think you mad. "Rosalind was beginning to feel that she had made a mistake. She did notfeel so sure Sally would hear nothing. A recollection crossed her mindof how one of the few incidents there was time for in her short marriedlife had been the writing of a letter by her husband to his friend, thereal Fenwick, and of much chaff therein about the eldest of these verydaughters, and her powerful rivalry to Jessie Nairn. It came back toher now. Sally alarmed her still further. 

"Yes, mother. I shall just get Mr. Fenwick to hunt up the address, andgo and call on the Beazleys. " This sudden assumption of a concrete formby the family was due to a vivid image that filled Sally's active brainimmediately of a household of parched women presided over by a driedman who owned a wig on a stand and knew what chaff-wax meant, whichshe didn't. A shop window near Lincoln's Inn was responsible. But toRosalind it really seemed that Sally must have had other means ofstudying this family, and she was frightened. 

"You don't know them, kitten?"

"Not the least. Don't want to. " This reflection suggests caution. "Perhaps I'd better write.... "

"Better do nothing of the sort, child. Better go to sleep.... "

"All right. " But Sally does not like quitting the subject so abruptly, and enlarges on it a little more. She sketches out a letter to bewritten to the lady who is at present a buffer-state between the driedman and the parched women. "Dear madam, " she recites, "you may perhapsrecall--or will perhaps recall--which is right, mother?"

"Either, dear. Go to sleep. " But just at this moment Rosalindrecollects with satisfaction that the name was neither Beazley norDearman, but Tressilian Tredgold. She has been thinking of fallingback on affectation of sleep to avoid more alarms, but this makes itneedless. 

"I'm sure I've got the name wrong, " she says, with revived wakefulnessin her voice. 

But Sally is murmuring to herself--"Perhaps recall my mother, Mrs. Rosalind Nightingale--Rosalind in brackets--by her maiden name of--bythe same name--who married the late Mr. Graythorpe in India--I say, mother.... "

"Yes, little goose. "

"How am I to put all that?"

"Go to sleep! I don't think you'll find that family very--coming. Myimpression is you had much better leave it alone. What good would itdo you to find out who Mr. Fenwick was? And perhaps have him go awayto Australia!"

"Why Australia?"

Oh dear, what mistakes Rosalind did make! Why on earth need shename the place she knew Gerry did go to? America would have done justas well. 

"Australia--New Zealand--America--anywhere!" But Sally doesn'tmind--has fallen back on her letter-sketch. 

"Apologizing for troubling you, believe me, dear madam, yoursfaithfully--or very faithfully, or truly--Rosalind Nightingale.... No;I should not like Mr. Fenwick to go away anywhere. No more would you. I want him here, for us. So do you!"

"I should be very sorry indeed for Mr. Fenwick to go away. We shouldmiss him badly. But fancy what his wife must be feeling, if he has one. I can sympathize with her. " It really was a relief to say anything sointensely true. 

Did the reality with which she spoke impress Sally more than the merewords, which were no more than "common form" of conversation? Probably, for something in them brought back her conference with the Major onBoxing Day morning when her mother was at church. What was thatshe had said to him when she was sitting on his knee improving hiswhiskers?--that if she, later on, saw reason to suppose his suspicionstrue, she would ask her mother point-blank. Why not? And here she waswith the same suspicions, quite, quite independent of the Major. Andsee how dark it was in both rooms! One could say anything. Besides, ifher mother didn't want to answer, she could pretend to be asleep. Shewouldn't ask too loud, to give her a chance. 

"Mother darling, if Mr. Fenwick was to make you an offer, how shouldyou like it?"

"Oh dear! _What's_ the child saying? What is it, Sallykin? I was justgoing off. "

Now, obviously, you can ask a lady Sally's question in the easy courseof flowing chat, but you can't drag her from the golden gates of sleepto ask it. It gets too official. So Sally backed out, and said she hadsaid nothing, which wasn't the case. The excessive readiness with whichher mother accepted the statement looks, to us, as if she had reallybeen awake and heard. 

CHAPTER XIV

HOW MILLAIS' "HUGUENOT" CAME OF A WALK IN THE BACK GARDEN. AND HOW FENWICK VERY NEARLY KISSED SALLY

In spite of Colonel Lund's having been so betimes in his forecastingsabout Mrs. Nightingale and Fenwick (as we must go on calling him forthe present), still, when one day that lady came, about six weeksafter the nocturne in our last chapter, and told him she must have hisconsent to a step she was contemplating before she took it, he felt alittle shock in his heart--one of those shocks one so often feels whenone hears that a thing he has anticipated without pain, even withpleasure, is to become actual. 

But he replied at once, "My dear! Of course!" without hearing anyparticulars; and added: "You will be happier, I am sure. Why shouldI refuse my consent to your marrying Fenwick? Because that's it, Isuppose?" That was it. The Major had guessed right. 

"He asked me to marry him, last night, " she said, with simpleequanimity and directness. "I told him yes, as far as my own wisheswent. But I said I wouldn't, if either you or the kitten forbade thebanns. "

"I don't think we shall, either of us. " It was a daughter'smarriage-warrant he was being asked to sign; a document seldom signedwithout a heartache, more or less, for him who holds the pen. But his_coeur navré_ had to be concealed, for the sake of the applicant;no wet blanket should be cast on her new happiness. He kissed heraffectionately. To him, for all her thirty-nine or forty birthdays, she was still the young girl he had helped and shielded in her despair, twenty years ago, he himself being then a widower, near forty years hersenior. "No, Rosa dear, " continued the Major. "As far as I can see, there can be no objection but one--_you_ know!"

"_The_ one?"

"Yes. It is all a _terra incognita_. He _may_ have a wife elsewhere, seeking for him. Who can tell?"

"It is a risk to be run. But I am prepared to run it"--she was goingto add "for his sake, " but remembered that her real meaning for thesewords would be, "for the sake of the man I wronged, " and that the Majorknew nothing of Fenwick's identity. She had not been able to persuadeherself to make even her old friend her confidant. Danger lay that way. She _knew_ silence would be safe against anything but Fenwick's ownmemory. 

"Yes, it is a risk, no doubt, " the Major said. "But I am like him. Icannot conceive a man forgetting that he had a wife. It seems animpossibility. He has talked about you to me, you know. "

"In connexion with his intention about me?"

"Almost. Not quite definitely, but almost. He knew I understood what hemeant. It seemed to me he was fidgeting more about his having so littleto offer in the way of worldly goods than about any possible wife inthe clouds. "

"Dear fellow! Just fancy! Why, those people in the City would take himinto partnership to-morrow if he had a little capital to bring in. Theytold him so themselves. "

"And you would finance him? Is that the idea? Well, I suppose as I'myour trustee, if the money was all lost, I should have to make it up, so it wouldn't matter. "

"Oh, Major dear! is _that_ what being a trustee means?"

"Of course, my dear Rosa! What did you think it meant?"

"Do you know, I don't know what I _did_ think; at least, I thought itwould be very nice if you were my trustee. "

The conversation has gone off on a siding, but the Major shunts thetrain back. "That was what you and little fiddle-stick's-end weretalking about till three in the morning, then?"

"Oh, Major dear, did you hear us? And we kept you awake? What a _shame_!"

 * * * * *

For on the previous evening, Sally being out musicking and expectedhome late, Fenwick and Mrs. Nightingale had gone out in the back-gardento enjoy the sweet air of that rare phenomenon--a really fine springnight in England--leaving the Major indoors because of his bronchialtubes. The late seventies shrink from night air, even when one means tobe a healthy octogenarian. Also, they go away to bed, secretively, whenno one is looking--at least, the Major did in this case. Of course, hewas staying the night, as usual. 

So, in the interim between the Major's good-night and Sally'scab-wheels, this elderly couple of lovers (as they would have wordedtheir own description) had the summer night to themselves. As the Majorclosed his bedroom window, he saw, before drawing down the blind, thatthe two were walking slowly up and down the gravel path, talkingearnestly. No impression of mature years came to the Major from thatgravel path. A well-made, handsome man, with a bush of brown hair anda Raleigh beard, and a graceful woman suggesting her beauty through theclear moonlight--that was the implication of as much as he could see, as he drew the inference a word of soliloquy hinted at, "Not Millais'Huguenot, so far!" But he evidently expected that grouping very soon. Only he was too sleepy to watch for it, and went to bed. Besides, wouldit have been honourable?

"It's no use, Fenwick, " she said to him in the garden, "trying to keepoff the forbidden subject, so I won't try. "

"It's not forbidden by me. Nothing could be, that _you_ would liketo say. "

Was that, she thought, only what so many men say every day to so manywomen, and mean so little by? Or was it more? She could not be sureyet. She glanced at him as they turned at the path-end, and hermisgivings all but vanished, so serious and resolved was his quiet facein the moonlight. She was half-minded to say to him, "Do you mean thatyou love me, Fenwick?" But, then, was it safe to presume on thepeculiarity of her position, of which he, remember, knew absolutelynothing. 

For with her it was not as with another woman, who expects what isbriefly called "an offer. " In _her_ case, the man beside her was herhusband, to whose exorcism of her love from his life her heart hadnever assented. While, in his eyes, she differed in no way in herrelation to him from any woman, to whom a man, placed as he was, longs to say that she is what he wants most of all mortal things, butstickles in the telling of it, from sheer cowardice; who dares not riskthe loss of what share he has in her in the attempt to get the whole. _She_ grasped the whole position, _he_ only part of it. 

"I am glad it is so, " she decided to say. "Because each time I see you, I want to ask if nothing has come back--no trace of memory?"

"Nothing! It is all gone. Nothing comes back. "

"Do you remember that about the tennis-court? Did it go any further, or die out completely?"

He stopped a moment in his walk, and flicked the ash from his cigar;then, after a moment's thought, replied:

"I am not sure. It seemed to get mixed with my name--on my arm. Ithink it was only because tennis and Fenwick are a little alike. " Hiscompanion thought how near the edge of a volcano both were, andresolved to try a crucial experiment. Better an eruption, after all, or a plunge in the crater, than a life of incessant doubt. 

"You remembered the name Algernon clearly?"

"Not _clearly_. But it was the only name with an 'A' that felt right. Unless it was Arthur, but I'm sure my name never was Arthur!"

"Sally thought it was hypnotic suggestion--thought I had laid an unfairstress upon it. I easily might have. "

"Why? Did you know an Algernon?"

"My husband's name was Algernon. " She herself wondered how any voicethat spoke so near a heart that beat as hers did at this moment couldkeep its secret. Yet it betrayed nothing, and so supreme was herself-control that she could say to herself, even while she knew shewould pay for this effort later, that the pallor of her face wouldbetray nothing either; he would put that down to the moonlight. She_was_ a strong woman. For she went steadily on, to convince herselfof her own self-command: "I knew him very little by that name, though. I always called him Gerry. "

He merely repeated the name thrice, but it gave her a moment of keenapprehension. Any stirring of memory over it might be the thin end ofa very big wedge. But if there was any, it was an end so thin thatit broke off. Fenwick looked round at her. 

"Do you know, " he said, "I rather favour the hypnotic suggestiontheory. For the moment you said the name Gerry, I fancied I too knewit as the short for Algernon. Now, that's absurd! No two people evermade Gerry out of Algernon. It's always Algy. "

"Always. Certainly, it would be odd. "

"I am rather inclined to think, " said Fenwick, after a short silence, "that I can understand how it happened. Only then, perhaps, my name maynot be Algernon at all. And here I have been using it, signing with it, and so on. "

"What do you understand?"

"Well, I suspect this. I suspect that you did lay some kind of stress, naturally, on your husband's name, and also on its abbreviation. Itaffected me somehow with a sense of familiarity. "

"Is it so _very_ improbable that you were familiar with the name Gerrytoo? It might be----"

"Anything might be. But surely we almost know that two accidentaladoptions of Gerry as a short for Algernon would not come across eachother by chance, as yours and mine have done. "

"What is 'almost knowing'? But tell me this. When I call youGerry--Gerry ... There!--does the association or impression repeatitself?" She repeated the name once and again, to try. There was a gooddeal of nettle-grasping in all this. Also a wish to clinch matters, todrive the sword to the hilt; to put an end, once and for all, to thestate of tension she lived in. For surely, if anything could prove hismemory was really gone, it would be this. That she should call him byhis name of twenty years ago--should utter it to him, as she could nothelp doing, in the tone in which she spoke to him then, and that herdoing so should arouse no memory of the past--surely this would show, if anything could show it, that that past had been finally erasedfrom the scroll of his life. She had a moment only of suspense afterspeaking, and then, as his voice came in answer, she breathed againfreely. Nothing could have shown a more complete unconsciousness thanhis reply, after another moment of reflection:

"Do you know, Mrs. Nightingale, that convinces me that the nameAlgernon _was_ produced by your way of saying it. It _was_ hypnoticsuggestion! I assure you that, however strange you may think it, everytime you repeat the name Gerry, it seems more familiar to me. If yousaid it often enough, I have no doubt I should soon be believing in thediminutive as devoutly as I believe in the name itself. Because I amquite convinced of Algernon Fenwick. Continually signing _per-pro_'shas driven it home. " He didn't seem quite in earnest over hisconviction, though--seemed to laugh a little about it. 

But a sadder tone came into his voice after an interval in which hiscompanion, frightened at her own temerity, resolved that she would notcall him Gerry again. It was sailing too near the wind. She was glad hewent back from this side-channel of their talk to the main subject. 

"No, I have no hope of getting to the past through my own mind. I feelit is silence. And that being so, I should be sorry that anyillumination should come to me out of the past, throwing light onrecords my mind could not read--I mean, any proof positive of what mycrippled memory could not confirm. I would rather remain quite in thedark--unless, indeed----"

"Unless what?"

"Unless the well-being of some others, forgotten with my forgottenworld, is involved in--dependent on--my return to it. That would beshocking--the hungry nestlings in the deserted nest. But I am soconvinced that I have only forgotten a restless life of rapidchange--that I _could_ not forget love and home, if I ever hadthem--that my misgivings about this are misgivings of the reasononly, not of the heart. Do you understand me?"

"Perfectly. At least, I think so. Go on. "

"I cannot help thinking, too, that a sense of a strong link with aforgotten yesterday would survive the complete effacement of all itsdetails in the form of a wish to return to it. I have none. My to-dayis too happy for me to wish to go back to that yesterday, even if Icould, without a wrench. I feel a sort of shame in saying I should besorry to return to it. It seems a sort of ... A sort of disloyalty tothe unknown. "

"You might long to be back, if you could know. Think if you could seebefore you now, and recognise the woman who was once your wife. " Therewas nettle-grasping in this. 

"It is a mere abstract idea, " he replied, "unaccompanied by any imageof an individual. I perceive that it is dutiful to recognise the factthat I should welcome her _if_ she appeared as a reality. But it is alarge _if_. I am content to go on without an hypothesis--that is reallyall she is now. And my belief that, if she had ever existed, I shouldnot be _able_ to disbelieve in her, underlies my acceptance of her inthat character. "

Mrs. Nightingale laughed. "We are mighty metaphysical, " said she. "Wouldn't it depend entirely on what she was like, when all's saidand done? I believe I'm right. We women are more practical than men, after all. "

"You make game of my metaphysics, as you call them. Well, I'll drop themetaphysics and speak the honest truth. " He stopped and faced roundtowards her, standing on the garden path. "Only, you must make me onepromise. "

She stopped also, and stood looking full at him. 

"What promise?"

"If I tell you all I think in my heart, you will not allow it to comebetween me and you, to undermine the only strong friendship I have inthe world, the only one I know of. "

"It shall make no difference between us. You may trust me. "

They turned and walked again slowly, once up and down. Then Fenwick'svoice, when he next spoke, had an added earnestness, a growing tension, with an echo in it, for her, of the years gone by--a ring of his youngenthusiasm, of his passionate outburst in the lawn-tennis garden twentyyears ago. He made no more ado of what he had to say. 

"I can form no image in my mind, try how I may, of any woman for whosesake I would give up one hour of the precious privilege I now enjoy. I have no right to--to assess it, to make a definition of it. ButI _have_ it now. I could not resume my place as the husband of a nowunknown wife--you know what I mean--and not lose the privilege ofbeing near _you_. It may be--it is conceivable, I mean; no more--thata revelation to me of myself, a light thrown on what I am, would bringme what would palliate the wrench of losing what I have of you. It _may_be so--it _may_ be! All I know is--all I can say is--that I can now_imagine_ nothing, no treasure of love of wife or daughter, that wouldbe a make-weight for what I should lose if I had to part from you. " Hepaused a moment, as though he thought he was going beyond his rights ofspeech, then added more quietly: "No; I can imagine _no_ hypotheticalwife. And as for my hypothetical daughter, I find I am always utilisingSally for her. "

Mrs. Nightingale murmured in an undertone the word "Sallykin, " as sheso often did when her daughter was mentioned, with that sort of caressin her voice. This time it was caught by a sort of gasp, and sheremained silent. What Sally _was_ had crossed her mind--the strangerelation in which she stood to Fenwick, born in _his_ wedlock, but nodaughter of his. And there he was, as fond of the child as he could be. 

Fenwick may have half misunderstood something in her manner, for whenhe spoke again his words had a certain aspect of recoil from what hehad said, at least of consideration of it in some new light. 

"When I speak to you as freely as this, remember the nature of theclaim I have to do so--the only apology I can make for taking anexceptional licence. "

"How do you mean?"

"I mean I do not count myself as a man--only a sort of inexplicablewaif, a kind of cancelled man. A man without a past is like a child, or an idiot from birth, suddenly endowed with faculties. "

"What nonsense, Fenwick! You have brooded and speculated over yourcondition until you have become morbid. Do now, as Sally would say, chuck the metaphysics. "

"Perhaps I was getting too sententious over it. I'm sorry, and pleaseI won't do so any more. "

"Don't then. And now you'll see what will happen. You will remembereverything quite suddenly. It will all come back in a flash, and oh, how glad you will be! And think of the joy of your wife and children!"

"Yes, and suppose all the while I am hating them for dragging me awayfrom you----"

"From me and Sally?"

"I wasn't going to say Sally, but I don't want to keep her out. Youand Sally, if you like. All I know is, if their reappearance were tobring with it a pleasure I cannot imagine--because I cannot imagine_them_--it would cut across my life, as it is now, in a way that woulddrive me _mad_. Indeed it would. How could I say to myself--as I saynow, as I dare to say to you, knowing what I am--that to be here withyou now is the greatest happiness of which I am capable. "

"All that would change if you recovered them. "

"Yes--yes--maybe! But I shrink from it; I shrink from _them_! They arestrangers--nonentities. You are--you are--oh, it's no use----" Hestopped suddenly. 

"What am I?"

"It's no use beating about the bush. You are the centre of my life asit is, you are what I--all that is left of me--love best in the world!I cannot _now_ conceive the possibility of anything but hatred for whatmight come between us, for what might sever the existing link, whateverit may be--I care little what it is called, so long as I may keep itunbroken.... "

"And I care nothing!" It was her eyes meeting his that stopped him. Hecould read the meaning of her words in them before they were spoken. Then he replied in a voice less firm than before:

"Dare we--knowing what I am, knowing what may come suddenly, any hourof the day, out of the unknown--_dare_ we call it love?" Perhaps inFenwick's mind at this moment the predominant feeling was terror of theconsequences to her that marriage with him might betray her into. Itwas much stronger than any misgiving (although a little remained) ofher feelings toward himself. 

"What else can we call it? It is a good old word. " She said this quitecalmly, with a very happy face one could see the flush of pleasureand success on even in the moonlight, and there was no reluctance, no shrinking in her, from her share of the outcome the Major had notwaited to see. "Millais' Huguenot" was complete. Rosalind Graythorpe, or Palliser, stood there again with her husband's arm round her--herhusband of twenty years ago! And in that fact was the keynote of whatthere was of unusual--of unconventional, one might almost phrase it--inher way of receiving and requiting his declaration. It hardly need besaid that _he_ was unconscious of any such thing. A man whose soulis reeling with the intoxication of a new-found happiness is notovercritical about the exact movement of the hand that has put thecup to his lips. 

The Huguenot arrangement might have gone on in the undisturbedmoonlight till the chill of the morning came to break it up if acab-wheel _crescendo_ and a _strepitoso_ peal at the bell had notannounced Sally, who burst into the house and rushed into thedrawing-room tumultuously, to be corrected back by a serious word fromAnn, the door-opener, that Missis and Mr. Fenwick had stepped out inthe garden. Ann's parade of her conviction that this was _en rčgle_, when no one said it wasn't, was suggestive in the highest degree. Professional perjury in a law-court could not have been moreself-conscious. Probably Ann knew all about it, as well as cook. Sallysaw nothing. She was too full of great events at Ladbroke GroveRoad--the sort of events that are announced with a preliminary, What_do_ you think, N or M? And then develop the engagement of O to P, orthe jilting of Q by R. 

There was just time for a dozen words between the components of theMillais group in the moonlight. 

"Shall we tell Sally?" It was the Huguenot that asked the question. 

"Not just this minute. Wait till I can think. Perhaps I'll tell herupstairs. Now say good-bye before the chick comes, and go. " And thechick came on the scene just too late to criticise the _pose_. 

"I say, mother!" this with the greatest _empressement_ of whichhumanity and youth are capable. "I've got something I _must_ tell you!"

"What is it, kitten?"

"Tishy's head-over-ears in love with the shop-boy!"

"Sh-sh-sh-shish! You noisy little monkey, do consider! The neighbourswill hear every word you say. " So they will, probably, as Miss Sally'svoice is very penetrating, and rings musically clear in the summernight. Her attitude is that she doesn't care if they do. 

"Besides they're only cats! And _nobody_ knows who Tishy is, or theshop-boy. I'll come down and tell you all about it. "

"We're coming up, darling!" You see, Sally had manifestoed down intothe garden from the landing of the stair, which was made of ironopenwork you knocked flower-pots down and broke, and you have had tohave a new one--that, at least, is how Ann put it. On the stair-topMrs. Nightingale stems the torrent of her daughter's revelationbecause it's so late and Mr. Fenwick must get away. 

"You must tell him all about it another time. "

"I don't know whether it's any concern of his. "

"Taken scrupulous, are we, all of a sudden?" says Fenwick, laughing. "That cock won't fight, Miss Pussy! You'll have to tell me all aboutit when I come to-morrow. Good-night, Mrs. Nightingale. " A sort ofhumorous formality in his voice makes Sally look from one to theother, but it leads to nothing. Sally goes to see Fenwick depart, and her mother goes upstairs with a candle. In a minute or soSally pelts up the stairs, leaving Ann and the cook to thumbscrewon the shutter-panels of the street door, and make sure thathousebreaker-baffling bells are susceptible. 

"Do you know, mamma, I really _did_ think--what do you think I thought?"

"What, darling?"

"I thought Mr. Fenwick was going to kiss me!" In fact, Fenwick had onlyjust remembered in time that family privileges must stand over tillafter the revelation. 

"Should you have minded if he had?"

"_Not a bit!_ Why should _anybody_ mind Mr. Fenwick kissing them? Youwouldn't yourself--you know you wouldn't! Come now, mother!"

"I shouldn't distress myself, poppet!" But words are mere wind; themanner of them is everything, and the foreground of her mother's mannersuggests a background to Sally. She has smelt a rat, and suddenly fixesher eyes on a tell-tale countenance fraught with mysterious reserves. 

"Mother, you _are_ going to marry Mr. Fenwick!" No change of type coulddo justice to the emphasis with which Sally goes straight to the point. Italics throughout would be weak. Her mother smiles as she fondles herdaughter's excited face. 

"I am, darling. So you may kiss him yourself when he comes to-morrowevening. "

And Tishy's passion for the shop-boy had to stand over. But, as theMajor had said, the mother and daughter talked till three in themorning--well, past two, anyhow!

CHAPTER XV

CONCERNING DR. VEREKER AND HIS MAMMA, WHO HAD KNOWN IT ALL ALONG. HOW SALLY LUNCHED WITH THE SALES WILSONS, AND GOT SPECULATING ABOUT HER FATHER. HOW TISHY LET OUT ABOUT MAJOR ROPER. HOW THERE WAS A WEDDING

The segment of a circle of Society that did duty for a sphere, in thecase of Mrs. Nightingale and Sally, was collectively surprised when itheard of the intended marriage of the former, having settled in its ownmind that the latter was the magnet to Mr. Fenwick's lodestone. Buteach several individual that composed it had, it seemed, foreseenexactly what was going to happen, and had predicted it in language thatcould only have been wilfully mistaken by persons interested in provingthat the speaker was not a prophet. Exceptional insight had beenepidemic. The only wonder was (to the individual speaker) that Mrs. Nightingale had remained single so long, and the only other wonder wasthat none of the other cases had seen it. They had evidently only takenseership mildly. 

Dr. Vereker had a good opportunity of studying omniscience of amalignant type in the very well marked case of his own mother. You mayremember Sally's denunciation of her as an old hen that came wobblingdown on you. When her son (in the simplicity of his heart) announcedto her as a great and curious piece of news that Mr. Fenwick wasgoing to marry Mrs. Nightingale, she did not even look up from herknitting to reply: "What did I say to you, Conny?" For his name wasConrad, as Sally had reported. His discretion was not on the alert onthis occasion, for he incautiously asked, "When?"

The good lady laid down her knitting on her knees, and folded herhands, interlacing her fingers, which were fat, as far as they wouldgo, and leaning back with closed eyes--eyes intended to remain closedduring anticipated patience. 

"Fancy asking me that!" said she. 

"Well, but--hang it!--_when?_"

"Do not use profane language, Conrad, in your mother's presence. Canyou really ask me, 'When?' Try and recollect!"

Conrad appeared to consider; but as he had to contend with the problemof finding out when a thing had been said, the only clue to the natureof which was the date of its utterance, it was no great wonder that hiscogitations ended in a shake of the head subdivided into itselements--shakes taken a brace at a time--and an expression of face asof one who whistles _sotto voce_. His questioner must have been lookingbetween her eyelids, which wasn't playing fair; for she indicted him onthe spot, and pushed him, as it were, into the dock. 

"_That_, I suppose, means that I speak untruth. Very well, my dear!"Resignation set in. 

"Come, mother, I say, now! Be a reasonable maternal parent. When didI say anybody spoke untruth?"

"My dear, you _said_ nothing. But if your father could have heard whatyou did _not_ say, you know perfectly well, my dear Conrad, what hewould have _thought_. Was he likely to sit by and hear me insulted?Did he ever do so?"

The doctor was writing letters at a desk-table that he used formiscellaneous correspondence as much as possible, in order that thisvery same mother of his should be left alone as little as possible. Heended a responsible letter, and directed it, and made it a thing of thepast with a stamp on it in a little basket on the hall-table outside. Then he came back to his mother, and bestowed on her the kiss, or peck, of peace. It always made him uncomfortable when he had to go away tothe hospital under the shadow of dissension at home. 

"Well, mother dear, what was it you really did say about the Fenwickengagement?"

"It would be more proper, my dear, to speak of it as the Nightingaleengagement. You will say it is a matter of form, but.... "

"All right. The Nightingale engagement.... "

"My dear! So abrupt! To your mother!"

"Well, dear mammy, what was it, really now?" This cajolery took effect, and the Widow Vereker's soul softened. She resumed her knitting. 

"If you don't remember what it was, dear, it doesn't matter. " Thedoctor saw that nothing short of complete concession would procurea tranquil sea. 

"Of course, I remember perfectly well, " he said mendaciously. He knewthat, left alone, his mother would supply a summary of what heremembered. She did so, with a bound. 

"I said, my dear (and I am glad you recollect it, Conrad)--I said fromthe very first, when Mr. Fenwick was living at Krakatoa--(it was all_quite_ right, my dear. Do you think I don't know? A grown-up daughterand two servants!)--I said that any one with eyes in their head couldsee. And has it turned out exactly as I expected, or has it not?"

"Exactly. "

"Very well, dear. I'm glad you say so. Now, don't contradict meanother time. "

The close observer of the actual (whom we lay claim to be) hasoccasionally to report the apparently impossible. We do not supposewe shall be believed when we say that Mrs. Vereker added: "Besides, there was the Major. "

 * * * * *

Professor Sales Wilson, Lętitia's father, was _the_ Professor SalesWilson. Only, if you had seen that eminent scholar when he got outsidehis library by accident and wanted to get back, you wouldn't havethought he was _the_ anybody, and would probably have likened him toa disestablished hermit-crab--in respect, that is, of such a one's desireto disappear into his shell, and that respect only. For no hermit-crabwould ever cause an acquaintance to wonder why he should shave at allif he could do it no better than that; nor what he was talking tohimself about so frequently; nor whether he polished his spectacles solong at a time to give the deep groove they were making across his nosea chance of filling up; nor whether he would be less bald if he rubbedhis head less; nor what he had really got inside that overpoweringphrenology of brow, and behind that aspect of chronic concentration. But about the retiring habits of both there could be no doubt. 

He lived in his library, attired by nature in a dressing-gown andskull-cap. But from its secret recesses he issued manifestoes whichshook classical Europe. He corrected versions, excerpted passages, disallowed authenticities, ascribed works to their true authors, andexposed the pretensions of sciolists with a vigour which ought to havefinally dispersed that unhallowed class. Only it didn't, because theyare a class incapable of shame, and will go on madly, even when theyhave been proved to be _mere_, beyond the shadow of a doubt. Perhapsthey had secret information about the domestic circumstances of theirdestroyer, and didn't care. If Yamen had had private means of knowingthat Vishnu was on uncomfortable terms with his wife, a correctedversion of the whole Hindu mythology might have been necessary. 

However, so far as can be conjectured, the image the world formed ofthe Professor was a sort of aggregate of Dr. Johnson, Bentley, Grotius, Mezzofanti, and a slight touch of, say Conington, to bring him wellup to date. But so much of the first that whenever the _raconteur_repeated one of the Professor's moderately bon-mots, he always put"sir" in--as, for instance, "A punster, sir, is a man who demoralisestwo meanings in one word;" or, "Should you call that fast life, sir?_I_ should call it slow death. " The _raconteur_ was rather given tomaking use of him, and assigning to him _mots_ which were not at all_bons_, because they only had the "sir" in them, and were otherwisemeaningless. He was distressed, not without reason, when he heard thathe had said to Max Müller, or some one of that calibre, "There is nosuch thing, sir, as the English language!" But he very seldom heardanything about himself, or any one else; as he passed his life, asaforesaid, in his library, buried in the Phoenician Dictionary hehoped he might live to bring out. He had begun the fourth letter;but _we_ don't know the Phoenician alphabet. Perhaps it has only fourletters in it. 

He came out of the library for meals, of course. But he took verylittle notice of anything that passed at the family board, and readnearly the whole time, occasionally saying something forcible tohimself. Indeed, he never conversed with his family unless deprivedof his book. This occurred on the occasion when Sally carried themomentous news of her mother's intended marriage to Ladbroke GroveRoad, the second day after they had talked till two in the morning. Matrimony was canvassed and discussed in all its aspects, and theparticular case riddled and sifted, and elucidated from every point ofthe compass, without the Professor being the least aware that anythingunusual was afoot, until Grotefend got in the mayonnaise sauce. 

"Take your master's book away, Jenkins, " said the lady of the house. And Jenkins, the tender-hearted parlourmaid, allowed master to keephold just to the end of the sentence. "Take it away, as I told you, and wipe that sauce off!"

Sally did so want to box that woman's ears--at least, she said soafter. She was a great horny, overbearing woman, was Mrs. Sales Wilson, and Sally was frightened lest Lętitia should grow like her. Only, Tishy's teeth never _could_ get as big as that! Nor wiggle. 

The Professor, being deprived of his volume, seemed to awakecompulsorily, and come out into a cold, unlearned world. But hesmiled amiably, and rubbed his hands round themselves rhythmically. 

"Well, then!" said he. "Say it all again. "

"Say what, papa?"

"All the chatter, of course. "

"What for, papa?"

"For me to hear. Off we go! _Who's_ going to be married?"

"You see, he was listening all the time. _I_ shouldn't tell him, ifI were you. Your father is really unendurable. And he gets worse. "Thus the lady of the house. 

"What does your mother say?" There is a shade of asperity in theProfessor's voice. 

"Says you were listening all the time, papa. So you were!" This isfrom Lętitia's younger sister, Theeny. Her name was Athene. Her brotherEgerton called her "Gallows Athene"--an offensive perversion of thename of the lady she was called after. Her mother had carefully taughtall her children contempt for their father from earliest childhood. Buttoleration of his weaknesses--etymology, and so on--had taken root inspite of her motherly care, and the Professor was on very good termswith his offspring. He negatived Theeny amiably. 

"No, my dear, I was like Mrs. Cluppins. The voices were loud, andforced themselves upon my ear. But as you all spoke at once, I haveno idea what anybody said. My question was conjectural--purelyconjectural. _Is_ anybody going to marry anybody? _I_ don't know. "

"What is your father talking about over there? _Is_ he going to helpthat tongue or not? Ask him. " For a peculiarity in this family was thatthe two heads of it always spoke to one another through an agent. Soclearly was this understood that direct speech between them, on itsrare occasions, was always ascribed by distant hearers to an outbreakof hostilities. If either speaker had addressed the other by name, theadvent of the Sergeant-at-Arms would have been the next thing lookedfor. On this occasion Lętitia's literal transmission of "_Are_ yougoing to help the tongue or not, papa?" recalled his wandering mindto his responsibilities. Sally's liver-wing--she was the visitor--waspleading at his elbow for its complement of tongue. 

But soon a four-inch space intervened between the lonely tongue-tipon the dish and what had once been, in military language, its baseof operations. Everybody that took tongue had got tongue. 

"Well, then, how about who's married whom?" Thus the Professor, resuming his hand-rubbing, and neglecting the leg of a fowl. 

"Make your father eat his lunch, Lętitia. We _cannot_ be late againthis afternoon. " Whereon every one ate too fast; and Sally felt veryglad the Professor had given her such a big slice of tongue, as sheknew she wouldn't have the courage to have a second supply, if offered, much less ask for it. 

"Do you hear, papa? I'm to make you eat your lunch, " says Lętitia;and her mother murmurs "That's right; make him, " as though he were ananaconda in the snake-house, and her daughter a keeper who could goinside the cage. Lętitia then adds briefly that Mrs. Nightingale isgoing to marry Fenwick. 

"Ha! Mercy on us!" says the Professor quite vaguely, and, even more so, adds: "Chicken--chicken--chicken--chicken--chicken!" Though what hesays next is more intelligible, it is unfortunate and ill-chosen: "Andwho _is_ Mrs. Nightingale?"

The sphinx is mobility itself compared with Mrs. Wilson's intensepreservation of her _status quo_. The import of which is that theProfessor's blunders are things of everyday occurrence--every minute, rather. She merely says to Europe, "You see, " and leaves that continentto deal with the position. Sally, who always gets impatient with theWilson family, except the Professor himself and Lętitia--though _she_is trying sometimes--now ignores Europe, and gets the offender intoorder on her own account. 

"Why, Professor dear, don't you know Mrs. Nightingale's my mother?I'm Sally Nightingale, you know!"

"I'm not at all sure that I did, my dear. I think I thought you wereSally Something-else. My mind is very absent sometimes. You mustforgive me. Sally Nightingale! To be sure!"

"Never mind, Professor dear!" But the Professor still looks vexed athis blunder. So Sally says in confirmation, "I've forgiven you. Shakehands!" And doesn't make matters much better, for her action seemsunaccountable to the absent-minded one, who says, "Why?" first, andthen, "Oh, ah, yes--I see. Shake hands, certainly!" On which theSphinx, at the far end of the table, wondered whether the ancientPhoenicians were rude, under her breath. 

"I'm so absent, Sally Nightingale, that I didn't even know your fatherwasn't living. " Lętitia looks uncomfortable, and when Sally merelysays, "I never saw my father, " thinks to herself what a very discreetgirl Sally is. Naturally she supposes Sally to be a wise enough childto know something about her own father. But the Wilson family were notcompletely in the dark about an unsatisfactory "something queer" inSally's extraction; so that she credits that unconscious young personwith having steered herself skilfully out of shoal-waters; but sheis not sure whether to class her achievement as intrepidity or cheek. She is wanted in the intelligence department before she can decidethis point. 

"Perhaps, if you try, Lętitia, you'll be able to make out whether yourfather is or is not going to eat his lunch. "

But as this appeal of necessity causes the Professor to run the riskof choking himself before Lętitia has time to formulate an inquiry, shecan fairly allow the matter to lapse, as far as she is concerned. Thedragon, her mother--for that was how Sally spoke of the horny one--keptan eye firmly fixed on the unhappy honorary member of most learnedsocieties, and gave the word of command, "Take away!" with suchpromptitude that Jenkins nearly carried off the plate from under hisknife and fork as he placed them on it. 

A citation from the Odyssey was received in stony silence by theDragon, who, however, remarked to her younger daughter that it was nouse talking about Phineus and the Harpies, because they had to be atSt. Pancras at 3. 10, or lose the train. And perhaps, if the servantswere to be called Harpies, your father would engage the next onehimself. They were trouble enough now, without that. 

Owing to all which, the reference to Sally's father got lost sight of;and she wasn't sorry, because Theeny, at any rate, wasn't wanted toknow anything about him, whatever Lętitia and her mother knew orsuspected. 

But, as a matter of fact, Sally's declaration that she "never saw" himwas neither discretion, nor intrepidity, nor cheek. It was simpleNature. She had always regarded her father as having been accessoryto herself before the fact; also as having been, for some mysteriousreason, unpopular--perhaps a _mauvais sujet_. But he was AncientHistory now--had joined the Phoenicians. Why should _she_ want to know?Her attitude of uninquiring acquiescence had been cultivated by hermother, and it is wonderful what a dominant influence from earlybabyhood can do. Sally seldom spoke of this mysterious father of hersin any other terms than those she had just used. She had never had anopportunity of making his acquaintance--that was all. In some way, undefined, he had not behaved well to her mother; and naturally shesided with the latter. Once, and once only, her mother had said to her, "Sally darling, I don't wish to talk about your father, but to forgethim. I have forgiven him, because of you. Because--how could I havedone without you, kitten?" And thereafter, as Sally's curiosity wasa feeble force when set against the possibility that its gratificationmight cause pain to her mother, she suppressed it easily. 

But now and again little things would be said in her presence thatwould set her a-thinking--little things such as what the Professorhas just said. She may easily have been abnormally sensitive on thepoint--made more prone to reflection than usual--by last night'smomentous announcement. Anyhow, she resolved to talk to Tishy abouther parentage as soon as they should get back to the drawing-room, where they were practising. All the two hours they ought to have playedin the morning Tishy would talk about nothing but Julius Bradshaw. And look how ridiculous it all was! Because she _did_ call him"shop-boy"--you know she did--only six weeks ago. Sally didn't see why_her_ affairs shouldn't have a turn now; and although she was quiteaware that her friend wanted her to begin again where they had left offbefore lunch, she held out no helping hand, but gave the preference toher own thoughts. 

"I suppose my father drank, " said Sally to Tishy. 

"If you don't know, dear, how should I?" said Tishy to Sally. And thatdid seem plausible, and made Sally the more reflective. 

The holly-leaves were gone now that had been conducive to thought atChristmas in this same room when we heard the two girls count fourso often, but Sally could pull an azalea flower to pieces over hercogitations, and did so, instead of tuning up forthwith. Lętitia waspreoccupied--couldn't take an interest in other people's fathers, norher own for that matter. She tuned up, though, and told Sally to lookalive. But while Sally looks alive she backs into a conversation ofthe forenoon, and out of the pending discussion of Sally's paternity. Their two preoccupations pull in opposite directions. 

"You _will_ remember not to say anything, won't you, Sally dear? Dopromise. "

"Say anything? Oh no; _I_ shan't say anything. I never do say things. What about?"

"You know as well as I do, dear--about Julius Bradshaw. "

"Of course I shan't, Tishy. Except mother; she doesn't count. I say, Tishy!"

"Well, dear. Do look alive. I'm all ready. "

"All right. Don't be in a hurry. I want to know whether you reallythink my father drank. "

"Why should I, dear? I never heard anything about him--at least, Inever heard anything myself. Mamma heard something. Only I wasn't torepeat it. Besides, it was nothing whatever to do with drink. " Themoment Lętitia said this, she knew that she had lost her hold onher only resource against cross-examination. When the difficulty ofconcealing anything is thrown into the same scale with the pleasure oftelling it, the featherweights of duty and previous resolutions kickthe beam. Then you are sorry when it's too late. Lętitia was, andcould see her way to nothing but obeying the direction on her music, which was _attacca_. To her satisfaction, Sally came in promptly inthe right place, and a first movement in B sharp went steadily throughwithout a back-lash. There seemed a chance that Sally hadn't caughtthe last remark, but, alas! it vanished. 

"What was it, then, if it wasn't drink?" said she, exactly as if therehad been no music at all. Lętitia once said of Sally that she wasa horribly direct little Turk. She was very often--in this instancecertainly. 

"I suppose it was the usual thing. " Twenty-four, of course, knew morethan nineteen, and could speak to the point of what was and wasn'tusual in matters of this kind. But if Lętitia hoped that vaguenesswould shake hands with delicacy and that details could be lubricatedaway, she was reckoning without her Turk. 

"What _is_ the usual thing?"

"Hadn't we better go on to the fugue? I don't care for the nextmovement, and it's easy----"

"Not till you say what you mean by 'the usual thing. '"

"Well, dear, I suppose you know what half the divorce-cases are about?"

"_Tishy!_"

"What, dear?"

"There was _no_ divorce!"

"How do you know, dear?"

"I _should_ have known of it. "

"How do you know that?"

"You might go on for ever that way. Now, Tishy dear, do be kind andtell me what you heard and who said it. _I_ should tell _you_. You_know_ I should. " This appeal produces concession. 

"It was old Major Roper told mamma--with blue pockets under his eyesand red all over, creeks and wheezes when he speaks--do you know him?"

"No, I don't, and I don't want to. At least, I've just seen him ata distance. I could see he was purple. _Our_ Major--Colonel Lund, youknow--says he's a horrible old gossip, and you can't rely on a word hesays. But what _did_ he say?"

"Well, of course, I oughtn't to tell you this, because I promised not. What he _said_ was that your mother went out to be married to yourfather in India, and the year after he got a divorce because he wasjealous of some man your mother had met on the way out. "

"How old was I?"

"Gracious me, child! how should _I_ know. He only said you were a babyin arms. Of course, you must have been, if you think of it. " Lętitiahere feels that possible calculations may be embarrassing, and tries toavert them. "Do let's get on to the third movement. We shall spend allthe afternoon talking. "

"Very well, Tishy, fire away! Oh, no; it's me. " And the third movementis got under way, till we reach a _pizzicato_ passage which Sallybegins playing with the bow by mistake. 

"That's _pits_!" says the first violin, and we have to begin again atthe top of the page, and the Professor in his library wonders why onearth those girls can't play straight on. The Ancient Phoenicians arefidgeted by the jerks in the music. 

But it comes to an end in time, and then Sally begins again:

"I _know_ that story's all nonsense now, Tishy. "

"Why?"

"Because mother told me once that my father never saw me, so come now!Because the new-bornest baby that ever was couldn't be too small forits father to see. " Sally pauses reflectively, then adds: "Unless hewas blind. And mother would have said if he'd been blind. "

"He couldn't have been blind, because----"

"Now, Tishy, you see! You're keeping back lots of things that oldwheezy squeaker said. And you _ought_ to tell me--you know you ought. Why couldn't he?"

"You're in such a hurry, dear. I was going to tell you. Major Ropersaid he never saw him but once, and it was out shooting tigers, and hewas the best shot for a civilian he'd ever seen. There was a tiger wasjust going to lay hold of a man and carry him off when your fathershot him from two hundred yards off----"

"The man or the tiger? I'm on the tiger's side. I always am. "

"The tiger, stupid! You wouldn't want your own father to aim at a tigerand hit a man?"

Sally reflects. "I don't think I should. But, I say, Tishy, do you meanto say that Major Roper meant to say that he was out shooting with myfather and didn't know what his name was?"

"Oh, no. He said his name, of course. It was Palliser ... That wasright, wasn't it?"

"Oh dear, no; it was Graythorpe. Palliser indeed!"

"It was true about the tiger though, because Major Roper says he's gotthe skin himself now. "

"Only it wasn't my father that shot it. That's quite clear. " Sally wasfeeling greatly relieved, and showed it in the way she added: "Now, doesn't that just show what a parcel of nonsense the whole story is?"

Sally had never told her friend about her mother's name before shetook that of Nightingale. Very slight hints had sufficed to make herreticent about Graythorpe. Colonel Lund had once said to her: "Ofcourse, your mother was Mrs. Graythorpe when she came to England; thatwas before she changed her name to Nightingale, you know?" Sheknew that her mother's money had come to her from a "grandfatherNightingale, " whose name had somehow accompanied it, and had been (veryproperly, as it seemed to her) bestowed on herself as well as hermother. They were part and parcel of each other obviously. In fact, shehad never more than just known of the existence of the name Graythorpein her family at all, and it had been imputed by her to this unpopularfather of hers, and put aside, as it were, on a shelf with him. Even ifher mother had not suggested a desire that the name should lapse, sheherself would have accepted its extinction on her own account. 

But now this name came out of the past as a consolation. Palliserindeed! How could mamma have been Mrs. Graythorpe if her husband's namehad been Palliser? Sally was not wise enough in worldly matters to knowthat divorced ladies commonly fall back on their maiden names. And shehad been kept, or left, so much in the dark that she had taken forgranted that her mother's had been Nightingale--that, in fact, she hadretaken her maiden name at her father's wish, possibly as a censureon the misbehaviour of a husband who drank or gambled or was otherwisereprobate. Her young mind had been manipulated all one way--had beenin contact only with its manipulators. Had she had a sister or brother, they would have canvassed the subject, speculated, run conclusions toearth, and demanded enlightenment. She had none but her mother to goto, unless it were Colonel Lund; and the painful but inevitable task ofboth was to keep her in the dark about her parentage at all hazards. "If ever, " said the former to the latter, "my darling girl has a childof her own, I may be able to tell her her mother's story. " Till then, it would be impossible. 

Sally had had a narrow escape of knowing more about this story whenthe veteran Sub-Dean qualified himself for an obituary in the "Times, "which she chanced upon and read before her mother had time to detectand suppress it. Luckily, a reasonable economy of type had restrictedthe names and designations of all the wives he had driven tandem, andno more was said of his third than that she was Rosalind, the widowof Paul Nightingale. So, as soon as Sally's mother had read the textherself, she was able to say to the Major, quite undisturbedly, thatthe old Sub-Dean had gone at last, leaving thirteen children. The nameGraythorpe had not crept in. 

But we left Sally with a question unanswered. Didn't that show whatnonsense old Major Roper's story was? Lętitia was rather glad toassent, and get the story quashed, or at least prorogued _sine die_. 

"It did seem rather nonsense, Sally dear. Major Roper was a stupid oldman, and evidently took more than was good for him. " Intoxicants areoften of great service in conversation. 

In this case they contributed to the reinstatement of Mr. Bradshaw. Dear me, it did seem so funny to Sally! Only the other day this youngman had been known to her on no other lines than as an establishedfool, who came to stare at _her_ out of the corners of his dark eyesall through the morning service at St. Satisfax. And now it was St. John's, Ladbroke Grove Road, and, what was more, he was being toleratedas a semi-visitor at the Wilsons'--a visitor with explanations in anundertone. This was the burden of Lętitia, as soon as she had contrivedto get Sally's troublesome parent shelved. 

"Why mamma needs always to be in such a furious fuss to drag in hisviolin, I do _not_ know. As if he needed to be accounted for! Ofcourse, if you ask a Hottentot to evenings, you have to explain him. But the office-staff at Cattley's (which is really one of the largestfirms in the country) are none of them Hottentots, but the contrary.... Now I know, dear, you're going to say what's the contrary of aHottentot, and all the while you know perfectly well what I mean. "

"Cut away, Tishy! What next?"

"Well--next, don't you think it very dignified of Mr. Bradshaw to be_able_ to be condescended to and explained in corners under people'sbreaths and not to show it?"

"He's got to lump it, if he doesn't like it. " Sally, you see, hasgiven up her admirer readily enough, but, as she herself afterwardssaid, it's quite another pair of shoes when you're called on to givethree cheers for what's really no merit at all! What does the youngman expect?

"Now, that's unkind, Sally dear. You wouldn't like _me_ to. Anyhow, that's what mamma _does_. Takes ladies of a certain position or withexpectations into corners, and says she hates the expression gentlemanand lady, but _they_ know what she means.... "

"_I_ know. And they goozle comfortably at her, like Goody Vereker. "

"Doesn't it make one's flesh creep to have a mother like that? I do getto hate the very sight of shot silk and binoculars on a leg when shegoes on so. But I suppose we never shall get on together--mamma and I. "

"What does the Professor think about him?"

"Oh--papa? Of course, papa's _perfectly hopeless_! It's the only truething mamma ever says--that he's _perfectly hopeless_. What do yousuppose he did that Sunday afternoon when Julius Bradshaw came and hadtea and brought the Strad--the first time, I mean?... Why, he actuallyfancied he had come from the shop with a parcel, and never found out hecouldn't have when he had tea in the drawing-room, and only suspectedsomething when he played Rode's 'Air with Variations for Violin andPiano. ' Just fancy! He wanted to know why he shouldn't have tea whenevery one else did, and offered him cake! And Sunday afternoon anda Stradivarius! _Do_ say you think my parents trying, Sally dear!"

Sally assented to everything in an absent way; but that didn't matteras long as she did it. Lętitia only wanted to talk. She seemed, thoughtSally, improved by the existing combination of events. She had had toclimb down off the high stilts about Bradshaw, and had only worked inone or two slight _Grundulations_ (a word of Dr. Vereker's) into hertalk this morning. Tishy wasn't a bad fellow at all (Sally'sexpression), only, if she hadn't been taught to strut, she wouldn'thave been any the worse. It was all that overpowering mother of hers!

Before she parted with her friend that afternoon Sally had a suddenaccess of Turkish directness:

"Tishy dear, _are_ you going to accept Julius Bradshaw if he asks you, or _not_?"

"Well, dear, you know we must look at it from the point of view of whathe would have been if it hadn't been for that unfortunate nervoussystem of his. The poor fellow couldn't help it. "

"But are you, or not? That's what _I_ want an answer to. "

"Sally dear! Really--you're just like so much dynamite. What would youdo yourself if you were me? I ask you. "

"I should do exactly whatever you settle to do if I were you. It standsto reason. But what's it going to be? That's the point. "

"He hasn't proposed yet. "

"That has nothing whatever to do with it. What you've got to do isto make--up--your--mind. " These last four words are very _staccato_indeed. Tishy recovers a dignity she has rather been allowing to lapse. 

"By the time you're my age, Sally dear, you'll see there are waysand ways of looking at things. Everything can't be wrapped up in anutshell. We're not Ancient Phoenicians nowadays, whatever papa maysay. But you're a dear, impulsive little puss. "

The protest was feeble in form and substance, and quite unworthy ofMiss Sales Wilson, the daughter of _the_ Professor Sales Wilson. Nowonder Sally briefly responded, "Stuff and nonsense!" and presentlywent home. 

Of course, the outer circle of Mrs. Nightingale's society (for in thismatter we are all like Regents Park) had their say about her proposedmarriage. But they don't come into our story; and besides, they had toofew data for their opinions to be of any value. What a difference itwould have made if old Major Roper had met Fenwick and recalled theface of the dead shot who, it seemed, had somehow ceded his tiger-skinto him. But no such thing happened, nor did anything else come abouteither to revive the story of the divorce or to throw a light on theidentity of Palliser and Fenwick. Eight weeks after the latter (or theformer?) had for the second time disclosed his passion to the samewoman, the couple were married at the church of St. Satisfax, and, having started for the Continent the same afternoon, found themselves, quite unreasonably happy, wandering about in France with hardly athought beyond the day at most, so long as a letter came from Sally atthe _postes-restantes_ when expected. And he had remembered nothing!

CHAPTER XVI

OF A WEDDING PARTY AND AN OLD MAN'S RETROSPECT. A HOPE OF RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE HEREAFTER. CHARLEY'S AUNT, AND PYRAMUS AND THISBE. HOW SALLY TRIED TO PUMP THE COLONEL AND GOT HALF A BUCKETFUL

And thus it came about that Rosalind Palliser (_née_ Graythorpe) stoodfor the second time at the altar of matrimony with the same bridegroomunder another name. The absence of bridesmaids pronounced and accentedthe fact that the bride was a widow, though, as there were very few ofthe congregation of St. Satisfax who did not know her as such, theannouncement was hardly necessary. Discussion of who her late husbandwas, or was not, had long since given way to a belief that he was a badlot, and that the less that was said about him the better. If any onewho was present at the wedding was still constructing theories abouthis identity--whether he had divorced his wife, was divorced himself, or was dead--certainly none of those theories connected themselves withthe present bridegroom. As for Sally, her only feeling, over and aboveher ordinary curiosity about her father, was a sort of paradoxicalindignation that his intrusion into her mother's life should haveprevented her daughter figuring as a bridesmaid. It would have been sojolly! But Sally was perfectly well aware that widows, strong-nervedfrom experience, stand in no need of official help in getting their"things" on, and acquiesced perforce in her position of a mereunqualified daughter. 

The Major--that is to say, Colonel Lund--stayed on after the wedding, under a sort of imputation of guardianship necessary for Sally--animputation accepted by her in order that the old boy should not feellonesome, far more than for any advantage to herself. She wasn't sureit did him any good though, after all, for the wedding-party (if itcould be called one, it was so small), having decided that itsafternoon had been completely broken into, gave itself up todissipation, and went to see "Charley's Aunt. " The old gentleman didnot feel equal to this, but said if Sally told him all about itafterwards it would be just as good, and insisted on her going. He saidhe would be all right, and she kissed him and left him reading "HarryLorrequer, " or pretending to. 

The wedding-party seemed to have grown, thought the Major, in contactwith the theatrical world when, on its return, it filled the summernight with sound, and made the one-eyed piebald cat who lived at TheRetreat foreclose an interview with a peevish friend acrimoniously. Perhaps it was only because the laughter and the jests, the good-nightsmixed with echoes of "Charley's Aunt, " and reminders of appointmentsfor the morrow, broke in so suddenly on a long seclusion that the Majorseemed to hear so many voices beyond his expectation. 

The time had not hung heavy on his hands though--at least, no heavierthan time always hangs on hands that wore gloves with no fingers nearupon eighty years ago. The specific gravity of the hours varies lessand less with loneliness and companionship as we draw nearer to thelast one of all--the heaviest or lightest, which will it be? The oldboy had been canvassing this point with another old boy, a real Major, our friend Roper, at the Hurkaru Club not long before, and, after hehad read a few pages of "Harry Lorrequer" he put his spectacles in tokeep the place, and fell back into a maze of recurrence and reflection. 

Was he honest, or was it affectation, when he said to that pursy andpurple old warrior that if the doctor were to tell him he had but anhour to live he should feel greatly relieved and happy? Was his heartonly pretending to laugh at the panic his old friend was stricken withat the mere mention of the word "death"--he who had in his time faceddeath a hundred times without a qualm? But then that was militarydeath, and was his _business_. Death the civilian, with paragraphs inthe newspapers to say "the worst" was feared, and the fever being keptdown, and the system being kept up, and smells of carbolic acid andhourly bulletins--that was the thing he shrank from. Why, the Majorcould remember old Jack Roper at Delhi, in the Mutiny, going out inthe darkness to capture those Sepoy guns--what was that placecalled--Ludlow Castle?--and now!... 

"Oh dammy, Colonel! Why, good Lard! who's dyin' or goin' to die? Timeenough to talk about dyin' when the cap fits. You take my advice, andtry a couple of Cockle's anti-bilious. My word for it, it's liver!... "And then old Jack followed this with an earthquake-attack of coughingthat looked very much as if the cap was going to fit. But came out ofit incorrigible, and as soon as he could speak endorsed his advicewith an admonitory forefinger: "You do as I tell you, and try 'em. "

But the fossil, who was ten years his senior, answered his own questionto himself in the affirmative as he sat there listening to the distantmurmur of wheels on the Uxbridge Road and the music of the catswithout. Yes, he was quite honest about it. He had no complaint tomake of life, for the last twenty years at any rate. His dear little_protégée_--that was how he thought of Sally's mother--had takengood care of that. But he had some harsh indictments against earlieryears--or rather _had_ had. For he had dismissed the culprits witha caution, and put the records on a back-shelf. 

He could take them down now and look at them without flinching. Afterall, he was so near the end! What did it matter?

There they all were, the neglected chronicles, each in its corner ofhis mind. Of his school-days, a record with all the blots and errorsworked into the text and made to do duty for ornaments. Not a blemishunforgiven. It is even so with us, with you; we all forgive ourschools. Of his first uniform and his first love, two records witha soil on each. For a chemical brother spilt sulphuric acid over thefirst, and the second married a custom-house officer. Of his firstgreat cloud--for, if he did not quite forget his first love, he soongot a second and even a third--a cloud that came out of a letter thatreached him in camp at Rawal Pindi, and told him that his father, a solicitor of unblemished character till then, had been indicted forfraudulent practices, and would have to stand his trial formisdemeanour. Of a later letter, even worse, that told of his acquittalon the score of insanity, and of how, when he went back two yearsafter on his first leave, he went to see his father in an asylum; whodid not know him and called him "my lord, " and asked him to "bring hiscase before the house. " Then of a marriage, like a dream now, witha wife who left him and a child that died; and then of many colourlessyears of mere official routine, which might have gone on till he felldown in harness, but for the chance that threw in his way the daughterof an old friend in sore trouble and alone. Not until her lonelinessand want of a protector on her voyage home suggested it did the harnesscome off the old horse. And then, as we have seen, followed thehappiest fourth part of his life, as he accounted it, throughout whichhe had never felt so willing to die as he had done before. RosalindGraythorpe grew into it as a kind of adopted daughter, and brought withher the morsel of new humanity that had become Sally--that would beback in an hour from "Charley's Aunt. "

And now Rosey had found a guardian, and was provided for. It would beno way amiss now for the Major to take advantage of death. There isso much to be said for it when the world has left one aching!

His confidence that his _protégée_ had really found a haven was nosmall compliment to Fenwick. For the latter, with his strange unknownpast, had nothing but his personality to rely on; and the verdict ofthe Major, after knowing him twelve months, was as decisive on thispoint as if he had known him twelve years. "He may be a bithot-tempered and impulsive, " said he to Sally. "But I really couldn'tsay, if I were asked, _why_ I think so. It's a mere idea. Otherwise, it's simply impossible to help liking him. " To which Sally replied, borrowing an expression from Ann the housemaid, that Fenwick was a cupof tea. It was metaphorical and descriptive of invigoration. 

But the Major's feeling that he was now at liberty to try Death afterLife, to make for port after stormy seas, had scarcely a trace in itof dethronement or exclusion from privileges once possessed. It was nothis smallest tribute to Fenwick that he should admit the idea to hismind at all--that he might have gained a son rather than lost adaughter. At least, he need not reject that view of the case, but itwould not do to build on it. _Unberufen!_ The Major tapped three timeson the little table where the lamp stood and "Harry Lorrequer" layneglected. He pulled out his watch, and decided that they would not bevery long now. He would not go to bed till he had seen the kitten--heusually spoke of her so to her mother. He had to disturb the kitten'scat, who was asleep on him, to get at the watch; who, being selfish, made a grievance of it, and went away piqued after stretching. Well, he was sorry of course, but it would have had to come, some time. Andhe hadn't moved for ever so long!

"I wonder, " half said, half thought he to himself, "I wonder who orwhat he really is?... If only we could have known!... Was I right notto urge delay?... Only Rosey was so confident.... _Could_ a woman ofher age feel so sure and be misled?"

It was _her_ certainty that had dragged his judgment along a path itmight otherwise have shrunk from. He could not know her reasons, buthe felt their force in her presence. Now she was gone, he doubted. Hadhe been a fool after all?

"Well--well; it can't be altered now. And she would have done it justthe same whatever I said.... I suppose she was like that when she wasa girl.... I wish I had even seen that husband of hers.... So odd theyshould both be Algernon! Does he know, I wonder, that the other wasAlgernon?" For the Major had religiously adhered to his promise not tosay anything to Fenwick about the old story. He knew she had told it, or would tell it in her own time. 

Then his thoughts turned to revival of how and where he found herfirst, and, as it all came back to him, you could have guessed, had youseen his face, that they had lighted on the man who was the evil causeof all, and the woman who had abetted him. The old hand on the tablethat had little more strength in it than when it wore a hedger's glovenear eighty years ago, closed with the grip of all the force it had, and the lamp-globe rang as the tremor of his arm shook the table. 

"Oh, I pray God there is a hell, " came audibly from as kind a heart asever beat. "_How_ I pray God there is a hell!" Then the stress of hisanger seemed to have exhausted him, for he lay back in his armchairwith his eyes closed. In a few moments he drew a long breath, and ashe wiped the drops from his brow, said aloud to himself: "I wish thekitten would come. " He seemed happier only from speaking of her. Andthen sat on and waited--waited as for a rescue--for Sally to come andfill up the house with her voice and her indispensable self. 

Something of an inconsistency in the attitude of his mind may havestruck across the current of his reflections--something connected withwhat this indispensable thing actually was and whence--for his thoughtsrelented as the image of her came back to him. Where would those eyesbe, conspirators with the lids above them and the merry fluctuations ofthe brows; where would those lips be, from which the laughter neverquite vanished, even as the ripple of the ocean's edge tries how smallit can get but never dies outright; where the great coils of black hairthat would not go inside any ordinary oilskin swimming-cap; where theincorrigible impertinence and flippancy be we never liked to miss aword of; where, in short, would Sally be if she had never emerged fromthat black shadow in the past?

Easy enough to say that, had she not done so, something else quite asgood might have been. Very likely. How can we limit the possible to theconditional-pręter-pluperfect tense? But then, you see, it wouldn'thave been Sally! That's the point. 

Sally's mother had followed such thoughts to the length of almostforgiving the author of her troubles. But she could not forgive himconsidered also as the author of her husband's. The Major could notfind any forgiveness at all, though the thought of Sally just sufficedto modify the severity of his condemnation. Leniency dawned. 

"Yes--yes; I was wrong to say that. But I couldn't help it. " So saidthe old man to himself, but quite as though he spoke to some one else. He paused a little, then said again: "Yes; I was wrong. But oh, whata damned scoundrel! And _what_ a woman!" Then, as though he feared areturn of his old line of thought, "I wish Sally would come. " Anda dreadful half-thought came to him, "Suppose there were a fire atthe theatre, and I had to wire ... Why--that would be worst of all!"

So, almost without a pause between, he had prayed for a hell to punisha crime, and for the safety of the treasured thing that was itssurviving record--a creature that but for that crime would never havedrawn breath. 

His reading-lamp had burned out its young enthusiasm, and was making upits mind to go out, only not in any hurry. It would expire with dignityand leave a rich inheritance of stench. Meanwhile, its decadence wasmarked enough to frank the Major in neglecting "Harry Lorrequer" forthe rest of the time, and also served to persuade him that he hadreally been reading. Abstention from a book under compulsion hassomething of the character of perusal. Gibbon could not have collectedhis materials on those lines, certainly. But the Major felt hisconscience clearer from believing that he meant to go on where he hadbeen obliged to stop. He cancelled "Harry Lorrequer, " put him back inthe bookcase to make an incident, then began actively waiting for thereturn of the playgoers. Reference to his watch at short intervalsintensified their duration, added gall to their tediousness. But soconvinced was he that they "would be here directly" that it was atleast half-an-hour before he reconsidered this insane policy andresumed his chair with a view to keeping awake in it. He was convincedhe was succeeding, had not noticed he was dozing, when he was suddenlywrenched out of the jaws of sleep by the merry voices of thehome-comers and the loss of the piebald cat's temper as aforesaid. 

"Oh, Major dear, you haven't gone to bed! You will be so tired! Whydidn't you go?"

"I've been very happy, chick. I've been reading 'Harry Lorrequer. 'I like Charles Lever, because I read him when I was a boy. What'so'clock?" He pulled out his watch with a pretence, easy of detection, that he had not just done so ten minutes before. It was a lie about"Harry Lorrequer, " you see, so a little extra didn't matter. 

"It's awfully late!" Sally testified. "Very nearly as late as it'spossible to be. But now we're in for it, we may as well make ita nocturnal dissipation. Ann!--don't go to bed; at least, not beforeyou've brought some more fresh water. This will take years to hot up. Oh, Major, Major, why _didn't_ you make yourself some toddy? I nevergo out for five minutes but you don't make yourself any toddy!"

"I don't want it, dear child. I've been drinking all day--however, ofcourse, it was a wedding.... "

"But you must have some now, anyhow. Stop a minute, there's some onecoming up the doorsteps and Ann's fastened up.... No, it's not thepoliceman. _I_ know who it is. Stop a minute. " And then presently theMajor hears Sally's half of an interview, apparently through a keyhole. "I shan't open the door ... Two bolts and a key and a chain--the idea!What is it?... My pocky-anky?... Keep it, it won't bite you ... Send itto the wash!... No, really, do keep it if you don't mind--keep it tillBrahms on Thursday. Remember! Good-night. " But it isn't quitegood-night, for Sally arrests departure. "Stop! What a couple of idiotswe are!... What for?--why--because you might have stuffed it in theletter-box all along. " And the incident closes on the line indicated. 

"It was only my medical adviser, " Sally says, returning withexplanations. "Found my wipe in the cab. "

"Dr. Vereker?"

"Yes. Dr. Him. Exactly! We bawled at each other through the keyhole likePyramus and Trilby----" She becomes so absorbed in the details of thetoddy that she has to stand a mere emendation over until it is ready. Then she completes: "I mean Thisbe. I wonder where they've got to?"

"Pyramus and Thisbe?"

"No, mother and her young man.... No, I won't sit on you. I'll sithere; down alongside--so! Then I shan't shake the toddy overboard. "

Her white soft hand is so comforting as it lies on the Major's on thechair-arm that he is fain to enjoy it a little, however reproachfulthe clock-face may be looking. You can pretend your toddy is too hot, almost any length of time, as long as no one else touches the tumbler;also you can drink as slow as you like. No need to hurry. Weddingsdon't come every day. 

"Was it very funny, chick?"

"Oh, wasn't it! But didn't mamma look _lovely_?... I've seen it twicebefore, you know. " This last is by way of apology for giving theconversation a wrench. But the Major didn't want to talk over thewedding--seemed to prefer "Charley's Aunt. "

"He dresses up like his aunt, doesn't he?"

"Oh yes--it's glorious fun! But _do_ say you thought mamma lookedlovely. "

"Of course she did. She always does. But had the others seen 'Charley'sAunt' before?"

"Tishy and her Bradshaw? Oh yes--at least, I suppose so. "

"And Dr. Vereker?"

"Oh, of course _he_ had--twice at least. The times we saw it, motherand I. He went too.... We-e-e-ell, there's nothing in that!" (We canonly hope again our spelling conveys the way the word _well_ wasprolonged. )

"Nothing at all. Why should there be? What a nice fellow Vereker is!"

"My medical adviser? Oh, _he's_ all right. Never mind him; talk aboutmother. "

"They must be very nearly at Rheims by now. " This is mere obedienceto orders on the Major's part. He feels no real interest in what heis saying. 

"How rum it must be!" says Sally, with grave consideration. And theMajor's "What?" evolves that "it" means marrying a second husband. 

"Going through it all over again when you've done it once before, "continues this young philosopher. The Major thinks of asking why itshould be rummer the second time than the first, but decides not to, and sips his toddy, and pats the hand that is under his. In a hazy, fossil-like way he perceives that to a young girl's mind the "rumness"of a second husband is exactly proportionate to the readiness of itsacceptance of the first. Unity is just as intrinsic a quality ofa first husband as the colour of his eyes or hair. Moreover, he isexpected to outlive you. Above all, he is perfectly natural and amatter of course. We discern in all this a sneaking tribute to anidea of a hereafter; but the Major didn't go so far as that. 

"She looked very jolly over it, " said he, retreating on generalities. "So did he. "

"Gaffer Fenwick? I should think so indeed! Well he might!" Then, aftera moment's consideration: "He looked like my idea of Sir RichardGrenville. It's only an idea. I forget what he did. Elizabethanjohnny. "

"What do you call him? Gaffer Fenwick? You're a nice, respectable youngmonkey! Well, he's not half a bad-looking fellow; well set up. " Butnone of this, though good in itself, is what Sally sat down to talkabout. A sudden change in her manner, a new earnestness, makes theMajor stop an incipient yawn he is utilising as an exordium to a hintthat we ought to go to bed, and become quite wakeful to say: "I willtell you all I can, my child. " For Sally has thrust aside talk of theday's events, making no more of the wedding ceremony than of "Charley'sAunt, " with: "_Why_ did my father and mother part? You _will_ tell menow, won't you, Major dear?"

Lying was necessary--inevitable. But he would minimise it. There wasalways the resource of the legal fiction; all babes born in matrimonyare legally the children of their mother's husband, _quand-mźme_. Hemust make that his sheet-anchor. 

"You know, Sallykin, your father and mother fell out before you wereborn. And the first time I saw your mother--why, bless my soul, mydear! you were quite a growing girl--yes, able to get a staff-officer'sthumb in your mouth, and bite it. Indeed, you did! It was GeneralPellew; they say he's going to be made a peer. " The Major thinks hesees his way out of the fire by sinking catechism in reminiscences. "Ican recollect it all as if it were yesterday. I said to him, 'Who's thepoor pretty little mother, General?' Because he knew your mother, andI didn't. 'Don't you know?' said he. 'She's Mrs. Graythorpe. ' I askedabout her husband, but Pellew had known nothing except that there wasa row, and they had parted. " The Major's only fiction here was that hesubstituted the name Graythorpe for Palliser. "Next time I saw her wepicked up some acquaintance, and she asked if I was a LincolnshireLund, because her father always used to talk of how he went to Lund'sfather's, near Crowland, when he was a boy. 'Stop a bit, ' said I; 'whatwas your father's name?' 'Paul Nightingale, ' says she. " Observe thatnothing was untrue in this, because Rosey always spoke and thought ofPaul Nightingale as her father. 

"That was my grandfather?" Sally was intent on accumulatingfacts--would save up analysis till after. The Major took advantage ofa slight choke over his whiskey to mix a brief nod into it; it was alie--but, then, he himself couldn't have said which was nod and whichwas choke; so it hardly counted. He continued, availing himself attimes of the remains of the choke to help him to slur over difficultpassages. 

"He was the young brother of a sort of sweetheart of mine--a sillyboyish business--a sort of calf-love. She married and died. But he washer great pet, a favourite younger brother. One keeps a recollectionof this sort of thing. "--The Major makes a parade of his powers ofoblivion, and his failure to carry it out sits well upon him. --"Ofcourse, my romantic memories"--the Major smiles derision of Love'syoung dream--"had something to do with my interest in your mother, butI hope I should have done the same if there had been no such thing. Well, the mere fact of your father's behaviour to your mother.... " Hestopped short, with misgivings that his policy of talking himself outof his difficulties was not such a very safe one, after all. Here hewas, getting into a fresh mess, gratuitously!

"Mamma won't talk about that, " says Sally, "so I suppose I'm not to ask_you_. " The Major must make a stand upon this, or the enemy will swarmover his entrenchments. Merely looking at his watch and saying it'stime for us to be in bed will only bring a moment's respite. There isnothing for it but decision. 

"Sally dear, your mother does not tell you because she wishes the wholething buried and forgotten. Her wishes must be my wishes.... "

He would like to stop here--to cut it short at that, at once and forgood. But the pathetic anxiety of the face from which all memories of"Charley's Aunt" have utterly vanished is too much for his fortitude;and, at the risk of more semi-fibs, he extenuates the sentence. 

"One day your mother may tell you all about it. She is the properperson to tell it--not me. Neither do I think I know it all to tell. "

"You know if there was or wasn't a divorce?" The Major feels very sorryhe didn't let it alone. 

"I'll tell you that, you inquisitive chick, if you'll promise on honournot to ask any more questions. "

"I promise. "

"Honour bright?"

"Honest Injun!"

"That's right. Now I'll tell you. There was no divorce, but there wasa suit for a divorce, instituted by him. He failed to make out a case. "Note that the expression "your father" was carefully excluded. "She wasabsolutely blameless--to my thinking, at least. Now that's plenty fora little girl to know. And it's high time we were both in bed andasleep. "

He kisses the grave, sad young face that is yearning to hear more, butis too honourable to break its compact. "They'll be at Rheims by now, "says he, to lighten off the conversation. 

CHAPTER XVII

SALLY'S LARK. AND HOW SHE TOOK HER MEDICAL ADVISER INTO HER CONFIDENCE AFTER DIVINE SERVICE

Though Sally cried herself to sleep after her interview with herbeloved but reticent old fossil, nevertheless, when she awoke nextmorning and found herself mistress of the house and the situation, shebecame suddenly alive to the advantages of complete independence. Shewas an optimist constitutionally; for it _is_ optimism to decide thatit is "rather a lark" to breakfast by yourself when you have justdried the tears you have been shedding over the loss of your morningcompanion. Sally came to this conclusion as she poured out her tea, after despatching his toast and coffee to the Major in his own room. He sometimes came down to breakfast, but such a dissipation as yesterdayput it out of the question on this particular morning. 

The lark continued an unalloyed, unqualified lark quite to the end ofthe second cup of tea, when it seemed to undergo a slight cloudingover--a something we should rather indicate by saying that it sloweddown passing through a station, than that it was modulated into a minorkey. Of course, we are handicapped in our metaphors by an imperfectunderstanding of the exact force of the word "lark" used in thisconnexion. 

The day before does not come back to us during our first cup atbreakfast, whether it be tea or coffee. A happy disposition lets whatwe have slept on sleep, till at least it has glanced at the weather, and knows that it is going to be cooler, some rain. Then memoryrevives, and all the chill inheritance of overnight. We pick up thethread of our existence, and draw our finger over the last knots, andthen go on where we left off. We remember that we have to see aboutthis, and we mustn't be late at that, and that there's an order gotto be made out for the stores. There wasn't in Sally's case, certainly, because it was Sunday; but there was tribulation awaiting her as soonas she could recollect her overdue analysis of the Major's concealedfacts. She had put it off till leisure should come; and now that shewas only looking at a microcosm of the garden seen through the window, and reflected upside down in the tea-urn, she had surely met withleisure. Her mind went back tentatively on the points of the old man'sreminiscences, as she looked at her own thoughtful face in the convexof the urn opposite, nursed in two miniature hands whose elbows werealready becoming unreasonably magnified, though really they were nextto nothing nearer. 

Just to think! The Major had actually been in love when he was young. More than once he must have been, because Sally knew he was a widower. She touched the shiny urn with her finger, to see how hideously itswelled in the mirror. You know what fun that is! But she took herfinger back, because it was too hot, though off the boil. 

There was a bluebottle between the blind and the window-pane, as usual;if he was the same bluebottle that was there when Fenwick was firstbrought into this room, he had learned nothing and forgotten nothing, like the old _régime_ in France. He only knew how to butt and blunderresonantly at the glass; but he could do it as well as ever, and heseemed to have made up his mind to persevere. Sally listened to hismonotone, and watched her image in the urn. 

"I wish I hadn't promised not to ask more, " she thought to herself. "Anyhow, Tishy's wrong. Nobody ever was named Palliser--that's flat!And if there was a divorce-suit ever so, _I_ don't care!... " She had tostop thinking for a moment, to make terms with the cat, who otherwisewould have got her claws in the beautiful white damask, and ripped. 

"Besides, if my precious father behaved so badly to mamma, how could itbe _her_ fault? I don't _believe_ in mother being the _least_ wrong inanything, so it's no use!" This last filled out a response to animaginary indictment of an officious Crown-Prosecutor. "I know what Ishould like! I should like to get at that old Scroope, or whatever hisname is, and get it all out of him. I'd give him a piece of my mind, gossipy old humbug!" It then occurred to Sally that she was beingunfair. No, she wouldn't castigate old Major Roper for tattling, and atthe same time cross-examine him for her own purposes. It would beunderhand. But it would be very easy, if she could get at him, to makehim talk about it. She rehearsed ways and means that might be employedto that end. For instance, nothing more natural than to recur to thelegend of how she bit General Pellew's finger; that would set him off!She recited the form of speech to be employed. "Do you know, MajorRoper, I'm told I once bit a staff-officer's finger off, " etc. Or wouldit be better not to approach the matter with circumspection, but gostraight to the point--"You must have met my father, Major Roper, etc. , " and then follow on with explanations? Oh dear, how difficult itwas to settle! If only there were any one she could trust to talk toabout it! Really, Tishy was quite out of the question, even if shecould take her mind off her Bradshaw for five minutes, which shecouldn't. 

"Of course, there's Prosy, if you come to that, " was the conclusionreached at the end of a long avenue of consideration, on each side ofwhich referees who might have been accepted, but had been rejected, were supposed to be left to their disappointment. "Only, fancy makinga confidant of old Prosy! Why, he'd feel your pulse and look at yourtongue, just as likely as not. "

But Dr. Vereker, thus dismissed to the rejected referees, seemed not tocare for their companionship, and to be able to come back. At any rate, Miss Sally ended up a long cogitation with, "I've a great mind to goand talk to Prosy about it, after all! Perhaps he would be at church. "

Now, if this had been conversation instead of soliloquy, Sally'sconstitutional frankness would have entered some protest against theassumption that she intended to go to church as a matter of course. Asshe was her only audience, and one that knew all about the speakeralready, she slurred a little over the fact that her decision to attendchurch was influenced by a belief that probably Dr. Vereker would bethere. If she chose, she should deceive herself, and consult nobodyelse. She looked at her watch, as the open-work clock with the punctualratchet-movement had stopped, and was surprised to find how late shewas. "Comes of weddings!" was her comment. However, she had time towind the clock up and set it going when she came downstairs again readyfor church. 

St. Satisfax's Revd. Vicar prided himself on the appropriateness of hissermons; so, this time, as he had yesterday united a distinguished andbeautiful widow to her second husband, he selected for his text theparable of the widow's son. True, Mrs. Nightingale had no son, andher daughter wasn't dead, and there is not a hint in the text thatthe widow of Nain married again, or had any intention of doing so. Onthe other hand, the latter had no daughter, presumably, and her sonwas alive. And as to marrying again, why, there was the very gistand essence of the comparison, if you chose to accept the crypticsuggestions of the Revd. Vicar, and make it for yourself. The lessonwe had to learn from this parable was obviously that nowadays widows, however good and solvent, were mundane, and married again; while in theCity of Nain, nineteen hundred years ago, they (being in Holy Writ)were, as it were, Sundane, and didn't. The delicacy of the reverendsuggestion to this effect, without formal indictment of any offender, passes our powers of description. So subtle was it that Sally felt shehad nothing to lay hold of. 

Nevertheless, when the last of the group that included herself and thedoctor, and walked from St. Satisfax towards its atomic elements'respective homes, had vanished down her turning--it was the large MissBaker, as a matter of fact--then Sally referred to the sermon and itstext, jumping straight to her own indictment of the preacher. 

"Why shouldn't my mother marry again if she likes, Dr. Vereker--especially Mr. Fenwick?"

"Don't you think it possible, Miss Sally, that the parson didn't meananything about your mother--didn't connect her in his mind with----"

"With the real widow in the parable? Oh yes, he did, though! As ifmother was a real widow!"

Now, the doctor had heard from his own widowed mother the heads ofthe gossip about the supposed divorce. He had pooh-poohed this as meretattle--asked for evidence, and so on. But, having heard it, it wasnot to be wondered at that he put a false interpretation on Sally'slast words. They seemed to acknowledge the divorce story. He feltvery unsafe, and could only repeat them half interrogatively, "Asif Mrs. Nightingale was a real widow?" But with the effect thatSally immediately saw clean through him, and knew what was passingin his mind. 

"Oh no, Dr. Vereker! I wasn't thinking of _that_. " She faced round todisclaim it, turning her eyes full on the embarrassed doctor. Then shesuddenly remembered it was the very thing she had come out to talkabout, and felt ashamed. The slightest possible flush, that framed upher smile and her eyes, made her at this moment a bad companion fora man who was under an obligation not to fall in love with her--forthat was how the doctor thought of himself. Sally continued: "But Iwish I had been, because it would have done instead. "

The young man was really, at the moment, conscious of very littlebeyond the girl's fascination, and his reply, "Instead of what?" wasa little mechanical. 

"I mean instead of explaining what I wanted you to talk about special. But when I spoke, you know, just now about a real widow, I meant a realwidow that--that _wids_--you know what I mean. Don't laugh!"

"All right, Miss Sally. I'm serious. " The doctor composes aprofessional face. "I know perfectly what you mean. " He waits for thenext symptom. 

"Now, mother never did wid, and never will wid, I hope. She hasn't gotit in her bones. " And then Miss Sally stopped short, and a little extraflush got time to assert itself. But a moment after she rushed theposition without a single casualty. "I want to know what people say, when I'm not there, about who my father was, and why he and motherparted. And I'm sure you can tell me, and will. It's no use askingTishy Wilson any more about it. " Observe the transparency of this younglady. She wasn't going to conceal that she had talked of it to TishyWilson--not she!

Dr. Vereker, usually reserved, but candid withal, becomes, under theinfection of Sally's frankness, candid and unreserved. 

"People haven't talked any nonsense to _me_; I never let them. But mymother has repeated to me things that have been said to her.... Shedoesn't like gossip, you know!" And the young man really believes whathe says. Because his mother has been his religion--just consider!

"I know she doesn't. " Sally analyses the position, and decides on thefib in the twinkling of an eye. She is going to make a son break apromise to his mother, and she knows it. So she gives him this asa set-off. "But people _will_ talk to her, of course! Shall I get _her_to tell _me_?"

The doctor considers, then answers:

"I think, Miss Sally--unless you particularly wish the contrary--Iwould almost rather not. Mother believed the story all nonsense, andwas very much concerned that people should repeat such silly tattle. She would be very unhappy if she thought it had come to your earsthrough her repeating it in confidence to me. "

"Perhaps you would really rather not tell it, doctor. " Disappointmentis on Sally's face. 

"No. As you have asked me, I prefer to tell it. Only you won't speakto her at all, will you?"

"I really won't. You may trust me. "

"Well, then, it's really very little when all's said and done. Somebodytold her--I won't say who it was--you don't mind?" Sally didn't--"toldher that your father behaved very badly to your mother, and that hetried to get a divorce from her and failed, and that after that theyparted by mutual consent, and he went away to New Zealand when you werequite a small baby. "

"Was that quite all?"

"That was all mother told me. I'm afraid I rather cut her short bysaying I thought it was most likely all unfounded gossip. Was any ofit true? But I've no right to ask questions.... "

"Oh, Dr. Vereker--no! That wouldn't be fair. Of course, when you areasked to tell, you are allowed to ask. Every one always is. Besides, I don't mind a bit telling you all I know. Only you'll be surprised atmy knowing so very little. "

And then Sally, with a clearness that did her credit, repeated all theinformation she had had--all that her mother had told her--what she hadextracted from Colonel Lund with difficulty--and lastly, but as themerest untrustworthy hearsay, the story that had reached her throughher friend Lętitia. In fact, she went the length of discrediting italtogether, as "Only Goody Wilson, when all was said and done. " Thefact that her mother had told her so little never seemed to strike heras strange or to call for comment. It was right that it should be so, because it was in her mother's jurisdiction, and what she did or saidwas right. Cannot most of us recall things unquestioned in our youththat we have marvelled at our passive acceptance of since? Sally'smother's silence about her father was ingrained in the nature ofthings, and she had never speculated about him so much as she had donesince Professor Wilson's remark across the table had led to Lętitia'stale about Major Roper and the tiger-shooting. 

Sally's version of her mother's history was comforting to her hearer onone point: it contained no hint that the fugitive to Australia was nother father. Now, the fact is that the doctor, in repeating what hismother had said to him, had passed over some speculations of hers aboutSally's paternity. No wonder the two records confirmed each other, seeing that the point suppressed by the doctor had been studiouslykept from Sally by all her informants. He, for his part, felt that thebargain did not include speculations of his mother's. 

"Well, doctor?" Thus Sally, at the end of a very short pause forconsideration. Vereker does not seem to need a longer one. "You mean, Miss Sally, do I think people talk spitefully of Mrs. Nightingale--Isuppose I must say Mrs. Fenwick now--behind her back? Isn't that thesort of question?" Sally, for response, looks a little short nod at thedoctor, instead of words. He goes on: "Well, then, I don't think theydo. And I don't think you need fret about it. People will talk aboutthe story of the quarrel and separation, of course, but it doesn'tfollow that anything will be said against either your father or mother. Things of this sort happen every day, with fault on neither side. "

"You think it was just a row?"

"Most likely. The only thing that seems to me to tell against yourfather is what you said your mother said just now--something abouthaving forgiven him for your sake. " Sally repeats her nod. "Well, even that might be accounted for by supposing that he had been veryhot-tempered and unjust and violent. He was quite a young chap, yousee.... "

"You mean like--like supposing Jeremiah were to go into a tantrum nowand flare up--he does sometimes--and then they were both to miff off?"

"Something of that sort. Very likely they would have understood eachother better if they had been a little older and wiser.... "

"Like us?" says Sally, with perfect unconsciousness of one aspect ofthe remark. "And then they might have gone on till now. " Regret thatthey did not do so is on her face, till she suddenly sees a newcontingency. "But then we shouldn't have had Jeremiah. I shouldn't havefancied that at all. " She doesn't really see why the doctor smiled atthis, but adds a grave explanation: "I mean, if I'd tried both, I mighthave preferred my step. " But there they were at Glenmoira Road, andmust say good-bye till Brahms on Thursday. 

Only, the doctor did (as a matter of history) walk down that road withSally as far as the gate with Krakatoa Villa on it, and got home latefor his mid-day Sunday dinner, and was told by his mother that he mighthave considered the servants. She herself was, meekly, out of it. 

CHAPTER XVIII

 OF A SWIMMING-BATH, "ET PRĘTEREA EXIGUUM"

This was the best of the swimming-bath season, and Sally rarely passeda day without a turn at her favourite exercise. If her swimming-bathhad been open on Sunday, she wouldn't have gone to church yesterday, not even to meet Dr. Vereker and talk about her father to him. As itwas, she very nearly came away from Krakatoa Villa next morning withoutwaiting to see the letter from Rheims, the post being late. Why _is_everything late on Monday?

However, she was intercepted by the postman and the foreign postmark--adozen words on a card, but she read them several times, and put thecard in her pocket to show to Lętitia Wilson. She was pretty sure to bethere. And so she was, and by ten o'clock had seen the card andexhausted its contents. And by five-minutes-past Sally was impendingover the sparkling water of Paddington swimming-bath. She was dry sofar, and her blue bathing-dress could stick out. But it was not to befor long, for her two hands went together after a preliminary stretchto make a cutwater, and down went Sally with a mighty splash into thedeep--into the moderately deep, suppose we say--at any rate into tenthousand gallons of properly filtered Thames water, which had been(no doubt) sterilised and disinfected and examined under powerfulmicroscopes until it hadn't got a microbe to bless itself with. Whenshe came up at the other end, to taunt Lętitia Wilson with hercowardice for not doing likewise, she was a smooth and shiny Sally, like a deep blue seal above water, but with modifications towardsfloating fins below. 

"Now tell me about the row last night, " said she, after reproaches metby Lętitia with, "It's no use, dear. I wasn't born a herring like you. "

Sally must have heard there had been some family dissension at LadbrokeGrove Road as she came into the bath with Lętitia, whom she met at thetowel-yielding _guichet_. However, the latter wasn't disposed todiscuss family matters in an open swimming-bath in the hearing of thecustodian, to say nothing of possible concealed dressers in horse-boxesalongside. 

"My dear child, _is_ this the place to talk about things in? _Do_ bea little discreet sometimes, " is her reply to Sally's request. 

"There's nobody here but us. Cut away, Tishy!" But Miss Wilson will_not_ talk about the row, whatever it was, with the chance ofgoodness-knows-who coming in any minute. For one thing, she wants toenjoy the telling, and not to be interrupted. So it is deferred toa more fitting season and place. 

Goodness-knows-who (presumably) came in in the shape of HenriettePrince, who was, after Sally, the next best swimmer in the Ladies'Club. After a short race or two, won by Sally in spite of heavy oddsagainst her, the two girls turned their attention to the art ofrescuing drowning persons. A very amusing game was played, eachalternately committing suicide off the edge of the bath while the othertook a header to her rescue from the elevation which we just now sawSally on ready to plunge. The rules were clear. The suicide was to doher best to drag the rescuer under water and to avoid being draggedinto the shallow end of the bath. 

"I know you'll both get drowned if you play those tricks, " says Lętitianervously. 

"No--we _shan't_, " vociferates Sally from the brink. "Now, are youready, Miss Prince? Very well. Tishy, count ten!"

"Oh, I wish you wouldn't! One--two--three.... " And Lętitia, all whosedignity and force of character go when she is bathing, does as she isbidden, and, at the "ten, " the suicide, with a cry of despair, hurlsherself madly into the water, and the rescuer flies to her succour. What she has to do is to grasp the struggling quarry by the elbowsfrom behind and keep out of the reach of her hands. But the tussle thatensues in the water is a short one, for the rescuer is no match for thesupposed involuntary resistance of the convulsed suicide, who eludesthe coming grasp of her hand with eel-like dexterity, and has her roundthe waist and drags her under water in a couple of seconds. 

"There now!" says Sally triumphantly, as they stand spluttering andchoking in the shallow water to recover breath. "Didn't I do thatbeautifully?"

"Well, but _anybody_ could like that. When real people are drowningthey don't do it like that. " Miss Prince is rather rueful about it. But Sally is exultant. 

"Oh, don't they!" she says. "They're worse when it's realdrowning--heaps worse!" Whereon both the other girls affirm in chorusthat then nobody can be saved without the Humane Society'sdrags--unless, indeed, you wait till they are insensible. 

"Can't they?" says Sally, with supreme contempt. "We were both of usdrowned that time fair. But now you go and drown yourself, and see ifI don't fish you out. Fire away!"

They fire away, and the determined suicide plays her part with spirit. But she is no match for the submarine tactics of her rescuer, who seemsjust as happy under water as on land, and rising under her at the endof a resolute deep plunge, makes a successful grasp at the head of herprey, who is ignominiously towed into safety, doing her best to drownherself to the last. 

This little incident is so amusing and exciting that the three youngladies, who walk home together westward, can talk of nothing butrescues all the way to Notting Hill. Then Miss Henriette Prince goes onalone, and as Lętitia and Sally turn off the main road towards the homeof the former, the latter says: "Now tell me about the row. "

It wasn't exactly a row, it seemed; but it came to the same thing. Mamma had made up her mind to be detestable about Julius Bradshaw--thatwas the long and short of it. And Sally knew, said Lętitia, howdetestable mamma could be when she tried. If it wasn't for papa, JuliusBradshaw would simply be said not-at-home to, and have to leave a cardand go. But she was going to go her own way and not be dictated to, maternal authority or no. Perhaps the speaker felt that Sally wasmentally taking exception to universal revolt, for a flavour of excuseor justification crept in. 

"Well!--I can't help it. I _am_ twenty-four, after all. I shouldn'tsay so if there was anything against him. But no man can be blamed fora cruel conjunction of circumstances, and mamma may say what she likes, but being in the office really makes all the difference. And look howhe's supporting his mother and sister, who were left badly off. _I_call it noble. "

"But you know, Tishy, you did say the negro couldn't change hisspots, and that I must admit there were such things as socialdistinctions--and you talked about sweeps and dustmen, you know youdid. Come, Tishy, did you, or didn't you?"

"If I said anything it was leopard, not negro. And as for sweeps anddustmen, they were merely parallel cases used as illustrations; and Idon't think I deserve to have them raked up.... " Miss Wilson is ratherinjured over this grievance, and Sally appeases her. "She shan't havethem raked up, she shan't! But what was this row really about, that'sthe point? It was yesterday morning, wasn't it?"

"How often am I to tell you, Sally dear, that there was really no_row_, property speaking. If you were to say there had been commentsat breakfast yesterday, then recrimination overnight, and a stiffnessat breakfast again this morning, you would be doing more than justiceto it. You'll see now if mamma isn't cold and firm and disinherity andgenerally detestable about it. "

"But what _was_ it? That's what _I_ want to know. "

"My dear--it was--absolutely nothing! Why should it be stranger forMr. Bradshaw to drive me home to save two hansoms than for you andDr. Vereker and the Voyseys to go all in one growler?"

"Because the Voyseys live just round the corner, quite close. It cameto three shillings because it's outside the radius. " The irrelevancy ofthis detail gives Lętitia an excuse for waiving the cab-question, onwhich her position is untenable. She dilutes it with extraneous matter, and it is lost sight of. 

"It doesn't matter whether it's cabs or what it is. Mamma's just thesame about everything. Even walking up Holland Park Lane after theconcert at Kensington Town Hall. I am sure if ever anything wasreasonable, that was. " She pauses for confirmation--is, in fact, wavering about the correctness of her own position, and weakly seekingreassurance. She is made happier by a nod of assent from Miss Sally. "Awfully reasonable!" is the verdict of the latter. Whatever there islacking seriousness in the judge's face is too slight to call fornotice--a mere twinkle to be ignored. Very little self-deception isnecessary, and in this department success is invariable. 

"I knew you would say so, dear, " Tishy continues. "And I'm sure youwould about the other things too ... Well, I was thinking about tea inKensington Gardens on Sunday. We have both of us a perfect right tohave tea independently, and the only question is about separate tables. "

"Suppose I come--to make it square. "

"Suppose you do, dear. " And the proposal is a relief evidently. 

A very slight insight into the little drama that is going on atLadbroke Grove Road is all that is wanted for the purposes of thisstory. The foregoing dialogue, ending at the point at which the twoyoung women disappear into the door of No. 287, will be sufficient togive a fairly clear idea of the plot of the performance, and to pointto its _dénouement_. The exact details may unfold themselves asthe story proceeds. The usual thing is a stand-up fight over thelove-affair, both parties to which have made up their minds--becomingmore and more obdurate as they encounter opposition from without--followedby reconciliations more or less real. Let us hope for the former in thepresent case, and that Miss Wilson and Mr. Bradshaw's lot may not becrossed by one of those developments of strange inexplicable fury whichso often break out in families over the schemes of two young people todo precisely what their parents did before them; and most ungovernably, sometimes, on the part of members who have absolutely no suggestionto make of any alternative scheme for the happiness of either. 

CHAPTER XIX

HOW FENWICK KNEW ALL ABOUT THE MASS. AND HOW BARON KREUTZKAMMER RECOGNISED MR. HARRISSON. LONDON AGAIN!

"Why do they call it the _messe des paresseux_?" The question must havebeen asked just as Sally looked at her watch because she saw the clockhad stopped. But the nave of the Cathedral of Rheims was very unlikethat of St. Satisfax as the bride and bridegroom lingered in out of thesunshine, and the former took the unwarrantable liberty, for a heretic, of crossing herself from the Holy Water at the foot of the column nearthe door. But she made up for it by the amount of _sous_ she gave tothe old blind woman, who must have been knitting there since the daysof Napoleon at least, if she began in her teens. 

"You haven't done it right, dearest. I knew you wouldn't. Look here. "And Fenwick crosses himself _secundum artem_, dipping his finger firstto make it valid. 

"But how came you to know?" His wife does not say this; she only thinksit. And how came he to know about the _messe des paresseux_? Sherepeats her question aloud. 

"Because the lazy people don't come to Mass till ten, " he replies. Theyare talking under their breath, as English folk do in foreign churches, heedless of the loud gabble and resonant results of too much snuffon the part of ecclesiastics off duty. Their own salvation hasbeen cultivated under a list slipper, cocoanut matting, secretivepew-opener policy; and if they are new to it all, they are shocked tosee the snuff taken over the heads and wooden _sabots_ of the devoutcountry-folk, whose ancestors knelt on the same hard stone centuriesago, and prayed for great harvests that never came, and to avert leanyears that very often did. The Anglican cannot understand the realaboriginal Papist. Sally's mother was puzzled when she saw an old, old kneeling figure, toothless and parchment-skinned, on whose rosarya pinch of snuff _ut supra_ descended, shake it off the bead inevidence, and get on to the next _Ave_, even as one who has businessbefore her--so many pounds of oakum to pick, so many bushels of peasto shell. It was a reality to her; and there was the Blessed Virginherself, a visible certainty, who would see to the recognition of itat headquarters. 

Fenwick passed up the aisle, dreamily happy in the smell of theincense, beside his bride of yesterday's making--she intensely happytoo, but in another way, for was not her bridegroom of yesterday herhusband of twenty years ago--cruelly wrenched away, but her husband forall that. Still, there was always that little rift within the lute thatmade the music--pray Heaven not to widen! Always that thought!--that hemight recollect. How could he remember the _messe des paresseux_, andkeep his mind a blank about how he came to know of it? It was the firstdiscomfort that had crossed her married mind--put it away!

It was easy to put it all away and forget it in the hush and gloomof the great church, filled with the strange intonation fromHeaven-knows-where--some side-chapel unseen--of a Psalm it would havepuzzled David to be told was his, and a scented vapour Solomon wouldhave known at once; for neither myrrh nor frankincense have changed onewhit since his day. It was easy enough so long as both sat listening to_Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax_. Carried _nem. Con. _ by allsorts and conditions of Creeds. But when the little bobs and tokens andskirt-adjustments of the fat priest and his handsome abettor (a youngfellow some girl might have been the wife of, with advantage to both)came to a pause, and the congregation were to be taken into confidence, how came Gerry to know beforehand what the fat one was going to say, with that stupendous voice of his?

"_Hoc est corpus meum, et hic est calix sanguinis mei. _ We all kneel, I think. " Thus the bridegroom under his breath. And his companion heard, almost with a shudder, the selfsame words from the priest, as thekneeling of the congregation subsided. 

"Oh, Gerry--darling fellow! How _can_ you know that, and not know.... "

"How I came by it? It's very funny, but I _can't_, and that's thetruth. I don't feel as if I ever _could_ know, what's more. But it allseems a matter of course. "

"Perhaps you're a Catholic all the while, without knowing it?"

"Perhaps I am. But I should like to know, because of going to the otherplace with you. I shouldn't care about purgatory without you, Roseydearest. No--not even with a reversionary interest in heaven. "

And then the plot thickened at the altar, and the odour of myrrh andfrankincense, and little bells rang to a climax, and the handsome youngpriest, let us hope, felt he had got value for the loss of thathypothetical girl. 

 * * * * *

That little incident in the great church at Rheims was the firstanxiety of Rosalind Fenwick's married life--the first resumption of theconditions she had been so often unnerved by during the period of theirbetrothal. She was destined to be crossed by many such. But she was, aswe have said, a strong woman, and had made up her mind to take theseanxieties as part of the day's work--a charge upon her happiness thathad to be paid. It was a great consolation to her that she could speakto her husband about the tension caused by her misgivings withoutassigning any special reasons for anxiety that would not be his as muchas hers. She had to show uneasiness in order to get the relief hissympathy gave her; but there were unknown possibilities in the Bushenough to warrant it without going outside what was known to both. Noneed at all that he should know of her separate unseen burden, for that!

But some of the jolts on the road, as we might call them, were to besore trials to Rosalind. One came in the fourth week of their honeymoon, and quite spoiled for her the last three days of her holiday. However, Fenwick himself laughed about it--that was one comfort. 

It was at Sonnenberg. You know the Great Hotel, or Pension, near theSeelisberg, that looks down on Lucerne Lake, straight over to whereTell shot the arrow? If you do not, it does not matter. Mr. And Mrs. Fenwick had never been there before, and have never been there since. And what happened might just as easily have happened anywhere else. But it was there, as a matter of fact; and if you know the place, youwill be able to imagine the two of them leaning on the parapet of theterrace that overlooks the lake, watching the steamer from Lucernecreeping slowly to the landing-place at the head of a white comet ithas churned the indescribable blue of the lake to, and discussingwhether it is nearest to Oriental sapphire or to green jasper at itsbluest. 

Rosalind had got used to continual wonderment as to when and whereFenwick had come to know so well this thing and that thing he spoke ofso familiarly; so she passed by the strange positiveness of his speechabout the shades of jasper, the scarcity of really blue examples, andhis verdict that the bluest possible one would be just the colour ofthat water below them. She was not going to ask him how he came to beso mighty wise about chalcedony and chrysoprase and sardonyx, aboutwhich she herself either never knew or had forgotten. She took it allas a matter of course, and asked if the Baron's cigar was a good one. 

"Magnificent!" Fenwick replied, puffing at it. "How shall we returnhis civility?"

"Give _him_ a cigar next time you get a chance. "

Fenwick laughs, in derision of his own cigars. 

"God bless me, my dearest love! Why, one of the Baron's is worth mywhole box. We must discover something better than that. " Both ponderover possible reciprocities in silence, but discover nothing, and seemto give up the quest by mutual consent. Then he says: "I wonder whyhe cosseted up to us last night in the garden so!" And she repeats:"I wonder why!"

"I don't believe he even knows our name, " she continues; and then herepeats: "_I_ don't believe he knows our name. I'm sure he doesn't. "

"And it was so dark, he couldn't have seen much of us. But his cigar'squite beautiful. Blow the smoke in my face, Gerry!" She shuts her eyesto receive it. How handsome Sally would think mamma was looking if shecould see her now in the light of the sunset! Her husband thinks muchto that effect, as he turns to blow the smoke on order into the facethat is so close to his, as they lean arm-in-arm on the parapet the sunhas left his warmth on, and means to take his eyes off in half anhour. They really look quite a young couple, and the frivolity of theirconduct adds to the effect. Nobody would believe in her grown-updaughter, to see that young Mrs. Algernon Fenwick. 

"I am ferry root, Mrs. Harrisson. If I introot, you shall say Iintroot. " It is the Baron, manifestly. His form--or rather his bulk, for he cannot be said to have a form; he is amorphous--is baronial inthe highest degree. His stupendous chest seems to be a huge cavern forthe secretion of gutturals, which are discharged as heavy artilleryat a hint from some unseen percussion-cap within. 

Mrs. Fenwick starts, a little taken aback at the Baron's thunderclap;for he had approached unawares, and her closed eyes helped on theeffect. When they opened, they looked round, as for a third person. Butthe Baron was alone. 

"Where is Mrs. Harrisson?" She asks the question with the most absoluteunconsciousness that she was herself the person addressed. The Baron, still believing, presumably, that Fenwick is _Mr. _ Harrisson, is nota person to be trusted with the position created. He develops anoffensive waggery, shakes the forefinger that has detected an escapade, and makes of his lips the round _O_ of shocked propriety, at heart insympathy with the transgressor. His little grey eyes glare through hisgold-rimmed spectacles, and his huge chest shakes with a substratum oflaughter, only just loud enough to put in the text. 

"O-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho! No, do not be afraight. She is not here. Weunterzdant. It is all unterzdoot. We shall be ferry tizgreet.... " Andthen the Baron pats space with his fingers only, not moving his hand, as a general indication of secrecy to the universe. 

Probably the slight flush that mantles the face he speaks to is lessdue to any offence at his fat, good-humoured German raillery than tosome vague apprehension of the real nature of the position about todevelop. But Fenwick imputes it to the former. If Rosey was inclined totreat the thing as a harmless joke, he would follow suit; but she lookshurt, and her husband, sensitive about every word that is said to her, blazes out:

"What on earth do you mean? What the devil do you mean? How dare youspeak to my wife like that?" He makes a half-step towards the burlymass of flesh, still shaking with laughter. But his wife stops him. 

"Do be patient, Gerry darling! Don't flare up like that. I'll have adivorce. I'll tell Sally.... " a threat which seems to have a softeningeffect. "Can't you see, dear, that there is some misunderstanding?"Fenwick looks from her to the Baron, puzzled. The latter drops hisjocular rallying. 

"I saw last night you did not know me, Mr. Harrisson. That isstraintch! Have you forgotten Diedrich Kreutzkammer?" He says his namewith a sort of quiet confidence of immediate recognition. But Fenwickonly looks blankly at him. 

"He does not know me!" cries the German, with an astonished voice. "'Frisco--the Klondyke--Chicago--the bridge at Brooklyn--why, it is nottwo years ago.... " He pauses between the names of the places, enforcingeach as a reminder with an active forefinger. 

Fenwick seems suddenly to breathe the fresh air of a solution of theproblem. He breaks into a sunny smile, to his wife's great relief. 

"Indeed, Baron Kreutzkammer, _my_ name is not Harrisson. _My_ name isFenwick, and this lady is my wife--Mrs. Fenwick. I have never been inany of the places you mention. " For the moment he forgot his own stateof oblivion: a thing he was getting more and more in the habit ofdoing. The Baron looked intently at him, and looked again. He slappedhis forehead, not lightly at all, but as if good hard slaps wouldreally correct his misapprehensions and put him right with the world. 

"I am all _wronck_" he said, borrowing extra force from an indurated_g_. "But it is ferry bustling--I am bustled!" By this he meantpuzzled. Fenwick felt apologetic. 

"I don't know how to thank you for the cigar Mr. Harrisson ought tohave had, " said he. He felt really ashamed of having smoked it underfalse pretences. 

"You shall throw it away, and I giff you one for yourself. That iseacey! But I am bustled. "

He continued puzzled. Mrs. Fenwick felt that he was only keepingfurther comment and inquiry in check because it would have beena doubt thrown on her husband's word to make any. Her uneasinesswould have been visible if her power of concealing it had not beenfortified by her belief that his happiness as well as hers depended(for the present, at any rate) on his ignorance of his own past. Perhaps she was wrong; with that we have nothing to do; we are tellingof things as they happened. Only we wish to record our conviction thatRosalind Fenwick was acting for her husband's sake as well as herown--not from a vulgar instinct of self-preservation. 

The Baron made conversation, and polished his little powerfulspectacle-lenses. He blew his nose like a salute of one gun in thecourse of his polishing. When _we_ blow _our_ nose, we hush ourpocket-handkerchief back into its home, and ignore it a little. TheBaron didn't. He continued polishing on an unalloyed corner throughthe whole of a very perceptible amount of chat about the tricks memoryplays us, and the probable depth of the blue water below. Rosalind'suneasiness continued. It grew worse, when the Baron, suddenlyreplacing his spectacles and fixing his eyes firmly on her husband, said sternly, "Yes, it is a bustle!" but was relieved when equallysuddenly, he shouted in a stentorian voice, "We shall meed lader, "and took his leave. 

"He's a jolly fellow, the Baron, anyhow!" said Fenwick. "I wonderwhether they heard him at Altdorf?"

"Every word, I should think. But how I should like to see the Mr. Harrisson he took you for!"

This was really part of a policy of nettle-grasping, which continued. She always felt happier after defying a difficulty than afterflinching. After all, if Gerry's happiness and her own were not motiveenough, consider Sally's. If she should really come to know hermother's story, Sally might die of it. 

Fenwick went on to the ending of the cigar, dreamily wondering, evidently "bustled" like the Baron. As he blew the last smoke away, and threw the smoking end down the slope, he repeated her words spokena minute before, "_I_ should like to see the Mr. Harrisson he tookme for. "

"It would be funny to see oneself as ithers see one. Some power mightgie you the giftie, Gerry. If only we could meet that Mr. Harrisson!"

"Do you remember how we saw our profiles in a glass, and you said, 'I'm sure those are somebody else'? Illogical female!"

"Why was I illogical? I knew they were going to turn out us in theend. But I was sure I shouldn't be convinced at once. " And the talkwandered away into a sort of paradoxical metaphysics. 

But when, later in the evening, this lady was described by confidentialchat at the far end of the salon as that handsome young Mrs. AlgernonFenwick who was only just married, and whose husband was playing chessin the smoking-room, and what a pity it was they were not going tostop over Monday, she thus described, accurately enough, was ratherrejoicing that that handsome Mr. Fenwick, who looked like a Holbeinportrait, was being kept quiet for half an hour, because she wanted toget a chance for a little chat with that dreadful noisy Prussian Von, who made all the glasses ring at table when he shouted so. Rosalind hadher own share of feminine curiosity, don't you see? and she was not byany means satisfied about Mr. Harrisson. She did not acknowledge thenature of her suspicions to herself, but she would very much like toknow, for all that! She got her opportunity. 

"I shouldn't the least mind myself if smoking _were_ allowed in thesalon, Baron. You saw to-day that I really liked the smoke?"

"Ja! when I make that chogue. It was a root chogue. But I amforgiffen?"

"It was Gerry who had to be forgiven, breaking out like that. I hopehe has promised not to do so any more?"

"He has bromiss to be goot. I have bromiss to be goot. We shall be_sages enfants_, as the French say. But I will tell you, MadameFenwick, about my vrent Harrisson your Cherry is so ligue.... "

"Let's go out on the terrace, then you can light a cigar and becomfortable.... Yes, I'll have my wrap ... No, that's wrong-side-out... That's right now.... Well, perhaps it will be a little cool forsitting down. We can walk about. "

"Now I can tell you about my vrent in America that your hussband is soligue. He could speague French--ferry well indeed. " Rosalind looked up. "It was when I heard your hussband speaguing French to that grosseGrafin Pobzodonoff that I think to myself that was Alchernon Harrissonthat I knew in California. "

"Suppose we sit down. I don't think it's too cold.... Yes, this placewill do nicely. It's sheltered from the wind. " If she does look alittle pale--and she feels she does--it will be quite invisible in thisdark corner, for the night is dark under a canopy of blazing stars. "What were you saying about French?"

"Alchernon Harrisson--that was his name--he could speague it well. Hespogue id ligue a nadiff. Better than I speague English. I speagueEnglish so well because I have a knees at Ganderbury. " This meant aniece at Canterbury. Baron Kreutzkammer speaks English so well that itis almost a shame to lay stress on his pronunciation of consonants. The spelling is difficult too, so we will give the substance of whathe told Rosalind without his articulation. By this time she, for herpart, was feeling thoroughly uneasy. It seemed to her--but it maybe she exaggerated--that nothing stood between her husband andthe establishment of his identity with this Harrisson except thedifference of name. And how could she know that he had not changed hisname? Had she not changed hers?

The Baron's account of Harrisson was that he made his acquaintanceabout three years since at San Francisco, where he had come to choosegold-mining plant to work a property he had purchased at Klondyke. Rosalind found it a little difficult to understand the account of howthe acquaintance began, from want of knowledge of mining machinery. Butthe gist of it was that the Baron, at that time a partner in a firmthat constructed stamping-mills, was explaining the mechanism of one toHarrisson, who was standing close to a small vertical pugmill, or mixerof some sort, just at the moment the driving-engine had stopped and thefly-wheel had nearly slowed down. He went carelessly too near the stillrevolving machinery, and his coat-flap was caught and wound into thehelix of the pugmill. "It would have crowned me badly, " said the Baron. But he remained unground, for Harrisson, who was standing close to themoribund fly-wheel, suddenly flung himself on it, and with incrediblestrength actually cut short the rotation before the Baron couldbe entangled in a remorseless residuum of crushing power, which, forall it looked so gentle, would have made short work of a horse'sthigh-bone. The Baron's coat was spoiled, though he was intact. ButHarrisson's right arm had done more than a human arm's fair share ofwork, and had to rest and be nursed. They had become intimate friends, and the Baron had gone constantly to inquire after the swelled arm. Ittook time to become quite strong again, he said. It was a fine strongarm, and burned all over with gunpowder, "what you call daddooed inEnglish. "

"Did it get quite well?"

"Ferry nearly. There was a little blaze in the choint here"--the Barontouched his thumb--"where the bane remained--a roomadic bane. Heburgessed a gopper ring for it. It did him no goot. " Luckily Rosalindhad discarded the magic ring long since, or it might have come intocourt awkwardly. 

If she still entertained any doubts about the identity of her husbandand Harrisson, the Baron's next words removed them. They came in answerto an expression of wonder of hers that he should so readily accept herhusband's word for his identity in the face of the evidence of his ownsenses. "I really think, " she had said, "that if I were in your placeI should think he was telling fibs. " This was nettle-grasping. 

"Ach, ach! No--no--no!" shouted the Baron, so loud that she was afraidit would reach the chess-players in the smoking-room, "I arrife at itby logic, by reasson. Giff me your attention. " He held up one fingerfirmly, as an act of hypnotism, to procure it. "Either I am ride orI am wronck. I cannot be neither. "

"You might be mistaken. "

The Baron's finger waved this remark aside impatiently. "I will fairythe syllogism, " he shouted. "Either your husband _is_ Mr. Harrisson, or he is _not_. He cannot be neither. " This was granted. "Ferry well, then. If he is Mr. Harrisson, Mr. Harrisson has doled fips. But I knowMr. Harrisson would not dell fips. Imbossible!"

"And if he is not?" The Baron points out that in this case hisstatement is true by hypothesis, to say nothing of the intrinsicprobability of truthfulness on the part of any one so like Mr. Harrisson. He is careful to dwell on the fact that this considerationof the matter is purely analysis of a metaphysical crux, indulged infor scientific illumination. He then goes on to apologize for havingbeen so very positive. But no doubt one or two minor circumstances hadso affected his imagination that he saw a very strong likeness whereonly a very slight one existed. "I shall look again. I shall be wicernext time. " But what were the minor circumstances, Rosalind asked. 

"There was the French--the lankwitch--that was one. But there wasanother--his _noce_! I will tell you. When my frent Harrisson gribeholt of that wheel, his head go down etchwice. " The Baron tried to hintat this with his own head, but his neck, which was like a prize-bull's, would not lend itself to the illustration. "That wheel was ferrysmooth--with a sharp gorner. _His noce touch that corner. _" The Baronsaid no more in words, but pantomimic action and a whistle showedplainly how the wheel-rim had glided on the bridge of Mr. Harrisson'snose. "It took off the gewdiggle, and made a sgar. Your hussband'snoce has that ferry sgar. That affected my imatchination. It is easyto unterzdant. "

But the subject was frightening Rosalind. She would have liked to hearmuch more about Mr. Harrisson; might ever have ended by taking the fatBaron, whom she thoroughly liked, into her confidence. The difficulty, however, was about decision in immediate action, which would beirrevocable. Silence was safer--or, sleep on it at least. For now, shemust change the conversation. 

"How sweet the singing sounds under the starlight!" But the Baron willnot tolerate any such loose inaccuracy. 

"It would sount the same in the taydime. The fibrations are the same. "But he more than makes up for his harsh prosaism by singing, in unisonwith the singers unseen:

 "Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten Dass ich so traurig bin.... "

No one could ever have imagined that such heavenly sounds could comefrom anything so fat and noisy. Mrs. Fenwick shuts her eyes to listen. 

When she opens them again, jerked back from a temporary dream-paradiseby the Baron remarking with the voice of Stentor or Boanerges that itis a "ferry broody lied, " her husband is standing there. He has beenlistening to the music. The Baron adds that his friend Mr. Harrissonwas "ferry vond of that lied. "

But when the two of them have said a cordial good-night to the unwieldynightingale, who goes away to bed, as he has to leave early in themorning, Fenwick is very silent, and once and again brushes his hairabout, and shakes his head in his old way. His wife sees what it is. The music has gone as near touching the torpid memory as the wildautumn night and the cloud-race round the moon had done in the littlefront garden at home a year ago. 

"A recurrence, Gerry?" she asks. 

"Something of the sort, Rosey love, " he says. "Something quite mad thistime. There was a steam-engine in it, of all things in the world!" Butit has been painful, evidently--a discomfort at least--as these thingsalways are. 

Rosalind's apprehension of untimely revelations dictated a feelingof satisfaction that the Baron was going away next day; her regretat losing the choice of further investigation admitted one ofdissatisfaction that he had gone. The net result was unsettlement anddiscomfort, which lasted through the remainder of Sonnenberg, and didnot lift altogether until the normallest of normal life came back ina typical London four-wheeler, which dutifully obeyed the injunctionto "go slowly, " not only through the arch that injunction brooded over, but even to the end of the furlong outside the radius which commandedan extra sixpence and got more. But what did that matter when Sally wasfound watching at the gate for its advent, and received her stepfatherwith an undisguised hug as soon as she found it in her heart torelinquish her mother?

CHAPTER XX

MERE DAILY LIFE AT KRAKATOA. BUT SALLY IS QUITE FENWICK'S DAUGHTER BY NOW. OF HER VIEWS ABOUT DR. VEREKER, AND OF TISHY'S AUNT FRANCES

When you come back from a holiday to a sodden and monstrous London, it is best to be welcomed by something young--by a creature that isconvinced that it has been enjoying itself, and that convinces you aswell, although you can't for the life of you understand the details. Why should anything enjoy itself or anything else in this Cimmeriangloom, while away over there the great Alpine peaks are white againstthe blue, and otherwhere the music of a hundred seas mixes with theirthunder on a thousand shores? Why come home?

But when we do and find that nothing particular has happened, and thatthere's a card for us on the mantelpiece, how stuffy are our welcomers, and how well they tone into the surrounding grey when they are elderlyand respectable? It is different when we find that, from their point ofview, it is we that have been the losers by our absence from all thegreat and glorious fun the days have been made of while we were awayon a mistaken and deluded continent, far from this delectable humanant-hill--this centre and climax of Life with a capital letter. Butthen, when this is so, they have to be young, as Sally was. 

The ex-honeymooners came back to jubilant records of that young lady'sexperience during the five weeks of separation. She listened withimpatience to counter records of adventures abroad, much preferring totell of her own at home. Mr. And Mrs. Fenwick acquiesced in the _rōle_of listeners, and left the rostrum to Sally after they had been revivedwith soup, and declined cutlets, because they really had had plenty toeat on the way. The rostrum happened to be a hassock on the hearthrug, before the little bit of fire that wasn't at all unwelcome, becauseSeptember had set in quite cold already, and there was certain to be awarm Christmas if it went on like this, and it would be very unhealthy. 

"And oh, do you know"--thus Sally, after many other matters had beendisposed of--"there has been such an awful row between Tishy and hermother about Julius Bradshaw?" Sally is serious and impressed; doesn'tsee the comic side, if there is one. Her mother felt that if there wasto be a volley of indignation discharged at Mrs. Wilson for her sharein the row, she herself, as belonging to the class mother, might feelcalled on to support her, and was reserved accordingly. 

"I suppose Lętitia wants to marry Mr. Bradshaw. Is that it?"

"Of course that's it! He hasn't proposed, because he's promised notto; but he will any time Tishy gives a hint. Meanwhile Goody Wilson hasrefused to sanction his visits at the house, and Lętitia has said shewill go into lodgings. "

"Sally darling, I do wish you wouldn't call all the married ladies ofyour acquaintance _Goody_. You'll do it some day to their faces. "

"It's only the middle-aged bouncers. "

"Well, dear chick, do try and not call them Goody. What did Goo--there!I was going to do it myself. What did Mrs. Wilson say to that?"

"Said Tishy's allowance wouldn't cover lodgings, and she had nothingelse to fall back on. So we go into the Park instead. "

Even Mrs. Fenwick's habituation to her daughter's incisive method is noproof against this. She breaks into an affectionate laugh, and kissesits provoker, who protests. 

"We-e-ell! There's nothing in _that_. We have tea in the shillingplaces under the trees in Kensington Gardens. _That's_ all right. "

"Of course that's all right--with a _chaperon_ like you! Who _could_say anything? But do tell me, Sally darling, does Mrs. Wilson dislikethis young man on his own account, or is it only the shop?"

"Only the shop, I do believe. And Tishy's twenty-four! What _is_ mystepfather sitting smiling at there in that contented way? Is thata Mossoo cigar? It smells very nice. "

"I was smiling at you, Sarah. No, it's not a Mossoo that I know of. AGerman Baron gave it me.... No, dearest! It really _was_ all right.... No--I really can't exactly say how; but it _was_ all right for allthat.... " This was in answer to a comment of his wife. 

"Never mind the German Baron, " Sally interrupts. "What business haveyou to smile at me, Jeremiah?" They had christened each other Jeremiahand Sarah for working purposes. 

"Because I chose--because you're such a funny little article. " He comesa little nearer to her, and putting his arm round her neck, pinches heroff-cheek. She gives him a very short kiss--hardly a real one--just anacknowledgment. He remains with her little white hand in his greathairy one, and she leans against him and accepts the position. But thatcigar is on her mother's mind. 

"How many did he give you, Gerry? Now tell the truth. "

"He gave me a lot. I smuggled them. I can't tell you _why_ it seemedall right I should accept them. But it _did_. "

"I suppose you know best, dear. Men are men, and I'm a female. But hewas such a perfect stranger. " She, of course, knew quite well that hewas not, but there was nettle-grasping in it on her part. 

"Yes, he was. But somehow he didn't seem so. Perhaps it was because Iflew into such a rage with him about what he called his 'crade chogue. 'But it wasn't _only_ that. Something about the chap himself--I can'ttell what. " And Fenwick becomes _distrait_, with a sort of restlesssearching on his face. He sits on, silent, patting Sally's little whitehand in his, and letting the prized cigar take care of itself, andremains silent until, after a few more interesting details about the"great row" at Ladbroke Grove Road, all three agree that sleep isoverdue, and depart to receive payment. 

Rosalind knows the meaning of it all perfectly. Some tiny trace ofmemory of the fat Kreutzkammer lingered in her husband's crippledmind--something as confused as the revolving engine's connexion withthe German volkslied. But enough to prevent his feeling the ten francs'worth of cigars an oppressive benevolence. It was very strange toher that it should so happen, but, having happened, it did not seemunnatural. What was stranger still was that Gerry should be there, loving Sally like a father--just as her own stepfather Paul Nightingalehad come to love _her_--caressing her, and never dreaming for a momenthow that funny little article came about. Yes, come what might, shewould do her best to protect these two from that knowledge, howevermany lies she had to tell. She was far too good and honourable awoman to care a particle about truthfulness as a means to an easyconscience; she did not mind the least how much hers suffered if itwas necessary to the happiness of others that it should do so. Andin her judgment--though we admit she may have been wrong--a revelationof the past would have taken all the warmth and light out of the happyand contented little world of Krakatoa Villa. So long as she had thecloud to herself, and saw the others out in the sunshine, she feltsafe, and that all was well. 

She would have liked companionship inside the cloud, for all that. Itwas a cruel disappointment to find, when she came to reflect on it, that she could not carry out a first intention of taking Colonel Lundinto her confidence about the Baron, and the undoubted insight he hadgiven into some portion of Fenwick's previous life. Obviously it wouldhave involved telling her husband's whole story. Her belief that he wasHarrisson involved her knowledge that he was not Fenwick. The Majorwould have said at once: "Why not tell him all this Baron told you, andsee if it wouldn't bring all his life back to him?" And then she wouldhave to tell the Major who he really was, to show him the need ofkeeping silence about the story. No, no! Danger lay that way. Too muchfinessing would be wanted; too many reserves. 

So she bore her secret knowledge alone, for their sakes feeling allthe while like the scapegoat in the wilderness. But it was a happywilderness for her, as time proved. Her husband's temper anddisposition were well described by Sally, when she told Dr. Vereker inconfidence one day that when he boiled he blew the lid off, but thathe was a practical lamb, and was wax in her mother's hands. A good fizzdid good, whatever people said. And the doctor agreed cordially. Forhe had a mother whose temper was notoriously sweetness itself, but wasmanipulated by its owner with a dexterity that secured all the effectsof discomfort to its beneficiaries, without compromising her own claimsto canonization. 

Fenwick's temper--this expression always means want of temper, orabsence of temper--was of the opposite sort. It occasioned noinconvenience to any one, and every one detected and classed it afterknowing him for twenty-four hours. The married couple had not existedfor three months in that form before this trivial individuality wasdefined by Ann and Cook as "only master. " Sally became so callous aftera slight passing alarm at one or two explosions that she would, forinstance, address her stepfather, after hearing his volleys atsome offender in the distance, with, "Who did I hear you calling aconfounded idiot, Jeremiah?" To which he would reply, softening intoa genial smile: "Lost my temper, I did, Sarah dear. Lost my temper withthe Wash. The Wash sticks in pins and the heads are too small to gethold of"; or, "People shouldn't lick their envelopes up to the hilt, and spoil one's ripping-corner, unless they want a fellow to swear";or something similar belonging to the familiar trials of daily life. 

But really safety-valve tempers are so common that Fenwick's wouldscarcely have called for notice if it had not been that, on oneoccasion, a remark of Sally's about a rather more vigorous _émeute_than usual led her mother, accidentally thrown off her guard, to reply:"Yes! But you have no idea how much better he is----" and then to stopsuddenly, seeing the mistake she was making. She had no time to seea way out of the difficulty before Sally, puzzled, looked at her with:"Better than when? I've known him longer than you have, mother. " ForSally always boasted of her earlier acquaintance. 

"No _when_ at all, kitten! How much better he is when we are alone!He never flares up then--that's what I meant. " But she knew quite wellthat her sentence, if finished, would have stood, "how much better heis than he used to be!" She was too candid a witness in the court ofher own conscience to make any pretence that this wasn't a lie. Ofcourse it was; but if she never had to tell a worse one than that forSally's sake, she would be fortunate indeed. 

She was much more happy in the court of her conscience than she was inthat of St. Satisfax--if we may ascribe a judicial status to him, tohelp us through with our analysis of her frame of mind. His was a courtwhich, if not identical at all points with the analogous exponents ofthings Divine in her youth, was fraught with the same jurisdiction;was vocal with resonances that proclaimed the same consequences to theunredeemed that the mumblings of a pastor of her early days, rememberedwith little gratitude, had been inarticulate with. Her babyhood hadreceived the idea that liars would be sent unequivocally to hell, andher maturity could not get rid of it. Outside the precinct of thesaint, the brief working morality that considers other folk first wasenough for her; within it, the theologism of an offended deity stillheld a traditional sway. Outside, her whole soul recoiled from the ideaof her child knowing a story that would eat into her heart like acancer; within, a reserve-corner of that soul, inoculated when it wasnew and susceptible, shuddered at her unselfish adhesion to the onlymeans by which that child could be kept in ignorance. 

However, she was clear about one thing. She would apologize in prayer;but she would go to hell rather than have Sally made miserable. Thus itcame about that Mrs. Fenwick continued a very devout church-goer, and, as her husband never left her side when he had a choice, he, too, became a frequent guest of St. Satisfax, whom he seemed to regard asa harmless though fantastic person who lived in some century or other, only you always forgot which. 

His familiarity with the usages of the reformed St. Satisfax, and hispower of discriminating the lapses of that saint towards the vicesof his early unregenerate days--he being all the while perfectlyunconscious how he came to know anything of either--continued toperplex his wife, and was a source of lasting bewilderment to Sally. A particular incident growing out of this was always associated inRosalind's mind with an epithet he then applied to Sally for the firsttime, but which afterwards grew to be habitual with him. 

"Of course, it's the Communion-table, " he said in connexion with somediscussion of church furniture. "We have no altars in our churchnowadays. You're a Papist, Sarah!"

"I thought Communion-tables were an Evangelical start, " said Sallyirreverently. "A Low Church turn-out. Our Mr. Prince is a Tractarian, and a Ritualist, and a Puseyite, and an Anglican. That's his game! TheBishop of London won't let him perform High Mass, and _I_ think it ashame! Don't you?... But I say, Jeremiah!" And Jeremiah refrained fromexpressing whatever indignation he felt with the Bishop of London, tofind what Sally said. It was to the effect that it was incredible thathe should know absolutely nothing about the original source of hisinformation. 

"I can only tell you, Sarah dear, " he said, with the ring of sadness inhis voice that always came on this topic, "that I _do_ remember nothingof the people who taught me, or the place I learned in. Yet I knowabout Tract No. 90, and Pusey and Newman, for all that. How I rememberthings that were information, and forget things that were things, ismore than I can tell you. But can't you think of bits of history youknow quite well, without ever recalling where you got them from?"

"Of course I can. At least, I could if I knew some history. Only Idon't. Oh yes, I do. Perkin Warbeck and Anne of Cleves. I've forgottenabout them now, only I know I knew them both. I've answered about themin examinations. They're history all right enough. As to who taught meabout them, couldn't say!"

"Very well, Sarah. Now put a good deal of side into your stroke, andyou'll arrive at me. "

But the revival of the old question had dug up discomfort his mind haddone its best to inter; and he went silent and sat with a half-madecigarette in his fingers thinking gravely. Rosalind, at a writing-tablebehind him, moved her lips at Sally to convey an injunction. Sally, quickly apprehensive, understood it as "Let him alone! Don't rake upthe electrocution!" But Sally's native directness betrayed her, andbefore she had time to think, she had said, "All right; I won't. " Theconsequence of which was that Fenwick--being, as Sally afterwardsphrased it, "too sharp by half"--looked up suddenly from his reverie, and said, as he finished rolling his cigarette, "What won't ourdaughter?"

The pleasure that struck through his wife's heart was audible in hervoice as she caught it up. "Our daughter won't be a silly inquisitivelittle puss-cat, darling. It only worries you, and does no good. "And he replied to her, as she came behind him and stood with anappreciative side-face against his, with a semi-apology for the phrase"daughter, " and allowed the rest of what they were speaking of tolapse. 

"I called her it for the pleasure of saying it, " said he. "It soundedso nice!" And then he knew that her kiss was approval, but of coursehad no conception of its thoroughness. For her part, she hardly daredto think of the strangeness of the position; she could only rejoiceat its outcome. 

After that it became so natural to him to speak of Sally as "ourdaughter" that often enough new acquaintances misconceived her relationto him, and had a shrewd insight that Mr. And Mrs. Fenwick must havebeen married very young. Once some visitors--a lady with one marrieddaughter and two single ones--were so powerfully impressed with Sally'sresemblance to her supposed parent that three-fourths of them wentunconvinced away, in spite of the efforts of the whole household toremove the error. The odd fourth was supposed to have carried awaycorrective information. "I got the flat one, with the elbows, ina quiet corner, " said Sally, "and told her Jeremiah was only step. Because they all shouted at once, so it was impossible to make themhear in a lump. "

Mistakes of this sort, occurring frequently, reacted on Mr. And Mrs. Fenwick, who found in them a constant support and justification forthe theory that Sally was really the daughter of both, while admittingintellectual rejection of it to be plausible to commonplace minds. Theythemselves got on a higher level, where _ex-post-facto_ parentageswere possible. Causes might have miscarried, but results having turnedout all right, it would never do to be too critical about antecedents. Anyhow, Sally was _going to be_ our daughter, whether she _was_ or not. 

Rosalind always found a curious consolation in the reflection that, however bewildering the position might be, she had it all to herself. This was entirely apart from her desire to keep Fenwick in ignoranceof his past; that was merely a necessity for his own sake and Sally's, while this related to the painfulness of standing face to face withan incredible conjunction of surroundings. She, if alone, could takerefuge in wonder-struck silence. If her knowledge were shared withanother, how could examination and analysis be avoided? And these wouldinvolve the resurrection of what she could keep underground as longas she was by herself; backed by a thought, if needed, of the merryeyebrows and pearly teeth, and sweet, soft youth, of its unconsciousresult. But to be obliged to review and speculate over what she desiredto forget, and was helped to forget by gratitude for its consequences, would have been a needless addition to the burden she had alreadyto bear. 

The only person she could get any consolation from talking with wasthe Major, who already knew, or nearly knew, the particulars of thenightmare of twenty years ago. But, then--we feel that we are repeatingthis _ad nauseam_--he was quite in the dark about Fenwick's identity, and was to be kept there. Rosalind had decided it so, and she may havebeen right. 

Would she have done better by forcing on her husband the knowledge ofhis own identity, and risking the shock to her daughter of hearing thestory of her outsider father's sin against her mother? Her decisionagainst this course was always emphasized by--may even have beenunconsciously due to--her prevision of the difficulty of thecommunication to Sally. How should she set about it? She picturedvarious forms of the attempt to herself, and found none she did notshudder at. 

The knowledge that such things could be would spoil the whole world forthe girl. She had to confess to herself that the customary palteringwith the meaning of words that enables modern novels to be writtenabout the damnedest things in the universe would either leave her minduninformed, or call for a commentary--a rubric in the reddest of redletters. Even a resort to the brutal force of Oriental speech done intoJacobean English would be of little avail. For hypocrisy is at work allthrough juvenile reception of Holy Writ, and brings out as a resultthe idea that that writ is holy because it uses coarse language aboutthings that hardly call for it. It Bowdlerises Potiphar's wife, andfavours the impression that in Sodom and Gomorrah the inhabitants weredissipated and sat up late. This sort of thing wouldn't work withSally. If the story were to be told at all, her thunderbolt directnesswould have it all out, down to the ground. Her mother went through the_pros_ and _cons_ again and again, and always came to the sameconclusion--silence. 

But for all that, Rosalind had a background belief that a time wouldcome when a complete revelation would be possible. Her mind stipulatedfor a wider experience for Sally before then. It would be so infinitelyeasier to tell her tale to one who had herself arrived at the goal ofmotherhood, utterly unlike as (so she took for granted) was to be theway of her arrival, sunlit and soft to tread, from the black precipiceand thorny wastes that had brought her to her own. 

Any possible marriage of Sally's, however, was a vague abstraction ofan indistinct future. Perhaps we should say _had been_, and admit thatsince her own marriage Mrs. Fenwick had begun to be more distinctlyaware that her little daughter was now within a negligible period ofthe age when her own tree of happiness in life had been so curtlybroken off short, and no new leafage suffered to sprout upon the brokenstem. This identity of age could not but cause comparison of lots. "Suppose it had been Sally!" was the thought that would sometimesspring on her mother's mind; and then the girl would wonder what mammawas thinking of that she should make her arm that was round her tightenas though she feared to lose her, or bring her an irrelevant, unanticipated kiss. 

This landmark-period bristled with suggested questions of what was tofollow it. Sally would marry--that seemed inevitable; and her mother, now that she was herself married again, did not shrink from the ideaas she had done, in spite of her protests against her own selfishness. 

Miss Sally's attitude toward the tender passion did not at presentgive any grounds for supposing that she was secretly its victim, orever would be. Intense amusement at the perturbation she occasionedto sensitive young gentlemen seemed to be the nearest approach toreciprocating their sentiments that she held out any hopes of. Sheadmitted as a pure abstraction that it was possible to be in love, but regarded applicants as obstacles that stood in their own way. 

"I'm sure his adoration does him great credit, " she said to Lętitiaone day about a new devotee--for there was no lack of them. "But it'shis eyes, and his nose, and his mouth, and his chin, and his ears, andhis hair, and his hands and his feet, and his altogether that----"

"That what?" asked her friend. 

"That you can't expect a girl to then, if you insist upon it. "

"Some girl will, you'll see, one of these days. "

"What!--even that man with teeth!" This was some chance acquaintance, useful for illustration, but not in the story. Lętitia knew enough ofhim to give a testimonial. 

"He's a very good fellow, whatever you may say!" said she. 

"My dear Tishy! Goodness is the distinguishing feature of the oppositesex. I speak as a person of my own. Men's moral qualities are alwayshigh. If it wasn't for their appearance, and their manners, and theirdefective intelligences, they would make the most charming husbands. "

"How very young you are!" Miss Wilson said, superior experience oozingout at every pore. Sally might have passed this by, but when it cameto patting you on the cheek, she drew a line. 

"Tishy dear, do you mean to go on like that, when I'm a hundred and youare a hundred and five?"

"Yes, dear. At least, I can't say. Anything may have happened by then. "

"What sort of thing? Come, Tishy, don't be enigmatical. For instance?"

"You'll change your mind and be wiser--you'll see. " Which might havebeen consecutive in another conversation. But it was insufferablypatronizing in Lętitia to evade the centenarian forecast that shouldhave come in naturally, and retreat into a vague abstraction, managingto make it appear (Sally couldn't say how or why) that her own generalremarks about man, which meant nothing, were a formal proclamationof celibacy on her part. It is odd how little the mere wording ofa conversation may convey, especially girl's conversation. What _is_there in the above to warrant what came next from Sally?

"If you mean Dr. Vereker, that's ridiculous. "

"I never mentioned his name, dear. "

"Of course you didn't; you couldn't have, and wouldn't have. Butanybody could tell what you meant, just the same, by leaving your mouthopen when you'd done speaking. " We confess freely that we should nothave known, but what are we? Why _should_ Lętitia's having left herlips slightly ajar, instead of closing them, have "meant Dr. Vereker"?

But the fact is--to quote an expression of Sally's own--brain-waveswere the rule and not the exception with her. And hypnotic suggestionraged as between her and Miss Lętitia Wilson, interrupting practice, and involving the performers in wide-ranging, irrelevant discussion. Itwas on a musical occasion at Ladbroke Grove Road that this conversationtook place. 

Lętitia wasn't going to deny Dr. Vereker, evidently, or else therereally was something very engrossing about her G string. Sally went on, while she dog's-eared her music, which was new, to get good turning-overadvantages when it came to playing. 

"My medical adviser's not bad, taken as an aunt. I don't quite knowwhat I should do without poor Prosy. But as for anything, of coursethat's absurd. Why, half the fun is that there _isn't_ anything!"

Lętitia knew as well as possible that her young friend, once started, would develop the subject on her own lines without further help fromher. She furnished her face with a faint expression of amused waiting, not strong enough to be indictable, but operative, and said nevera word. 

"Foolery would spoil it all, " pursued Sally; "in fact, I put myfoot down at the first go-off. I pointed out that I stipulated tobe considered a chap. Prosy showed tact--I must say that forProsy--distinctly tact. You see, if I had had to say a single wordto him on the subject, it would have been all up. " Then possibly, in response to a threat of an inflexion in her friend's waitingcountenance, "I should say, when I make use of the expression 'pointedout, ' perhaps I ought to say 'conveyed to him. '" Sally gets the violain place for a start, and asks is her friend ready? Waiting, it seems;so she merely adds, "Yes, I should say conveyed it to him. " And offthey go with the new piece of music in B flat, and are soon involved interrifying complications which have to be done all over again. At theend, they are ungrateful to B flat, and say they don't care much forit; it will be better when they can play it, however. Then Lętitiaschemes to wind Sally up a little. 

"Doesn't the Goody goozle at you about him, though? You said she did. "

"The Goody--oh yes! (By-the-bye, mother says I mustn't call your maGoody Wilson, or I shall do it to her face, and there'll be a prettyhow-do-you-do. ) Prosy's parent broods over one, and gloats as if onewas crumpets; but Prosy himself is very good about her--aware of hershortcomings. "

"I don't care what you call _my_ mother. Call her any name you like. But what does Dr. Vereker say?"

"About his'n? Says she's a dear good mother, and I mustn't mind her. I say, Tishy!"

"What, dear?"

"What _is_ the present position of the row? You said your mother. Youknow you did--coming from the bath--after Henriette went away. "

"I did say my mother, dear. But I wish it were otherwise. I've toldMr. Bradshaw so. "

"You'd be much nicer if you said Julius. Told him what?"

"Told him a girl can't run counter to the wishes of her family inpractice. Of course, M--well, then, Julius, if you will have it--isready to wait. But it's really ridiculous to talk in this way, when, after all, nothing's been said. "

"_Has_ nothing?"

"Not _to_ anybody. Only him and me. "

"At Riverfordhook?"

"Why, yes, what I told you. We needn't go over it again. "

"In the avenue. And moonrise and things. What o'clock was it, please, ma'am?"

"About ten-fifteen, dear. We were in by eleven. " This was a faintattempt to help dignity by a parade of accuracy in figures, and anaffectation of effrontery. "But really we needn't go over it again. Youknow what a nice letter he wrote Aunt Frances?" And instead of waitingfor an answer, Tishy, perhaps to avoid catechism about the moonrise andthings, ploughs straight on into a recitation of her lover's letter toher aunt: "Dear Lady Sales--Of course it will (quite literally) give methe _greatest possible_ pleasure to come. I will bring the Strad"; andthen afterwards he said: "I hope your niece will give a full accountof me, and not draw any veils over my social position. However, thisbeing written at my desk here on the shop-paper will prevent anymisunderstanding. "

"Your Aunt Frances has been hatching you--you two!" says Sally, ignoring the letter. 

"She is a dear good woman, if ever there was one. I wish mamma was myaunt-by-marriage, and she her!" And then Lętitia went on to tell manythings about the present position of the "row" between herself and hermother, concerning which it can only be said that nothing transpiredthat justified its existence. Seeing that no recognition was asked forof any formal engagement either by the "young haberdasher" himself--forthat was the epithet applied to him (behind his back, of course) bythe older lady--or by the object of his ambitious aspirations, it mighthave been more politic, as well as more graceful, on her part, to leavethe affair to die down, as love-affairs unopposed are so very apt todo. Instead of which she needs must begin endeavouring to frustratewhat at the time of her first interference was the merest flirtationbetween a Romeo who was tied to a desk all day, and a Juliet who wasconstantly coming into contact with other potential Romeos--plenty ofthem. Our own private opinion is that if the Montagus and Capulets hadtried to bury the hatchet at a public betrothal of the two youngpeople, the latter would have quarrelled on the spot. Setting theirfamily circles by the ears again would almost have been as much fun asa secret wedding by a friar. You doubt it? Well, we may be wrong. Butwe are quite certain that the events which followed shortly after thechat between the two girls recorded above either would never have cometo pass, or would have taken an entirely different form, if it had notbeen for the uncompromising character of Mrs. Sales Wilson's attitudetowards her daughter's Romeo. 

We will give this collateral incident in our history a chapter toitself, for your convenience more than our own. You can skip it, yousee, if you want to get back to Krakatoa Villa. 

CHAPTER XXI

OF JULIUS BRADSHAW'S INNER SOUL. AND OF THE HABERDASHER'S BATTLE AT LADBROKE GROVE ROAD. ON CARPET STRETCHING, AND VACCINATION FROM THE CALF. AN AFTER-DINNER INTERVIEW, AND GOOD RESOLUTIONS. EVASIVE TRAPPISTS

You can remember, if you are male and middle-aged, or worse, somelittle incident in your own early life more or less like thateffervescence of unreal passion which made us first acquainted withMr. Julius Bradshaw and his violin. Do you shake your head, and denyit? Are you prepared to look us in the face, and swear you never, whena young man, had a sleepless night because of some girl whom you hadscarcely spoken to, and who would not have known who you were if youhad been able to master your trepidation and claim acquaintance; andwho, in the sequel, changed her identity, and became what the greatestword-coiner of our time called a "speech-friend" of yours, withouta scrap of romance or tenderness in the friendship?

Sally's sudden change of identity from the bewitching little gardenerwho had fascinated this susceptible youth, to a merely uncommonly nicegirl, was no doubt assisted by his introduction just at that momentto the present Mrs. Julius Bradshaw. For it would be the merestaffectation to conceal the ultimate outcome of their acquaintance. 

When Julius came to Krakatoa Villa, he came already half disillusionedabout Sally. What sort of an _accolade_ he expected on arriving tokeep his passion on its legs, Heaven only knows! He certainly hadbeen chilled by her easy-going invitation to her mother's. A definitedeclaration of callous indifference would not have been half soeffective. Sally had the most extraordinary power of pointing out thatshe stipulated to be considered as a chap; or conveying it, which cameto the same thing. On the other hand, Lętitia, who had been freelyspoken of by Sally as "making a great ass of herself about socialtommy-rot and people's positions, " and who was aware of the justice ofthe accusation, had been completely jerked out of the region of Grundyby Julius's splendid rendering of Tartini, and had felt disconcertedand ashamed; for Tishy was a thorough musician at heart. Theconsequence was an _amende honorable_ to the young man, on whom--hehaving no idea whatever of its provoking cause--it produced the effectthat might have been anticipated. Any young lady who wishes to enslavea young man will really do better work by showing an interest inhimself than by any amount of fascination and allurement, on the linesof Greuze. We are by no means sure that it is safe to reveal thissecret, so do not let it go any farther. Young women are formidableenough, as it is, without getting tips from the camp of the enemy. 

Anyhow, Sally became a totally different identity to Mr. JuliusBradshaw. He, for his part, underwent a complete transformation inhers--so much so that the vulgar child was on one occasion quitetaken aback at a sudden recollection of his _début_, and said toher stepfather: "Only think, Jeremiah! Tishy's Julius is really thatyoung idiot that came philandering after me Sundays, and I had quiteforgotten it!"

The young idiot had settled down to a reasonable personality; if notto a manifestation of his actual self, at any rate as near as he waslikely to go to it for some time to come; for none of us ever succeedsin really showing himself to his fellow-creatures outright. That'simpossible. 

Sally had never said very much to her friend of this pre-introductionphase of Julius--had, in fact, thought little enough about it. Perhapsher taking care to say nothing at all of it in his later phase was hermost definite acknowledgment of its existence at any time. It was onlya laughable incident. She saw at once, when she took note of that sofa_séance_, which way the cat was going to jump; and we are bound to sayit was a cat that soon made up its mind, and jumped with decision. 

Mrs. Sales Wilson's endeavour to intercept that cat had been promptand injudicious. She destroyed whatever chance there was of a sudden_volte-face_ on its part--and oh, the glorious uncertainty of thisclass of cat!--first by taking no notice of it aggressively, nextby catching hold of its tail, too late. In the art of ignoringbystanders, she was no match for the cat. And detention seemed onlyto communicate impetus. 

Julius Bradshaw's first receptions at the Ladbroke Grove House hadbeen based mainly on his Stradivarius. The Dragon may be said to haveadmitted the instrument, but only to have tolerated its owner, as onemight tolerate an organman who owned a distinguished monkey. Still, theposition was an ambiguous one. The Dragon felt she had made a mistakein not shutting the door against this lion at first. She had "lethim in, to see if she could turn him out again, " and the crisis ofthe campaign had come over the question whether Mr. Bradshawmight, or should, or could be received into the inner bosom of thehousehold--that is to say, the dinner-bosom. The Dragon said no--shedrew the line at that. Tea, yes--dinner, no!

After many small engagements over the question in the abstract, theplot thickened with reference to the arrangements of a particularThursday evening. The Dragon felt that a decisive battle must befought; the more so that her son Egerton, whom she had relied onto back her against a haberdasher, though he might have been uselessagainst a jockey or a professional cricketer, had gone over to theenemy, and announced (for the Professor had failed to communicatethe virus of scholarship to this young man) that he was unanimousthat Mr. Bradshaw should be forthwith invited to dinner. 

His mother resorted to the head of the household as to a Court ofAppeal, but not, as we think, in a manner likely to be effective. Hernatural desire to avenge herself on that magazine of learning formarrying her produced an unconciliatory tone, even in her preamble. 

"I suppose, " she said, abruptly entering his library in the vitalcentre of a delectable refutation of an ignoramus--"I suppose it's nouse looking to you for sympathy in a matter of this sort, but----"

"I'm busy, " said the Professor; "wouldn't some other time do as well?"

"I knew what I had to expect!" said the lady, at once allowing herdesire to embitter her relations with her husband to get the betterof her interest in the measure she desired to pass through Parliament. She left the room, closing the door after her with venomous quietness. 

The refutation would have to stand over; it was spoiled now, and thedelicious sarcasm that was on his pen's tip was lost irrevocably. Heblotted a sentence in the middle, put his pen in a wet sponge, andopened his door. He jerked it savagely open to express his attitudeof mind towards interruption. His "_What_ is it?" as he did so was inkeeping with the door-jerk. 

"I can speak of nothing to you if you are so _tetchy_"--a word saidspitefully, with a jerk explanatory of its meaning. "Another time willdo better, now. I prefer to wait. "

When these two played at the domestic game of exasperate-my-neighbour, the temper lost by the one was picked up by the other, and added tohis or her pack. It was so often her pack that there must have been anunfair allotment of knaves in it when dealt--you know what that meansin beggar-my-neighbour? On this occasion Mrs. Wilson won heavily. It was not every day that she had a chance of showing her greatforbearance and self-restraint, on the stairs to an audience of a manin leather kneecaps who was laying a new drugget in the passage, anda model of discretion with a dustpan, whose self-subordination wasbeyond praise; her daughter Athene in the passage below inditing herson Egerton for a misappropriation of three-and-fivepence; and a faintsuspicion of Lętitia's bedroom door on the jar, for her to listenthrough, above. 

It wasn't fair on the Professor, though; for even before he exploded, his lady-wife had had ample opportunity of reconnoitring thebattle-field, and, as it were, negotiating with auxiliaries, by a showof gentle sweetness which had the force of announcement that she wasbeing misunderstood elsewhere. But she would bear it, conscious ofrectitude. Now, the Professor didn't know there was any one withinhearing; so he snapped, and she bit him _sotto voce_, but raised a meekvoice to follow:

"Another time will be better. I prefer to wait. " This was all thepublic heard of her speech. But she went into the library. 

"What do you want to speak to me about?" Thus the Professor, remainingstanding to enjoin the temporary character of the interview; tocountercheck which the lady sank in an armchair with her back to thelight. Both she and Lętitia conveyed majesty in swoops--filled up_fauteuils_--could motion humbler people to take a seat beside them. "Tishy's Goody runs into skirts--so does _she_ if you come to that!"was Sally's marginal note on this point. The countercheck was effectual, and from her position of vantage the lady fired her first shot. 

"You know perfectly well what I want to speak about. " The awkward partof this was that the Professor did know. 

"Suppose I do; go on!" This only improved his position very slightly, but it compelled the bill to be read a first time. 

"Do you wish your daughter to marry a haberdasher?"

"I do not. If I did, I should take her round to some of the shops. "

But his wife is in no humour to be jested with. "If you cannot beserious, Mr. Wilson, about a serious matter, which concerns thelifelong well-being of your eldest daughter, I am only wasting my timein talking to you. " She threatens an adjournment with a slight move. Her husband selects another attitude, and comes to business. 

"You may just as well say what you have come to say, Roberta. It'sabout Lętitia and this young musician fellow, I suppose. Why can'tyou leave them alone?" Now, you see, here was a little triumph forRoberta--she had actually succeeded in getting the subject into therealm of discussion without committing herself to any definitestatement, or, in fact, really saying what it was. She could prosecuteit now indirectly, on the lines of congenial contradiction of herhusband. 

"I fully expected to be accused of interfering with what does notconcern me. I am not surprised. My daughter's welfare is, it appears, to be of as little interest to me as it is to her father. Very well. "

"What do you wish me to do? Will you oblige me by telling me whatit is you understand we are talking about?" A gathering storm ofdetermination must be met, the Dragon decides, by a correspondingaccess of asperity on her part. She rises to the occasion. 

"I will tell you about what I do _not_ understand. But I do not expectto be listened to. I do _not_ understand how any father can remain inhis library, engaged in work which cannot possibly be remunerative, while his eldest daughter contracts a disgraceful marriage with asocial inferior. " The irrelevance about remuneration was ill-judged. 

"I can postpone the Dictionary--if that will satisfy you--and go onwith some articles for the Encyclopędia, which pay very well, untilafter the ceremony. Is the date fixed?"

"It is easy for you to affect stupidity, and to answer me with would-bewitty evasions. But if you think to deter me from my duty--a mother'sduty--by such pitiful expedients you are making a great mistake. Youmake my task harder to me, Septimus, but you do not discourage me. Youknow as well as I do--although you choose to affect the contrary--thatwhat I am saying does not relate to any existing circumstances, butonly to what may come about if you persist in neglecting your dutyto your family. I came into this room to ask you to exercise yourauthority with your daughter Lętitia, or if not your authority--for sheis over twenty-one--your influence. But I see that I shall get no help. It is, however, what I expected--no more and no less. " And the skirtsrustle with an intention of getting up and going away injured. 

Mrs. Wilson had a case against her husband, if not a strong one. Hisideas of the duties of a male parent were that he might incur paternityof an indefinite number of sons and daughters, and discharge all hisobligations to them by providing their food and education. Having paidquittance, he was at liberty to be absorbed in his books. Had hispayments been large enough to make his wife's administration of thehousehold easy, he might have been justified, especially as she, forher part, was not disposed to allow him any voice in any matter. Nevertheless, she castigated him frightfully at intervals for notexercising an authority she was not prepared to permit. He was nothingbut a ninepin, set up to be knocked down, an Aunt Sally who was neverallowed to keep her pipe in her mouth for ten consecutive seconds. Thenatural consequence of which was that his children despised him, butto a certain extent loved him; while, on the other hand, they somewhatdisliked their mother, but (to a certain extent) respected her. It isvery hard on the historian and the dramatist that every one is notquite good or quite bad. It would make their work so much easier. Butit would not be nearly so interesting, especially in the case of thelast-named. 

The Professor may have had some feeling on these lines when he stoppedthe skirts from rustling out of the apartment by a change in hismanner. 

"Tell me seriously what you wish me to do, Roberta. "

"I wish you to give attention, if not to the affairs--_that_ I cannotexpect--of your household, at least to this--you may call it foolishand pooh-pooh it--business of Lętitia and this young man--I reallycannot say young gentleman, for it is mere equivocation not to callhim a haberdasher. "

The Professor resisted the temptation to criticize some points ofliterary structure, and accepted the obvious meaning of this. 

"Tell me what he really is. "

"I have told you repeatedly. He is nothing--unless we palter with themeaning of words--but a clerk in the office at the stores where we paya deposit and order goods on a form. They were originally haberdashers, so I don't see how you can escape from what I have said. But I haveno doubt you will try to do so. "

"How comes he to be such a magnificent violinist? Are they all... ?"

"I know what you are going to say, and it's foolish. No, they are notall magnificent violinists. But you know the story quite well. "

"Perhaps I do. But now listen. I want to make out one thing. Thisyoung man talked quite freely to me and Egerton about his place, hisposition, salary--everything. And yet you say he isn't a gentleman. "

"Of course he isn't a gentleman. I don't the least understand whatyou mean. It's some prevarication or paradox. " Mrs. Wilson taps thechair-arm impatiently. 

"I mean this--if he isn't a gentleman, how comes it that he isn'tashamed of being a haberdasher? Because he _isn't_. Seemed to takeit all as a matter of course. "

"I cannot follow your meaning at all. And I will not trouble you toexplain it. The question now is--will you, or will you not, _do_something?"

"Has the young gentleman?"--Mrs. Wilson snorted audibly--"Well, hasthis young haberdasher made any sort of definite declaration toLętitia?"

"I understand not. But it's impossible not to see. "

"Would it not be a little premature for me to say anything to him?"

"Have I asked you to do so?"

"I am a little uncertain what it is you have asked me to do. "

Mrs. Wilson contrived, by pantomime before she spoke, to express herperfect patience under extremest trial, inflicted on her by an impudentsuggestion that she hadn't made her position clear. She would, however, state her case once more with incisive distinctness. To that end sheseparated her syllables, and accented selections from them, even asa resolute hammer accents the head of a nail. 

"Have I not told you dis_tinct_ly"--the middle syllable of this wordwas a sample nailhead--"a _thou_sand times that what I wish you todo--however much you may shirk doing it--is to _speak_ to Lętitia--toremonstrate with her about the encouragement she is giving to thisyoung man, and to _point out_ to her that a girl in her position--inshort, the duties of a girl in her position?" Mrs. Wilson's come-downat this point was an example of a solemn warning to the elocutionistwho breaks out of bounds. She was obliged to fall back arbitrarily onher key-note in the middle of the performance. "Have I said this toyou, Mr. Wilson, or have I not?"

"Speaking from memory I should say _not_. Yes--certainly _not_. ButI can raise no reasonable objection to speaking to Lętitia, providedI am at liberty to say what I like. I understand that to be part ofthe bargain. "

"If you mean, " says the lady, whose temper had not been improved by thefirst part of the speech; "if you mean that you consider yourself atliberty to encourage a rebellious daughter against her mother, I knowtoo well from old experience that that is the case. But I trust thatfor once your right feeling will show you that it is your _plain duty_to tell her that the course she is pursuing can only lead to the lossof her position in society, and probably to poverty and unhappiness. "

"I can tell her you think so, of course, " says the Professor, drily. 

"I will say no more"--very freezingly. "You know as well as I do whatit is your _duty_ to say to your daughter. What you will _decide_to say, I do _not_ know. " And premonitory rustles end in a move tothe door. 

"You can tell her to come in now--if you like. " The Professor won'tshow too vivid an interest. It isn't as if the matter related to aScythian war-chariot, or a gold ornament from a prehistoric tomb, or_varię lectiones_. 

"At least, Septimus, " says the apex of the departing skirts, "you willremember what is due to yourself and your family--_I_ am nobody--so faras not to encourage the girl in resisting her mother's authority. " And, receiving no reply, departs, and is heard on the landing rejectinginsufficient reasons why the drugget will not lay flat. And presentlyissuing a mandate to an upper landing:

"Your father wishes to speak to you in his library. _I_ wish you togo. " The last words not to seem to abdicate as Queen Consort. 

Lętitia isn't a girl whom we find new charms in after making hermother's acquaintance. You know how some young people would be passableenough if it were not for a lurid light thrown upon their identity byother members of their family. You know the sister you thought was abeauty and dear, until you met her sister, who was gristly and a jade. But it's a great shame in Tishy's case, because we do honestly believeher seeming _da capo_ of her mother is more skirts than anything else. We credit their respective _apices_ with different dispositions, although (yes, it's quite true what you say) we don't see exactly fromwhat corner of the Professor's his daughter got her better one. He'sall very well, but.... 

Anyhow, we are sorry for Tishy now, as she comes uneasily into thelibrary to be "spoken to. " She comes in buttoning a glove and saying, "Yes, papa. " She was evidently just going out--probably arrested bythe voices in the library. 

"Well, my dear, your mother wishes me to speak to you.... H'm! h'm!By-the-bye, " he interrupts himself, "it really is a very extraordinarything, but it's just like work-people. A man spends all his life layingcarpets, and the minute he lays mine it's too big or too small. "

"The man outside? He's very tiresome. He says the passage is an unusualsize. "

"I should have taken that point when I measured it. It seems to me latein the day now the carpet's made up. However, that's neither here northere. Your mother wishes me to--a--to speak to you, my dear. "

"What does she want you to say, papa?"

"H'm--well!--it's sometimes not easy to understand your mother. Icannot say that I have gathered precisely what it is she wishes meto say. Nor am I certain that I should be prepared to say it if Iknew what it was. "--Tishy brightened perceptibly. --"But I am thisfar in sympathy with what I suppose to be her meaning"--Tishy's facefell--"that I should be very sorry to hear that you had made anybinding promises to any young gentleman without knowing more of hisantecedents and connexions than I suppose you do at the present aboutthis--a--musical friend of yours--without consulting me. " Theperfunctory tone in which he added, "and your mother, " made the wordshardly worth recording. 

But perhaps the way they, in a sense, put the good lady out of court, helped to make her daughter brighten up again. "Dear papa, " she said, "I should never dream for one moment of doing such a thing. Nor wouldMr. Bradshaw dream of asking me to do so. "

"That's quite right, my dear--quite enough. Don't say anything more. I am not going to catechize you. " And Tishy was not sorry to hearthis, because her disclaimer of a binding promise was only true in theletter. In fact, our direct Sally had only the day before pounced uponher friend with, "You know perfectly well he's kissed you heaps oftimes!" And Tishy had only been able to begin an apology she was notto be allowed to finish with, "And suppose he has... ?"

However, her sense of an untruthfulness that was more than merelytechnical was based not so much on the bare fact of a kissing-relationhaving come about, as upon a particular example. She knew it was themerest hypocrisy to make believe that the climax of that interview atRiverfordhook, where there were the moonrise and things, did notconstitute a pledge on the part of both. However, Tishy is not thefirst young lady, let me tell you--if you don't know already--who hasbeen guilty of equivocation on those lines. It is even possible thather father was conniving at it, was intentionally accepting what heknew to be untrue, to avoid the trouble of further investigation, andto be able to give his mind to the demolition of that ignoramus. Acertain amount of fuss was his duty; but the sooner he could find anexcuse to wash his hands of these human botherations and get back tohis inner life the better. 

Perhaps it was a sense of chill at the suspicion that her father wasnot concerned enough about her welfare that made Lętitia try to arresthis retirement into his inner life. Or it may have been that she wassensitive, as young folk are, at her new and strange experience of RealLove, and at the same time grated on--scraped the wrong way--in herharsh collision with her mother, who was showing Cupid no quarter, andwas only withheld from overt acts of hostility to Julius Bradshaw bythe knowledge that excess on her part would precipitate what she soughtto avert. 

Whatever the cause was, her momentary sense of relief that her fatherwas not going to catechize her was followed by a feeling that shealmost wished he would. It would be so nice to have a natural parentthat was really interested in his daughter's affairs. Poor Tishy feltlonely, and as if she was going to cry. She must unpack her heart, evenif it bored papa, who she knew wanted to turn her out and write. Shebroke down over it. 

"Oh, papa--papa! Indeed, I want to do everything you wish--whatever youtell me. I _will_ be good, as we used to say. " A sob grew in her throatover this little nursery recollection. "Only--only--only--it isn'treally quite true about no promises. We haven't made them, you know, but they're _there_ all the same. " Tishy stops suddenly to avoid a sobshe knows is coming. A pocket-handkerchief is called in to remove tearssurreptitiously, under a covering pretence of a less elegant function. The Professor hates scenes worse than poison, and Tishy knows it. 

"There, there! Well, well! Nothing to cry about. _That's_ right. " Thisis approval of the disappearance of the pocket-handkerchief--someconfusion between cause and effect, perhaps. "Come, my child--come, Lętitia--suppose now you tell me all about it. "

Tishy acknowledges to herself that she desires nothing better. Yes, papa dear, she will, indeed she will, tell him everything. And thenmakes a very fair revelation of her love-affair--a little dry andstilted in the actual phrasing, perhaps, but then, what can you expectwhen one's father is inclined to be stiff and awkward in such a matter, to approach it formally, and consider it an interview? It was allmamma's fault, of course. Why should she be summoned before the bar ofthe house? Why couldn't her father find his way into her confidence inthe natural current of events? However, this was better than nothing. 

Besides, we softened gradually as we developed the subject. One ofus, who was Mr. Bradshaw at first, became Julius later, with a stronglubricating effect. We began with sincere attachment, but we lovedeach other dearly before we had done. We didn't know when "it" beganexactly--which was a fib, for we were perfectly well aware that "it"began that evening at Krakatoa Villa, which has been chronicledherein--but for a long time past Julius had been asking to be allowedto memorialise the Professor on the subject. 

"But you know, papa dear, I couldn't say he was to speak to you untilI was quite certain of myself. Besides, I did want him to be on betterterms with mamma first. "

Professor Wilson flushed angrily, and began with a knitted brow, "Iwish your mother would----" but stopped abruptly. Then, calming down:"But you are quite certain _now_, my dear Lętitia?" Oh dear, yes; nodoubt of that. And how about Julius? The confident ring of the girl'slaugh, and her "Why, you should hear him!" showed that she, at least, was well satisfied of her lover's earnestness. 

"Well, my dear child, " said the Professor, who was beginning to feelthat it was time to go back to his unfinished ignoramus, tyro, orsciolist; "I tell you what I shall do. When's he coming next? Thursday, to dinner. Very well. I shall make a little opportunity for a quiettalk with him, and we shall see. "

The young lady came out of the library on the whole comfortabler thenshe had entered it, and finished buttoning that glove in the passage. As she stood reflecting that papa would really be very nice if he wouldshave more carefully--for the remains of his adieu was still raspingher cheek--she was aware of the voice of the carpet; she heard itcomplain, through the medium of its layer, or stretcher, who seemedto mean to pass the remainder of his days scratching the head ofperplexity on the scene of his recent failure to add to hisprofessional achievements. 

"It's what I say to the guv'nor"--thus ran his Jeremiad--"in dealin'with these here irregular settin's out, where nothin's not to sayparallel with anything else, nor dimensions lendin' theirselves toaccommodation. 'Just you let me orfer it in, ' I says 'afore the finalstitchin' to, or even a paper template in extra cases is a savin' inthe end. ' Because it stands to reason there goes more expense with anill-cut squint or obtoose angle, involvin' work to rectify, than cutackerate in the first go-off. Not but what ruckles may disappear underthe tread, only there's no reliance to be placed. You may depend on it, to make a job there's nothin' like careful plannin', and foresight inthe manner of speakin'. And, as I say to the guv'nor, there's no needfor a stout brown-paper template to go to waste, seein' it works inwith the under-packin'. " And much more which Tishy could still hearmurmuring on in the distance as she closed the street door and fledto an overdue appointment with Sally, into whose sympathetic ear shecould pour all her new records of the progress of the row. 

To tell the whole of the prolonged pitched battle that ensued wouldtake too much ink and paper. The Dragon fought magnificently, so longas she had the powerful backing of her married daughter, Mrs. SowerbyBagster, and the skirmishing help of Athene. This latter was, however, not to be relied on--might go over to the enemy any moment. Mrs. Bagster, or Clarissa, who was an elder sister of Lętitia's, becamelukewarm, too, on a side-issue being raised. It did not appear toconnect itself logically with the bone of contention, having referenceentirely to vaccination from the calf. But it led to an exaggeratedsensitiveness on her part as to the responsibility we incurred byinterference with what might (after all) be the Will of Providence. If this should prove so, it would be our duty not to repine. Clarissacontrived to surround the subject with an unprovoked halo of religiousmeekness, and to work round to the conclusion that it would bepresumptuous not to ask Mr. Bradshaw to dinner. Only this resultedabsolutely and entirely from her refusing to have her three childrenall vaccinated from the calf forthwith, because their grandmotherthought it necessary. The latter, finding herself deserted in her hourof need by a powerful ally--for three whole children had given Clarissaa deep insight into social ethics, and a weighty authority--surrenderedgrudgingly. She tried her best to make her invitation to dinner takethe form of leave to come to dinner, and partly succeeded. Hersuggestions that she hoped Mr. Bradshaw would understand the rules ofthe game at the table of Society caused the defection of her remainingconfederate, Athene, who turned against her, exclaiming: "He won't eatwith his knife, at any rate!" However, it was too late to influencecurrent events. The battle was fought and over. 

The obnoxious young man didn't eat with his knife when he came, withdocility, a day after he received the invitation. Remember, he appearsoriginally in this story as a chosen of Cattley's, one warranted todefy detection by the best-informed genteelologist. He went throughhis ordeal very well, on the whole, considering that Egerton (fromfriendship) was always on the alert to give him tips about civilisedconduct, and that Mrs. Wilson called him nearly every known dissyllabicname with _A_'s in it--Brathwaite, Palgrave, Bradlaugh, Playfair, andso on, but not Bradshaw. She did this the more as she never addressedhim directly, treating him without disguise as the third-personsingular in a concrete form. This was short-sighted, because itstimulated her husband to a tone of civility which would probablyhave risen to deference if the good lady had not just stopped shortof insult. 

Egerton and the only other male guest (who was the negative youngpianist known to Sally as Somebody Elsley) having found it convenientto go away at smoking-time to inspect the latter's bicycle, theProfessor seized his opportunity for conversation with thethird-person-singular. He approached the subject abruptly:

"Well, it's Lętitia, I understand, that we're making up to, eh?"Perhaps it was this sudden conversion to the first person plural thatmade the young man blush up to the roots of his hair. 

"What can I say?" he asked hesitatingly. "You see, Professor Wilson, if I say yes, it will mean that I have been p-paying my addresses, asthe phrase is.... "

"And taking receipts?"

"Exactly--and taking receipts, without first asking her father's leave. And if I say no----"

"If you say no, my dear young man, her father will merely ask youto help yourself and pass the port (decanter with the little brassticket--yes, that one. Thank you!). Well, I see what you mean, and weneedn't construct enigmas. We really get to the point. Now tell me allabout it. " We don't feel at all sure the Professor's way of getting tothe point was not a good one. You see, he had had a good deal to dowith young men in early academical phases of existence--tutorships andthe like--and had no idea of humming and hawing and stuttering overtheir affairs. Besides, it was best for Bradshaw, as was shown by thegreater ease with which he went on speaking, and began telling theProfessor all about it. 

"I shouldn't be speaking truthfully, sir, if I were to pretend thingshaven't gone a little beyond--a little beyond--the exact rules. Butyou've no idea how easily one can deceive oneself. "

"Haven't I?" The Professor's mind went back to his own youth. He knewvery well how easily he had done it. A swift dream of his past shotthrough his brain in the little space before Bradshaw resumed. 

"Well, it was only a phrase. Of course you know. I mean it has allcrept on so imperceptibly. And I have had no real chance of talkingabout it--to _you_, sir--without asking for a formal interview. Anduntil very lately nothing Lęt--Miss Wilson.... "

"Tut-tut! Lętitia--Lętitia. What's the use of being prigs about it?"

"Nothing Lętitia has said would have warranted me in doing this. I_could_ have introduced the subject to Mrs. Wilson once or twice, but.... "

"All right. I understand. Well, now, what's the exact state of thingsbetween you and Lętitia?"

"You will guess what our wishes are. But we know quite well that theirfulfilment is at present impossible. It may remain so. I have no meansat present except a small salary. And my mother and sister----"

"Have a claim on you--is that it?" The Professor's voice seems toforestall a forbidding sound. But he won't be in too great a hurry. He continues: "You must have some possibility in view, some sort ofexpectation. "

Bradshaw's reply hesitated a good deal. 

"I am afraid I have--I am afraid--allowed myself to fancy--that, inshort, I might be able to--outgrow this unhappy nervous affection. "

"And then?"

"I know what you mean, Professor Wilson. You mean that a violinist'sposition, however successful, would be less than you have a right toexpect for your daughter's husband. Of course that is so, but----"

"But I mean nothing of the sort. " The Professor is abrupt and decisive, as one who repudiates. "I know nothing about positions. However, Mr. Bradshaw, you are quite right this far--that is what Mrs. Wilson wouldhave meant. _She_ knows about positions. What _I_ meant was that youwouldn't have enough to live upon at the best, in any comfort, andthat I shouldn't be able to help you. Suppose you had a large family, and the nervous affection came back?" His hearer quakes at this crude, unfeeling forecast of real matrimonial facts. He and Lętitia fullyrecognise in theory that people who marry incur families; but, likeevery other young couple, would prefer a veil drawn over theirparticular case. The young man flinches visibly at the Professor'sneedlessly savage hypothesis of disasters. Had he been a rapid andskilful counsel in his own behalf, he would have at once pounced ona weak point, and asked how many couples would ever get married atall, if we were to beg and borrow every trouble the proper people(whoever they are) are ready to give away and lend. He can only lookcrestfallen, and feel about in his mind for some way of saying, "IfI wanted Lętitia to promise to marry me, that would apply. As mattersstand, it is not to the purpose, " without seeming to indite theProfessor for prematureness. Of course, the position had been createdentirely by the Dragon. Why could she not have let them alone, as herhusband had said to her? Why not, indeed?

But Master Julius has to see his way out into the open, and he ismerely looking puzzled, and letting a very fair cigar out--and, youknow, they are never the same thing relighted. Perhaps what he doesis as good as anything else. 

"I see you are right, sir, and I am afraid I am to blame--I mustbe--because my selfish thoughtlessness, or whatever it ought to becalled, has placed us in a position out of which no happiness canresult for either?" He looks interrogatively into the Professor's goldspectacles, but sees no relaxation in the slightly knitted brow abovethem. Their owner merely nods. 

"But you needn't take all the blame to yourself, " he says. "I've nodoubt my daughter is entitled to her share of it"--to which Bradshawtries to interpose a denial--"only it really doesn't matter whose faultit is. "

The disconcerted lover, who felt all raw, public, and uncomfortable, wondered a little what the precise "it" was that could be said to beany one's fault. After all, he and Lętitia were just two persons goingon existing, and how could it be any concern of any one else's whateach thought of or felt for the other? It is true he lacked absolutionfor the kissing transgressions; they were blots on a clean sheet ofmere friendship. But would the Dragon be content that he and Lętitiashould continue to see each other if they signed a solemn agreementthat there was to be no kissing? You see, he was afraid he was goingto be cut off from his lady-love, and he didn't like the looks of theProfessor. But he didn't propose the drawing up of any such compact. Perhaps he didn't feel prepared to sign it. However, he was to berelieved from any immediate anxiety. The Professor had never meantto take any responsibility, and now that he had said his say, he onlywanted to wash his hands of it. 

"Now, understand me, Bradshaw, " said he--and there was leniency andhope in the dropped "Mr. "--"I do not propose to do more than advise;nor do I know, as my daughter is twenty-four, what I can do exceptadvise. We won't bring authority into court.... Oh yes, no doubtLętitia believes she will never act against my wishes. Many girls havethought that sort of thing. But----" He stopped dead, with a littleside-twist of the head, and a lip-pinch, expressing doubt, thenresumed: "So I'll give you my advice, and you can think it over. Itis that you young people just keep out of each other's way, and letthe thing die out. You've no idea till you try what a magical effectabsence has; poetry is all gammon. Take my advice, and try it. Havesome more port? No--thank me! Then let's go upstairs. "

Upstairs were to be found all the materials for an uncomfortableevening. A sort of wireless telegraphy that passed between Bradshawand Lętitia left both in low spirits. They did not rise (the spirits)when the Professor said, to the public generally, "Well, I must saygood-night, but _you_ needn't go, " and went away to his study; nor whenhis Dragon followed him, with a strong flavour of discipline on her. For thereupon it became necessary to ignore conflict in the hinterlandof some folding-doors, accompanied by sounds of forbearance and a highmoral attitude. There was no remedy but music, and as soon as Bradshawgot at his Stradivarius the mists seemed to disperse. The _adagio_ ofSomebody's quartette No. 101 seemed to drive a coach-and-six throughmortal bramble-labyrinths. But as soon as it ceased, the mists cameback all the thicker for being kept waiting. And the outcome of awinding-up interview between the sweethearts was the conclusion thatafter what had been said by the father of one of them, it was necessarythat all should be forgotten, and be as though it had never been. And the gentleman next day, when he showed himself at his desk atCattley's, provoked the remark that Paganini had got the hump thismorning--which shows that his genius as a violinist was recognisedat Cattley's. 

As for the lady, we rather think she made up her mind in the courseof the night that if her family were going to interfere with herlove-affairs, she would let them know what it was to have peopleyearning for other people in the house. For she refused boiled eggs, eggs and bacon, cold salmon-trout, and potted tongue at breakfast nextday, and left half a piece of toast and half a cup of tea as a visiblerecord that she had started pining, and meant to do it in earnest. 

What Lętitia and Julius suffered during their self-inflictedseparation, Heaven only knows! This saying must be interpreted asmeaning that nobody else did. They were like evasive Trappist monks, who profess mortification of the flesh, but when it comes to thescratch, don't flog fair. Whatever they lost in the cessation ofuncomfortable communion at the eyrie, or lair, of the Dragon was morethan made up for by the sub-rosaceous, or semi-clandestine, characterof the intercourse that was left. Stolen kisses are notoriouslysweetest, but when, in addition to this, every one is actually thevery last the shareholders intend to subscribe for, their fascinationis increased tenfold. And every accidental or purely unintentionallyarranged meeting of these two had always the character of an interviewbetween people who never meet--which, like most truths, was only falsein exceptional cases; and in this instance these were numerous. Factitious absence of this sort will often make the heart grow fonder, where the real thing would make it look about for another; and anotheris generally to be found. 

It might have been unsafe to indulge in speculation, based on the then_status quo_, as to when the inevitable was going to happen. We knowall about it now, but that doesn't count. Stories, true or false, should be told consecutively. 

CHAPTER XXII

IT WAS THAT MRS. NIGHTINGALE'S FAULT. A SATISFACTORY CHAP, GERRY! A TELEGRAM AND A CLOUD. BRONCHITIS AND ASTHMA AND FOG. SALLY GOES TO MAYFAIR. THE OLD SOLDIER HAS NOTICE TO QUIT

The most deeply-rooted instinct of mankind is the one that promptsit to lay the blame on some one else. Mankind includes womankind, andwoman includes (for we believe she is still living) the Dragon ofthe last chapter. As it did not occur to this good lady that her ownattitude of estrangement from Lętitia had anything to answer for in therash and premature development of the latter's love-affair, she castabout for a scapegoat, and found one in the person of Rosalind Fenwick. Some one had schemed the whole business, clearly, and who else couldit be but that woman? Of course, Lętitia herself was simply the victimof a plot--she was young and inexperienced; people's daughters are. 

But nothing in the nefarious business had escaped the watchful eye ofthe Dragon. At the time of the very first appearance of "that Mrs. Nightingale" on the scene she had pointed out her insidious character, and forewarned North and North-west Kensington of what was to beexpected from a person of her antecedents. It was true no one knewanything about these latter; but, then, that was exactly the point. 

"It's useless attempting to find excuses for that woman. Clarissa, "she had said. "It's always the same story with people of that sort. Whenever they have no proper introduction, they always turn outschemers and matchmakers. I detected her, and said so at once. It iseasy for your father to pretend he has forgotten. He always does. Myconsolation is that I did my duty. And then, of course, it all turnsout as I said. Anybody could have known what sort of person she waswith half an eye!"

"And what sort of person is she?" asked Clarissa coldly. She had notforgotten the vaccination from the calf. 

"The sort of person you would expect. Unless, Clarissa, you are goingto take a leaf out of your father's book, and make believe you do notunderstand what is transparently on the surface. What interest canMajor Roper have in inventing the story, I should like to know?"

"How does he come to know so much about it? Who told him?"

"Who _told_ him? Why, of course that very old gentleman--what's hisname?--_you_ know----" Mrs. Wilson tries if she can't recollectwith a quick vibration of a couple of fingers to back up her brain. "Colonel Dunn!"

"Major Lund?"

"Lunn or Dunn. Yes, I remember now; it's Lunn, because the girl saidwhen she was a child she thought Sally Lunns had something to do withboth. You may depend on it, I'm right. Well, Major Roper's his mostintimate friend. They belong to the same club. "

The ladies then lost sight of their topic, which lapsed into a ratherheated discussion of whether the very old gentleman was a Colonel ora Major. As we don't want to hear them on this point, we may let themlapse too. 

It may have been because of some home anxieties--notably about theMajor, whose bronchitis had been bad--that Rosalind Fenwick continuedhappily unconscious of having incurred any blame or taken anyresponsibility on herself in connexion with the Ladbroke Grove row, as Sally called it. If she _had_ known of it, very likely it wouldnot have troubled her, for she was really too contented with her owncondition and surroundings to be concerned about externals. Whatevertroubles she had were connected with the possibility, which alwaysseemed to grow fainter, of a revival of her husband's powers of memory. Sometimes whole weeks would pass without an alarm. Sometimes somelittle stirring of the mind would occur twice in the same day; still, the tendency seemed to be, on the whole, towards a more and morecomplete oblivion. 

But the fact is that so long as she had the Major invalided at KrakatoaVilla (for he was taken ill there, and remained on her hands manyweeks before he could return to his lodgings) she had the haziestimpressions of the outside world. Sally talked about "the row" whilethey were nursing the old boy, but really she heeded her very little. Then, when the invalid was so far reinstated that he was fit to bemoved safely, Sally went away too, for a change. 

The respite to old Colonel Lund was not to be for long. But the rest, alone with her husband, was not unwelcome to Rosalind. 

"I can never have been one-tenth as happy, Rosey darling, " said he toher one day, "as I have been in the last six months. I should recollectall about it if I had. "

"You're a satisfactory chap to deal with, Gerry--I must say that foryou. You always beam, come what may. Even when you fly out--which youdo, you know--it's more like a big dog than a wasp. You werealways.... " Now, Rosalind was going to say "always like that"; it wasa mistake she was constantly in danger of. But she stopped in time, and changed her speech to "You're not without your faults, you know!You never can come to an anchor, and be quiet. You sit on the arms ofchairs, and your hands are too big and strong. No; you needn't stop. Goon!" We like leaving the words to elucidate the concurrent action. "Andyou don't smell much of tobacco. "

Fenwick, however, had noticed the kink in the thread, and must needswind it back to get a clear line. "I was always what?" said he. Hiswife saw a way out. 

"Always good when your daughter was here to manage you. " It wasn't sosatisfactory as it might have been, but answered in dealing with a mindso unsuspicious. Sally's having spent Christmas and stayed on a littleat a friend's in the country lent plausibility to a past tense whichmight else have jarred. 

"I don't want the kitten all to myself, you know, " said Fenwick. "Itwouldn't be fair. After all, she _was_ yours before she was mine. "

There was not a tremor in the hand that lay in his, the one that wasnot caressing her cheek; not a sign of flinching in the eyes thatturned round on him; not a trace of hesitation in the voice that said, with concession to a laugh in it: "Yes, she _was_ mine before she wasyours. " Such skill had grown in this life of nettle-grasping!--indeed, she hardly felt the sting now. This time she was able to go onplacidly, in the unconnected way of talk books know not, and lifewell knows:

"Do you know what the kitten will be next August?"

"Yes; twenty-one. "

"It's rather awful, isn't it?"

"Which way do you mean? It's awful because she isn't _fiancée_, orawful because she might be at any minute?"

"You've picked up her way of going to the point, Gerry. I never saidanything about her being _fiancée_. "

"No, but you meant it. "

"Of course I did! Well, then, because she might be any minute. I'mvery glad she _isn't_. Why, you know I _must_ be!"

"_I_ am, anyhow!"

"Just think what the house would be without her!"

"The best place in the world still for me. " She acknowledges this bya kiss on his hairy hand, which he returns _via_ her forehead; thengoes on: "All the same, I'll be hanged if I know what we should dowithout our kitten. But has anything made you afraid?"

"Oh no; nothing at all! Certainly; no, nothing. Have _you_ noticedanything?"

"Oh dear, no! For anything I can see, she may continue a--a sort ofmer-pussy to the end of time. " Both laugh in a way at the name hehas made for her; then he adds: "Only.... "

"Only what?"

"Nothing I could lay hold of. "

"I wonder whether you're thinking of the same thing as I am?" Verysingularly, it does not seem necessary to elucidate the point. Theymerely look at each other, and continue looking as Fenwick says:

"They _are_ a funny couple, if that's it!"

"They certainly _are_, " she replies. "But I _have_ thought so, forall that!" And then both look at the fire as before, this being, ofcourse, in the depth of winter. Rosalind speaks next. 

"There's no doubt about _him_, of course! But the chick would havetold me at once if.... "

"If there had been anything to tell. No doubt she would. "

"Of course, it's absurd to suppose he could see so much of her as hedoes, and not.... "

"Perfectly absurd! But then, you know, that young fiddler was verybad, indeed, about the chick until he made her acquaintance. "

"So he was. " Thoughtfully, as one who weighs. 

"The kitten met him with a sort of stony geniality that would haveknocked the heart out of a Romeo. If Juliet had known the method, she could have nipped Shakespeare in the bud. "

"She _didn't_ want to. Sally _did_. "

"But then Shakespeare might have gone on and written a dry respectablestory--not a love-story; an esteem story--about how Juliet took aninterest in Romeo's welfare, and Romeo posted her letters for her, andpresented her with a photograph album, and so on. And how the familiesleft cards. "

"But it isn't exactly stony geniality. It's another method altogetherwith the doctor--a method the child's invented for herself. "

Fenwick repeats, "A method she's invented for herself. Exactly. Well, we shall have her back to-morrow. What time does she come?" And thenher mother says, interrupting the conversation: "What's that?"

"What's what?"

"I thought I heard the gate go. "

"Not at this time of night. " But Fenwick is wrong, for in a momentcomes an imperious peal at the bell. A pair of boots, manifestly ona telegraph-boy's cold feet, play a devil's tattoo on the sheltereddoorstep. They have been inaudible till now, as the snow is on theground again at Moira Villas. In three minutes the boots are released, and they and their wearer depart, callously uninterested in thecontents of the telegram they have brought. If we were a telegraph-boy, we should always be yearning to know and share the joys and sorrows ofour employers. This boy doesn't, to judge by the way he sings that heis "Only the Ghost of a Mother-in-law, " showing that he goes to themusic-halls. 

 * * * * *

Less than ten minutes after the telegraph-boy has died away in thedistance Rosalind and her husband are telling a cab to take them to174, Ball Street, Mayfair. 

It does so grudgingly, because of the state of the roads. It wantsthree-and-sixpence, and gets it, for the same reason. But it doesn'tappear to be drawn by a logical horse who can deal with inferences, because it is anxious to know when its clients are going back, thatit may call round for them. 

For the telegram was that there was "no cause immediate apprehension;perhaps better come--Major. " As might have been expected from sucha telegram about a man of his age, just after seeming recovery from anattack of bronchitis, the hours on earth of its subject were numbered. Fever may abate, temperature may be brought down to the normal, themost nourishing possible nourishment may be given at the shortestpossible intervals, but the recoil of exhaustion will have its way whenthere is little or nothing left to exhaust. Colonel Lund had possiblytwo or three years of natural life before him, disease apart, whena fierce return of the old enemy, backed by the severity of a Londonwinter, and even more effectually by its fog, stopped the old heart afew thousand beats too soon, and ended a record its subject had ceasedto take an interest in a few paragraphs short of the normal _finis_. 

We allow our words to overtake our story in this way because we knowthat you know--you who read--exactly what follows telegrams like theone that came to Mrs. Fenwick. If you are new and young, and do notknow it yet, you will soon. However, we can now go back. 

When the economical landlady (a rather superior person) who had openedthe street-door was preceding Rosalind up the narrow stairs, andturning up gas-jets from their reserve of darkness-point, she surprisedher by saying she thought there was the Major coming downstairs. "Yes, madam; the Major--Major Roper, " she continued, in reply to anexpression of astonishment. Rosalind had forgotten that Colonel Lundwas, outside her own family, "the Colonel. "

It was Major Roper whom we have seen at the Hurkaru Club, as purple asever and more asthmatic--in fact, the noise that was the Major comingdownstairs was also the noise of the Major choking in the fog. It cameslowly down, and tried hard to stop, in order that its source mightspeak intelligibly to the visitors. What time the superior person stoodand grudged the gas. In the end, speech of a sort was squeezed outslowly, as the landlady, stung to action by the needless gas-waste, plucked the words out of the speaker's mouth at intervals, and finishedthem up for him. The information came piecemeal; but in substance itwas that he had the day before found his old friend coughing his liverup in this dam fog, and had taken on himself to fetch the medical manand a nurse; that these latter, though therapeutically useless, as isthe manner of doctors and nurses, had common-sense enough to back him(Roper) in his view that Mrs. Fenwick ought to be sent for, althoughthe patient opposed their doing so. So he took upon himself to wire. There wasn't any occasion whatever for alarm, ma'am! Not the slightest. "You hear me, and mark what I say--an old stager, ma'am! Ever sucha little common-sense, and half the patients would recover!" A fewdetails of the rapid increase of the fever, of the patient's resistanceto the sending of his message, and an indication of a curious feelingon the old Colonel's part that it wouldn't be correct form to go backto be nursed through a second attack when he had so lately got safeout of the first one. All this landed the speaker in something nearsuffocation, and made his hearers protest, quite uselessly, against hisagain exposing himself to the fog. Whereon the landlady, with a fingeron the gas-tap, nodded toward the convulsed old officer to supply herspeech with a nominative, and spoke. What she said was merely: "Hasn'tbeen to bed. " And then waited for Rosalind to go upstairs with suchaggressive patience that the latter could only say a word or two ofthanks to Major Roper and pass up. He, for his part, went quickerdownstairs to avoid the thanks, and the gas-tap vigil came to a suddenend the moment Rosalind turned the handle of the door above.... Now, what is the object of all this endless detail of what might have beeneasily told in three words--well, in thirty, certainly?

Simply this: to show you why Fenwick, following on after somediscussion with the cab below, was practically invisible to theasthmatic one, who passed him on the stairs just as the light abovevanished. So he had no chance of recognizing the donor of his tiger'sskin, which he might easily have done in open day, in spite of thetwenty years between, for the old chap was as sharp as a razor aboutpeople. He passed Fenwick with a good-evening, and Mr. Fenwick, hepresumed, and his good lady was on ahead, as indicated by the speaker'sthumb across his shoulder. Fenwick made all acknowledgments, and felthis way upstairs in the dark till the nurse with a hand-lamp lookedover the banisters for him. 

 * * * * *

When Sally came back to Krakatoa Villa early next day she found anempty house, and a note signed Jeremiah that explained its emptiness. We had been sent for to the Major, and Sally wasn't to be frightened. He had had a better night than last night, the doctor and nurse said;and Sally might come on as soon as she had had a good lunch. Only shewas on no account to fidget. 

So she didn't fidget. She had the good lunch very early, left Ann toput back her things in the drawers, and found her way through thethickening fog to the Tube, only just anxious enough about the Majorto feel, until the next station was Marble Arch, that London hadchanged and got cruder and more cold-hearted since she went away, andthat the guard was chilly and callous about her, and didn't care howjolly a house-party she had left behind her at Riverfordhook. For itwas that nice aunt of Tishy's that had asked her down for a few days, and the few days had caught on to their successors as they came, andbecome a fortnight. But he appeared to show a human heart, at least, by a certain cordiality with which he announced the prospect of MarbleArch, which might have been because it was Sally's station. Now, hehad said Lancaster Gate snappishly, and Queen's Road with misgiving, as though he would have fain added D. V. If the printed regulationshad permitted it. Also, Sally thought there was good feeling in thereluctance he showed to let her out, based entirely on nervousnesslest she should slip (colloquially) between the platform. 

You don't save anything by taking the pink 'bus, nor any 'bus for thatmatter, down Park Lane when the traffic tumbles down every half-minute, in spite of cinders lavished by the authority, and can't really see itsway to locomotion when it gets up. So you may just as well walk. Sallydid so, and in ten minutes reached the queer little purlieu teemingwith the well-connected, and named after the great Mysteries they areconnected with, that lies in the angle of Park Lane and Piccadilly. Persons of exaggerated sense of locality or mature hereditaryexperience can make short cuts through this district, but the wayfarer(broadly speaking) had better not try, lest he be found dead in a mewsby the Coroner, and made the subject of a verdict according to theevidence. Sally knew all about it of old, and went as straight throughthe fog as the ground-plan of the streets permitted to the house whereher mother and a nurse were doing what might be done to prolong thetenancy of the top-floor. But both knew the occupant had receivednotice to quit. Only, it did seem so purposeless, this writ ofejectment and violent expulsion, when he was quite ready to go, andwanted nothing but permission. 

CHAPTER XXIII

OF A FOG THAT WAS UP-TO-DATE, AND HOW A FIRE-ENGINE RELIEVED SALLY FROM A BOY. HOW SALLY GOT IN AT A GENTLEMEN'S CLUB, AND HOW VETERANS COULD RECOLLECT HER FATHER. BUT THEY KNOW WHAT SHE CAN BE TOLD, AND WHAT SHE CAN'T. HOW MAJOR ROPER WOULD GO OUT IN THE FOG

Mrs. Fenwick was not sorry to break down a little, now that herdaughter had come to break down on. She soon pulled together, however. Breaking down was not a favourite relaxation of hers, as we have seen. Her husband had, of course, left her to go to his place of business, not materially the worse for a night spent without closed eyes and inthe anxiety of a sick-chamber. 

"Oh, mother darling! you are quite worn out. How is he?"

"He's quiet now, kitten; but we thought the cough would have killed himin the night. He's only so quiet now because of the opiates. Only athis age----" Mrs. Fenwick stopped and looked at the nurse, whose shakeof the head was an assent to the impossibility of keeping a patient ofeighty alive on opiates. Then, having gone thus far in indicating thegrim probabilities of the case, Sally's mother added, as alleviationto a first collision with Death: "But Dr. Mildmay says the inflammationand fever may subside, and then, if he can take nourishment----" butgot no further, for incredulity of this sort of thing is in the air ofthe establishment. 

Not, perhaps, on Sally's part. Young people who have not seen Deathface-to-face have little real conception of his horrible unaskedintrusion into the house of Life. That house is to them almost asinviolable as the home of our babyhood was to the most of us, asacred fane under the protection of an omnipotent high-priest andpriestess--papa and mamma. Almost as inviolable, that is, when thosewho live in it are our friends. Of course, the people in the newspapersgo dying--are even killed in railway accidents. This frame of mindwill change for Sally when she has seen this patient die. For thetime being, she is half insensible--can think of other things. 

"What did the party mean that let me in, mother darling? The fustyparty? She said she thought it was the Major. I didn't take any noticetill now. I wanted to get up. "

"It was the other Major, dear--Major Roper. Don't you know? _He_ usedto talk of him, and say he was an old gossip. " In the dropped voice andthe stress on the pronoun one can hear how the speaker's mind knowsthat the old Colonel is almost part of the past. "But they were veryold friends. They were together through the Mutiny. _He_ was hiscommanding officer. " Sally's eyes rest on the old sabre that hangson its hook in the wall, where she has often seen it, ranking itprosaically with the other furnishings of "the Major's" apartment. Now, a new light is on it, and it becomes a reality in a lurid past, long, long before there was any Sally. A past of muzzle-loading guns andMinié rifles, of forced marches through a furnace-heat to distant fortsthat hardly owned the name, all too late to save the remnant of theirdefenders; a past of a hundred massacres and a thousand heroisms;a past that clings still, Sally dear, about the memory of us oldstersthat had to know it, as we would fain that no things that are, or areto be, should ever cling about yours. But you have read the story often, and the tale of it grows and lives round the old sabre on the wall. 

Except as an explanation of the fusty party's reference to a Major, OldJack--that was Sally's Major's name for him--got very little footholdin her mind, until a recollection of her mother's allusion to him as anold gossip having made her look for a suitable image to place there, she suddenly recalled that it was he that had actually seen her father;talked to him in India twenty years ago; could, and no doubt would, tell her all about the divorce. But there!--she couldn't speak to himabout it here and now. It was impossible. 

Still, she was curious to see him, and the fusty but genteel one hadevidently expected him. So, during the remainder of what seemed toSally the darkest day, morally and atmospherically, that she had everspent--all but the bright morning when she ran into the fog somewherenear Surbiton, full of tales to tell of the house-party that now seemeda happy dream--during this gloomy remainder Sally wondered what couldhave happened that the other Major should not have turned up. The fogwould have been more than enough to account for any ordinarynon-appearance; hardly for this one. 

For it turned out, as soon as it got full powers to assert itself, thedensest fog on record. The Londoner was in his element. He told thedissatisfied outsider with pride of how at midday it had beenimpossible to read large pica on Ludgate Hill; he didn't say why hetried to do so. He retailed frightful stories--but always with a senseof distinction--of folk crushed under hoofs and cart-wheels. If onehalf were true, some main thoroughfares must have been paved withflattened pedestrians. The satisfaction he derived from the hugeextra profits of the gas-companies made his hearer think he must bea shareholder, until _pari passu_ reasoning proved him to have investedin fog-signals. His legends of hooligans preying on the carcasses ofstrangled earls undisturbed had a set-off in others of marauders whohad rushed into the arms of the police and thought them bosom friends;while that of an ex-Prime Minister who walked round and round foran hour, and then rang at a house to ask where he was, ended inconsolation, as the door was opened by his own footman, who told himhe wasn't at home. Exact estimates were current, most unreasonably, ofthe loss to commerce; so much so that the other Londoner corrected himpositively with, "Nearer three-quarters of a million, they say, " andfelt proud of his higher knowledge. But neither felt the least ashamed, nor the least afraid of the hideous, inevitable future fog, when asuffocated population shall find, as it surely will, that it is at thebottom of a sea of unbreathable air, instead of one that merely makesit choke its stomach up and kills an old invalid or two. On thecontrary, both regarded it as the will of a judicious Providence, a developer of their own high moral qualities and a destroyer of theirgerms. 

Bronchitis and asthma are kittle-cattle to shoe behind, even where thesweet Mediterranean air blows pure upon Rapallo and Nervi, but whatmanner of cattle are they in a London fog? Can they be shoed at all?As Mrs. Fenwick sits and waits in terror to hear the first inevitablecough as the old man wakes, and talks in whispers to her daughter inthe growing darkness, she feels how her own breath drags at the toughair, and how her throat resents the sting of the large percentage ofsulphur monoxide it contains. The gas-jet is on at the full--or ratherthe tap is, for the fish-tail burner doesn't realise its ideal. Itsputters in its lurid nimbus--gets bronchitis on its own account, triesto cough its tubes clear and fails. Sally and her mother sit on in thedarkness, and talk about it, shirking the coming suffocation of theirold friend, and praying that his sleep may last till the deadly airlightens, be it ever so little. Sally's animated face shows that sheis on a line of cogitation, and presently it fructifies. 

"Suppose every one let their fires out, wouldn't the fog go? Itcouldn't go on by itself. "

"I don't know, chick. I suppose it's been all thought out by committeesand scientific people. Besides, we should all be frozen. "

"Not if we went to bed. "

"What! In the daytime?"

"Better do nothing in bed than be choked up. "

"I dare say the fog wouldn't go away. You see, it's due to atmosphericconditions, so they say. "

"That's only because nobody's there to stop 'em talking nonsense. Look at all that smoke going up our chimney. " So it was, and a jollyblaze there was going to be when the three shovelfuls Sally hadenthusiastically heaped on had incubated, and the time was ripe forthe poker. 

Had you been there you would have seen in Sally's face as it caught thefirelight-flicker and pondered on the cause of the fog, that _she_ hadnot heard a choking fit of the poor old sleeper in the next room. Andin her mother's that she _had_, and all the memory of the dreadfulhours just passed. Her manner, too, was absent as she talked, and shelistened constantly. Sally was to know what it was like soon. The opiumsleep would end. 

"Isn't that him?" The mother's sharp ear of apprehension makes her saythis; the daughter has not heard the buried efforts of the lung thatcannot cough. It will succeed directly, if the patient is raised up, so. Both have gone quickly and quietly into the sick-chamber, and itis the nurse who speaks. Her prediction is fulfilled, and the silentstruggle of suffocation becomes a tearing convulsion, that means tolast some while and does it. How the old, thin tenement of life can goon living unkilled is a problem to solve. But it survives this time. Perhaps the new cough-mixture will make the job easier next time. Weshall see. 

Anyhow, this attack--bad as it was--has not been so bad as the one hehad at three this morning. Rosalind and Nurse Emilia invent a paroxysmof diabolical severity, partly for the establishment of a pinnacle forthemselves to look down on Sally from, partly for her consolation. Hewasn't able to speak for ever so long after that, and this time he istrying to say something.... "What is it, dear?"

"Couldn't we have a window open to let a little air in?"

Well!--we could have a window open. We could let a little air in--butonly a very little. And that very little would bring with it copiouspercentages of moisture saturated with finely subdivided carbonaceousmatter, of carbon dioxide, and sulphur dioxide, and traces of hydricchloride, who is an old friend of our youth, known to us then asmuriatic acid. 

"It's such a thick fog, Major dear. As soon as it clears a littlewe'll open the window. Won't we, Sally?"

"Is Sally there?... Come and touch my hand, kitten.... That'sright.... " What is left of the Major can still enjoy the plump littlewhite hand that takes the old fingers that once could grasp the swordthat hangs on the wall. It will not be for very long now. A newspaperparagraph will soon give a short record of all the battles that swordleft its scabbard to see, and will tell of its owner's service in hislater days as deputy Commissioner at Umritsur, and of the record oflong residence in India it established, exceeding that of his nextcompetitor by many years. Not a few old warriors that were in thosebattles, and many that knew his later time, will follow him beyond itvery soon. But he is not gone yet, and his hand can just give back itspressure to Sally's, as she sits by him, keeping her heart in and hertears back. The actual collapse of vital forces has not come--will notcome for a few days. He can speak a little as she stoops to hear him. 

"Young people like you ought to be in bed, chick, getting beauty-sleep. You must go home, and make your mother go.... _You_ go. _I_ shall beall right.... "

"It isn't night, Major dear"--Sally makes a paltry attempt tolaugh--"it's three in the afternoon. It's the fog. " But she cannot hearwhat he says in answer to this, go close as she may. After a pause ofrest he tries again, with raised voice:

"Roper--Roper--Old Jack ... Mustn't come ... Asthma in the fog ... Somebody go to stop him. " He is quite clear-headed, and when Sally saysshe will go at once, he spots the only risk she would run, being youngand healthy:

"Sure you can find your way? Over the club-house--Hurkaru Club----"And then is stopped by a threat of returning cough. 

But Sally knows all about it, and can find her way anywhere--so shesays. She is off in a twinkling, leaving her mother and the nurse towait for the terrible attack that means to come, in due course, assoon as the new cough-mixture gets tired. 

Sally is a true Londoner. _She_ won't admit, whoever else does, that a fog is a real evil. On the contrary, she inclines to Prussiantactics--flies in the face of adverse criticism with the decision thata fog is rather a lark when you're out in it. Actually face to facewith a human creature choking, Sally's optimism had wavered. Itrecovers itself in the bracing atmosphere of a main-thoroughfarecharged to bursting with lines of vehicles, any one of which wouldgo slowly alone, but the collective slowness of which finds a ventin a deadlock a mile away--an hour before we can move, we here. 

By what human agency it comes about that any wheeled vehicle drawnof horses can thunder at a hand-gallop through the matrix of sucha deadlock, Heaven only knows! But the glare of the lamps of thefire-brigade, hot upon the wild excitement of their war-cry, showsthat this particular agglomeration of brass and copper, fraught withsuppressed energy of steam well up, means to try for it--seems to havehad some success already, in fact. It quite puts Sally in spirits--therapid _crescendo_ of the hissing steam, the gleaming boiler-dome thatmight be the fruitful mother of all the helmets that hang about herskirts, the sudden leaping of the whole from the turgid opacity behindand equally sudden disappearance into the void beyond, the vanishing"Fire!" cry from which all consonants have gone, leaving only a soundof terror, all confirm her view of the fog as a lark. For, you see, Sally believed the Major might pull through even now. 

Also the coming of the engine relieved her from what threatened tobecome a permanent embarrassment. A boy, who may have been a goodboy or may not, had attached himself to her, under pretext ofeither a strong organ of locality or an extensive knowledge of town. 

"Take yer 'most anywhere for fourpence! Anywhere yer like to name. 'Ammersmith, 'Ackney Wick, Noo Cross, Covent Garden Market, RegencyPark. Come, I say, missis!"

Sally shouldn't have shaken her head as she did. She ought to haveignored his existence. He continued:

"I don't mind makin' it thruppence to the Regency Park. Come, missis, I say! Think what a little money for the distance. How would _you_like to do it yourself?" Sally rashly allowed herself to be led intocontroversy. 

"I tell you I don't want to go to Regents Park. " But the boy passedthis protest by--ignored it. 

"You won't get no better oarfer. You ask any of the boys. They'lltell you all alike. Regency Park for thruppence. Or, lookey herenow, missis! You make it acrorst Westminster Bridge, and I'll saytwopence-'a'penny. Come now! Acrorst a bridge!" This boy had quitelost sight of the importance of selecting a destination with referenceto its chooser's life-purposes, in his contemplation of the advantagesof being professionally conducted to it. Sally was not sorry when thecoming of the fire-engine distracted his attention, and led to hisdisappearance in the fog. 

Pedestrians must have been stopping at home to get a breath of freshair indoors, as the spectres that shot out of the fog, to becomepartly solid and vanish again in an instant, seemed to come alwaysone at a time. 

"Can you tell me, sir"--Sally is addressing a promising spectre, anold gentleman of sweet aspect--"have I passed the Hurkaru Club?" Thespectre helps an imperfect hearing with an ear-covering outspread hand, and Sally repeats her question. 

"I hope so, my dear, " he says, "I hope so. Because if you haven't, Ihave. I wonder where we are. What's this?" He pats a building at itsreachable point--a stone balustrade at a step corner. "Why, here weare! This is the Club. Can I do anything for you?"

"I want Major Roper"--and then, thinking more explanation asked for, adds--"who wheezes. " It is the only identification she can recall fromTishy's conversation and her mother's description. She herself hadcertainly seen their subject once from a distance, but she had onlyan impression of something purple. She could hardly offer that asidentification. 

"Old Jack! He lives in a kennel at the top. Mulberry, tell Major Roperlady for him. Yes, better send your card up, my dear; that's right!"

By this time they are in a lobby full of fog, in which electric lightspots are showing their spiritless nature. Mulberry, who is like Gibbonthe historian painted in carmine (a colour which clashes with hisvermilion lappets), incites a youth to look sharp; also, to take thatcard up to Major Roper. As the boy goes upstairs with it two steps ata time Sally follows the old gentleman into a great saloon with standingdesks to read skewered journals on and is talking to him on thehearthrug. She thinks she knows who he is. 

"I came to stop Major Roper coming round to see _our_ Major--ColonelLund, I mean. It isn't fit for him to come out in the fog. "

"Of course, it isn't. And Lund mustn't come out at his age. Why, he'solder than I am.... What? Very ill with bronchitis? I heard he'd beenailing, but they said he was all right again. Are you his Rosey?"

"No, no; mamma's that! She's more the age, you know. I'm only twenty. "

"Ah dear! how one forgets! Of course, but he's bad, I'm afraid. "

"He's very bad. Oh, General Pellew--because I know it's you--his coughis so dreadful, and there's no air for him because of this nasty fog!Poor mamma's there, and the nurse. I ought to hurry back; but he wantedto prevent Major Roper coming round and getting worse himself; so weagreed for me to come. I'll just give my message and get back. "

"Your mamma was Mrs. Graythorpe. I remember her at Umballa years ago. I know; she changed her name to Nightingale. She is now Mrs... ?" Sallysupplied her mother's married name. "And you, " continued Lord Pellew, "were Baby Graythorpe on the boat. "

"Of course. You came home with Colonel Lund; he's told me about that. Wasn't I a handful?" Sally is keenly interested. 

"A small handful. You see, you made an impression. I knew you before, though. You had bitten me at Umballa. "

"He's told me about that, too. Isn't that Major Roper coming now?" Ifit is not, it must be some one exactly like him, who stops to swear atsomebody or something at every landing. He comes down by instalments. Till the end of the last one, conversation may continue. Sally wantsto know more about her _trajet_ from India--to take the testimony ofan eyewitness. "Mamma says always I was in a great rage because theywouldn't let me go overboard and swim. "

"I couldn't speak to that point. It seems likely, though. I always wantto jump overboard now, but reason restrains me. You were not reasonableat that date. "

"It _is_ funny, though, that I have got so fond of swimming since. I'mquite a good swimmer. "

Major Roper is by this time manifest volcanically at the bottom of thestaircase, but before he comes in Lord Pellew has time to say so ishis nasturtium granddaughter a good swimmer. He has thirteen, andhas christened each of them after a flower. He hopes thirteen isn'tunlucky, and then Major Roper comes in apologetic. Sally can justrecollect having seen him before, and thinks him as purple as ever. 

"Lund--er!--Lund--er!--Lund--er!--Lund, " he begins; each time he saysthe name being baffled by a gasp, but holding tight to Sally's hand, asthough to make sure of her staying till he gets a chance. He gets none, apparently, for he gives it up, whatever he was going to say, with thehand, and says instead, in a lucky scrap of intermediate breath: "I wascomin' round--just comin'--only no gettin' those dam boots on!" Andthen becomes convulsively involved in an apology for swearing beforea young lady. She, for her part, has no objection to his damning hisboots if he will take them off, and not go out. This she partlyconveys, and then, after a too favourable brief report of the patient'sstate--inevitable under the circumstances--she continues:

"That's what I came on purpose to say, Major Roper. You're not to comeout on any account in the fog. Colonel Lund wouldn't be any better foryour coming, because he'll think of you going back through the fog, and he'll fret. Please do give up the idea of coming until it clears. Besides, he isn't my grandfather. " An inconsecutive finish to correcta mistake of Old Jack's. She resumes the chair she had risen from whenhe came in, and thereupon he, suffering fearfully from having nobreathing-apparatus and nothing to use it on, makes concession to achair himself, but all the while waves a stumpy finger to keep Sally'slast remark alive till his voice comes. The other old soldier remainsstanding, but somewhat on Sally's other side, so that she does not seeboth at once. A little voice, to be used cautiously, comes to the Majorin time. 

"Good Lard, my dear--excuse--old chap, you know!--why, good Lard, whata fool I am! Why, I knoo your father in India. "

But he stops suddenly, to Sally inexplicably. She does not see thatGeneral Pellew has laid a finger of admonition on his lips. 

"I never saw my father, " she says. It is a kind of formula of herswhich covers all contingencies with most people. This time she does notwant it to deadlock the conversation, which is what it usually servesfor, so she adds: "You really knew him?"

"Hardly knoo, " is the reply. "Put it I met him two or three times, andyou'll about toe the line for a start. Goin' off at that, we soon comeup to my knowin' the Colonel's not your grandfather. " Major Roper doesnot get through the whole of the last word--asthma forbids it--but hismeaning is clear. Only, Sally is a direct Turk, as we have seen, andlikes clearing up things. 

"You know my friend Lętitia Wilson's mother, Major Roper?" The Majorexpresses not only that he does, but that his respectful homage is dueto her as a fine woman--even a queenly one--by kissing his finger-tipsand raising his eyes to heaven. "Well, Lętitia (Tishy, I call her)says you told her mother you knew my father in India, and went outtiger-hunting with him, and he shot a tiger two hundred yards off andgave you the skin. " Sally lays stress on the two hundred yards asa means of identification of the case. No doubt the Major owned manyskins, but shot at all sorts of distances. 

It is embarrassing for the old boy, because he cannot ignore GeneralPellew's intimations over Sally's head, which she does not see. He isto hold his tongue--that is their meaning. Yes, but when you have madea mistake, it may be difficult to begin holding it in the middle. Perhaps it would have been safer to lose sight of the subject in thedesert of asthma, instead of reviving it the moment he got to an oasis. 

"Some misunderstanding', " said he, when he could speak. "I've got atiger-skin the man who shot it gave me out near Nagpore, but he wasn'tyour father. " How true that was!

"Do you remember his name?" Sally wants him to say it was Palliseragain, to prove it all nonsense, but a warning finger of the oldGeneral makes him desperate, and he selects, as partially true, thesupposed alias which--do you remember all this?--he had ascribed tothe tiger-shooter in his subsequent life in Australia. 

"Perfectly well. His name was Harrisson. A fine shot. He went awayto Australia after that. "

Sally laughs out. "How very absurd of Tishy!" she says. "She hadn'teven got the name you said right. _She_ said it was Palliser. It soundslike Harrisson. " She stopped to think a minute. "But even if she hadsaid it right it wouldn't be my father, because his name, you know, was Graythorpe--like mine before we both changed to Nightingale--motherand I. We did, you know. "

Old Jack assents to this with an expenditure of breath not warrantedwhere breath is so scarce. He cannot say "of course, " and that herecollects, too often. Perhaps he is glad to get on a line of veracity. The General says "of course, " also. "Your mother, my dear, was Mrs. Graythorpe when I knew her at Umballa and on the boat. " Both theseveterans call Sally "my dear, " and she doesn't resent it. 

But her message is really given, and she ought to get back. Shesucceeds in finally overruling Major Roper's scheme of coming out intothe fog, which has contrived to get blacker still during thisconversation; but has more trouble with the other old soldier. Sheonly overcomes that victor in so many battle-fields by representingthat if he does see her safe to Ball Street _she_ will be miserable ifshe doesn't see _him_ safe back to the club. "And then, " she adds, "weshall go on till doomsday. Besides, I _am_ young and sharp!" At whichthe old General laughs, and says isn't _he_? Ask his granddaughters!Sally says no, he isn't, and she can't have him run over to pleaseanybody. However, he will come out to see her off, though Old Jack mustdo as he's told, and stop indoors. He watches the little figure vanishin the fog, with a sense of the merry eyebrows in the pretty shoulders, like the number of a cab fixed on behind. 

 * * * * *

When General Pellew had seen Sally out, to the great relief of Gibbonof the various reds in the lobby, he returned and drew a chair forhimself beside Major Roper, who still sat, wrestling with the fog, where he had left him. 

"What a dear child!... Oh yes; she'll be all right. Take better careof herself than I should of her. She would only have been looking afterme, to see that I didn't get run over. " He glanced round and droppedhis voice, leaning forward to the Major. "She must never be told. "

"You're right, Pelloo! Dam mistake of mine to say! I'm a dammutton-headed old gobblestick! No better!" We give up trying toindicate the Major's painful interruptions and struggles. Of course, he might have saved himself a good deal by saying no more than wasnecessary. General Pellew was much more concise and to the purpose. 

"_Never_ be told. I see one thing. Her mother has told her little ornothing of the separation. "

"No! Dam bad business! Keep it snug's the word. "

"You saw she had no idea of the name. It _was_ Palliser, wasn't it?"

"Unless it was Verschoyle. " Major Roper only says this to convincehimself that he might have forgotten the name--a sort of washypalliation of his Harrisson invention. It brings him within ameasurable distance of a clear conscience. 

"No, it wasn't Verschoyle. I remember the Verschoyle case. " By thistime Old Jack is feeling quite truthful. "It _was_ Palliser, andit's not for me to blame him. He only did what you or I might havedone--any man. A bit hot-headed, perhaps. But look here, Roper.... "

The General dropped his voice, and went on speaking almost in awhisper, but earnestly, for more than a minute. Then he raised itagain. 

"It was that point. If you say a word to the girl, or begin givingher any information, and she gets the idea you can tell her more, she'll just go straight for you and say she must be told the whole. I can see it in her eyes. And _you can't tell her the whole_. Youknow you can't!"

The Major fidgeted visibly. He knew he should go round to learn abouthis old friend (it was barely a quarter of a mile) as soon as the leastdiminution of the fog gave him an excuse. And he was sure to see Sally. He exaggerated her age. "The gyairl's twenty-two, " said he weakly. TheGeneral continued:

"I'm only speaking, mind you, on the hypothesis.... I'm supposing thecase to have been what I told you just now. Otherwise, you couldwork the telling of it on the usual lines--unfaithfulness, estrangedaffections, desertion--all the respectable produceable phrases. But asfor making that little Miss Nightingale _understand_--that is, withoutmaking her life unbearable to her--it can't be done, Major. It can'tbe done, old chap!"

"I see your game. I'll tell her to ask her mother. "

"It can't be done that way. I hope the child's safe in the fog. " TheGeneral embarked on a long pause. There was plenty of time--more timethan he had (so his thought ran) when his rear-guard was cut off by theAfridis in the Khyber Pass. But then the problem was not so difficultas telling this live girl how she came to be one--telling her, that is, without poisoning her life and shrouding her heart in a fog as denseas the one that was going to make the street-lamps outside futilewhen night should come to help it--telling her without dashing theirresistible glee of those eyebrows and quenching the smile thatopened the casket of pearls that all who knew her thought of her by. 

Both old soldiers sat on to think it out. The older one firstrecognised the insolubility of the problem. "It can't be done, " saidhe. "Girls are not alike. She's too much like my nasturtiumgranddaughter now.... "

"I shall have to tell her dam lies. "

"That won't hurt you, Old Jack. "

"I'm not complainin'. "

"Besides, I shall have to tell 'em, too, as likely as not. You musttell me what you've told, so as to agree. I should go round to askafter Lund, only I promised to meet an old thirty-fifth man here atfive. It's gone half-past. He's lost in the fog. But I can't go awaytill he comes. " Old Jack is seized with an unreasoning sanguineness. 

"The fog's clearin', " he says. "You'll see, it'll be quite bright inhalf-an-hour. Nothin' near so bad as it was, now. Just you look atthat window. "

The window in question, when looked at, was not encouraging. So far ascould be seen at all through the turgid atmosphere of the room, it wasa parallelogram of solid opacity crossed by a window-frame, with ahopeless tinge of Roman ochre. But Old Jack was working up to a fictionto serve a purpose. By the time he had succeeded in believing the fogwas lifting he would be absolved from his promise not to go out in it. It was a trial of strength between credulity and the actual. TheGeneral looked at the window and asked a bystander what he thought, sir? Who felt bound to testify that he thought the prospect hopeless. 

"You're allowin' nothin' for the time of day, " said Major Roper, andhis motive was transparent. Sure enough, after the General's friendhad come for him, an hour late, the Major took advantage of the doubtwhether absolute darkness was caused by fog or mere night, and in spiteof all remonstrances, began pulling on his overcoat to go out. Heeven had the effrontery to appeal to the hall-porter to confirm hisviews about the state of things out of doors. Mr. Mulberry added hisdissuasions with all the impressiveness of his official uniform and thecubic area of its contents. But even his powerful influence carried noweight in this case. It was useless to argue with the infatuated oldboy, who was evidently very uneasy about Major Lund, and suspected alsothat Miss Nightingale had not reported fair, in order to prevent himcoming. He made himself into a perfect bolster with wraps, and put ona respirator. This damned thing, however, he took off again, as itimpeded respiration, and then went out into the all but solid fog, gasping and choking frightfully, to feel his way to Hill Street andsatisfy himself the best thing was being done to his old friend'sbronchitis. 

"They'll kill him with their dam nostrums, " said he to the last memberof the Club he spoke to, a chance ex-Secretary of State for India, whomhe took into his confidence on the doorstep. "A little common-sense, sir--that's what's wanted in these cases. It's all very fine, sir, whenthe patient's young and can stand it.... " His cough interrupted him, but he was understood to express that medical attendance was fraughtwith danger to persons of advanced years, and that in such cases hisadvice should be taken in preference to that of the profession. Herecovered enough to tell Mulberry's subordinate to stop blowin'that dam whistle. There were cabs enough and to spare, he said, butthey were affecting non-existence from malicious motives, and as astepping-stone to ultimate rapacity. Then he vanished in the darkness, and was heard coughing till he turned a corner. 

CHAPTER XXIV

HOW MAJOR ROPER MET THAT BOY, AND GOT UPSTAIRS AT BALL STREET. AN INTERVIEW BETWEEN ASTHMA AND BRONCHITIS. HOW SALLY PINIONED THE PURPLE VETERAN, AND THERE WAS NO BOY. HOW THE GOVERNOR DONE HOARCKIN', AND GOT QUALIFIED FOR A SUBJECT OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH

Old Jack's powers of self-delusion were great indeed if, when hestarted on his short journey, he really believed the fog had mended. Atleast, it was so dense that he might never have found his way withoutassistance. This he met with in the shape of a boy with a link, whomSally at once identified from his description, given when the Major hadsucceeded in getting up the stairs and was resting in the sitting-roomnear the old sabre on the wall, wiping his eyes after his effort. Colonel Lund was half-unconscious after a bad attack, and it was bestnot to disturb him. Fenwick had not returned, and no one was very easyabout him. But every one affirmed the reverse, and joined in a sort ofCreed to the effect that the fog was clearing. It wasn't and didn'tmean to for some time. But the unanimity of the creed fortified thecongregation, as in other cases. No two believers doubted it at once, just as no two Alpine climbers, strung together on the moraine ofa glacier, lose their foothold at the same time. 

"I know that boy, " said Sally. "His nose twists, and gives him apresumptuous expression, and he has a front tooth out and puts histongue through. Also his trousers are tied on with strings. "

"Everlastin' young beggar, if ever there was one, " says the oldsoldier, in a lucid interval when speech is articulate. But he isallowing colloquialism to run riot over meaning. No everlasting personcan ever have become part of the past if you think of it. He goes on tosay that the boy has had twopence and is to come back for fourpence inan hour, or threepence if you can see the gas-lamps, because thena link will be superfluous. Sally recognises the boy more than ever. 

"I wonder, " she says, "if he's waiting outside. Because the party ofthe house might allow him inside. Do you think I could ask, mother?"

"You might _try_, kitten, " is the reply, not given sanguinely. AndSally goes off, benevolent. "Even when your trousers are tied up withstring, a fog's a fog, " says she to herself. 

"I knoo our friend Lund first of all.... " Thus the Major, noddingtowards the bedroom door.... "Why, God bless my soul, ma'am, I knewLund first of all, forty-six years ago in Delhi. Forty--six--years!And all that time, if you believe me, he's been the same obstinatemoole. Never takin' a precaution about anythin', nor listening toa word of advice!" This is about as far as he can go without a choke. Rosalind goes into the next room to get a tumbler of water. The nurse, who is sitting by the fire, nods towards the bed, and Rosalind goesclose to it to hear. "What is it, dear?" She speaks to the invalidas to a little child. 

"Isn't that Old Jack choking? I know his choke. What does he come outfor in weather like this? What does he mean? Send him back.... No, send him in here. " The nurse puts in a headshake as protest. But forall that, Sally finds, when she returns, that the two veterans arecontending together against their two enemies, bronchitis and asthma, with the Intelligence Department sadly interrupted, and the enemy inpossession of all the advantageous points. 

"He oughtn't to try to talk, " says Rosalind. "But he will. " She andSally and the nurse sit on in the fog-bound front room. The gas-lightshave no heart in them, and each wears a nimbus. Rosalind wishes Gerrywould return, aloud. Sally is buoyant about him; _he's_ all right, trust _him_! What about the everlasting young beggar?

"I persuaded Mrs. Kindred, " says Sally. "And we looked outside for him, and he'd gone. "

"Fancy a woman being named Kindred!"

"When people are so genteel one can believe anything! But what do youthink the boy's name is?... Chancellorship! Isn't that queer? She knowshim--says he's always about in the neighbourhood. He sleeps in themews behind Great Toff House. "

Her mother isn't listening. She rises for a moment to hear what she mayof how the talk in the next room goes on; and then, coming back, saysagain she wishes Gerry was safe indoors, and Sally again says, "Oh, _he's_ all right!" The confidence these two have in one another makesthem a couple apart--a sort of league. 

What Mrs. Fenwick heard a scrap of in the next room would have been, but for the alarums and excursions of the two enemies aforementioned, a consecutive conversation as follows:

"You're gettin' round, Colonel?"

"A deal better, Major. I want to speak to _you_. "

"Fire away, old Cockywax! You remember Hopkins?--CartwrightHopkins--man with a squint--at Mooltan--expression of his, 'OldCockywax. '"

"I remember him. Died of typhoid at Burrampore. Now you listen to me, old chap, and don't talk--you only make yourself cough. "

"It's only the dam fog. _I'm_ all right. "

"Well, shut up. That child in the next room--it's her I want to talkabout. You're the only man, as far as I know, that knows the story. She doesn't. She's not to be told. "

"Mum's the word, sir. Always say nothin', that's my motto. Penderfield's daughter at Khopal--at least, he was her father. One damfather's as good as another, as long as he goes to the devil. " This maybe a kind of disclaimer of inheritance as a factor to be reckoned with, an obscure suggestion that human parentage is without influence oncharacter. It is not well expressed. 

"Listen to me, Roper. You know the story. That's the only man I can'tsay God forgive him to. God forgive _me_, but I can't. "

"Devil take me if I can!... Yes, it's all right. They're all in thenext room.... "

"But the woman was worse. She's living, you know.... "

"I know--shinin' light--purifying society--that's her game! I'd purify_her_, if I had my way. "

"Come a bit nearer--my voice goes. I've thought it all out. If thegirl, who supposes herself to be the daughter of her mother's husband, tries to run you into a corner--you understand?"

"I understand. "

"Well, don't you undeceive her. Her mother has never told her_anything_. She doesn't suppose she had any hand in the divorce. Shethinks his name was Graythorpe, and doesn't know he wasn't her father. Don't you undeceive her--promise. "

But the speaker is so near the end of his tether that the Major hasbarely time to say, "Honour bright, Colonel, " when the bronchial stormbursts. It may be that the last new anodyne, which is warranted to haveall the virtues and none of the ill-effects of opium, had also come tothe end of _its_ tether. Mrs. Fenwick came quickly in, saying he hadtalked too much; and Sally, following her, got Major Roper away, leaving the patient to her mother and the nurse. The latter knew whatit would be with all this talking--now the temperature would go up, and he would have a bad night, and what would Dr. Mildmay say?

Till the storm had subsided and a new dose of the sedative had beengiven, Sally and Old Jack stood waiting in sympathetic pain--youknow what it is when you can do nothing. The latter derived someinsignificant comfort from suggestions through his own choking thatall this was due to neglect of his advice. When only moans and heavybreathing were left, Sally went back into the bedroom. Her mother wasnursing the poor old racked head on her bosom, with the sword-hand ofthe days gone by in her own. She said without speaking that he wouldsleep presently, and the fewer in the room the better, and Sally leftthem so, and went back. 

Yes, the Major would take some toddy before he started for home. Andit was all ready, lemons and all, in the black polished wood cellaret, with eagles' claws for feet. Sally got the ingredients out and beganto make it. But first she gently closed the door between the rooms, to keep the sound of their voices in. 

"You really did see my father, though, Major?" There seemed to bea good deal of consideration before the answer came, not all to beaccounted for by asthma. 

"Yes--certainly--oh yes. I saw Mr. Graythorpe once or twice. Anotherspoonful--that's plenty. " A pause. 

"Now, don't spill it. Take care, it's very hot. That's right. " Anotherpause. "Major Roper.... "

"Yes, my dear. What?"

"_Do_ tell me what he was like. "

"Have you never seen his portrait?"

"Mother burnt it while I was small. She told me. Do tell me what yourecollect him like. "

"Fine handsome feller--well set up. Fine shot, too! Gad! that was aneat thing! A bullet through a tiger two hundred yards off just behindthe ear. "

"But I thought _his_ name was Harrisson. " The Major has got out of hisdepth entirely through his own rashness. Why couldn't he leave thattiger alone? Now he has to get into safe water again. 

A good long choke is almost welcome at this moment. While it goes on hecan herald, by a chronic movement of a raised finger, his readiness toexplain all as soon as it stops. He catches at his first articulation, so that not a moment may be lost. There were _two_ tigers--that's theexplanation. Harrisson shot one, and Graythorpe the other. Thecross-examiner is dissatisfied. 

"Which was the one that shot the tiger two hundred yards off, justbehind the ear?"

The old gentleman responds with a spirited decision: "Your father, my dear, your father. That tiger round at my rooms--show it you ifyou like--that skin was given me by a feller named Harrisson, in theCommissariat--quite another sort of Johnny. He was down with theCentral Indian Horse--quite another place!" He dwells on theinferiority of this shot, the smallness of the skin, the closecontiguity of its owner. A very inferior affair!

But, being desperately afraid of blundering again, he makes the facthe admits, that he had confoozed between the two cases, a reason fora close analysis of the merits of each. This has no interest forSally, who, indeed, had only regarded the conversation, so far, as astepping-stone she now wanted to leap to the mainland from. After all, here she is face-to-face with a man who actually knows the story of theseparation, and can talk of it without pain. Why should she not getsomething from him, however little? You see, the idea of a somethingthat could not be told was necessarily foreign to a mind somesomethings could not be told to. But she felt it would be difficult toaccount to Major Roper for her own position. The fact that she knewnothing proved that her mother and Colonel Lund had been anxious sheshould know nothing. She could not refer to an outsider over theirheads. Still, she hoped, as Major Roper was deemed on all hands anarrant old gossip, that he might accidentally say something to enlightenher. She prolonged the conversation in this hope. 

"Was that before I was born?"

"The tiger-shootin'? Well, reely, my dear, I shouldn't like to say. It's twenty years ago, you see. No, I couldn't say--couldn't say whenit was. " He is beginning to pack himself in a long woollen scarf anovercoat with fur facings will shortly cover in, and is, in fact, preparing to evacuate a position he finds untenable. "I must bethinkin' of gettin' home, " he says. Sally tries for a word more. 

"Was it before he and mother fell out?" It is on the Major's lips tosay, "Before the proceedings?" but he changes the expression. 

"Before the split? Well, no; I should say after the split. Yes--probably after the split. " But an unfortunate garrulity promptshim to say more. "After the split, I should say, and beforethe----"--and then he feels he is in a quagmire, and flounders to thenearest land--"before your father went away to Australia. " Then hediscerns his own feebleness, recognising the platitude of this lastremark. For nobody could shoot tigers in an Indian jungle after he hadgone off to Australia. Clearly the sooner he gets away the better. 

A timely choking-fit interposes to preserve its victim from furtherquestioning. The patient in the next room is asleep or torpid, so heomits farewells. Sally's mother comes out to say good-night, and Sallygoes down the staircase with him and his asthma, feeling that it ishorrible and barbarous to turn him out alone in the dense blackness. Perhaps, however, the peculiar boy with the strange name will be there. That would be better than nothing. Sally feels there is somethingindomitable about that boy, and that fog nourishes and stimulates it. 

But, alas!--there is no boy. And yet it certainly would be fourpenceif he came back. For, though it may be possible to see the streetgas-lamps without getting inside the glass, you can't see them fromthe pavement. Nevertheless, the faith that "it" is clearing having beenonce founded, lives on itself in the face of evidence, even as otherfaiths have done before now. So the creed is briefly recited, and theMajor disappears with the word good-night still on his lips, and hiscough, gasp, or choke dies away in the fog as he vanishes. 

Somebody is whistling "Arr-hyd-y-nos" as he comes from the other sidein the darkness--somebody who walks with a swinging step and a resonantfoot-beat, some one who cares nothing for fogs. Fenwick's voice isdefiant of it, exhilarated and exhilarating, as he ceases to be a cloudand assumes an outline. Sally gives a kiss to frozen hair that crackles. 

"What's the kitten after, out in the cold? How's the Major?"

"Which? _Our_ Major? He's a bit better, and the temperature's lower. "Sally believed this; a little thermometer thing was being wielded asan implement of optimism, and had lent itself to delusions. 

"Oh, how scrunchy you are, your hands are all ice! Mamma's been gettingin a stew about _you_, squire. " On which Fenwick, with the slightest ofwhistles, passes Sally quickly and goes four steps at a time up thestairs, still illuminated by Sally's gas-waste. For she had left thelights at full cock all the way up. 

"My dearest, you never got my telegram?" This is to Rosalind, whohas come out on the landing to meet him. But the failure of thetelegram--lost in the fog, no doubt--is a small matter. What shelvesit is the patient grief on the tired, handsome face Fenwick findstears on as he kisses it. Sally has the optimism all to herself now. Her mother knows that her old friend and protector will not be herelong--that, of course, has been true some time. But there's thesuffering, present and to come. 

"We needn't stop the chick hoping a little still if she likes. " Shesays it in a whisper. Sally is on the landing below; she hears thewhispering, and half guesses its meaning. Then she suppresses thelast gas-tap, and follows on into the front room, where the three sittalking in undertones for perhaps an hour. 

Yes, that monotonous sound is the breathing of the patient in the nextroom, under the new narcotic which has none of the bad effects ofopium. The nurse is there watching him, and wondering whether it willbe a week, or twenty-four hours. She derives an impression fromsomething that the fog really is clearing at last, and goes to thewindow to see. She is right, for at a window opposite are dimlyvisible, from the candles on either side of the mirror, two white armsthat are "doing" the hair of a girl whose stays are much too tight. She is dressing for late dinner or an early party. Then the nurse, listening, understands that the traffic has been roused from its longlethargy. "I thought I heard the wheels, " she says to herself. ThenSally also becomes aware of the sound in the traffic, and goes to _her_window in the front room. 

"You see I'm right, " she says. "The people are letting their fires out, and the fog's giving. Now I'm going to take you home, Jeremiah. " Forthe understanding is that these two shall return to Krakatoa Villa, leaving Rosalind to watch with the nurse. She will get a chop in halfan hour's time. She can sleep on the sofa in the front room if shefeels inclined. All which is duty carried out or arranged for. 

After her supper Rosalind sat on by herself before the fire in thefront room. She did not want to be unsociable with the nurse; but shewanted to think, alone. A weight was on her mind; the thought that thedear old friend, who had been her father and refuge, should never knowthat she again possessed her recovered husband on terms almost as goodas if that deadly passage in her early life had never blasted thehappiness of both. He would die, and it would have made him so happy toknow it. Was she right in keeping it back now? Had she ever been right?

But if she told him now, the shock of the news might hasten hiscollapse. Sudden news need not be bad to cause sudden death. And, maybethe story would be too strange for him to grasp. Better be silent. Butoh! if he might have shared her happiness!

Drowsiness was upon her before she knew it. Better perhaps sleep alittle now, while he was sleeping. She looked in at him, and spoke tothe nurse. He lay there like a lifeless waxwork--blown through, likean apparatus out of order, to simulate breath, and doing it badly. How could he sleep when now and then it jerked him so? He could, andshe left him and lay down, and went suddenly to sleep. After a timethat was a journey through a desert, without landmarks, she was assuddenly waked. 

"What?... I thought you spoke.... " And so some one had spoken, butnot to her. She started up, and went to where the nurse was conversingthrough the open window with an inarticulate person in the streetbelow, behind the thick window-curtain she had kept overlapped, tocheck the freezing air. 

"What is it?"

"It's a boy. I can't make out what he says. "

"Let me come!" But Rosalind gets no nearer his meaning. She ends upwith, "I'll come down, " and goes. The nurse closes the window and goesback to the bedroom. 

The street door opens easily, the Chubb lock being the only fastening. The moment Rosalind sees the boy near she recognises him. There is nodoubt about the presumptuous expression, or the cause of it. Also theostentatious absence of the front tooth, clearly accounting forinaudibility at a distance. 

"What do you want?" asks Rosalind. 

"Nothin' at all for myself. I come gratis, I did. There's a manywouldn't. " He is not too audible, even now; but he would be betterif he did not suck the cross-rail of the area paling. 

"Why did you come?"

"To bring you the nooze. The old bloke's a friend of yours, missis. Or p'r'aps he ain't! I can mizzle, you know, and no harm done. "

"Oh no, don't mizzle on any account. Tell me about the old bloke. Do you mean Major Roper?"

"Supposin' I do, why shouldn't I?" This singular boy seems to haveno way of communicating with his species except through defiancesand refutations. Rosalind accepts his question as an ordinary assent, and does not make the mistake of entering into argument. 

"Is he ill?" The boy nods. "Is he worse?" Another nod. "Has he gonehome to his club?" The boy evidently has a revelation to make, butwould consider it undignified to make it except as a denial ofsomething to the contrary. He sees his way after a brief reflection. 

"He ain't gone. He's been took. "

"He's been taken? How has he been taken?"

"On a perambulance. Goin' easy! But he didn't say nothin'. Not harfa word!"

"Had he fainted?" But this boy has another characteristic--when hecannot understand he will not admit it. He keeps silence, and goeson absorbing the railing. Rosalind asks further: "Was he dead?"

"It'd take a lawyer to tell that, missis. "

"I can't stand here in the cold, my boy. Come in, and come up andtell us. " So he comes up, and Rosalind speaks to the nurse in theother room, who comes; and then they turn seriously to getting theboy's story. 

He is all the easier for examination from the fact that he isimpressed, if not awed, by his surroundings. All the bounce is knockedout of him, now that his foot is no longer on his native heath, thestreet. Witness that the subject of his narrative, who would certainlyhave been the old bloke where there was a paling to suck, has becomea simple pronoun, and no more!

"I see him afore, missis, " he says. "That time wot I lighted himround for twopence. And he says to come again in three-quarters ofan hour. And I says yes, I says. And he says not to be late. Nor yetI shouldn't, only the water run so slow off the main, and I waskep.... Yes, missis--a drorin' of it off in their own pails at thebalkny house by the mooze, where the supply is froze.... "

"I see, you got a job to carry up pails of water from that thing thatsticks up in the road?"

"Yes, missis; by means of the turncock. Sim'lar I got wet. But I didn'tgo to be late. It warn't much, in the manner of speakin'. I was on his'eels, clost. "

"You caught him?"

"Heard him hoarckin' in the fog, and I says to my mate--boy by the nameof 'Ucklebridge, only chiefly called Slimy, to distinguish him--Isays--I says that was my guv'nor, safe and square, by the token of thesound of it. And then I catches him up in the fog, follerin' by thesound. My word, missis, he _was_ bad! Wanted to holler me over thecoals, he did, for behind my time. I could hear him wantin' to do it. But he couldn't come by the breath. "

Poor Old Jack! The two women look at each other, and then say to theboy: "Go on. "

"Holdin' by the palins, he was, and goin' slow. Then he choked itoff like, and got a chanst for a word, and he says: 'Now, you youngsee-saw'--that's what he said, missis, 'see-saw'--'just you stir yourstumps and cut along to the clubbus: and tell that dam red-faced foolMulberry to look sharp and send one of the young fellers to lend anarm, and not to come hisself. ' And then he got out a little flat bottleof something short, and went for a nip; but the cough took him, and itsprouted over his wropper and was wasted. "

The women look at each other again. The nurse sees well into the story, and says quickly under her breath to Rosalind: "He'd been told what todo if he felt it coming. A drop of brandy might have made thedifference. " The boy goes on as soon as he is waited for. 

"Mr. Mulberry he comes runnin' hisself, and a couple more on 'em! Andthen they all calls me a young varmint by reason of the guv'nor havinggot lost. But a gentleman what comes up, he says all go opposite ways, he says, and you'll hear him in the fog. So I runs up a parsage, andin the middle of the parsage I tumbles over the guv'nor lyin' acrostthe parsage. Then I hollers, and then they come. "

"Oh dear!" says Rosalind; for this boy had that terrible power of vividdescription which flinches at no realism--_seems_ to enjoy the horrorof it; does not really. Probably it was only his intense anxiety tocommunicate _all_, struggling with his sense of his lack of language--aprivilege enjoyed by guv'nors. But Rosalind feels the earnestness ofhis brief epic. He winds it up:

"But the guv'nor, he'd done hoarckin'. Nor he never spoke. Thegentleman I told you, he says leave him lyin' a minute, he says, andhe runs. Then back he comes with the apoarthecary--him with the redlight--and they rips the guv'nor's sleeves up, spilin' his coat. Andthey prokes into his arm with a packin'-needle. Much use it done! Andthen they says, it warn't the fog, and I called 'em a liar. 'Cos it'sa clearin' off, they says. It warn't, not much. I see the perambulancecome, and they shoved him in, and I hooked it off, and heard 'emsaying where's that young shaver, they says; he'll be wanted for histestament. So I hooked it off. "

"And where did you go?"

"To a wisit on a friend, I did. Me and Slimy--him I mentioned afore. And he says, he says, to come on here--on'y later. So then I come onhere. "

Rosalind finds herself, in the face of what she feels must mean OldJack's sudden death, thinking how sorry she is she can command no pairof trousers of a reasonable size to replace this boy's drenched ones--apair that would need no string. A crude brew of hot toddy, and most ofthe cake that had appealed to Major Roper in vain, and never gone backto the cellaret, were the only consolations possible. They seemedwelcome, but under protest. 

"Shan't I carry of 'em outside, missis?"

"On the stairs, then. " This assent is really because both women believehe will be comfortabler there than in the room. "Where are you going tosleep?" Rosalind asks, as he takes the cake and tumbler away to thestairs. She puts a gas-jet on half-cock. 

"Twopenny doss in Spur Street, off of 'Orseferry Road, Westminster. "This identification is to help Rosalind, as she may not be able to spotthis particular doss-house among all she knows. 

"Do you always sleep there?"

"No, missis! Weather permitting, in our mooze--on the 'eap. The'orse-keeper gives a sack in return for a bit of cleanin', early, before comin' away. "

"What are you?" says Rosalind. She is thinking aloud more than askinga question. But the boy answers:

"I'm a wife, I am. Never learned no tride, ye see!... Oh yes; I've beento school--board-school scollard. But they don't learn you no tride. You parses your standards and chucks 'em. " This incredible boy, whodeliberately called himself a waif (that was his meaning), was itpossible that he had passed through a board-school? Well, perhaps hewas the highest type of competitive examinee, who can learn everythingand forget everything. 

"But you have a father?"

"I could show him you. But he don't hold with teachin' his sons trides, by reason of their gettin' some of his wiges. He's in the sanitaryengineering himself, but he don't do no work. " Rosalind looks puzzled. "That's his tride--sanitary engineering, lavatries, plumbin', andfittin'. Been out of work better than three years. He can jint you offpuppies' tails, though, at a shillin'. But he don't only get a lightjob now and again, 'cos the tride ain't wot it was. They've beenshearin' of 'em off of late years. Thank you, missis. " The refreshmentshave vanished as by magic, and Rosalind gives the boy the rest of thecake and a coin, and he goes away presumably to the doss-house hesmells so strong of, having been warmed, that a flavour of the heap inthe mews would have been welcome in exchange. So Rosalind thinks as sheopens the window a moment and looks out. She can quite see the housesopposite. The fog has cleared till the morning. 

Perhaps it is the relenting of the atmospheric conditions, or perhapsit is the oxygen that the patient has been inhaling off and on, thathas slightly revived him. Or perhaps it is the champagne that comes upthrough a tap in the cork, and reminds Rosalind's ill-slept brain ofsomething heard very lately--what on earth exactly was it? Oh, sheknows! Of course, the thing in the street the sanitary engineer'sson drew the pails of water at for the house with the balcony. It ispleasanter to know; might have fidgeted her if she had not found out. But she is badly in want of sleep, that's the truth!

"I thought Major Roper was gone, Rosey. " He can talk through his heavybreathing. It must be the purer air. 

"So he is, dear. He went two hours ago. " She sits by him, taking hishand as before. The nurse is, by arrangement, to take her spell ofsleep now. 

"I suppose it's my head. I thought he was here just now--just thisminute. "

"No, dear; you've mixed him up with Gerry, when he came in to saygood-night. Major Roper went away first. It wasn't seven o'clock. " Butthere is something excited and puzzled in the patient's voice as heanswers--something that makes her feel creepy. 

"Are you _sure_? I mean, when he came back into the room with hiscoat on. "

"You are dreaming, dear! He never came back. He went straight away. "

"Dreaming! Not a bit of it. You weren't here. " He is so positive thatRosalind thinks best to humour him. 

"I suppose I was speaking to Mrs. Kindred. What did he come back tosay, dear?"

"Oh, nothing! At least, I had told him not to chatter to Sallykin aboutthe old story, and he came back, I suppose, to say he wouldn't. " Heseemed to think the incident, as an incident, closed; but presentlygoes on talking about things that arise from it. 

"Old Jack's the only one of them all that knew anything about it--thatSallykin is likely to come across. Pellew knew, of course; but he's notan old chatterbox like Roper. "

Ought not Rosalind to tell the news that has just reached her? She asksherself the question, and answers it: "Not till he rallies, certainly. If he does not rally, why then----!" Why then he either will know orwon't want to. 

She has far less desire to tell him this than she has to talk ofthe identity of her husband. She would almost be glad, as he is todie--her old friend--that she should have some certainty beforehandof the exact time of his death, so that she might, only for an houra companion in her secrecy. If only he and she might have borne theburden of it together! She reproached herself, now that it was toolate, with her mistrust of his powers of retaining a secret. See howkeenly alive he was to the need of keeping Sally's parentage in thedark! And _that_ was what the whole thing turned on. Gerry's continuedignorance might be desirable, but was a mere flea-bite by comparison. In her strained, sleepless, overwrought state the wish that "the Major"should know of her happiness while they could still speak of ittogether grew from a passing thought of how nice it might have been, that could not be, to a dumb dominant longing that it should be. Still, after all, the only fear was that he should talk to Gerry; and how easyto keep Gerry out of the room! And suppose he did talk! Would Gerrybelieve him? There was risky ground there, though. 

She was not sorry when no more speech came through the heavy breathingof the invalid. He had talked a good deal, and a semi-stupor followed, relieving her from the strong temptation she had felt to lead him backto their past memories, and feel for some means of putting him inpossession of the truth. As the tension of her mind grew less, shebecame aware this would have been no easy thing to do. Then, as she satholding the old hand, and wondering that anything so frail could stillkeep in bond a spirit weary of its prison, drowsiness crept over heronce more, all the sooner for the monotonous rhythm of the heavybreath. Consciousness gave place to a state of mysterious discomfort, complicated with intersecting strings and a grave sense ofresponsibility, and then to oblivion. After a few thousand years, probably minutes on the clock, a jerk woke her. 

"Oh dear! I was asleep. "

"You might give me another nip of the champagne, Rosey dear. And thenyou must go and lie down. I shall be all right. Is it late?"

"Not very. About twelve. I'll look at my watch. " She does so, and itis past one. Then the invalid, being raised up towards his champagne, has a sudden attack of coughing, which brings in the nurse as areserve. Presently he is reinstated in semi-comfort, half a toneweaker, but with something to say. And so little voice to say it with!Rosalind puts her ear close, and repeats what she catches. 

"Why did Major Roper come back? He didn't, dear. He went away aboutseven, and has not been here since. "

"He was in the room just this minute. " The voice is barely audible, the conviction of the speaker absolute. He is wandering. The nurse'smind decides, in an innermost recess, that it won't be very long now. 

 * * * * *

Rosalind looked out through a spot she had rubbed clean on the frozenwindow-pane, and saw that it was bright starlight. The fog had gone. That boy--he was asleep at the twopenny doss, and the trousers weredrying. What a good thing that he should be totally insensitive toatmosphere, as no doubt he was. 

The hardest hours for the watcher by a sick-bed are those that cannotbe convinced that they belong to the previous day. One o'clock may becoaxed or bribed easily enough into winking at a pretence that it isonly a corollary of twelve; two o'clock protests against it audibly, and every quarter-chime endorses its claim to be to-morrow; threeo'clock makes short work of an imposture only a depraved effronterycan endeavour to foist upon it. Rosalind was aware of her unfitnessto sit up all night--all this next night--but nursed the pretext thatit had not come, and that it was still to-day, until a sense of themorning chill, and something in the way the sound of each belated cabconfessed to its own scarcity, convinced her of the uselessness offurther effort. Then she surrendered the point, short of the strokeof three, and exchanged posts with the nurse, who promised to call herat once should it seem necessary to do so. Sleep came with a rush, anddreamless oblivion. Then, immediately, the hand of the nurse on hershoulder, and her voice, a sudden shock in the absolute stillness:

"I thought it better to wake you, Mrs. Nightingale. I am _so_sorry.... "

"Oh dear! how long have I slept?" Rosalind's mind leaped through asecond of unconsciousness of where she is and what it's all about toa state of intense wakefulness. "What o'clock is it?"

"It's half-past six. I should have left you to have your sleep out, only he wanted you.... Yes, he woke up and asked for you, and thenasked again. He's hardly coughed. "

"I'll come. " Rosalind tried for alacrity, but found she was quitestiff. The fire was only a remnant of red glow that collapsed feeblyas the nurse touched it with the poker. It was a case for a couple oflittle gluey wheels, and a good contribution to the day's fog, alreadyin course of formation, with every grate in London panting to takeshares. Rosalind did not wait to see the black column of smoke startfor its chimney-pot, but went straight to the patient's bedside. 

"Is that Rosey? I can't see very well. Come and sit beside me. I wantyou. " He was speaking more easily than before, so his hearer thought. Could it be a change for the better? She put her finger on the pulse, but it was hard to find. The fever had left him for the time being, but its work was done. It was wonderful, though, that he should haveso much life in him for speech. 

"What is it, Major dear?... Let's get the pillow right.... There, that's better! Yes, dear; what is it?"

"I've got my marching orders, Rosey. I shall be all right. Shan't besorry ... When it's over.... Rosey girl, I want you to do somethingfor me.... Is my watch there, with the keys?"

"Yes, dear; the two little keys. "

"The little one opens my desk ... With the brass corners.... Yes, thatone.... Open the top flap, and look in the little left-hand drawer. Got it?"

"Yes; you want the letters out? There's only one packet. "

"That's the lot. Read what's written on them. "

"Only 'Emily, 1837. '"

"Quite right! That was your aunt, you know--your father's sister. Don't cry, darling. Nothing to cry about! I'm only an old chap. There, there!" Rosalind sat down again by the bed, keeping the packet ofletters in her hand. Presently the old man, who had closed his eyes asthough dozing, opened them and said: "Have you put them on the fire?"

"No. Was I to?"

"That was what I meant. I thought I said so.... Yes; pop 'em on. "Rosalind went to the fireside and stood hesitating, till the old manrepeated his last words; then threw the love-letters of sixty yearsago in a good hot place in the burning coal. A flare, and they werewhite ash trying to escape from a valley of burning rocks; then eventhat was free to rise. Maybe the only one who ever read them would besoon--would be a mere attenuated ash, at least, as far as what lay onthat bed went, so pale and evanescent even now. 

"A fool of a boy, Rosey dear, " said the old voice, as she took herplace by the bed again. "Just a fool of a boy, to keep them all thoseyears. And _she_ married to another fellow, and a great-grandmother. Ah, well!... Don't you cry about it, Rosey.... All done now!" She mayhave heard him wrong, for his voice went to a whisper. She wondered atthe way the cough was sparing him. 

Then she thought he was falling asleep again; but presently he spoke. "I shall do very well now.... Nothing but a little rest ... That'sall I want now. Only there's something I wanted to say about ... About.... "

"About Sally?" Rosalind guessed quickly, and certainly. 

"Ah ... About the baby. _Your_ baby, Rosey.... That man that was herfather ... He's on my mind.... "

"Oh me, forget him, dear--forget him! Leave him to God!" Rosalindrepeated a phrase used twenty years ago by herself in answer to theold soldier's first uncontrollable outburst of anger against the manwho had made her his victim. His voice rose again above a whisper ashe answered:

"I heard you say so, dear child ... Then ... That time. You wereright, and I was wrong. But what I've said--many a time, God forgiveme!--that I prayed he was in hell. I would be glad now to think Ihad not said it. "

"Don't think of it. Oh, my dear, don't think of it! You never meantit.... "

"Ah, but I did, though; and would again, mind you, Rosey! Only--notnow! Better let him go, for Sallykin's sake.... The child's the puzzleof it.... "

Rosalind thought she saw what he was trying to say, and herself triedto supplement it. "You mean, why isn't Sally like him?"

"Ah, to be sure! Like father like son, they say. His son's a chip ofthe old block. But then--he's his mother's son, too. Two such!--andthen see what comes of 'em. Sallykin's your daughter ... Rosey'sdaughter. Sallykin.... " He seemed to be drowsing off from mereweakness; but he had something to say, and his mind made for speechand found it:

"Yes, Rosey; it's the end of the story. Soon off--I shall be! Notvery long now. Wasn't it foggy?"

"Yes, dear; it was. But it's clear now. It's snowing. "

"Then you could send for Jack Roper. Old Jack! He can tell mesomething I want to know.... I know he can.... "

"But it's the middle of the night, dear. We can't send for him now. Sally shall go for him again when she comes in the morning. What isit you want to know?"

"What became of poor Algernon Palliser.... I know Old Jack knows.... Something he heard.... I forget things ... My head's not good. Ah, Rosey darling! if I'd been there in the first of it ... I could havegot speech of him. I might have ... Might have.... "

As the old man's mind wandered back to the terrible time it draggedhis hearer's with it. Rosalind tried to bear it by thinking of whatSally was like in those days, crumpled, violent, vociferous, altogether _intransigeante_. But it was only a moment's salve to areeling of the reason she knew must come if this went on. If he sleptit might be averted. She thought he was dropping off, but he rousedhimself again to say: "What became of poor Palliser--your husband?"

Then Rosalind, whose head was swimming, let the fact slip from herthat the dying man had never seen or known her husband in the olddays; only he had always spoken of him as one to be pitied, notblamed, even as she herself thought of him. Incautiously she now said, "Poor Gerry!" forgetting that Colonel Lund had never known him by thatname, or so slightly that it did not connect itself. Yet his mind wasmarvellously clear, too; for he immediately replied: "I did not meanFenwick. I meant your first husband. Poor boy! poor fellow! Whatbecame of him?"

"_His_ name was Algernon, too, " was all the answer she could think of. It was a sort of forlorn hope in nettle-grasping. Then she saw it hadlittle meaning in it for her listener. His voice went on, almostwhispering:

"Many a time I've thought ... If we could have found the poor boy ... And shown him Sally ... He might have ... Might have.... "

Rosalind could bear it no longer. Whoever reads this story carelesslymay see little excuse for her that she should lose her head at thebedside of a dying man. It was really no matter for surprise that sheshould do so. Consider the perpetual tension of her life, the brokeninsufficient sleep of the last two days, the shock of "Old Jack's"sudden death a few hours since! Small blame to her, to our thinking, if she did give way! To some it may even seem, as to us, that thecourse she took was best in the end. And, indeed, her self-controlstood by her to the last; it was a retreat in perfect order, not aflight. Nor did she, perhaps, fully measure how near her old friendwas to his end, or release--a better name, perhaps. 

"Major dear, I have something I must tell you. " The old eyelids opened, and his eyes turned to her, though he remained motionless--quite asone who caught the appeal in the tension of her voice and guessed itsmeaning. 

"Rosey darling--yes; tell me now. " His voice tried to rise abovea whisper; an effort seemed to be in it to say: "Don't keep anythingback on my account. "

"So I will, dear. Shut your eyes and lie quiet and listen. I want totell you that I know that my first husband is not dead.... Yes, dear;don't try to speak. You'll see when I tell you.... Algernon Palliseris not dead, though we thought he must be. He went away from Lahoreafter the proceedings, and he did go to Australia, no doubt, as weheard at the time; but after that he went to America, and was theretill two years ago ... And then he came to England. " The old man triedto speak, but this time his voice failed, and Rosalind thought it bestto go straight on. "He came to England, dear, and met with a badaccident, and lost his memory.... "

"_What!_" The word came so suddenly and clearly that it gave her newcourage to go on. She _must_ tell it all now, and she felt sure hewas hearing and understanding all she said. 

"Yes, dear; it's all true. Let me tell it all. He lost his memorycompletely, so that he did not know his own name.... "

"My God!"

"Did not know his own name, dear--did not know his own name--didnot know the face of the wife he lost twenty years ago--all, all ablank!... Yes, yes; it was he himself, and I took him and kept him, and I have him now ... And oh, my dear, my dear, he does not knowit--knows _nothing_! He does not know who I am, nor who he was, northat Sally is the baby; but he loves her dearly, as he never couldhave loved her if ... If.... "

She could say no more. The torrent of tears that was the first actualrelief to the weight upon her heart of two years of secrecy grew andgrew till speech was overwhelmed. But she knew that her story, howeverscantily told, had reached her listener's mind, though she could nothave said precisely at what moment he came to know it. The tone ofhis exclamation, "My God!" perhaps had made her take his knowledge forgranted. Of one thing, however, she felt certain--that details wereneedless, would add nothing to the main fact, which she was quiteconvinced her old friend had grasped with a mind still capable ofholding it, although it might be in death. Even so one tells a childthe outcome only of what one tells in full to older ears. Then quickon the heels of the relief of sharing her burden with another followedthe thought of how soon the sympathy she had gained must be lost, buried--so runs the code of current speech--in her old friend's grave. All her heart poured out in tears on the hand that could still closefitfully upon her own as she knelt by the bed on which he would sosoon lie dying. 

Presently his voice came again--a faint whisper she could just catch:"Tell it me again, Rosey ... What you told me just now ... Justnow. " And she felt his cold hand close on hers as he spoke. Then sherepeated what she had said before, adding only: "But he may never cometo know his own story, and Sally must not know it. " The old whispercame back, and she caught the words: "Then it is true! My God!"

She remained kneeling motionless beside him. His breath, weak andintermittent, but seeming more free than when she left him four hourssince, was less audible than the heavy sleep of the overtaxed nursein the next room, heard through the unclosed door. The familiar earlynoises of the street, the life outside that cares so little for thedeath within, the daily bread and daily milk that wake us too soon inthe morning, the cynical interchanges of cheerful early risers aboutthe comfort of the weather--all grew and gathered towards the comingday. But the old Colonel heard none of them. What thought he still hadcould say to him that this was good and that was good, hard though itmight be to hold it in mind. But one bright golden thread ran clearthrough all the tangled skeins--he would leave Rosey happy at last, for all the bitterness her cup of life had held before. 

 * * * * *

The nurse had slept profoundly, but she was one of those fortunatepeople who can do so at will, and then wake up at an appointed time, as many great soldiers have been able to do. As the clock struckeight she sat up in the chair she had been sleeping in and listened amoment. No sound came from the next room. She rose and pushed the dooropen cautiously and looked in. Mrs. Fenwick was still kneeling by thebed, her face hidden, still holding the old man's hand. The nursethought surely the still white face she saw in the intermittent gleamsof a lamp-flame flickering out was the face of a dead man. Need sherouse or disturb the watcher by his side? Not yet, certainly. Shepulled the door very gently back, not closing it. 

A sound came of footsteps on the stairs--footsteps without voices. Itwas Fenwick and Sally, who had passed through the street door, open fora negotiation for removal of the snow--for the last two hours had madea white world outside. Sally was on a stairflight in the rear. She hadpaused for a word with the boy Chancellorship, who was a candidate forsnow-removal. He seemed relieved by the snow. It was a tidy lot bettermorning than last night, missis. He had breakfasted--yes--off ofcorfy, and paid for it, and buttered 'arf slices and no stintin', fortwopence. Sally had a fellow-feeling for this boy's optimism. But hehad something on his mind, for when Sally asked him if Major Roper hadgot home safe last night, his cheerfulness clouded over, and he saidfirst, "Couldn't say, missis;" and then, "He's been got home, you mayplace your dependence on that;" adding, inexplicably to Sally, "Hewon't care about this weather; it won't be no odds!" She couldn't waitto find out his meaning, but told him he might go on clearing awaythe snow, and when Mrs. Kindred came he was to say Miss RosalindNightingale told him he might. She said she would be answerable, andthen ran to catch up Fenwick. 

The nurse came out to meet them on the landing, and in answer toFenwick's half-inquiry or look of inquiry--Sally did not gatherwhich--said: "Yes--at least, I think so--just now. " Sally made up hermind it was death. But it was not, quite; for as the nurse, precedingthem, pushed the door of the sickroom gently open, the voice of theman she believed dead came out almost strong and clear in the silence:"Evil has turned to good. God be praised!"

But they were the last words Colonel Lund spoke. He died so quietlythat the exact moment of dissolution was not distinguishable. Fenwickand Sally found Rosalind so overstrained with grief and watching thatthey asked for no explanation of the words. Indeed, they may not haveascribed any special meaning to them. 

CHAPTER XXV

ABOUT SIX MONTHS, AND HOW A CABMAN SAW A GHOST. OF SALLY'S AND THE DOCTOR'S "MODUS VIVENDI, " AND THE SHOOSMITH FAMILY. HOW SALLY MADE TEA FOR BUDDHA, AND HOW BUDDHA FORESAW A STEPDAUGHTER. DELIRIUM TREMENS

It may make this story easier to read at this point if we tell ourreader that this twenty-fifth chapter contains little of vitalimport--is, in fact, only a passing reference to one or twoby-incidents that came about in the half-year that followed. Hecannot complain that they are superfluous if we give him fair warningof their triviality, and enable him to skip them without remorse. But they register, to our thinking, what little progress events madein six very nice months--a period Time may be said to have skipped. And whoso will may follow his example, and lose but little in thedoing of it. 

Very nice months they were--only one cloud worth mention in the blue;only one phrase in a minor key. The old familiar figure of "theMajor"--intermittent, certainly, but none the less invariable; makingthe house his own, or letting it appropriate him, hard to saywhich--was no longer to be seen; but the old sword had been hung ina place of honour near a portrait of Paul Nightingale, Mrs. Fenwick'sstepfather--its old owner's school-friend of seventy years ago. At herdeath it was to be offered to the school; no surviving relative wasnamed in the will, if any existed. Everything was left unconditionally"to my dear daughter by adoption, Rosalind Nightingale. "

Some redistributions of furniture were involved in the importation ofthe movables from the two rooms in Ball Street. The black cabinet, orcellaret, with the eagle-talons, found a place in the dining-room inthe basement into which Fenwick--only it seems so odd to go back toit now--was brought on the afternoon of his electrocution. Sally alwaysthought of this cabinet as "Major Roper's cabinet, " because she gotthe whiskey from it for him before he went off in the fog. If onlyshe had made him drunk that evening! Who knows but it might haveenabled him to fight against that terrible heart-failure that was notthe result of atmospheric conditions. She never looked at this cabinetbut the thought passed through her mind. 

Her mother certainly told her nothing at this time about her lastconversation with the Colonel, or almost nothing. Certainly shementioned more than once what she thought a curious circumstance--thatthe invalid, who was utterly ignorant of Old Jack's death, hadpersisted so strongly that he was present in the room when he musthave been dead some hours. Every one of us has his little bit ofPsychical Research, which he demands respect for from others, whoseown cherished private instances he dismisses without investigation. This example became Mrs. Fenwick's; who, to be just, had not setherself up with one previously, in spite of the temptation theAnglo-Indian is always under to espouse Mahatmas and buried Faquirsand the like. There seemed a good prospect that it would becomean article of faith with her; her first verdict--that it was anhallucination--having been undermined by a certain contradictiousness, produced in her by an undeserved discredit poured on it by pretendersto a superior ghost-insight; who, after all, tried to utilise itafterward as a peg to hang their own particular ghosts on. Whichwasn't researching fair. 

Sally was no better than the rest of them; if anything, she was alittle worse. And Rosalind was far from sure that her husband wouldn'thave been much more reasonable if he hadn't had Sally there toencourage him. As it was, the league became, _pro hac vice_, a leagueof Incredulity, a syndicate of Materialists. Rosalind got no quarterfor the half-belief she had in what the old Colonel had saidon his death-bed. Her report of his evident earnestness and theself-possession of his voice carried no weight; failing powers, delirium, effects of opiates, and ten degrees above normal had it alltheir own way. Besides, her superstition was weak-kneed. It only wentthe length of suggesting that it really was very curious when you cameto think of it, and she couldn't make it out. 

That the incident received such very superficial recognition must beaccounted for by the fact that Krakatoa Villa was not a villa of thespeculative-thinker class. We have known such villas elsewhere, butwe are bound to say we have known none where speculative thought hastackled the troublesome questions of death-bed appearances, hauntedhouses, _et id genus omne_, with the result of coming to any but veryspeculative conclusions. The male head of this household may havefelt that he himself, as a problem for the Psychical Researcher, wasill-fitted to discuss the subject. He certainly shied off expressingany decided opinions. 

"What do you really think about ghosts?" said his wife to him one day, when Sally wasn't there to come in with her chaff. 

"Ghosts belong in titled families. Middle-class ghosts are a poor lot. Those in the army and navy cut the best figure, on the whole--JuniorUnited Service ghosts.... "

"Gerry, be serious, or I'll have a divorce!" This was a powerful gripon a stinging-nettle. Rosalind felt braced by the effort. "Did youever see a ghost, old man?"

"Not in the present era, sweetheart. I can't say about B. C. " He usedto speak of his life in this way, but his wife always felt sorry whenhe alluded to it. It seldom happened. "No, I have never seen one tomy knowledge. I've been seen as a ghost, though, which is veryunpleasant, I assure you. "

Rosalind's mind went back to the fat Baron at Sonnenberg. She supposedthis to be another case of the same sort. "When was that?" she said. 

"Monday. I took a hansom from Cornhill to our bonded warehouse. It'sunder a mile, and I asked the driver to change half-a-crown; I hadn'ta shilling. He got out a handful of silver, and when he had picked outthe two shillings and sixpence he looked at me for the first time, andstarted and stared as if I was a ghost in good earnest. "

"Oh, Gerry, he must have seen you before--before it happened!"Remember that this was, in the spirit of it, a fib, seeing that thetone of voice was that of welcome to a possible revelation. To ourthinking, the more honour to her who spoke it, considering themotives. Gerry continued:

"So I thought at first. But listen to what followed. As soon as hissurprise, whatever caused it, had toned down to mere recognitionpoint, he spoke with equanimity. 'I've driven you afore now, mister, 'said he. 'You won't call me to mind. Parties don't, not when fares;when drivers, quite otherwise. I'm by way of taking notice myself. You'll excuse _me_?' Then he said, 'War-r-r-p, ' to the horse, who wastrying to eat himself and dig the road up. When they were friendsagain, I asked, Where had he seen me? Might I happen to call to mindLivermore's Rents, and that turn-up?--that was his reply. I said Imightn't; or didn't, at any rate. I had never been near Livermore'sRents, nor any one else's rents, that I could recall the name of. 'Tryagain, guv'nor, ' said he. 'You'll recall if you try hard enough. _He_recollects it, _I'll_ go bail. My Goard! you _did_ let him have it!'Was it a fight? I asked. Well, do you know, darling, that cabbyaddressed me seriously; took me to task for want of candour. 'That ain't worthy of a guv'nor like you, ' he said. 'Why make anyconcealments? Why not treat me open?' I gave him my most solemn honourthat I was utterly at a loss to guess what he was talking about, onwhich he put me through a sort of retrospective catechism, broken byreminders to the horse. '_You_ don't rec'lect goin' easy over thebridge for to see the shipping? Nor yet the little narrer courtright-hand side of the road, with an iron post under an arch andparties hollerin' murder at the far end? Nor yet the way you held himin hand and played him? Nor yet what you sampled him out at thefinish? My Goard!' He slapped the top of the cab in a sort of ecstasy. 'Never saw a neater thing in my life. _No_ unnecessary violence, _no_agitation! And him carried off the ground as good as dead! Ah! I madeinquiry after, and that was _so_. ' I then said it must have been someone else very like me, and held out my half-crown. He slipped backhis change into his own pocket, and when he had buttoned it overostentatiously addressed me again with what seemed a last appeal. 'I take it, guv'nor, ' said he, 'you may have such a powerful list offighting fixtures in the week that you don't easy recollect one outfrom the other. But _now_, _do_, _you_, _mean_ to say your memorydon't serve you in this?--I drove you over to Bishopsgate, 'crossLondon Bridge. Very well! Then you bought a hat--white Panama--andtook change, seein' your own was lost. And you was going to pay me, and I drove off, refusin' to accept a farden under the circumstances. Don't you rec'lect that?' I said I didn't. 'Well, I _did_, ' said he. 'And, with your leave, I'll do the same thing now. I'll drive you mostanywhere you'd like to name in reason, but I won't take a farden. 'And, do you know, he was off before my surprise allowed me to saya word. "

"Now, Gerry, was it that made you so glum on Monday when you cameback? I recollect quite well. So would Sally. "

"Oh no; it was uncomfortable at first, but I soon forgot all about it. I recollect what it was put me in the dumps quite well. It was a longtime after the cabby. "

"What was it?"

"Well, it was as I walked to the station. I went a little way round, and passed through an anonymous sort of a churchyard. I saw a box ina wall with 'Contributions' on it, and remembering that I really hadno right to the cabby's shilling or eighteenpence, I dropped a florinin. And then, Rosey dear, I had the most horrible recurrence I've hadfor a long time--something about the same place and the same box, andsome one else putting three shillings in it. And it was all mixed upwith a bottle of champagne and a bank. I can't explain why thesethings are so painful, but they are. _You_ know, Rosey!"

"I know, dear. " His wife's knowledge seemed to make her quite silentand absent. She may have seen that the recovery of this cabman wouldsupply a clue to her husband's story. Had he taken the number of thecab? No, he hadn't. Very stupid of him! But he had no pencil, or hecould have written it on his shirt-sleeve. He couldn't trust hismemory. Rosalind didn't feel very sorry the clue was lost. As for him, did he, we wonder, really exert himself to remember the cab's number?

But when the story was told afterwards to Sally, the moment thePanama hat came on the tapis, she struck in with, "Jeremiah! youknow quite well you had a Panama hat on the day you were electrocuted. And, what's more, it was brand new! And, what's more, it's outside inthe hall!"

It was brought in, and produced a spurious sense of being detectiveson the way to a discovery. But nothing came of it. 

All through the discussion of this odd cab-incident the fact thatFenwick "would have written down the cab-driver's number on hisshirt-sleeve, " was on the watch for a recollection by one of the threethat a something had been found written on the shirt-cuff Fenwickwas electrocuted in. The ill-starred shrewdness of Scotland Yard, bydetecting a mere date in that something, had quite thrown it out ofgear as an item of evidence. By the way, did no one ever ask whyshould any man, being of sound mind, write the current date on hisshirt-sleeve? It really is a thing that can look after its owninterests for twenty-four hours. The fact is that, no sooner docoincidences come into court, than sane investigation flies out atthe skylight. 

There was much discussion of this incident, you may be sure; butthat is all we need to know about it. 

 * * * * *

Our other chance gleanings of the half-year are in quite another partof the field. They relate to Sally and Dr. Vereker's relation toone another. If this relation had anything lover-like in it, theycertainly were not taking Europe into their confidence on the subject. Whether their attitude was a spontaneous expression of respectfulindifference, or a _parti-pris_ to mislead and hoodwink her, of courseEurope couldn't tell. All that that continent, or the subdivision ofit known as Shepherd's Bush, could see was a parade of callousnessand studied civility on the part of both. The only circumstance thatimpaired its integrity or made the bystander doubt the good faithof its performers was the fact that one of them was a girl, and anattractive one--so attractive that elderly ladies jumped meanly atthe supposed privileges of their age and sex, and kissed her a greatdeal more than was at all fair or honourable. 

The ostentatious exclusion of Cupid from the relationship of these twodemanded a certain mechanism. Every meeting had to be accounted for, or there was no knowing what match-making busybodies wouldn't say; or, rather, what they would say would be easily guessable by the lowesthuman insight. Not that either of them ever mentioned precaution tothe other; all its advantages would have vanished with openacknowledgment of its necessity. These arrangements were instinctiveon the part of both, and each credited the other with a mole-likeblindness to their existence. 

For instance, each was graciously pleased to believe--or, at least, tobelieve that the other believed--in a certain institution that calledfor a vast amount of checking of totals, comparisons of counterfoils, inspection of certificates, verification of data--everything, inshort, of which an institute is capable that could make incessantcorrespondence necessary and frequent personal interviews advisable. It could boast of Heaven knows how many titled Patrons andPatronesses, Committees and Sub-committees, Referees and Auditors. No doubt the mere mention of such an institution was enough torender gossip speechless about any single lady and gentleman whom itaccidentally made known one to another. Its firm of Solicitors alone, with a line all to itself in its prospectuses, was enough to put ahost of Loves to flight. 

On which account Ann, at Krakatoa Villa, when she announced, "A personfor you, Miss Sally, " was able to add, "from Dr. Vereker, I think, miss, " without the faintest shade of humorous reserve, as of one whosees, and does not need to be told. 

And when Sally had interviewed a hopeless and lopsided female, whoappeared to be precariously held together by pins, and to have analmost superhuman power of evading practical issues, she (fortifiedby this institution) was able to return to the drawing-room and say, without a particle of shame, that she supposed she should have to goand see Old Prosy about Mrs. Shoosmith to-morrow afternoon. And whenshe called at the doctor's at teatime--because that didn't take himfrom his patients, as he made a point of his tea, because of hismother, if it was only ten minutes--both he and she believedreligiously in Mrs. Shoosmith, and Dr. Vereker filled out her form(we believe we have the phrase right) with the most business-likegravity at the little table where he wrote his letters. 

Mrs. Shoosmith's form called for filling out in more senses than one. The doctor's mother's form would not have borne anything further inthat direction; except, indeed, she had been provided with hooks togo over her chair back, and keep her from rolling along the floor, as a sphere might if asked to sit down. 

A suggestion of the exceptional character of all visits from Sally toDr. Vereker, and _vice-versa_, was fostered by the domestics at hishouse as well as at Krakatoa Villa. The maid Craddock, who respondedto Sally's knock on this Shoosmith occasion, threw doubt on thepossibility of the doctor ever being visible again, and kept the doormentally on the jar while she spoke through a moral gap an inch wide. Of course, that is only our nonsense. Sally was really in the housewhen Craddock heroically, as a forlorn hope in a lost cause, offeredto "go and see"; and going, said, "Miss Nightingale; and is Dr. Vereker expected in to tea?" without varnish of style, or redundanceof wording. But Sally lent herself to this insincere performance, andremained in the hall until she was called on to decide whether shewould mind coming in and waiting, and Dr. Vereker would perhaps beback in a few minutes. All this was part of the system of insinceritywe have hinted at. 

So was the tenor of Sally's remarks, while she waited the few minutes, to the effect that it was a burning shame that she should take upMrs. Vereker's time, a crying scandal that she should interrupt herknitting, and a matter of penitential reflection that she hadn'twritten instead of coming, which would have done just as well. Towhich Mrs. Vereker, with a certain parade of pretended insincerity(to make the real article underneath seem _bona fides_), replied withmock-incredible statements about the pleasure she always had in seeingSally, and the rare good fortune which had prompted a visit at thistime, when, in addition to being unable to knit, owing to her eyes, she had been absorbed in longing for news of a current event thatSally was sure to know about. She particularised it. 

"Oh, it isn't _true_, Mrs. Vereker! You don't mean to say you believed_that_ nonsense? The idea! Tishy--just fancy!" Goody Vereker (the nameSally thought of her by) couldn't shake her head, the fulness at theneck forbade it; but she moved it cosily from side to sidecontinuously, much as a practicable image of Buddha might have done. 

"My child, I've quite given up believing and disbelieving things. I wait to be told, and then I ask if it's true. Now you've told me. It isn't true, and that settles the matter. "

"But whoever could tell you such _nonsense_, Mrs. Vereker?"

"A little bird, my dear. " The image of Buddha left off the movement ofincredulity, and began a very gentle, slow nod. "A little bird tellsme these things--all sorts of things. But now I _know_ this one'suntrue I should never _dream_ of believing it. Not for one moment. "

Sally felt inclined to pinch, bite, or otherwise maltreat thespeaker, so very worthless did her offer of optional disbelief seem, and, indeed, so very offensive. But her inclination only went thelength of wondering how she could get at a vulnerable point throughso much fat. 

"Tishy quarrels with her mother, I _know_, " said she. "But as to herdoing anything like _that_! Besides, she never told me. Besides, Ishould have been asked to the wedding. Besides, " etcetera. 

For, you see, what this elderly lady had asked the truth about was, had or had not Lętitia Wilson and Julius Bradshaw been privatelymarried six months ago? Probably, during ęons and epochs of knitting, she had dreamed that some one had told her this. Or, even moreprobably, she had invented it on the spot, to see what change shecould get out of Sally. She knew that Sally, prudently exasperated, would give tongue; whereas conciliatory, cosy inquisition--the rightway to approach the elderly gossip--would only make her reticent. Nowit was only necessary to knit, and Sally would be sure to developthe subject. The line she appeared to take was that it was a horribleshame of people to say such things, in view of the fact that it wasonly yesterday that Tishy had quite settled that rash matrimony indefiance of her parents would not only be inexcusable but wrong. Sallylaid a fiery emphasis on the only-ness of yesterday, and seemed toimply that, had it been a week ago, there would have been much moreplausibility in the story of this secret nuptial of six months back. 

"Besides, " she went on, accumulating items of refutation, "Julius hasonly his salary, and Tishy has nothing--though, of course, she couldteach. Besides, Julius has his mother and sister, and they have onlya hundred and fifty a year. It does as long as they all live together. But it wouldn't do if Julius married. " On which the old Goody (Sallytold her mother after) embarked on a long analysis of how jointhousekeeping could be managed if Tishy would consent to be absorbedinto the Bradshaw household. She made rather a grievance of it thatSally could not supply data of the sleeping accommodation at GeorgianaTerrace, Bayswater. If she had known that, she could have got themall billeted on different rooms. As it was, she had to be contentto enlarge on the many economies the family could achieve if theyconsented to be guided by a person of experience--_e. G. _, herself. 

"Of course, dinner would have to be late, " she said, "because of Mr. Bradshaw not getting home till nearly eight. They would have to makeit supper. And it might be cold; it's a great saving, and makes it soeasy where there's one servant. " Sally shuddered with horror at thisimplied British household. Poor Tishy!

"But they're _not going_ to marry till they see their way, " sheexclaimed in despair. She felt that Tishy and Julius were beinginvolved, entangled, immeshed by an old matrimonial octopus ingilt-rimmed spectacles--like Professor Wilson's--who could knittranquilly all the while, while she herself could do nothing to savethem. "It might be cold!!" Every evening, perhaps--who knows?

"Very proper, my dear. " Thus the Octopus. "I felt sure such a nice, sensible girl as Miss Wilson never would. That is Conrad. " It reallywas a sound of a latch-key, but speech is no mere slave to fact. 

"And I was really quite glad when Dr. Prosy came in--the way the Goodywas going on about Tishy!" So Sally said to her mother when she hadcompleted her report of the portion of this visit she chose to tellabout. On which her mother said, "What a dear little humbug youare, kitten, " and she replied, as we have heard her reply before, "We-e-ell, there's nothing in that!" and posed as one who has beenmisrepresented. But her mother stuck to her point, which was thatSally knew she was quite glad when Dr. Vereker came in, Tishy or no. 

Whatever the reason was that Sally was quite glad at the appearanceof Dr. Prosy, there could be no doubt about the fact. Her laughreached the cook in the kitchen, who denounced Craddock theparlourmaid for not telling her it was Miss Nightingale, when itmight have been a visitor, seeing no noise come of it. Cook remarkedshe knew how it would be--there was the doctor picking up like--andhadn't she told Craddock so? But Craddock said no!

"Mrs. Shoosmith again--the everlasting Mrs. Shoosmith!" exclaimed thedoctor. It was very unfeeling of them to laugh so over this unhappywoman, who was the survivor of two husbands and the proprietor of one, and the mother of seven daughters and five sons, each of whom wasa typical "case, " and all of whom sought admission to Institutes ontheir merits. The lives of the whole family were passed in applicationsfor testimonials and certificates, alike bearing witness to theirchronic qualifications for it. Sally was mysteriously hardhearted aboutthem, while fully admitting their claims on the public. 

"That's right, Dr. Conrad"--Sally had inaugurated this name forherself--"Honoria Purvis Shoosmith. Mind you put in the Purvis right. Now write down lots of diseases for her to have. " Sally is leaningover the doctor's chair to see him write as she says this. There issomething in the atmosphere of the situation that seems to clash withthe actual business in hand. The doctor endeavours, not seriouslyenough, perhaps, to infuse a flavour of responsibility. 

"My professional dignity, Miss Nightingale, will not permit of thescheme of diagnosis you indicate. If any disorders entirely withoutsymptoms were known to exist, I should be delighted to ascribe thewhole of them to Mrs. Shoosmith.... "

"Don't be prosy, Dr. Conrad. Fire away! You told me lots--you know youdid! Rheumatic arthritis--gout--pyęmia.... "

"Come, I say, Miss Sally, draw it mild. I never said pyęmia. _An_ęmia, perhaps.... "

"Very well, Anne, then! We can let it go at that. Fire away!" Thedoctor looks round his own corner at the rows of pearls and the laughthat frames them, the merry eyebrows and the scintillating eyes theyaccentuate. A perilous intoxication, not to be too freely indulged inby a serious professional man at any time--in business hours certainlynot. But if the doctor were quite in earnest over a sort of Spartandeclaration of policy his heart feels the prudence of, would thatresponsive twinkle flutter in his face behind its mock gravity? He isall but head over ears in love with Sally--so why pretend? Really, wedon't know--and that's the truth. 

"Wouldn't it be a good way to consider what it is that is really thematter, and make out the statement accordingly?" He goes on lookingat Sally, scratches himself under the chin with his pen, and waitsfor an answer. 

"Good, sensible, general practitioner! See how practical he is! Now, I should never have thought of that!"

"Well, what shall we put her down as? Chronic arthritis--spinalcurvature--tuberculosis of the cervical vertebrę?"

"Those all sound very nice. But I don't think it matters which youchoose. If she hasn't got it now, she'll develop it if I describeit. When I told her mother couldn't get rid of her neuritis, sheimmediately asked to know the symptoms, and forthwith claimed themas her own. 'Well, there now, and to think what I was just a-sayin'to Shoosmith, this very morning! Just in the crick of the thumb-joint, you can't 'ardly abear yourself!' And then she told how she said toShoosmith frequent, where was the use of his getting impatient, andexclaimin' the worst expressions? Because his language went beyonda quart, and no reasonable excuse. "

"Mr. Shoosmith doesn't seem a very promising sort? He's a tailor, isn't he?"

"No; he's a messenger. He runs on errands and does odd jobs. But hecan't run--I've seen him!--he can only shamble. And his voice ishoarse and inaudible. And he has a drawback--two drawbacks, in fact. He is no sooner giv' coppers on a job than he drinks them. "

"What's the other?"

"His susceptibility to intoxicants. His 'ed is that weak that 'mostanythink upsets him. So you see. "

"Poor chap! He's handicapped in the race of life. As for his wife, when I saw her she was suffering with acute rheumatism and badfeeling--and, I may add, defective reasoning power. However.... " Thedoctor fills in blanks, adds a signature, says "There we are!" andMrs. Shoosmith is disposed of as an applicant to the institution, andwill no doubt reap some benefits we need not know the particulars of. But she remains as a subject for the student of human life--also, tea comes--also, which is interesting, Sally proceeds to make it. 

Now, if the reserves this young lady had made about this visit, ifher pretence that it was a necessity arising from a charitableorganization, if the colour that was given to that pretence by herinterview with the servant Craddock--if any of these things had beenmore or less than the grossest hypocrisy, would it, we ask you, havebeen accepted as a matter of course that she should pull off hergloves and sit down to make tea with a mature knowledge of how to getthe little lynch-pin out of the spirit-lamp, and of how manyspoonfuls? No; the fact is, Sally was a more frequent visitor to theimage of Buddha than she chose to admit; and as for the doctor, heseized every legitimate opportunity of 'cello practice at KrakatoaVilla. But G. P. 's cannot call their time their own. 

"The funny part of Mrs. Shoosmith, " said Sally, when the pot was fullup and the lid shut, "is that the moment she is brought into contactwith warm soapy water and scrubbing-brushes, she seems to renew heryouth. She brings large pins out of her mouth and secures her apron. And then she scrubs. Now you may blow the methylated out and makeyourself useful, Dr. Conrad. "

"Does she put back the pins when she's done scrubbing?" the doctorasks, when he has made himself useful. 

"She puts them back against another time, so I have understood. Isuppose they live in her mouth. That's yours with two lumps. That isyour mother's--no, I won't pour it yet. She's asleep. "

For the fact is that the Goody, anxious to invest herself with anappearance of forbearance towards the frivolities of youth, readinessto forego (from amiability) any share in the conversation, insightinto the _rapports_ of others (especially male and female _rapports_), and general superiority to human weakness, had endeavoured to expressall these things by laying down her knitting, folding her hands onher circumference, and looking as if she knew and could speak if shechose. But if you do this, even the maintenance of an attentivehypodermic smile is not enough to keep you awake--and off you go! TheGoody did, and the smile died slowly off into a snore. Never mind! Shewas in want of rest, so she said. It was curious, too, for she seldomgot anything else. 

It would have been unfeeling to wake her, so Dr. Vereker went and sata good deal nearer Sally, not to make more noise than was necessary. This reacted, an outsider might have inferred, on the subject-matterof the conversation, making it more serious in tone. And as Sally putthe little Turk's cap over the pot to keep it warm, and the doctorknew perfectly well that the blacker the tea was the better his motherliked it, this lasted until that lady woke up with a start a longtime after, and said she must have been asleep. Then, as Cook wasaware in the kitchen, some more noise came of it, and Sally carriedoff Mrs. Shoosmith's certificate. 

"You know, Dr. Conrad, it makes you look like a real medical man, " shesaid at the gate, referring to the detention of the doctor's pill-box, which awaited him, and he replied that it didn't matter. King, thedriver, looked as if he thought it _did_, and appeared morose. Is itbecause coachmen always keep their appointments with society andsociety never keeps its appointments with coachmen that a settledmelancholy seems to brood over them, and their souls seem cankeredwith misanthropy?

The doctor had rather a rough time that evening. For among thepatients he was going to try to see and get back to dinner (thus rancurrent speech of those concerned) there was a young man from the WestIndies, who had come into something considerable. But he was afflictedwith a disorder he called the "jumps, " and the doctor's diagnosis, ifcorrect, showed that the _vera causa_ of this aptly-named disease wasalcohol of sp. Gr. Something, to which the patient was in the habitof adding very few atoms of water indeed. The doctor was doing all hecould to change the regimen, but only succeeded on making his patientweak and promise amendment. On this particular evening the latterquite unexpectedly went for the doctor's throat, shouting, "I see yourplans!" and King had to be summoned from his box to help restrain him. So Dr. Vereker was tired when he got home late to dinner, and wouldhave felt miserable, only he could always shut his eyes and think ofSally's hands that had come over his shoulder to discriminate pointsin Mrs. Shoosmith's magna-charta. They had come so near him that hecould smell the fresh sweet dressing of the new kid gloves--six anda half, we believe. 

But although he liked his Goody mother to talk to him about the girlwho had christened her so, he was tired enough this evening to wishthat her talk had flowed in a less pebbly channel. For she chose thisopportunity to enlarge upon the duties of young married women towardstheir husbands' parents, their mothers especially. Her conclusion wasa little unexpected:

"I have said nothing throughout, my dear. I should not dream of doingso. But if I had I trust I should have made it clearly understood howI regarded Miss Lętitia Wilson's conduct. "

"But there wasn't any. Nobody contracted a private marriage. "

"My dear Conrad! Have I said that any one has done so? Have I usedthe expression 'private marriage'?"

"Why--no. I don't think you have. Not to-day, at least. "

"When have I done so? Have I not, on the contrary, from the verybeginning told you I should take the first opportunity of disbelievingso absurd and mischievous a story? And have I lost a moment? Was itnot the first word I said to Sally Nightingale before you came in, andwithout a soul in the room to hear? I only ask for justice. But if myson misrepresents me, what can I expect from others?" At this pointpatient toleration only. 

"But, mother dear, I don't _want_ to misrepresent you. Only I'll behanged if I see why Tishy Wilson is to be hauled over the coals?"

A suggestion of a proper spirit showed itself. "I am accustomed toyour language, and will say nothing. But, my dear Conrad, for you arealways my son, and will remain so, whatever your language may be, doyou, my dear Conrad, do you really sanction the attitude of a younglady who refuses to marry--public and private don't come into thematter--because of a groundless antipathy? For it is admitted on allhands that Mrs. Julius Bradshaw is a person of rather superior class. "

"She's Mrs. Bradshaw--not Mrs. Julius. But what makes you supposeTishy Wilson objects to her?"

"My dear Conrad, you know as well as I do that is a mereprevarication. Why evade the point? But in my opinion you do wiselynot to attempt any defence of Lętitia Wilson. It may be true thatshe has not laid herself open to misconstruction in this case, butthe lack of good feeling is to all intents and purposes the sameas if she had; and I must say, my dear Conrad, I am surprisedthat a professional man with your qualifications should undertaketo justify her. "

"But Miss Wilson hasn't _done_ anything! What are you wigging awayat her for, mother dear?"

"Have I not expressly said that she has done nothing whatever? Ofcourse she has not, and, I hope, never will. But it is easy for you, Conrad, to take refuge in a fact which I have been scrupulouslycareful to admit from the very beginning. And 'wigging away!' Whatlanguage!"

"Never mind the language, mother darling! Tell me what it's allabout. " Tired as he is, he gets up from the chair he has not beensmoking in (because this is the drawing-room) to go round and kisswhat is probably the fatty integument of a very selfish old woman, but which he believes to be that of an affectionate mother. "What'sit all about?" he repeats. 

"My dear Conrad! Is it not a little unfeeling to ask me what it isall about when you know?"

"I _don't_ know, mother dear. I can do any amount of guessing, butI don't _know_. "

"I think, my dear, if you will light my candle and ring for Craddockto shut up, that I had better go to bed. " Which her son does, butperversely abstains from giving the old lady any assistance to sayingwhat is in her mind to say. 

But she did not intend to be baffled. For when he had piloted her toher state apartment, carrying her candle, under injunctions on noaccount to spill the grease, and a magazine of wraps and wools andunintelligible sundries, she contrived to invest an elucidation ofher ideas with an appearance of benevolence by working in a readinessto sacrifice herself to her son's selfish longing for tobacco. 

"Only just hear me to the end, my dear, and then you can get away toyour pipe. What I did _not_ say--for you interrupted me--did notrelate so much to Miss Lętitia Wilson as to Sally Nightingale. She, I am sure, would never come between any man she married and his mother. I am making no reference to any one whatever, although, however old Iam, I have eyes in my head and can see. But I can read character, andthat is my interpretation of Sally Nightingale's. "

"Sally Nightingale and I are not going to make it up, if that's whatyou mean, mother. She wouldn't have me, for one thing----"

"My dear, I am not going to argue the point. It is nearly eleven, andunless I get to bed I shan't sleep. Now go away to your pipe, andthink of what I have said. And don't slam your door and wake mewhen you come up. " She offered him a selection to kiss, shutting hereyes tight. And he gave place to Craddock, and went away to hisunwholesome, smelly habit, as his mamma had more than once called it. His face was perplexed and uncomfortable; however, it got ease aftera few puffs of pale returns and a welcome minute of memory of thebouquet of those sixes. 

But his little happy oasis was a very small one. For a messenger camewith a furious pull at the night-bell and a summons for the doctor. His delirium-tremens case had very nearly qualified its brain for aP. M. --at least, if there were any of it left--by getting at a pistoland taking a bad aim at it. The unhappy dipsomaniac was half-shot, and prompt medical attendance was necessary to prevent the somethingconsiderable being claimed by his heir-at-law. 

Whether this came to pass or not does not concern us. This much iscertain, that at the end of six months which this chapter represents, and which you have probably skipped, he was as much forgotten by thedoctor as the pipe his patient's suicidal escapade had interrupted, orthe semi-vexation with his mother he was using it as an anodyne for. 

CHAPTER XXVI

MORNING AT LADBROKE GROVE ROAD, AND FAMILY DISSENSION. FACCIOLATI, AND A LEGACY. THE LAST CONCERT THIS SEASON. THE GOODY WILL COME TO IGGULDEN'S. BUT FANCY PROSY IN LOVE!

Towards the end of the July that very quickly followed Rosalindnoticed an intensification of what might be called the Ladbroke GroveRoad Row Chronicle--a record transmitted by Sally to her real andadopted parent in the instalments in which she received it from Tishy. 

This record on one occasion depicted a battle-royal at breakfast, "over the marmalade, " Sally said. She added that the Dragon might justas well have let the Professor alone. "He was reading, " she said, "'The Classification of Roots in Prehistoric Dialects, ' because I sawthe back; and Tacitus was on the butter. But the Dragon likes thegrease to spoil the bindings, and she knows it. "

A vision of priceless Groliers soaking passed through Rosalind's mind. "Wasn't that what this row was about, then?" she asked. 

"I don't think so, " said Sally, who had gone home to breakfast withTishy after an early swim. "It's difficult to say what it was about. Really, the Professor had hardly said _anything at all_, and theDragon said she thought he was forgetting the servants. Fossett wasn'teven in the room. And then the Dragon said, 'Yes, shut it, ' to Athene. Fancy saying 'Yes, shut it, ' in a confidential semitone! Really, I can't see that it was so very wrong of Egerton, although he _is_a booby, to say there was no fun in having a row before breakfast. He didn't mean them to think he meant them to hear. "

"But how did it get from the marmalade to Tishy's haberdasher?" askedFenwick. 

"Can't say, Jeremiah. It all came in a buzz, like a wopses nest. Andthen Egerton said it was rows, rows, rows all day long, and he shouldhook it off and get a situation. It _is_ rows, rows, rows, so it's nouse pretending it isn't. But it always comes round to the haberdashergrievance in the end. This time Tishy went to her father in thelibrary, and confessed up about Kensington Gardens. "

Both hearers said, "Oh, I see!" and then Sally transmitted the reportof this interview. It had not been stormy, and may be looked at by thelight of the Professor's last remark. "The upshot is, Tish, that youcan marry Julius against your mother's consent right off, and neverlose a penny of your aunt's legacy. "

"Legacy is good, very excellent good, " said Fenwick. "How much wasit, Sarah?"

"Oh, I don't know. Lots--a good lot--a thousand pounds! The Dragonwanted to make out that it was conditional on her consent to Tishy'smarriage. That was fibs. But what I don't see is that Gaffer Wilsonever said a word to Tishy about his own objections to her marryingJulius, if he has any!"

"Perhaps, " Rosalind suggested, "she hasn't told you all he said. " Butto this Sally replied that Tishy had told her over and over and overagain, only she said _over_ so often that her adopted parent said forHeaven's sake stop, or he should write the word into his letters. However, the end of the last despatch was at hand, and he himselftook up the conversation on signing it. 

"Yours faithfully, Algernon Fenwick. That's the lot! I agree withthe kitten. "

"What about?"

"About if he has any. I believe he'd be glad if Miss Wilson tookthe bit in her teeth and bolted. "

"You agree with Prosy?" As Sally says this, without a thought ina thoughtful face but what belongs to the subject, her mother isconscious that she herself is quite prepared to infer that Prosyalready knows all about it. She has got into the habit of hearingthat he knows about things. 

"What does Vereker say?" Thus Fenwick. 

"He'll be here in a minute, and you can ask him. That's him! I meanthat's his ring. "

"It's just like any other ring, chick. " It is her mother who speaks. But Sally says: "Nonsense! as if I didn't know Prosy's ring!" AndDr. Vereker appears, quartet bound, for this was the weekly musicalevening at Krakatoa Villa. 

"Jeremiah wants to know whether you don't think Tishy's male parentwould be jolly glad if she and Julius took the bit in their teeth andbolted?" "I shouldn't be the least surprised if they did, " is thedoctor's reply. But it does not strike Sally as rising to the heightof her Draconic summary. 

"You're not shining, Dr. Conrad, " she says; "you're evading the point. What do _you_ think Gaffer Bristles thinks, that's the point?" Dr. Conrad appears greatly exhilarated and refreshed by Sally, whose motherseems to share his feeling, but she enjoins caution, for all that. 

"Do take care, kitten, " she says. "They're on the stairs. " But Sallyconsiders "they" are miles off, and will take ages getting upstairs. "They've only just met at the door, " is her explanatory comment, showing appreciation of one human weakness. 

"Suppose we were to get it put in more official form!" Fenwicksuggests. "Would Professor Sales Wilson be very much shocked if hisdaughter and Paganini made a runaway match of it?" The name Paganinihas somehow leaked out of Cattley's counting-house, and become commonproperty. 

"I think, if you ask me, " says Vereker, speaking to Fenwick, but nevertaking his eyes off Sally, on whom they feed, "that Professor SalesWilson would be very much relieved. "

"_That's_ right!" says Sally, speaking as to a pupil who has profited. "Now you're being a good little General Practitioner. " And then, theages having elapsed with some alacrity, the door opens and the twosubjects of discussion make their appearance. 

The anomalous cousin did not come with them, having subsided. Mrs. Fenwick herself had taken the pianoforte parts lately. She had alwaysbeen a fair pianist, and application had made her passable--a goodmake-shift, anyhow. So you may fill out the programme to yourliking--it really doesn't matter what they played--and consider thatthis musical evening was one of their best that season. It was justas well it should be so, as it was their last till the autumn. Sallyand her mother were going to the seaside all August and some ofSeptember, and Fenwick was coming with them for a week at first, and after that for short week-end spells. He had become a partnerin the wine-business, and was not so much tied to the desk. 

 * * * * *

"Well, then, it's good-bye, I suppose?" The speaker is Rosalindherself, as the Stradivarius is being put to bed. But she hasn't theheart to let the verdict stand--at least, as far as the doctor isconcerned. She softens it, adds a recommendation to mercy. "Unlessyou'll come down and pay us a visit. We'll put you up somewhere. "

"I'm afraid it isn't possible, " is the answer. But the doctor can'tget his eyes really off Sally. Even as a small boy might strain atthe leash to get back to a source of cake against the grasp of an ironnurse, even so Dr. Conrad rebels against the grip of professionalengagements, which is the name of his cold, remorseless tyrant. But Sally is harnessing up a coach-and-six to drive through humanobligations. Her manner of addressing the doctor suggests previoustalk on the subject. 

"You _must_ get the locum, and come. You know you can, and it's allnonsense about can't. " What would be effrontery in another charactermakes Sally speak through and across the company. A secret confidencebetween herself and the doctor, that you are welcome to the fullknowledge of, and be hanged to you! is what the manner of the twoimplies. 

"I spoke to Neckitt about it, and he can't manage it, " says thedoctor in the same manner. But the first and second violin are waitingto take leave. 

"We'll say good-night, then--or good-bye, if it's for six weeks. "Tishy is perfectly unblushing about the _we_. She might be conveyingMr. Tishy away. They go, and get away from Dr. Vereker, by-the-bye. An awkward third isn't wanted. 

"There's plenty more Neckitts where he comes from, " pursues Sally, as the "other two"--for that is how Fenwick thinks of them--getthemselves and their instruments out of the house. "So don't benonsensical, Dr. Conrad.... Stop a moment. I _must_ speak to Tishy. "And Sally gives chase, and overtakes the other two just by thefire-alarm, where Fenwick came to a standstill. Do you remember? Itcertainly has been a record effort to "get away first. " You know thisexperience yourself at parties? Sally speaks to Tishy in the glorioussummer night, and the three talk together earnestly under innumerableconstellations, and one gas-lamp that elbows the starry heavens outof the way--a self-asserting, cheeky gas-lamp. 

The doctor organizes tactics rapidly. He can hear that Sally's stepgoes up the street, and then the voices at a distance. If he can saygood-bye and rush away just as Sally does the same, why then theywill meet outside, don't you see?

Rosalind and her husband seem to have wireless telegrams passing. Forwhen Sally vanishes there is a ring as of instruction received in thetone of Fenwick's voice as he addresses the doctor:

"Couldn't you manage to get your mother to come too, Vereker? She mustbe terribly in want of a change. "

"So I tell her; but she's so difficult to move. "

"Have a sedan-chair thing----"

"I don't mean that--not physically difficult. I mean she's got soanchored no one can persuade her to move. She hasn't been away forages. "

"Sally must go and persuade her. " It is Rosalind who says this. "I'msure Sally will manage it. "

"She will if any one can, " says the doctor. "Of course, I couldsoon get a locum if there was a chance of mother. " And then theconversation supports itself on the possible impossibility of findinga lodging at St. Sennans-on-Sea, and consoles itself with its intenseimprobability till the doctor finds it necessary to depart with thepromptitude of a fire-engine suddenly rung up. 

He had calculated his time to a nicety, for he met Sally just as "theother two" got safe round the corner. 

 * * * * *

"Oh no, " said Fenwick, replying to a query; "he doesn't mean to carryit all the way. He'll pick up a cab at the corner. " The query wasabout the violoncello, and Fenwick was coming back to the roomwhere his wife was closing the piano in anticipation of Ann. He haddiscreetly launched the instrument and its owner under the stars, andleft the street door standing wide open--a shallow pretence that hebelieved Sally already in touch with it. 

"They _are_ a funny couple, " Rosalind said. "Just fancy! They've knowneach other two years, and there they are! But I do like him. It's allhis mother, you know ... What is?... Why, goose--of course I mean hewould speak at once if it wasn't for that obese mother of his. "

"But she's so fond of Sally. " In reply to this his wife kisses hischeeks, forehead, and chin consecutively, and he says it was rightthat time, only the other way round. This refers to a system foundedon the crossing incident at Rheims. 

"Of course she is, darling; or pretends she is. But he can neitherdivorce his mamma nor ask the kitten to marry her. You see?"

"I see--in fact, I've thought so myself. In confidence, you know. But is no compromise possible?" Rosalind shakes a slow, regretful, negative head, and her lips form a silent "No!"

"Not with her. The woman has her own share of selfishness, and herson's, too. _He_ has none. "

"But Sally. "

"I see what you mean. Sally goes to the wall one way if she doesn'tthe other. So he works out selfish, poor dear fellow! in the end. But, Gerry darling, let me tell you this: you have no idea how impossiblethat young man thinks it that a girl should love _him_. If he thoughtit possible the kitten really cared about, or could care about him, he'd go clean off his head. Indeed, I am right. "

"Perhaps you are. There she is. "

Sally ran straight upstairs, leaving Ann to close the door. She atonce discharged her mind of its burden, _more suo_. 

"Prosy thinks so, too!"

"Thinks what?"

"Thinks they'll go and get married one fine morning, whether or no!"

But she seemed to be the only one much excited about this. Somethingwas preoccupying the other two minds, and our Sally had not theremotest notion what. 

 * * * * *

Nevertheless, it came about that before the next Monday--the day ofSally's departure with her mother to St. Sennans-on-Sea--that youngperson paid a farewell visit to the obese mother of her medicaladviser, and found her knitting. 

"That, my dear, is what I am constantly saying to Conrad, " was herreply to a suggestion of Sally's that she wanted change and rest. "Only this very morning, when he came into my room to see that I hadfresh-made toast--because you know, my dear, how tiresome servants areabout toast--they make it overnight, and warm it up in the morning. Cook is no exception, and I have complained till I'm tired. I shouldbe sorry to change, she's been here so long, but I did hear the otherday of such a nice respectable person.... "

Sally interrupted, catching at a slight pause: "But when Dr. Conradcame into your room, what did he say?"

"My dear, I was going to tell you. " She paused, with closed eyesand folded hands of aggressive patience, for all trace of humaninterruption to die down; then resumed: "I said to Conrad: 'I thinkyou might have thought of that before. ' And then he was sorry. I willdo him that justice. My dear boy has his faults, as I know too well, but he is always ready to admit he is wrong. "

"We can get you lodgings, you know, " said Sally, from sheer intuition, for she had not a particle of information, so far, about what passedover the toast. The old lady seemed to think the conversation had beensufficiently well filled out, for she merely said, "Facing the sea, "and went on knitting. 

Sally and her mother knew St. Sennan well--had been at hiswatering-place twice before--so she was able, as it were, to forecastlodgings on the spot. "I dare say Mrs. Iggulden's is vacant, " shesaid. "I wish you could have hers, she's such a nice old body. Herhusband was a pilot, and she has one son a coastguard and another inthe navy. And one daughter has no legs, but can do shell-work; andthe other's married a tax-collector. "

But Goody Vereker was not going to be beguiled into making herselfagreeable. She took up the attitude that Sally was young, and easilydeceived. She threw a wet blanket over her narrative of the Igguldenfamily, and ignored any murmurs that came from beneath it. "Sea-faringfolk are all alike, " so she said. "When I was your age, my dear, Isimply worshipped them. My father and all his brothers were devotedto the sea, and my Uncle David published an account of his visit tothe Brazils. But you will learn by experience. At any rate, I trustthere are no vermin. That is always my terror in these lodging-houses, and ill-aired beds. "

Was it fair, Sally thought to herself, to expose that dear old Mrs. Iggulden, who lived in a wooden dwelling covered with tar, betweentwo houses built of black shiny bricks, but consisting chieflyof bay-windows with elderly visitors in them looking throughtelescopes at the shipping, and telling the credulous it was brigs orschooners--was it fair to expose Mrs. Iggulden to this gilt-spectacledlob-worm? Sally didn't know that Mrs. Iggulden could show a properspirit, because in her own case the conditions had never beenfavourable. They had practised no incantations. 

"Very well, then, Mrs. Vereker. As soon as ever mamma and I haveshaken down, we'll see about Iggulden's; and if they can't take yousomebody else will. "

"I am in your hands, " said the Goody, smiling faintly andsubmissively. She leaned back with her eyes closed, and was afraidshe had done too much. She used to have periodical convictions tothat effect. 

Sally had an appointment with Lętitia Wilson at the swimming bath, so the Goody, in an access of altruism, perceived that she mustn'tkeep her. She herself would try to rest a little. 

 * * * * *

All people, as we suppose, lead two lives, more or less--their outerlife, that of the world and action, and an inner life they have allto themselves. But how different is the proportion of the two livesin different subjects! And how much less painful the latter life iswhen we feel we could tell it all if we chose. Only we don't choose, because it's no concern of yours or any one else's. 

This was Sally's frame of mind. She would not have felt the ghost ofa reserve of an inmost thought (from her mother, for instance) in theface of questions asked, though she kept her own counsel about manypoints whose elucidation was not called for. It may easily be thatRosalind asked no questions about some things, because she had no wishthat her daughter should formulate their answers too decisively. Herrelation with Conrad Vereker, for example. Was it love, or what? Ifthere was to be marrying, and families, and that sort of thing, andpossible interference with swimming-matches and athletics, and so on, would she as soon choose this man for her accomplice as any other sheknew? Suppose she was to hear to-morrow that Dr. Vereker was engagedto Sylvia Peplow, would she be glad or sorry?

Rosalind certainly did ask no such questions. If she had, the answersto the first two would have been, we surmise, very clear and decisive. What nonsense! Fancy Prosy being in love with anybody, or anybodybeing in love with Prosy! And as for marrying, the great beauty of itall was that there was to be no marrying. Did he understand that? Ohdear, yes! Prosy understood quite well. But we wonder, is the imageour mind forms of Sally's answer to the third question correct orincorrect? It presents her to us as answering rather petulantly: "Why_shouldn't_ Dr. Conrad marry Miss Peplow, if he likes, and _she_likes? I dare say _she'd_ be ready enough, though!" and thenpretending to look out of the window. And shortly afterwards: "Isuppose Prosy has a right to his private affairs, as much as I haveto mine. " But with lips that tighten over her speech, without a smile. Note that this is all pure hypothesis. 

But she had nothing to conceal that she knew of, had Sally. Whata difference there was between her inner world and her mother's, whocould not breathe a syllable of that world's history to any living soul!

Rosalind acknowledged to herself now how great the relief had beenwhen, during the few hours that passed between her communication toher old friend on his deathbed and the last state of insensibilityfrom which he never rallied, there had actually been on this earth oneother than herself who knew all her story and its strange outcome. Forthose few hours she had not been alone, and the memory of it helpedher to bear her present loneliness. She could hear again, when shewoke in the stillness of the night, the voice of the old man, awhisper struggling through his half-choked respiration, that saidagain and again: "Oh, Rosey darling! can it be true? Thank God! thankGod!" And the fact that what she had then feared had never cometo pass--the fact that, contrary to her expectations, he had beenstrangely able to look the wonder in the face, and never flinch fromit, seeing nothing in it but a priceless boon--this fact seemed togive her now the fortitude to bear without help the burden of herknowledge--the knowledge of who he was, this man that was beside herin the stillness, this man whose steady breathing she could hear, whose heart-beats she could count. And her heart dwelt on the oldsoldier's last words, strangely, almost incredibly, resonant, ahard-won victory in his dying fight for speech, "Evil has turned togood. God be praised!" It had almost seemed as if the parting soul, onthe verge of the strangest chance man has to face, lost all measure ofthe strangeness of any earthly thing, and was sensible of nothing butthe wonderment of the great cause of all. 

But one thing that she knew (and could not explain) was that thissecret knowledge, burdensome in itself, relieved the oppression of onestill more burdensome, and helped her to drive it from her thoughts. We speak of the collision of the record in her mind of what herdaughter was, and whence, with the fact that Sally was winding herselfmore and more, daughterwise, round the heart of the man whose bondwith her mother she, small and unconscious, had had so large a sharein rending asunder twenty years ago. It was to her, in its victoryover crude physical fact, even while it oppressed her, a bewilderingtriumph of spirit over matter, of soul over sense, this firmconsolidating growth of an affection such as Nature means, but oftenfails to reach, between child and parent. And as it grew and grew, herchild's actual paternity shrank and dwindled, until it might easilyhave been held a matter for laughter, but for the black cloud ofDevildom that hung about it, and stamped her as the infant of aNativity in the Venusberg, whose growing after-life had gone far toshroud the horror of its lurid caverns with a veil of oblivion. 

We say all these things quite seriously of our Sally, in spite ofher incorrigible slanginess and vulgarity. We can now go on to St. Sennans-on-Sea, where we shall find her in full blow, but very stickywith the salt water she passes really too much of her time in, evenfor a merpussy. 

CHAPTER XXVII

ST. SENNANS-ON-SEA. MISS GWENDOLEN ARKWRIGHT. WOULD ANY OTHER CHILD HAVE BEEN SALLY? HOW MRS. IGGULDEN'S COUSIN SOLOMON SURRENDERED HIS COUCH

St. Sennans-on-Sea consists of two parts--the new and the old. The oldpart is a dear little old place, and the new part is beastly. So Sallysays, and she must know, because this is her third visit. 

The old part consists of Mrs. Iggulden's and the houses we havedescribed on either side of her, and maybe two dozen more wooden orblack-brick dwellings of the same sort; also of the beach and itsinteresting lines of breakwater that are so very jolly to jump off orto lie down and read novels under in the sea smell. Only not too nearthe drains, if you know it. If you don't know it, it doesn't matter somuch, because the smell reminds you of the seaside, and seems rightand fitting. You must take care how you jump, though, off thesebreakwaters, because where they are not washed inconceivably clean, and all their edges smoothed away beyond belief by the tides that comeand go for ever, they are slippery with green sea-ribbons that clingclose to them, and green sea-fringes that cling closer still, andbrown sea-ramifications that are studded with pods that pop if youtread on them, but are not quite so slippery; only you may just aswell be careful, even with them. And we should recommend you, beforeyou jump, to be sure you are not hooked over a bolt, not merelybecause you may get caught, and fall over a secluded reading-publicon the other side, but because the red rust comes off on you and soilsyour white petticoat. 

If you don't mind jumping off these breakwaters--and it really israther a lark--you may tramp along the sea front quite near up towhere the fishing-luggers lie, each with a capstan all to itself, under the little extra old town the red-tanned fishing-nets live in, in houses that are like sailless windmill-tops whose plank walls havealmost merged their outlines in innumerable coats of tar, laid bylong generations back of the forefathers of the men in oil-clothhead-and-shoulder hats who repair their nets for ever in the Channelwind, unless you want a boat to-day, in which case they will scull youabout, while you absolutely ache sympathetically with their efforts, of which they themselves remain serenely unaware, till you've been outlong enough. Then they beach you cleverly on the top of a wave, andtheir family circle seizes you, boat and all, and runs you up theshingle before the following wave can catch you and splash you, whichit wants to do. 

There is an aroma of the Norman Conquest and of Domesday Book aboutthe old town. Research will soon find out, if she looks sharp, thatthere is nothing Norman in the place except the old arch in theamorphous church-tower, and a castle at a distance on the flats. Butthe flavour of the past is stronger in the scattered memories ofbygone sea-battles not a century ago, and the names of streets thatdo not antedate the Georges, than in these mere scraps that are alwaysopen to the reproach of medięvalism, and are separated from us by agreat gulf. And it doesn't much matter to us whether the memories areof victory or defeat, or the names those of sweeps or heroes. All'sone to us--we glow; perhaps rashly, for, you see, we really know verylittle about them. And he who has read no history to speak of, if heglows about the past on the strength of his imperfect data, may easilybreak his molasses-jug. 

So, whether our blood is stirred by Nelson and Trafalgar, whereofwe have read, or by the Duke of York and Walcheren, whereof wehaven't--or mighty little--we feel in touch with both these heroes, for they are modern. Both have columns, anyhow; and we can dwell upontheir triumph or defeat almost as if it wasn't history at all, butsomething that really happened, without running any risk of beingaccused of archaism or of deciphering musty tomes. And we can enjoyour expedition all the same to the ruined keep in the level pastures, where the long-horned black cattle stand and think and flap theirtails still, just as they did in the days when the basement dungeons, now choked up, held real prisoners with real broken hearts. 

But there is modern life, too, at St. Sennans--institutions that keepabreast of the century. Half the previous century ago, when we wentthere first, the Circulating Library consisted, so far as we canrecollect it, of a net containing bright leather balls, a collectionof wooden spades and wheelbarrows, a glass jar with powder-puffs, another with tooth-brushes, a rocking-horse--rashly stocked in thefirst heated impulse of an over-confident founder--a few othertrifles, and, most important of all, a book-case that supplied thetitle-rōle to the performance. That book-case contained (we areconfident) _editiones principes_ of Mrs. Ratcliff, Sir Walter Scott, Bulwer Lytton, Currer Bell ... Well, even Fanny Burney, if you cometo that. There certainly was a copy of "Frankenstein, " and fifty yearsago our flesh was so compliant as to creep during its perusal. Itwouldn't now. 

But even fifty years ago there was never a volume that had not beendefaced out of all knowledge by crooked marks of the most inquisitiveinterrogation, and straight marks of the most indignant astonishment, by the reading-public in the shadows of the breakwaters. It reallyread, that public did; and, what's more, it often tore out theinteresting bits to take away. I remember great exasperation when asudden veil was drawn over the future of two lovers just as the younggentleman had flung himself into the arms of the young lady. Anunhallowed fiend had cut off the sequel with scissors and boned it!

That was done, or much of it, when the books were new, and therailway-station was miles away; when the church wasn't new, butold, which was better. It has been made new since, and has chairsin it, and memorial windows by Stick and Co. In those days itsSunday-folk were fisherfolk mostly, and a few local magnates orparvates--squirophants, they might be called--and a percentage ofthe visitors. 

Was St. Sennan glad or sorry, we wonder, when the last two sortssubscribed and restored him? If we had been he, one of us would havehad to have the temper of a saint to keep cool about it. Anyhow, it'sdone now, and can't be undone. 

But the bathing-machines are not restored, at any rate. Thoseindescribables yonder, half rabbit-hutch, half dry-dock--a long rowfor ladies and a short one for gentlemen, three hundred yardsapart--couldn't trust 'em any nearer, bless you!--these superannuatedGod-knows-whats, struggling against disintegration from automaticplunges down a rugged beach, and creaking journeys back you are askedto hold on through--it's no use going on drying!--these tributes topublic decorum you can find no room in, and probably swear at--nosacrilegious restorer has laid his hand on these. They evidentlycontemplate going on for ever; for though their axes grow more andmore oblique every day, their self-confidence remains unshaken. Butthen they think they _are_ St. Sennans, and that the wooden houses aresubordinate accidents, and the church a mere tributary that was alittle premature--got there first, in its hurry to show respect for_them_. And no great wonder, seeing what a figure they cut, seen froma boat when you have a row! Or, rather, used to cut; for now the newtown (which is beastly) has come on the cliff above, and looks forall the world as if _it_ was St. Sennans, and speaks contemptuouslyof the real town as the Beach Houses. 

The new town can only be described as a tidy nightmare; yet it isa successful creation of the brains that conceived it--a successfulcreation of ground-rents. As a development of land ripe for building, with more yards of frontage to the main-road than at first sightgeometry seems able to accommodate, it has been taking advantage ofunrivalled opportunities for a quarter of a century, backed byadvances on mortgage. It is the envy of the neighbouring proprietorseast and west along the coast, who have developed their own eligiblesites past all remedy and our endurance, and now have to drain theirpurses to meet the obligations to the professional mortgagee, who isbiding his hour in peace, waiting for the fruit to fall into his mouthand murderously sure of his prey. But at St. Sennans a mysterioussilence reigns behind a local office that yields keys on application, and answers all inquiries, and asks ridiculous rents. And thissilence, or its keeper, is said to have become enormously rich overthe new town. 

The shareholders in the St. Sennans Hotel, Limited, cannot have becomerich. If they had, surely they would provide something better for ahungry paying supplicant than a scorched greasy chop, inflamed at thecore, and glass bottles containing a little pellucid liquid that partswith its carbon dioxide before you can effect a compromise with thecork, which pushes in, but not so as to attain its ideal. So yourSeltzer water doesn't pour fast enough to fizz outside the bottle, and your heart is sad. Of course, you can have wine, if you come tothat, for look at the wine-list! Only the company's ideas of the valueof wine are not limited, and if you decide not to be sordid, and ordera three-shilling bottle of Médoc, you will find its contents to bevery limited indeed. But why say more than that it is an enormoushotel at the seaside? You know all about them, and what it feels likein rainy weather, when the fat gentleman has got to-day's "Times, " andmeans to read all through the advertisement-column before he gives upthe leaders, and you have to spend your time turning over thick andshiny snap-shot journals with a surfeit of pictures in them; or theReal Lady, or the Ladylike Lady, or the Titled Lady, the portraits ofwhom--one or other of them--sweep in curves about their folio pages;and, while they fascinate you, make you feel that you would falter onthe threshold of matrimony if only because they couldn't possibly takenourishment. Would not the discomfort of meals eaten with a companionwho could swallow nothing justify a divorce _a mensa_?

A six-shilling volume might be written about the New Hotel, with anexecration on every page. Don't let us have anything to do with it, but keep as much as possible at the Sea Houses under the cliff, whichconstitute the only St. Sennans necessary to this story. We shall beable to do so, because when Mrs. And Mr. Fenwick and their daughterwent for a walk they always went up the cliff-pathway, which had stepscut in the chalk, past the boat upside down, where new-laid eggs couldbe bought from a coastguard's wife. And this path avoided the New Townaltogether, and took them straight to the cliff-track that skirtedgrowing wheat and blazing poppies till you began to climb the smoothhill-pasture the foolish wheat had encroached upon in the Protectiondays, when it was worth more than South Down mutton. And now every earof it would have been repenting in sackcloth and ashes if it had beenqualified by Nature to know how little it would fetch per bushel. Butit wasn't. And when, the day after their arrival, Rosalind and herhusband were on the beach talking of taking a walk up that way whenSally came out, it could have heard, if it would only have stoodstill, the sheep-bells on the slopes above reproaching it, andtaunting it with its usurpation and its fruitless end. Perhaps it wasbecause it felt ashamed that it stooped before the wind that carriedthe reproachful music, and drowned it in a silvery rustle. The barleysucceeded the best. You listen to the next July barley-field youhappen on, and hear what it can do when a breeze comes with no noiseof its own. 

Down below on the shingle the sun was hot, and the tide was high, andthe water was clear and green close to the shore, and jelly-fishabounded. You could look down into the green from the last steep ridgeat high-water mark, and if you looked sharp you might see one abound. Only you had to be on the alert to jump back if a heave of the greentransparency surged across the little pebbles that could gobble it upbefore it was all over your feet--but didn't this time. Oh dear!--howhot it was! Sally had the best of it. For the allusion to Sally's"coming out" referred to her coming out of the water, and she wasstaying in a long time. 

"That child's been twenty-four minutes already, " said her mother, consulting her watch. "Just look at her out there on the horizon. Whaton earth _are_ they doing?"

It _was_ a little inexplicable. At that moment Sally and herfriend--it was one Fräulein Braun, who had learned swimming in thebaths on the Rhone at Geneva and in Paris--appeared to be nothing buttwo heads, one close behind the other, moving slowly on the water. Then the heads parted company, and apparently their owners lay ontheir backs in the water, and kicked up the British Channel. 

"They're saving each other's lives, " said Gerry. He got up from a niceintaglio he had made to lie in, and after shaking off a good bushel ofsmall pebbles a new-made beach-acquaintance of four had heaped uponhim, resorted to a double opera-glass to see them better. "The kittenwanted me to get out of my depth for her to tow me in. But I didn'tfancy it. Besides, a sensitive British public would have beenscandalised. "

"You never learned to swim, then, Gerry----?" She just stopped herselfin time. The words "after all" were on her lips. Without them herspeech was mere chat; with them it would have been a match to a mine. She sometimes wished in these days that the mine might explode ofitself, and give her peace. 

"I suppose I never did, " replied her husband, as a matter of course. "At least, I couldn't do it when I tried in the water just now. Ishould imagine I must have tried B. C. , or I shouldn't have known howto try. It's not a thing one forgets, so they say. " He paused a fewseconds, and then added: "Anyhow, it's quite certain I couldn't doit. " There was not a trace of consciousness on his part of anythingin _her_ mind beyond what her words implied. But she felt in peril offire, so close to him, with a resurrection of an image in it--a vividone--of the lawn-tennis garden of twenty years ago, and the speech ofhis friend, the real Fenwick, about his inability to swim. 

This sense of peril did not diminish as he continued: "I've found outa lot of things I _can_ do in the way of athletics, though; I seem toknow how to wrestle, which is very funny. I wonder where I learned. And you saw how I could ride at Sir Mountmassingham's last month?"This referred to a country visit, which has not come into our story. "And that was very funny about the boxing. Such a peaceful old fogeyas your husband! Wasn't it, Rosey darling?"

"Why won't you call the Bart. By his proper name, Gerry? Wasn't what?"

"Funny about the gloves. You know that square fellow? He was awell-known prizefighter that young Sales Wilson had picked up andbrought down to teach the boys. You remember him? He went to church, and was very devout.... "

"I remember. "

"Well, it was in the billiard-room, after dinner. He said quitesuddenly, 'This gentleman now can make use of his daddles. I can seeit in him'--meaning me. 'What makes you think that, Mr. Macmorrough?'said I. 'We of the fancy, sir, ' says he, 'see these things, withoutreferrin' to no books, by the light of Nature. ' And next day we hada set-to with the gloves, and his verdict was 'Only just short ofprofessional. ' Those boys were delighted. I wonder how and whenI became such a dab at it?"

"I wonder!" Rosalind doesn't seem keen on the subject. "I wish thosecrazy girls would begin to think of coming in. If it's going to belike this every day I shall go home to London, Gerry. "

"Perhaps when Vereker comes down on Monday he'll be able to influence. Medical authority!"

Here the beach-acquaintance, who had kept up a musical undercurrent ofdisjointed comment, perceived an opportunity for joining more activelyin the conversation. 

"My mummar says--my mummar says--my mummar says.... "

"Yes--little pet--what does she say?" Thus Rosalind. 

"Yes--Miss Gwendolen Arkwright--what does she say?" Thus Fenwick, onwhom Miss Arkwright is seated. 

"My mummar says se wissus us not to paggle Tundy when the tideses goedout. But my mummar says--my mummar says.... "

"Yes, darling. "

"My mummar says we must paggle Monday up to here. " Miss Arkwrightindicates the exact high-water mark sanctioned, candidly. "Wiv nosooze, and no stottins!" She then becomes diffuse. "And my bid sisterTotey's doll came out in my bed, and Dane dusted her out wiv aduster. And I can do thums. And they make free.... " At this point MissArkwright's copy runs short, and she seizes the opportunity for a sortof seated dance of satisfaction at her own eloquence--a kind ofsubjective horsemanship. 

"I wish I never had to do any sums that made more than three, " is theputative horse's comment. "But there are only two possible, alas! Andthe totals are stale, as you might say. "

"I'm afraid my little girl's being troublesome. " Thus the mamma, looking round a huge groin of breakwater a few yards off. 

"Troublesome, madame?" exclaims Fenwick, using French unexpectedly. "She's the best company in Sussex. " But Miss Arkwright's nurse Janedomineers into the peaceful circle with a clairvoyance that MissGwendolen is giving trouble, and bears her away rebellious. 

"What a shame!" says Gerry _sotto voce_. "But I wonder why I said'madame'!"

"I remember you said it once before. " And she means to add "thefirst time you saw me, " but dubs it, in thought, a needless lie, andsubstitutes, "that day when you were electrocuted. " And then imaginesshe has flinched, and adds her original text boldly. She isn't sorrywhen her husband merely says, "That was queer too!" and remainslooking through his telescope at the swimmers. 

"They're coming at last--a couple of young monkeys!" is her comment. And, sure enough, after a very short spell of stylish sidestrokesSally's voice and laugh are within hearing ahead of her companion'smore guttural intonation. Her mother draws a long breath of reliefas the merpussy vanishes under her awning, and is shouted and tappedat to hold tight, while capstan-power tugs and strains to bring herdressing-room up a sharp slope out of reach of the sea. 

"Well, Jeremiah, and what have _you_ got to say for yourself?" saidthe merpussy soon after, just out of her machine, with a huge massof briny black hair spread out to dry. The tails had to be split andsorted and shaken out at intervals to give the air a chance. Sallywas blue and sticky all over, and her finger-tips and nails all onecolour. But her spirits were boisterous. 

"What about?"

"What about, indeed? About not coming into the water to be pulled out. You promised you would, you know you did!"

"I did; but subject to a reasonable interpretation of the compact. I should have been out of my depth ever so long before you could reachme. Why didn't you come closer?"

"How could I, with a fat, pink party drying himself next door? _You_wouldn't have, if it had been you, and him Goody Vereker.... "

"Sal-ly! Darling!" Her mother remonstrates. 

"We-ell, there's nothing in that! As if we didn't all know what theGoody would look like.... "

Rosalind is really afraid that the strict mamma of her husband'srecent incubus will overhear, and sit at another breakwater next day. "_Come_ along!" she says, dispersively and emphatically. "We shallhave the shoulder of mutton spoiled. "

"No, we shan't! Shall we, Jeremiah? We've talked it over, me andJeremiah. Haven't we, Gaffer Fenwick?" She is splitting up the saltcongestions of his mane as she sits by him on the shingle. He confirmsher statement. 

"We have. And we have decided that if we are two hours late it may bedone enough. But that in any case the so-called gravy will be greyhot water. "

"Get up and come along, and don't be a mad kitten! I shall go andleave you two behind. So now you know. " And Rosalind goes away upthe shingle. 

"What makes mother look so serious sometimes, kitten? She did just now. "

"She's jealous of you and me flirting like we do. Don't put your haton; let the sun dry you up a bit. Does she really look serious though?Do you mean it?"

"Yes, I mean it. It comes and goes. But when I ask her she only laughsat me. " A painful thought crosses Sally's mind. Is it possible thatsome of her reckless escapades have _froissé_'d her mother? She goesoff into a moment's contemplation, then suddenly jumps up with, "Comealong, Jeremiah, " and follows her up the beach. 

But the gravity on the face of the latter, by now half-way to thehouse, had nothing to do with any of Sally's shocking vulgaritiesand outrageous utterances. No, nor even with the green-eyed monsterJealousy her unscrupulous effrontery had not hesitated to impute. Sheallowed it to dominate her expression, as there was no one there tosee, until the girl overtook her. Then she wrenched her face and herthoughts apart with a smile. "You _are_ a mad little goose, " said she. 

But the thing that weighted her mind--oppressed or puzzled her, asmight be--what was it?

Had she been obliged to answer the question off-hand she herself mighthave been at a loss to word it, though she knew quite well what itwas. It was the old clash between the cause of Sally and its result. It was the thought that, but for a memory that every year seemed tocall for a stronger forgetfulness, a more effective oblivion, thislittle warm star that had shone upon and thawed a frozen life, thissalve for the wound it sprang from, would have remained unborn--anonentity! Yes, she might have had another child--true! But would thatchild have been Sally?

She was so engrossed with her husband, and he with her, that she feltshe could, as it were, have trusted him with his own identity. But, then, how about Sally? Though she might with time show him the needfor concealment, how be sure that nothing should come out in the veryconfusion of the springing of the mine? She could trust him withhis identity--yes! Not Sally with hers. Her great surpassing terrorwas--do you see?--not the effect on _him_ of learning about Sally'sstrange _provenance_, but for Sally herself. The terrible knowledgeshe could not grasp the facts without would cast a shadow over herwhole life. 

So she thought and turned and looked down on the beach. There belowher was this unsolved mystery sitting in the sun beside the man whoselife it had rent asunder from its mother's twenty years ago. And asRosalind looked at her she saw her capture and detain his hat. "Tolet his mane dry, I suppose, " said Rosalind. "I hope he won't get asunstroke. " She watched them coming up the shingle, and decided thatthey were going on like a couple of school-children. They were, rather. 

 * * * * *

Perhaps the image in Sally's profane mind of "hers affectionately, Rebecca Vereker, " before or after an elderly bathe, would not haveappeared there if she had not received that morning a letter sosigned, announcing that, subject to a variety of fulfilments--amongwhich the Will of God had quite a conspicuous place--she and herson would make their appearance next Monday, as our text has alreadyhinted. On which day the immature legs of Miss Gwendolen Arkwrightwere to be released from a seclusion by which some religious object, undefined, had been attained the day before. 

But the conditions which had to be complied with by the lodgings itwould be possible for this lady to occupy were such as have rarelybeen complied with, even in houses built specially to meet theirrequirements. Each window had to confront, not a particular quarter, but a particular ninetieth, of the compass. A full view of the seahad to be achieved from a sitting-room not exposed to its glare, anattribute destructive of human eyesight, and fraught with curiouseffects on the nerves. But the bedrooms had to look in directionsforeign to human experience--directions from which no wind ever cameat night. A house of which every story rotated on an independentvertical axis might have answered--nothing else would. Even then spacewould have called for modification, and astronomy and meteorologywould have had to be patched up. Then with regard to the differentlevels of the floors, concession was implied to "a flat"; but, stairways granted, the risers were to be at zero, and the treads atboiling-point--a strained simile! As to cookery, the services of a_chef_ with great powers of self-subordination seemed to be pointedat, a _cordon-bleu_ ready to work in harness. Hygienic precautions, such as might have been insisted on by an Athanasian sanitaryinspector on the premises of an Arian householder, were made a_sine qua non_. Freedom from vibration from vehicles was so firmlystipulated for that nothing short of a balloon from Shepherd's Bushcould possibly have met the case. The only relaxation in favour ofthe possible was a diseased readiness to accept shakedowns, sandwichesstanding, cuts off the cold mutton, and snacks generally on behalfof her son. 

Mrs. Iggulden, who was empty both sets on Monday, didn't answer in anyone particular to any of these requisitions. But a spirit of overgrowncompromise crept in, making a sufficient number of reasons why no oneof them could be complied with an equivalent of compliance itself. Only in respect of certain racks and tortures for the doctor was Mrs. Iggulden induced to lend herself to dangerous innovation. "I can'thave poor Prosy put to sleep in a bed like this, " said Sally, punchingin the centre of one, and finding a hideous cross-bar. Either Mrs. Iggulden's nephew must saw it out, and tighten up the sacking from endto end, or she must get a Christian bed. Poor Prosy! Whereon Mrs. Iggulden explained that her nephew had by an act of self-sacrificesurrendered this bed as a luxury for lodgers in the season, havinghimself a strong congenital love of bisection. He hadn't slept nighso sound two months past, and the crossbar would soothe his slumbers. 

So it was finally settled that the Goody and her son should cometo Iggulden's. The question of which set she should occupy beingleft open until she should have inspected the stairs. Thereon Mrs. Iggulden's nephew, whose name was Solomon, contrived a chair to carrythe good lady up them; which she, though faint, declined to availherself of when she arrived, perhaps seeing her way to greaterembarrassment for her species by being supported slowly upstairswith a gasp at each step, and a moan at intervals. However, she wasgot up in the end, and thought she could take a little milk with ateaspoonful of brandy in it. 

But as to giving any conception of the difficulties that arose at thispoint in determining the choice between above and below, that must beleft to your imagination. A conclusion _was_ arrived at in time--ina great deal of it--and the Goody was actually settled on the groundfloor at Mrs. Iggulden's, and contriving to battle against collapsefrom exhaustion with an implication that she had no personal interestin reviving, but would do it for the sake of others. 

CHAPTER XXVIII

HOW SALLY PUT THE FINISHING TOUCH ON THE DOCTOR, WHO COULDN'T SLEEP. OF THE GRAND DUKE OF HESSE-JUNKERSTADT. AND OF AN INTERVIEW OVERHEARD

Fenwick was not a witness of this advent, as the Monday on which ithappened had seen his return to town. He had had his preliminary week, and his desk was crying aloud for him. He departed, renewing a solemnpromise to write every day as the train came into the little stationat Egbert's Road, for St. Sennans and Growborough. It is only a singleline, even now, to St. Sennans from here, but as soon as it was doneit was good-bye to all peace and quiet for St. Sennan. 

Rosalind and her daughter came back in the omnibus--not the one forthe hotel, but the one usually spoken of as Padlock's--the one thatlived at the Admiral Collingwood, the nearest approach to an inn inthe old town. The word "omnibus" applied to it was not meant literallyby Padlock, but only as a declaration of his indifference as to whichfour of the planet's teeming millions rode in it. This time there wasno one else except a nice old farmer's wife, who spoke _to_ each ofthe ladies as "my dear, " and _of_ each of them as "your sister. "Rosalind was looking wonderfully young and handsome, certainly. Theysecured all the old lady's new-laid eggs, because there would beMrs. Vereker in the evening. We like adhering to these ellipses ofdaily life. 

Next morning Sally took Dr. Vereker for a walk round to show him theplace. Try to fancy the condition of a young man of about thirty, whohad scarcely taken his hand from the plough of general practice forfour years--for his holidays had been mighty insignificant--suddenlyinaugurating three weeks of paradise in _the_ society man mostcovets--of delicious seclusion remote from patients, a happy valleywhere stethoscopes might be forgotten, and carbolic acid was unknown, where diagnosis ceased from troubling, and prognosis was at rest. Hegot so intoxicated with Sally that he quite forgot to care if thecases he had left to Mr. Neckitt (who had been secured as a substituteafter all) survived or got terminated fatally. Bother them and theirmoist _rāles_ and cardiac symptoms, and effusions of blood on the brain!

Dr. Conrad was a young man of an honest and credulous nature, with aturn for music naturally, and an artificial bias towards medicineinfused into him by his father, who had died while he was yet a boy. His honesty had shown itself in the loyalty with which he carried outhis father's wishes, and his credulity in the readiness with which heaccepted his mother's self-interested versions of his duty towardsherself. She had given him to understand from his earliest years thatshe was an unselfish person, and entitled to be ministered unto, andthat it was the business of every one else to see that she did notbecome the victim of her own self-sacrifice. At the date of thiswriting her son was passing through a stage of perplexity about hisduty to her in its relation to his possible duty to a wife undefined. That he might not be embarrassed by too many puzzles at once, hewaived the question of who this wife was to be, and ignored the factthat would have been palpable to any true reading of his mind, that ifit had not been for Miss Sally Nightingale this perplexity might neverhave existed. He satisfied his conscience on the point by a pretextthat Sally was a thing on a pinnacle out of his reach--not for thelikes of him! He made believe that he was at a loss to find a footholdon his greasy pole, but was seeking one in complete ignorance of whatwould be found at the top of it. 

This shallow piece of self-deception was ripe for disillusionment whenSally took its victim out for a walk round to show him the place. It had the feeblest hold on existence during the remainder of the day, throughout which our medical friend went on dram-drinking, knowingthe dangers of his nectar-draughts, but as helpless against them asany other dram-drinker. It broke down completely and finally betweenmoonrise and midnight--a period that began with Sally calling underIggulden's window, "Come out, Dr. Conrad, and see the phosphorescencein the water; it's going to be quite bright presently, " and endedwith, "Good gracious, how late it is! Shan't we catch it?" anexclamation both contributed to. For it was certainly past eleveno'clock. 

But in that little space it had broken down, that delusion; and thedoctor knew perfectly well, before ten o'clock, certainly, that allthe abstract possible wives of his perplexity meant Sally, and Sallyonly. And, further, that Sally was at every point of the compass--thatshe was in the phosphorescence of the sea, and the still golden colourof the rising moon. That space was full of her, and that each littlewave-splash at their feet said "Sally, " and then gave place to anotherthat said "Sally" again. Poor Prosy!

But what did they _say_, the two of them? Little enough--mere merrychat. But on his part so rigid a self-constraint underlying it thatwe are not sure some of the little waves didn't say--not Sally at all, but--Miss Nightingale! And a persistent sense of a thought that wasonly waiting to be thought as soon as he should be alone--that wasgoing to run somewhat thus: "How could it come about? That this girl, whom I idolize till my idolatry is almost pain; this girl who has beenmy universe this year past, though I would not confess it; this wonderwhom I judge no man worthy of, myself least of all--that she should becancelled, made naught of, hushed down, to be the mate of a poor G. P. ;to visit his patients and leave cards, make up his little accounts, perhaps! Certainly to live with his mother.... " But he knew under theskin that he would be even with that disloyal thought, and would stopit off at this point in time to believe he hadn't thought it. 

Still, for all that this disturbing serpent would creep into his Eden, for all that he would have given worlds to dare a little more--thatmoment in the moonlight, with a glow-flecked water at his feet andhers, and the musical shingle below, and a sense of Christy Minstrelssinging about Billy Pattison somewhere in the warm night-air above, and the flash of the great revolving light along the coast answeringthe French lights across the great, dark silent sea--that moment wasthe record moment of his life till then. It would never do to say soto Sally, that was all! But it was true for all that. For his lifehad been a dull one, and the only comfort he could get out of thestory of it so far was that at least there was no black page in it hewould like to cut out. Sally might read them all, and welcome. Theirrelation to _her_ had become the point to consider. You see, at hearthe was a slow-coach, a milksop, nothing of the man of the world abouthim. Well, her race had had a dose of the other sort in the lastgeneration. Had the breed wearied of it? Was that Sally's unconsciousreason for liking him?

"How very young Prosy has got all of a sudden!" was Sally's postscriptto this interview, as she walked back to their own lodgings with hermother, who had been relieving guard with the selfless one while thedoctor went out to see the phosphorescence. 

"He's like a boy out for a holiday, " her mother answered. "I had noidea Dr. Conrad could manage such a colour as that; I thought he waspallid and studious. "

"Poor dear. _We_ should be pallid and studious if it was cases allday long, and his ma at intervals. "

"Do you know, kitten darling, I can't help thinking perhaps we dothat poor woman an injustice.... "

"--Can't you?" Thus Sally in a parenthetic voice--

"... And that she really isn't such a very great humbug after all!"

"Why not?"

"Because she would be such a _very_ great humbug, don't you see, chick?"

"Why shouldn't she? Somebody must, or there'd be no such thing. "

"Why should there be any such thing?"

"Because of the word. Somebody must, or there'd be no one to hook itto.... Have they stopped, I wonder, or are they going to begin again?"This referred to the Ethiopian banjos afar. "I do declare they'regoing to sing Pesky Jane, and it's nearly twelve o'clock!"

"Never mind _them_! How came _you_ to know all the vulgarnigger-songs?... I was going to say. It's very difficult to believeit's quite all humbug when one hears her talk about her son and hiswelfare, and his prospects and.... "

"I know what she talked about. When her dear son marries, she's goingto devote herself to him and her dear daughter that will be. Wasn'tthat it?"

"Yes; but then she couldn't say more than that all she had would betheirs, and she would take her to her bosom, etcetera. Could she?"

"She'll have to pull a long way!" The vulgar child's mind has flownstraight to the Goody's outline in profile. She is quite incorrigible. "But wasn't that what old Mr. Turveydrop said, or very nearly? Ofcourse, one has to consider the parties and make allowance. "

"Sallykin, what a madcap you are! You don't care _what_ you say. "

"We-e-ell! there's nothing in that.... But look here, mammy darling. Did that good woman in all she said to-night--all the time she wasjawing--did she once lose sight of her meritorious attitude?"

"It may only be a _faēon de parler_--a sort of habit. "

"But it isn't. Jeremiah says so. We've talked it over, us two. Hesays he wouldn't like his daughter--meaning me--to marry poor Prosy, because of the Goody. "

"Are you sure he meant you? Did you ask him?"

"No, because I wasn't going to twit Jeremiah with being only step. We kept it dark who was what. But, of course, he meant me. Like asubmarine telegraph. " Sally stopped a moment in gravity. Then shesaid: "Mother dear!"

"What, kitten?"

"What a pity it is Jeremiah is only step! Just think how nice ifhe'd been real. Now, if you'd only met twenty years sooner.... "

A nettle to grasp presented itself--a bad one. Rosalind seized itbodily. "I shouldn't have had my kitten, " she said. 

"I see. I should have been somebody else. But that wouldn't havemattered to me. "

"It would have--to me!" But this is the most she can do in the wayof nettle-grasping. She is glad when St. Sennan, from his tower withthe undoubted piece of Norman, begins to count twelve, and gives heran excuse for a recall to duty. "Do think how we're keeping poor Mrs. Lobjoit up, you unfeeling child!" is her appeal on behalf of their ownfisherman's wife. Sally is just taking note of a finale of the Ethiopchoir. "They've done Pesky Jane, and they're going away to bed, " shesays. "How the black must come off on the sheets!" And then theyhurried home to sleep sound. 

But there was little sleep for the doctor that night, perhaps becausehe had got so young all of a sudden. So it didn't matter much that hismother countermanded his proposal that bed should be gone to, on theground that it was so late now that she wouldn't be able to sleepa wink. If she _could_ have gone an hour ago it would have beendifferent. Now it was too late. An aggressive submissiveness wasutilized by the good lady to the end of his discomfort and that ofMrs. Iggulden, who--perhaps from some memories of the Norman Conquesthanging about the neighbourhood--would never go to bed as long as alight was burning in the house. 

"It is very strange and most unusual, I know, " she continued sayingafter she had scarified a place to scratch on. "Your great-uncleEverett Gayler did not scruple to call it phenomenal, and that whenI was the merest child. After eleven no sleep!" She continued herknitting with tenacity to illustrate her wakefulness. "But I am glad, dear Conrad, that you forgot about me. You were in pleasanter societythan your old mother's. No one shall have any excuse for saying I ama burden on my son. No, my dear boy, my wish is that you shall feel_free_. " She laid aside the knitting needles, and folding her handsacross the outline Sally was to be dragged up, or along, dropped hereyelids over a meek glare, and sat with a fixed, submissive undersmileslightly turned towards her son. 

"But I thought, mother, as Mrs. Fenwick was here.... " Slow, slight, acquiescent nods stopped him; they were enough to derail any speechexcept the multiplication-table or the House-that-Jack-built! Butshe waited with exemplary patience for certainty that the train hadstopped. Then spoke as one that gives a commission to speech, and observes its execution at a distance. Her expression remainedimmutable. "She is a well-meaning person, " said she. 

"I didn't know how late it was. " Poor Dr. Conrad gives upself-defence--climbs down. "The time ran away. " It _had_ done so, there was no doubt about that. 

"And you forgot your mother. But Mrs. Fenwick is a well-meaningperson. We will say no more about it. "

Whereupon her son, feeling that silence is golden, said nothing. Buthe went and kissed her for all that. She said inscrutably: "You mighthave kissed me. " But whether she was or wasn't referring to the factthat she had succeeded in negotiating his kiss on the rim of herspectacles, Conrad couldn't tell. Probably she meant he might havekissed her before. 

There was no doubt, however, about her intention of knitting till pastone in the morning. She did it enlarging on the medical status of herillustrious uncle, Dr. Everett Gayler, who had just crept into theconversation. Her son wasn't so sorry for this as Mrs. Iggulden, whodozed and waked with starts, on principle, outside in the passageunseen. _He_ could stand at the wide-open window, and hear the littlewaves plash "Sally" in the moonlight, and the counter-music of thedown-drawn shingle echo "Sally" back. Sometimes the pebbles and thewater gave place for a moment to the tread of two persistent walkersup and down--men who smoked cigars, and became a little audible anddied again at every time of passing. 

One time the doctor caught a rise of voice--though they did not passso very near--that said: "My idea is to stay here till.... "

Then at the next turn the same voice grew from inaudibility to ... "So I arranged with the parson here for to-morrow, and we shallget.... " and died again. At this moment Dr. Everett Gayler was atthe climax of his fame, having just performed tracheotomy on theGrand Duke of Hesse-Junkerstadt, and been created Knight-Commanderof some Order whose name Mrs. Vereker wasn't sure about. 

Next time the men returned, the same voice that seemed to do all thetalking said: "... Expensive, of course, but she hates the idea ofa registry-office. " They paused, and the listener heard that the othervoice had said something to which the first replied: "No, not Grundy. But she had some friends cooked at one, and they said it was stuffy, and they would sooner have endured twenty short homilies.... "

A wax vesta scratched, blazed, lighted another cigar, and the secondvoice said, "Oh--ah!" and both grew inaudible again. 

Dr. Everett Gayler had just pronounced the Grand Duchess'sdisease--they were an afflicted family--a disease his narratorcouldn't pronounce at all. Most of her bones, in a state of necrosis, had been skilfully removed by the time the smokers had passed back. But so much more was Dr. Conrad listening to what the waves said tothe shingle and the shingle answered back, than to either the GrandDuchess or the registry-office, that it never crossed his mind whosethe voice was who lit the vesta. He heard it say good-night--its ownerwould get back to the hotel--and the other make due response. Andthen nothing was left but the coastguard. 

But the Grand Duke's family were not quite done with. It had to berecorded how many of his distinguished ancestors had suffered from_Plica polonica_. Still, the end did come at last, and the worthy ladythought perhaps if she could lie down now she might drop off. So Mrs. Iggulden got her release and slept. 

Dr. Conrad didn't, not a wink. The whole place was full of Sally. Theflashlight at intervals, in couplets, seemed to say "Sally" twice whenit came, and then to leave a blank for him to think about her in. Thegreat slow steamer far out to sea showed a green eye of jealousy or ared one of anger because it could not come ashore where Sally was, buthad perforce to go on wherever it was navigated. The millions of blacksea-elves--did you ever discriminate them?--that the slight observerfancies are the interstices of the moonlight on the water, were allbusy about Sally, though it was hard to follow their movements. Andevery time St. Sennan said what o'clock it was, he added, "One hournearer to Sally to-morrow!"

Poor Prosy!

CHAPTER XXIX

OF A MARRIAGE BY SPECIAL LICENCE. ROSALIND'S COMPARISONS. OF THE THREE BRIDESMAIDS, AND HOW THE BRIDE WAS A GOOD SAILOR

But it never occurred to Dr. Vereker that the voice of the smokinggentleman, whose "_she_" knew a couple that had been cooked at aregistry office, was a voice quite familiar to him. The only effectit had on his Sally-dazed mind was to make him wonder four hours afterwhat it was that kept putting Julius Bradshaw into his head. If abrain-molecule could have been found not preoccupied with Sally hemight have been able to give her next day a suggestive hint abouta possibility ahead. But never a word said he to Sally; and when, on her return from bathing the following morning, Mrs. Lobjoit, thefisherman's wife, surprised her with the news that "the young lady"had come and had left her luggage, but would be back in half-an-hour, she was first taken aback, and thought it was a mistake next. Butno--no chance of that! The young lady had asked for Mrs. AlgernonFenwick, or, in default, for Miss Sally, quite distinctly. She hadn'tsaid any name, but there was a gentleman with her. Mrs. Lobjoitseemed to imply that had there been no gentleman she might have beennameless. Padlock's omnibus they came in. 

So Sally went on being taken aback where she had left off, and wasstill pondering over the phenomenon when her mother followed herthrough the little yard paved with round flints bedded in mortar--allexcept the flower-beds, which were in this case marigold-beds andfuschia-beds and tamarisk-shakedowns--and the street door which alwaysstood open, and it was very little use ringing, the bell being broken. But you could pass through, and there would always be old Mr. Lobjoitin the kitchen, even if Mrs. Lobjoit was not there herself. 

"Why not look on the boxes, you stupid kitten? There's a name on them, or ought to be. " Thus Rosalind, after facts told. 

"What a thing it is to have a practical maternal parent!" Thus Sally. And Mrs. Lobjoit put on record with an amiable smile that that is whatshe kept saying to Miss Nightingale, "Why not look?" Whereas the factis Mrs. Lobjoit never said anything of the sort. 

"Here's a go!" says Sally, who gets at the label-side of the trunkfirst. "If it isn't Tishy!" And the mother and daughter look at eachother's faces, each watching the other's theory forming of what thissudden apparition means. 

"What do you think, mother?"

"What do _you_ think, kitten?" But the truth is, both wanted timeto know what to think. And they hadn't got much forwarder with thesolution of the problem when a light was thrown upon it by the suddenapparition of Lętitia herself, accompanied by the young gentlemanwhom Sally did not scruple to speak of--but not in his presence--asher counter-jumper. She did this, she said, to "pay Tishy out" forwhat she had said about him before she made his acquaintance. 

The couple were in a mixed state of exaltation and confusion--Tishyhalf laughing, a third crying, and a sixth keeping up her dignity. Both were saying might they come in, and doing it without waiting foran answer. 

Rosalind's remark was one of those nonsequences often met with in reallife: "There's enough lunch--or we can send out. " Sally's was: "Butare you the Julius Bradshaws, or are you not? That's what _I_ want toknow. " Sally won't be trifled with, not she!

"Well, Sally dear, no, --we're not--not just yet. " Tishy hesitates. Julius shows firmness. 

"But we want to be at two o'clock this afternoon, if you'll come.... "

"Both of us?"

"Why--of course, both of you. "

"Then Mrs. Lobjoit will have to be in time with lunch. " It does notreally matter who were the speakers, nor what the share of each wasin the following aggregate:

"How did you manage to get it arranged?" "Why _now_? Have youquarrelled with your mother?" "How long can you be away? I hate astingy honeymoon!" "You've got no things. " "Do you think they'll knowat home where you are?" "Where are you going afterwards?" "What do youthink your father will say?" "What I want to know is, what put it intoyour head _now_, more than any other time?"

Responses to the whole of which, much at random, are incorporated inwhat follows: "Julius isn't wanted for three weeks. " "I'm sure theProfessor's on our side, really. " "I left a letter to tell them, anyhow. " "Calais. We shan't be sick, in weather like this. We'll crossby the night boat. " "I've got a new dress to be married in, and a newumbrella--oh yes, and other things. " "I'll tell you the whole story, Sally dear, as soon as I've had time to turn round. " "No--notquarrelled--at least, no more than usual. " "Special licence, of course. "

What time Vereker, who had been to the post-office, which sold allsorts of things, to inquire if they had a packet of chemical oatmeal(the only thing his mother could digest this morning), and was comingback baffled, called in on his way to Mrs. Iggulden's. Not to seeSally, but only to take counsel with the family about chemicaloatmeal. By a curious coincident, the moment he heard of Miss SalesWilson's arrival, he used Sally's expression, and said that there was"a go!" Perhaps there was, and that accounted for it. 

"Here's Dr. Conrad--he'll have to come too. " Thus Sally explicitly. To which he replied, "All right. Where?" Sally replied with gravity:"To see these two married by special licence. " And Julius added: "You_must_ come, doctor, to be my bottle-holder. "

A small undercurrent of thought in the doctor's mind, in which he canstill accommodate passing events and the world's trivialities, beginsto receive impressions of the facts of the case. The great rivercalled Sally flows steadily on, on its own account, and makes andmeddles not. It despises other folk's petty affairs. Dr. Conradmasters the position, and goes on to draw inferences. 

"Then that must have been _you_ last night, Bradshaw?"

"I dare say it was. When?"

"Walking up and down with another fellow in front here. Smokingcigars, both of you. "

"Why didn't you sing out?"

"Well, now--why didn't I?" He seems a little unable to account forhimself, and no wonder. "I think I recollected it was like you afteryou had gone. "

"Don't be a brain-case, Dr. Conrad. What would your patients say ifthey heard you go on like that?" Sally said this, of course. Hermother thought to herself that perhaps the patients would send fora married doctor. 

But her mind was taking no strong hold on the current of events, considering what a very vital human interest was afloat on them. Itwas wandering back to another wedding-day--her own first wedding-dayof twenty years ago. As she looked at this bridegroom--all hisupspring of hope making light of such fears as needs must be in likecase all the world over--he brought back to her vividly, for all hewas so unlike him, the face of the much younger man who had met herthat day at Umballa, whose utter freedom from suspicion as he welcomedher almost made her able to forget the weeks gone by--the more so thatthey were like a dream in Hell, and their sequel like an awakening inParadise. Well, at any rate, she had recaptured this man from Chaos, and he was hers again. And she had Sally. But at the word the wholeworld reeled and her feet were on quicksands. What and whence wasSally?

At least this was true--there was no taint of her father there! Sallywasn't an angel--not a bit of it--no such embarrassment to a merelyhuman family. But her mother could see her truth, honour, purity--callit what you will--in every feature, every movement. As she stoodthere, giving injunctions to Vereker to look alive or he'd be late, her huge coil of sea-soaked black hair making her white neck lookwhiter, and her white hands reestablishing hair-pins in the depths ofit, she seemed the very incarnation of non-inheritance. Not a trace ofthe sire her mother shuddered to think of in the music of her voice, in the laughter all who knew her felt in the mirth of her eyebrows andthe sparkle of her pearly teeth. All her identity was her own. If onlyit could have been known then that she was going to be Sally!... Buthow fruitless all speculation was!

"Perhaps mother knows. Chemical oatmeal, mother, for invalids andpersons of delicate digestion? They haven't got it at Pemberton's. "The eyes and the teeth flash round on her mother, and in a twinklingthe unhallowed shadow of the past is gone. It was only a moment inall, though it takes more to record it. Rosalind came back to the lifeof the present, but she knew nothing about chemical oatmeal. Nevermind. The doctor would find out. And he would be sure to be in time. 

He was in time--plenty of time, said public opinion. And the couplewere duly married, and went away in Padlock's omnibus to catchthe train for Dover in time for the boat. And Dr. Conrad's eyeswere on the eldest bridesmaid. For, after all, two others wereobtained--jury-bridesmaids they might be called--in the persons ofMiss Gwendolen Arkwright and an even smaller sister, who were somehowcommandeered by Sally's enterprise, and bribed with promises ofrefreshment. But the smaller sister was an erring sister, for havingbeen told she was on no account to speak during the service, shewas suddenly struck with the unfairness of the whole thing, and, pointing at St. Sennans' arch-priest, said very audibly that _he_was "peatin', " so why wasn't she to "peat"? However, it was a verygood wedding, and there was no doubt the principals had really becomethe Julius Bradshaws. They started from Dover on a sea that lookedlike a mill-pond; but Tishy's husband afterwards reported that thebride sat with her eyes shut the last half of the _trajet_, and said, "Don't speak to me, and I shall be all right. "

 * * * * *

That summer night Rosalind and her daughter were looking out over thereputed mill-pond at the silver dazzle with the elves in it. The moonhad come to the scratch later than last night, from a feeling of whatwas due to the almanac, which may (or must) account for an otherwiseenigmatical remark of Sally's, who, when her mother wondered what timeit was, replied: "I don't know--it's later than it was yesterday. " Butdid that matter, when it was the sort of night you stopped out allnight on, according to Sally. They came to an anchor on a seat facingthe sea, and adjourned human obligation _sine die_. 

"I wonder if they've done wisely. " Rosalind represents marriedthoughtfulness. 

Sally shelves misgivings of this sort by reflections on the common lotof humanity, and considers that it will be the same for them as everyone else. 

"_They_'ll be all right, " she says, with cheerful optimism. "I wonderwhat's become of Prosy. "

"He's up there with his mother. I saw him at the window. But I didn'tmean that: they'll be happy enough together, I've no doubt. I mean, has Lętitia done wisely to quarrel with her family?"

"She hasn't; it's only the she-dragon. Tishy told me all about itgoing to church. "

 * * * * *

And, oh dear, how poor Prosy, who was up there with his mother, didlong to come out to the voices he could hear plain enough, even asfar off as that! But then he had been so long away to-day, and heknew his excellent parent always liked to finish the tale of her ownwedding-day when she began it--as she often did. So he listened againto the story of the wedding, which was celebrated in the severestthunderstorm experienced in these islands since the days ofQueen Elizabeth, by a heroic clergyman who was suffering frompleuro-pneumonia, which made his voice inaudible till a miraculouschance produced one of Squilby's cough lozenges (which are not to behad now for love or money), and cured him on the spot. And how thebridesmaids all had mumps, more or less. And much concerning theamazingly dignified appearance of her own father and mother, whichwas proverbial, and therefore no matter of surprise to any one, theproverb being no doubt well known to Europe. 

But there, it didn't matter! Sally would be there to-morrow. 

CHAPTER XXX

HOW A FORTNIGHT PASSED, AND THE HONEYMOONERS RETURNED. OF A CHAT ON THE BEACH, AND MISS ARKWRIGHT'S SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE. ALMOST THE LAST, LAST, LAST--MAN'S HEAD!

Sally to-morrow--and to-morrow--and to-morrow. Sally for fourteenmorrows. And the moon that had lighted the devoted young man to hisfate--whatever it was to be--had waned and left the sky clear fora new one, on no account to be seen through glass. 

They were morrows of inextinguishable, indescribable delight for theirvictims or victim--for how shall we classify Sally? Who shall treadthe inner temple of a girl's mind? How shall it be known that sheherself has the key to the Holy of Holies?--that she is not dwellingin the outer court, unconscious of her function of priestess, itsprivileges and responsibilities? Or, in plainer language, metaphorshaving been blowed in obedience to a probable wish of the reader's, how do we know Sally was not falling in love with the doctor? How dowe know she was not in love with him already? How did _she_ know?

All we know is that the morrows went on, each one sweeter than thelast, and all the little incidents went on that were such nothings atthe time, but were so sure to be borne in mind for ever! _You_ knowall about it, you who read. Like enough you can remember now, old asyou are, how you and she (or he, according as your sex is) got lostin the wood, and never found where the picnic had come to an anchortill all the wings of chicken were gone and only legs left; or howthere was a bull somewhere; or how next day the cat got caught on theshoulder of one of you and had to be detached, hooking horribly, bythe other; or how you felt hurt (not jealous, but hurt) because she(or he) was decently civil to some new he (or she), and how relievedyou were when you heard it was Mr. Or Mrs. Some-name-you've-forgotten. Why, if you were to ask now, of that grey man or woman whose life waslinked with yours, maybe now sixty years agone, did he or she havea drumstick, or go on to ham-sandwiches?--or, was it really a bull, after all?--or, had that cat's claws passed out of memory?--or, whatwas the name of that lady (or gentleman) at the So-and-so's?--ifyou asked any of these things, she or he might want a repeat intoa deaf ear but would answer clear enough in the end, and recallthe drumsticks and the equivocal bull, the cat's claws, and theunequivocal married person. And then you would turn over all thelittle things of old, and wrangle a bit over details here and there;and all the while you would be the very selfsame two that were youngand were lost in the wood and trampled down the fern and saw thesquirrels overhead all those long years ago. 

Many a little thing of a like nature--perhaps some identical--made uphours that became days in that fortnight we have to skip, and then theend was drawing near; and Dr. Conrad would have to go back and writeprescriptions with nothing that could possibly do any harm in them, and abstain with difficulty from telling young ladies with cultivatedwaists they were liars when they said you could get a loaf of breadbetween all round, and it was sheer nonsense. And other littleenjoyments of a G. P. 's life. Yes, the end was very near. But Sally'sresolute optimism thrust regrets for the coming chill aside, anddecided to be jolly while we could, and acted up to its decision. 

Besides, an exciting variation gave an interest to the last week ofthe doctor's stay at St. Sennans. The wandering honeymooners, ingratitude to that saint, proposed to pay him a visit on their way backto London. Perhaps they would stop a week. So the smallest possibleaccommodation worthy of the name was found for them over a brandyballand bull's-eye shop in a house that had no back rooms, being laid likea vertical plaster against the cliff behind, and having an exit ona flat roof where you might bask in the sun and see the bright redpoppies growing in the chalk, and contribute your share towardsa settlement of the vexed question of which are brigs. There wasn'tanother room to be had in the real St. Sennans, and it came to thator the hotel (which was beastly), and you might just as well be inLondon. Thus Sally, and settled the question. 

And this is how it comes to pass that at the beginning ofthis chapter--which we have only just got to, after all thiscircumlocution!--Sally and one of the Julius Bradshaws were sittingtalking on the beach in the shadow of a breakwater, while the otherJulius Bradshaw (the original one) was being taken for a walk to theextremely white lighthouse three miles off, or nearly five if youwent by the road, by Dr. Conrad, who by this time knew all the walksin the neighbourhood exactly as well as Sally did, neither more norless. And both knew them very well. 

The tide had come up quite as far as it had contemplated, and seemedto have made up its mind this time not to go back in too great ahurry. It was so nice there on the beach, with Tishy and Sallyand Miss Gwendolen Arkwright, the late bridesmaid, who was havingan independent chat all to herself about the many glories of thepier-end, and the sights to be seen there by visitors for a penny. And it--we are speaking of the tide--had got a delightful tangle offloating weed (_Fucus Vesiculosus_) and well-washed scraps of woodfrom long-forgotten wrecks--who knows?--and was turning it gentlyto and fro, and over and over, with intermittent musical caresses, against the shingle-bank, whose counter-music spoke to the sea ofthe ages it had toiled in vain to grind it down to sand. And thetide said, wait, we shall see. The day will come, it said, when nota pebble of you all but shall be scattered drifting sand, unless youhave the luck to be carted up at a shilling a load by permission ofthe authorities, to be made into a concrete of a proper consistencyaccording to the local by-laws. But the pebbles said, please, no; wewill bide our time down here, and you shall have us for your own--playwith us in the sun at the feet of these two ladies, or make thewhirling shoals of us, beaten to madness, thunder back your voice whenit shouts in the storm to the seaman's wife, who stops her ears in thedark night alone that she may not hear you heralding her husband'sdeath. And the tide said very good; but a day would come when thepebbles would be sand, for all that. And even the authority would begone, and the local by-laws. But it would sound upon some shore forever. So it kept on saying. Probably it was mistaken. 

This has nothing to do with our story except that it is approximatelythe substance of a statement made by Sally to Miss Arkwright, who wasinterested, and had been promised it all over again to-morrow. Forthe present she could talk about the pier and take her audience forgranted. 

"But was it that Kensington Gardens business that did the job?" askedSally, in the shadow of the breakwater, getting the black hair dryafter three-quarters of an hour in the sea; because caps, you know, are all nonsense as far as keeping water out goes. So Sally had to sitever so long with it out to dry. And the very tiny pebbles you canalmost see into stick to your hands, as you know, and come off in yourhair when you run them through it, and have to be combed out. Atleast, Sally's had. But she kept on running the pebbles through herstill blue fingers for all that as she half lay, half sat by Tishyon the beach. 

"'Did the job!'" repeats the bride on her honeymoon with someindignation. "Sally dear, when will you learn to be more refined inyour ways of speech? I'm not a _précieuse_, but--'did the job!'Really, Sally!... "

"Observe the effect of three weeks in France. The Julius Bradshaws canparlay like anything! No, Tishy darling, don't be a stuck-upper, buttell me again about Kensington Gardens. "

"I told you. It was just like that. Julius and I were walking up theavenue--you know.... "

"The one that goes up and across, and comes straight like this?"Tishy, helped by a demonstration of blue finger-tips, recognises this, strange to say. 

"No, not that one. It doesn't matter. We didn't see mamma coming tillshe was ever so close, because of the Speke Monument in the way. Andwhat could possess her to come home that way from Hertford Street, Mayfair, I cannot imagine!"

"Never mind, Tishy dear! It's no use crying over spilled milk. Whatdid she say?"

"Nothing, dear. She turned purple, and bowed civilly. To Julius, ofcourse. But it included me, whether or no. "

"But was that what did the job?... We-ell, I do not see _anything_to object to in that expression. Was it?"

"If you mean, dear, was it that that made us, me and Julius, feel thatmatters would get no better by waiting, I think perhaps it was.... Well, when it comes to meeting one's mother in Kensington Gardens, near the Speke Monument, and being bowed civilly to, it seems to meit's high time.... Now, isn't it, Sally?"

Sally evaded giving testimony by raising other questions: "What didyour father say?" "Did the Dragon tell him about the meeting in thepark?" "What do you think he'll say now?"

"Now? Well, you know, I've got his letter. _He's_ all right--andrather dear, _I_ think. What do _you_ think, Sally?"

"I think very. "

"Perhaps I should say very. But with papa you never know. He reallydoes love us all, after a fashion, except Egerton, only I'm neversure he doesn't do it to contradict mamma. "

"Why don't they chuck each other and have done with it?" The vulgarchild lets fly straight into the bull's-eye; then adds thoughtfully:"_I_ should, only, then, I'm not a married couple. "

Tishy elided the absurd figure of speech and ignored it. The chanceof patronising was not to be lost. 

"You are not married, dear. When you are, you may feel thingsdifferently. But, of course, papa and mamma _are_ very odd. I usedto hear them through my door between the rooms at L. B. G. Road. Itwas wrangle, wrangle, wrangle; fight, fight, fight; all through thenight--till two o'clock sometimes. Oh dear!"

"You're sure they always were quarrelling?"

"Oh dear, yes. I used to catch all the regular words--settlement andprincipal and prevaricate. All that sort of thing, you know. But therethey are, and there they'll be ten years hence, that's my belief, living together, sleeping together, and dining at opposite ends of thesame table, and never communicating in the daytime except through meor Theeny, but quarrelling like cat and dog. "

"What shall you do when you go back? Go straight there?"

"I think so. Julius thinks so. After all, papa's the master of thehouse--legally, at any rate. "

"Shall you write and say you're coming?"

"Oh, no! Just go and take our chance. We shan't be any nearer if wegive mamma an opportunity of miffing away somewhere when we come. What_is_ that little maid talking about there?" The ex-bridesmaid is threeor four yards away, and is discoursing eloquently, a word in the aboveconversation having reminded her of a tragic event she has mentionedbefore in this story. "I seeps with my bid sister Totey's dolly, " iswhat she appears to be saying. 

"Never mind the little poppet, Tishy, till you've told me more aboutit. " Sally is full of curiosity. "Did that do the job or did it not?That's what I want to know. "

"I suppose it did, dear, indirectly. That was on Saturday afternoon. Next morning we breakfasted under a thundercloud with Egerton grinninginside his skin, and looking like 'Won't you catch it, that's all!'at me out of the corner of his eye. That was bad enough, without one'smarried sister up from the country taking one aside to say that _she_wasn't going to interfere, and calling one to witness that _she_ hadsaid nothing so far. All she said was, 'Me and mamma settle it betweenus. ' 'Settle what?' said I; and she didn't answer, and went away tothe first celebration. "

"She's not bad, your married sister, " Sally decided thoughtfully. 

"Oh no, Clarissa's not bad. Only she wants to run with the hare andexplain to the hounds when they come up.... What happened next? Why, as I went upstairs past papa's room, out comes mamma scarlet withanger, and restraining herself in the most offensive way for me to gopast. I took no notice, and when she was gone I went down and walkedstraight into the library. I said, 'What is it, papa?' I saw he waschuckling internally, as if he'd made a hit. "

"Wasn't he angry? What did he say?"

"Oh no, _he_ wasn't angry. Let's see ... Oh!... What he said was, 'That depends so entirely on what _it_ is, my dear. But, broadlyspeaking, I should say it was your mother. ' 'What has she been sayingto you?' I asked. And he answered, 'I can only give her exact wordswithout pledging myself to their meaning. She stated that she"supposed I was going to tell my daughter I approved of her walkingabout Kensington Gardens with _that man's_ arm around her waist. "I replied--reasonably, as it seems to me--that I supposed that manwas there himself. Otherwise, it certainly did seem to me a mostobjectionable arrangement, and I hope you'll promise your mother notto do it again. '"

"What on earth did he mean?"

"You don't understand papa. He quibbles to irritate mamma. He meantlike a waistband--separate--don't you see?"

"I see. But it wouldn't bend right. " Sally's truthful nature postponeslaughing at the Professor's absurdity; looks at the case on itsmerits. When she has done justice to this point, she laughs and adds:"What did _you_ say, Tishy?"

"Oh, I said what nonsense, and it wasn't tight round like all that;only a symptom. And we didn't even know mamma was there because ofSpeke and Grant's obelisk. There wasn't a soul! Papa saw it quite asI did, and was most reasonable. So I thought I would feel my way todeveloping an idea we had been broaching, Julius and I, just that verytime by the obelisk. I asked papa flatly what he would do if I marriedJulius straight off. 'I believe, my dear, ' said he, 'that I shouldbe bound to disapprove most highly of your conduct and his. ' 'But_should_ you, papa?' I said. 'I should be _bound_ to, my dear, 'said he. 'But should you turn us out of the house?' I asked. 'Mostcertainly _not_, ' said he emphatically. 'But I should disapprove. 'I said I should be awfully sorry for that. 'Of course you would, ' saidhe. 'Any dutiful daughter would. But I don't exactly see what harm itwould do _you_. ' And you see how his letter begins--that he is bound, as a parent, to feel the strongest disapprobation, and so on. No, I don't think we need be frightened of papa. As for mamma, of courseit wouldn't be reasonable to expect her to.... "

"To expect her to what?"

"Well, I was going to say keep her hair on. The expression isEgerton's, and I'm sorry to say his expressions are not alwaysladylike, however telling they are! So I hesitated. Now what _is_that baby talking about down there?"

For through the whole of Tishy's interesting tale that baby had beendwelling on the shocking occurrence of her sister's doll as beforerecorded. Her powers of narrative--giving a dramatic form to allthings, and stimulated by Sally's statements of what the beach saidto the sea, and the sea said back--had, it seemed, attracted shoalsof fish from the ocean depths to hear her recital of the tragedy. 

"Suppose, now, you come and tell it us up here, Gwenny, " says thebride to the bridesmaid. And Sally adds: "Yes, delicious littleMiss Arkwright, come and tell us all about it too. " Whereupon MissArkwright's musical tones are suddenly silent, and her eyes, that areso nearly the colour of the sea behind her, remain fixed on her twopetitioners, their owner not seeming quite sure whether she shallacquiesce, or coquette, or possibly even burst into tears. Shedecides, however, on compliance, coming suddenly up the beach on allfours, and exclaiming, "Tate me!" flings herself bodily on Sally, who welcomes her with, "You sweet little darling!" while Mrs. JuliusBradshaw, anticipating requisition, looks in her bag for anotherchocolate. They will spoil that child between them. 

"Now tell us about the fisses and dolly, " says Sally. But thenarrator, all the artist rising in her soul, will have everythingin order. 

"I _told_ ze fisses, " she says, reproach in her voice. 

"I see, ducky. You told the fishes, and now you'll tell us allabout dolly. "

"I seeps wiv dolly, because my bid sister Totey said 'Yes. ' Dollyseeps in her fings. I seep in my nightgown. Kean from the wass----"

"How nice you must be! Well, then, what next?" Sally may be said toimbibe the narrator at intervals. Tishy calls her a selfish girl. "You've got her all to yourself, " she says. The story goes on:

"I seep vethy thound. Papa seeps vethy thound. Dolly got betweenthe theets and the blangticks, and came out. It was a dood dob. Dane_said_ it _was_--a dood dob!"

"What did Jane say was a good job? Poor dolly coming out?" A long, grave headshake denies this. The constructive difficulties of the taleare beyond the young narrator's skill. She has to resort to ellipsis. 

"Or I sood have been all over brang and sawduss. Dane _said_ so. "

"Don't you see, Sally, " says Tishy, "dolly was in anothercompartment--the other side of the sheet. " But Sally says, of course, _she_ understands, perhaps even suspects Tishy of claiming moreacquaintance with children than herself because she has been marriedthree weeks. This isn't fair patronising. 

"Dolly came out at ve stisses"--so the sad tale goes on--"and tyed, dolly did. Dane put her head on to ty wiv my pocket-hanshtiff!"

"I see, you little ducky, of course her head had come off, and shecouldn't cry till it was put on, was that it? Don't dance, but sayyes or no. " This referred to a seated triumphal dance the chroniclerindulged in at having put so much safely on record. Having subsided, she decided on _zass_ as the proper thing to say, but it took time. Then she added suddenly: "But I _told_ ze fisses. " Sally took a goodlong draught, and said: "Of course you did, darling. You shan't bedone out of that!" But an addendum or appendix was forthcoming. 

"My mummar says I must tate dolly to be socked for a penny where theman is wiv buttons--and the man let Totey look froo his pyglass, and see all ve long sips, sits miles long--and I shall see when I'ma glowed-up little girl, like Totey. "

"Coastguard's telescope, evidently, " says Sally. "The man up at theflagstaff. Six miles long is how far off they were, not the lengthof the ships at all. "

"I saw that. But what on earth were the socks? Does his wife selldoll's clothes?"

"We must try to find that out. " And Sally sets herself to the task. But it's none so easy. Some mystery shrouds the approach to thispassage in dolly's future life. It is connected with "kymin up, " and"tandin' on a tep, " and when it began it went wizzy, wizzy, wizz, and e-e-e-e, and never stopped. But Gwendolen had not been alarmedwhatever it was, because her "puppar" was there. But it was exhaustingto the intellect to tell of, for the description ended with a musical, if vacuous, laugh, and a plunge into Sally's bosom, where the narratorremained chuckling, but quite welcome. 

"So Gwenny wasn't pitened! What a courageous little poppet! I wonderwhat on earth it was, Sally. "

Thus Tishy, at a loss. But Sally is sharper, for in a moment thesolution dawns upon her. 

"What a couple of fools we are, Tishy dear! It wasn't _socks_--it was_shocks_. It was the galvanic battery at the end of the pier. A pennya time, and you mustn't have it on full up, or you howl. Why on earthdidn't we think of that before?"

But Nurse Jane comes in on the top of the laughter that follows, which Miss Gwendolen is joining in, rather claiming it as a triumphfor her own dramatic power. She demurs to removal, but goes in the endon condition that all present shall come and see dolly galvanised atan early date. Jane agrees to replace dolly's vitals and sew her upto qualify her for this experience. And so they depart. 

"What a dear little mite!" says Mrs. Julius; and then they let themite lapse, and go back to the previous question. 

"No, Sally dear, mamma will be mamma to the end of the time. ButI didn't tell you all papa said, did I?"

"How on earth can _I_ tell, Tishy dear? You had got to 'any dutifuldaughter would, ' etcetera. Cut along! Comes of being in love, Isuppose. " This last is a reflection on the low state of Tishy'sreasoning powers. 

"Well, just after that, when I was going to kiss him and go, papastopped me, and said he had something to say, only he mustn't be toolong because he had to finish a paper on, I think, 'Some TechnicalTerms in use in Cnidos in the Sixth Century, B. C. ' Or was it... ?"

"That was it. That one'll do beautifully. Go ahead!"

"Well--of course it doesn't matter. It was like papa, anyhow.... Oh, yes--what he said then! It was about Aunt Priscilla's thousand pounds. He wanted to repeat that the interest would be paid to me half-yearlyif by chance I married Julius or any other man without his consent. 'I wish it to be distinctly understood that if you marry Bradshaw itwill be against my consent. But I only ask you to promise me this, Lętitia, that you won't marry any other man against my consent atpresent. ' I promised, and he said I was a dutiful daughter. Therewon't be any trouble with papa. "

"Don't look like it! I say, Tishy, that thousand pounds is very nice. How much will you have? Forty pounds a year?"

"It's more than that. It's gone up, somehow--sums of money do--ordown. They're never the same as at first. I'm so glad about it. It'snot as if I brought Julius absolutely nothing. "

"How much is it?" Sally is under the impression that sums ofmoney that exist on the word of signed documents only, and whosematerialisation can only be witnessed by bankers, are like fourpence, one of whose properties is that it _is_ fourpence. They are notanalogous, and Lętitia is being initiated into the higher knowledge. 

"Well, dear, you see the stock has gone up, and it's at sixthree-quarters. You must ask Julius. He can do the arithmetic. "

"Does that mean it's sixty-seven pounds ten?"

"You'd better ask Julius. Then, you know, there's the interest. "Sally asked what interest. "Why, you see, Aunt Priscilla left itto me eleven years ago, so there's more. " But a vendor of mauveand magenta woollen goods, known to Sally as "the beach-woman, "was working up towards them. 

"That woman never goes when she comes, " said Sally. "Let's getup and go!"

 * * * * *

We like lingering over this pleasant little time. It helps on butlittle, if at all, with our story. But in years to come this youngcouple, who only slip into it by a side-chance, having really littlemore to do with it than any of the thousand and one collateralsthat interest the lives of all of us, and come and go and areforgotten--this Julius and Lętitia will talk of the pleasant threedays or so they had at St. Sennans when they came back from France. And we, too, having choice of how much we shall tell of thosethree or four days, are in little haste to leave them. Those hoursof unblushing idleness under a glorious sun--idleness fostered andencouraged until it seems one great exertion to call a fly, andanother to subside into it--idleness on matchless moonlight nights, on land or on water--idleness with an affectation of astronomicalstudy, just up to speculating on the identity of Aldebaran or Arcturus, but scarcely equal to metaphysics--idleness that lends itself readilyto turning tables and automatic writing, and gets some convincingphenomena, and finds out that so-and-so is an extraordinarymedium--idleness that says that letter will do just as well to-morrow, and Smith must wait--such hours as these disintegrate the moral fibreand anęsthetize our sense of responsibility, and make us so obliviousof musical criticism that we accept brass bands and inexplicableserenaders, white or black, and even accordions and hurdy-gurdies, asintrinsic features of the _ensemble_--the _fengshui_ of the time andplace--and give them a penny if we've got one. 

That is and will be Mr. And Mrs. Julius Bradshaw's memory of thosethree days or so, when they have grown quite old together, as we hopethey may. And if you add memory of an intoxicated delirium of love--oflove that was on no account to be shown or declared or even hintedat--and of a tiresome hitch or qualification, an unselfish parent infull blow, you will have the record that is to remain in the mind ofConrad Vereker. 

CHAPTER XXXI

HOW SALLY DIDN'T CONFESS ABOUT THE DOCTOR, AND JEREMIAH CAME TO ST. SENNANS ONCE MORE

That evening Sally sat with her mother on the very uncomfortable seatthey affected on what was known as the Parade, a stone's throw fromthe house for a good stone-thrower. It had a little platform ofpebbles to stand on, and tamarisks to tickle you from behind when thewind was northerly. It was a corrugated and painful seat, and hada strange power of finding out your tender vertebrę and pulverisingthem, whatever your stature might be. It fell forward when itsoccupants, goaded to madness, bore too hard on its front bar, andconvinced them they would do well, henceforward, to hold itartificially in its place. But Rosalind and her daughter forgaveit all these defects--perhaps because they were really too lazy toprotest even against torture. It was the sea air. Anyhow, there theysat that evening, waiting for Padlock's omnibus to come, bringingFenwick from the station. Just at the moment at which the storyovertakes them, Rosalind was looking wonderfully handsome in thesunset light, and Sally was thinking to herself what a beautifulmother she had; and how, when the after-glow dies, it will leave itsmemory in the red gold that is somewhere in the rich brown her eyesare resting on. Sally was fond of dwelling on her mother's beauty. Perhaps doing so satisfied her personal vanity by deputy. She wascontent with her own self, but had no admiration for it. 

"You _are_ a dear good mammy. Fancy your losing all the best timeof the morning indoors!"

"How the best time of the morning, chick?"

"Sitting with that old cat upstairs.... Well, I can't help it. She_is_ an old cat. "

"You're a perverse little monkey, kitten; that's what _you_ are!"Rosalind laughed with an excuse--or caress, it may be--in her laugh. "No, " she continued, "we are much too hard on that old lady, both ofus. Do you know, to-day she was quite entertaining--told me all abouther own wedding-day, and how all the bridesmaids had the mumps. "

"Has she never told you that before?"

"Only once. Then she told me about the late-lamented, and what arespect he had for her judgment, and how he referred to her at everycrisis. I didn't think her at all bad company. "

"Because you're a darling. I suppose you had it all about howProsy, when he was a boy, wanted to study music, and how his pasaid that the turning-point in the career of youth lay in the choiceof a profession. "

"Oh yes! And how his strong musical turn came from her side of thefamily. In herself it was dormant. But her Aunt Sophia had never onceput her finger on a false note of the piano. This was confirmed bythe authority of her eminent uncle, Dr. Everett Gayler, himself nomean musician. "

"Poor Prosy! I know. "

"And how musical faculty--amounting to genius--often remainedabsolutely unsuspected owing to its professor having no inheritance. But it would come out in the children. Then, and not till then, tardy justice was done.... Well, I don't know exactly how she workedit out, but she managed to suggest that she was Handel and Mozartin abeyance. Her son's fair complexion clinched matters. It was thetrue prototype of her own. A thoroughly musical complexion, bespeaking German ancestry. "

"Isn't that the omnibus?" says Sally. But, no, it isn't. Shecontinues: "I don't believe in musical complexions. Look at JuliusBradshaw--dark, with high cheek-bones, and a thin olive hand withblue veins in it. I say, mother.... "

"What, chick?"

"He's changed his identity--Julius Bradshaw has. I can't believe hewas that spooney boy that used to come hankering after me at church. "And the amusement this memory makes hangs about Sally's lips as thetwo sit on into a pause of silence. 

The face of the mother does not catch the amusement, but remains graveand thoughtful. She does not speak; but the handsome eyes that restso lovingly on the speaker are full of something from the past--somerecord that it would be an utter bewilderment to Sally to read--abewilderment far beyond that crux of the moment which maybe has struckher young mind for the first time--the old familiar puzzle of thechange that comes to all of us in our transition from first to lastexperience of the strange phenomenon we call a friend. Sally can'tmake it out--the way a silly lad, love-struck about her indifferentself so short a while back, has become a totally altered person, thehusband of her schoolmate, an actual identity of life and thought andfeeling; he who was in those early days little more than a suit ofclothes and a new prayer-book. 

But if that is so strange to Sally, how measurelessly stranger is sheherself to her mother beside her! And the man they are waiting andwatching for, who is somewhere between this and St. Egbert's stationin Padlock's venerable 'bus, what a crux is _he_, compared now tothat intoxicated young lover of two-and-twenty years ago, in thatlawn-tennis garden that has passed so utterly from his memory! And amoment's doubt, "But--has it?" is caught and absorbed by what seemedto Rosalind now an almost absurd fact--that, a week before, he hadbeen nothing but a _fidus Achates_ of that other young man providedto make up the lawn-tennis set, and that it was that other young manat first, not he, that belonged to _her_. And he had changed away soeasily to--who was it? Jessie Nairn, to be sure--and left the coastclear for his friend. Whatever now _was_ his name? Oh dear, what afool was Rosalind! said she to herself, to have half let slip that itwas _he_ that was Fenwick, and not Gerry at all. All this comparesitself with Sally's experience of Bradshaw's metamorphosis, and herown seems the stranger. 

Then a moment of sharp pain that she cannot talk to Sally of thesethings, but must lead a secret life in her own silent heart. And thenshe comes back into the living world, and finds Sally well on withthe development of another topic. 

"Of course, poor dears! They've not played a note together since therow. It's been nothing but Kensington Gardens or the Albert Hall. ButI'm afraid he's no better. If only he _could_ be, it would make allthe difference. "

"What's that, darling? _Who_ could be... ? Not your father?" For, asoften as not, Rosalind would speak of her husband as Sally's father. 

"Not Jeremiah--no. I was talking about Julius B. And his nervoussystem. Wouldn't it?"

"Wouldn't it what?"

"Make all the difference? I mean that he could get his violin-playingback. I told you about that letter?"

"No--what letter?"

"From an agent in Paris. Rateau, I think, was the name. Had heardSignor Carissimi had recovered his health completely, and wasplaying. Hoped he might be honoured with his instructions to makehis arrangements in Paris, as he had done so four years ago. Wasn'tit aggravating?"

"Does it make any difference?"

"Why, of course it does, mother darling. The aggravation! Just thinknow! Suppose he could rely on ten pounds a night, fancy that!"

"Suppose he could!... Yes, that would be nice. " But there is apreoccupation in her tone, and Sally wants sympathy to be drawn witha vigorous outline. 

"What's my maternal parent thinking about, as grave as a judge?Jeremiah's all right, mammy darling! _He's_ not killed in a railwayaccident. Catch _him_!" This is part of a systematized relationshipbetween the two. Each always discredits the possibility of mishapto the other. It might be described as chronic reciprocal ChristianScience. 

"I wasn't thinking of Gerry. " Which is true in a sense, as she doesnot think of the Gerry her daughter knows. And the partial untruthdoes not cross her mind--a tacit recognition of the powers of change. "I was wool-gathering. "

"No--what _was_ she thinking of?" For some reason the third personis thought more persuasive than the second. 

"Thinking of her kitten. " And this is true enough, as Rosalind isreally always thinking of Sally, more or less. 

"We-ell, _I'm_ all right. What's the matter with _me_?"

"Nothing at all that I know of, darling. " But it does cross thespeaker's mind that the context of circumstances might make this anopportunity for getting at some information she wants. For Sally hasremained perfectly inscrutable about Conrad Vereker, and Rosalind hasbeen asking herself whether it is possible that, after all, there_is_ nothing. She doesn't know how to set about it, though. Perhapsthe best thing would be to take a leaf out of Sally's own book, andgo straight to the bull's-eye. 

"Do you really want to know what I was thinking of, Sallykin?" Butno sooner has she formulated the intention of asking a question, andallowed the intention to creep into her voice than Sally knows allabout it. 

"As if I don't know already. You mean me and Prosy. "

"Of course. But how did you know?"

"Mammy _dear_! As if I was born yesterday! If you want people not toknow things, you mustn't have delicate inflexions of voice. I knewyou were going to catechize about Prosy the minute you got to 'didI really want to know. '"

"But I'm not going to catechize, chick. Only when you ask me what I'mthinking about, and really want to know, I tell you. I _was_ thinkingabout you and Conrad Vereker. " For some mysterious reason this mentionof his name in full seems to mature the conversation, and make clearerdefinition necessary. 

Our own private opinion is that any one who closely observes humancommunion will see that two-thirds of it runs on lines like theforegoing. Very rarely indeed does a human creature say what it means. Exhaustive definition, lucid statements, concise terminology--evenplain English--are foreign to its nature. The congenial soil in whichthe fruit of Intelligence ripens is Suggestion, and the wirelesstelegraphs of the mind are the means by which it rejoices tocommunicate. Don't try to say what you mean--because _you_ can't. Youare not clever enough. Try to mean what you want to say, and leave thedictionary to take care of itself. 

This little bit of philosophizing of ours has just given Sally time, pondering gravely with the eyebrows all at rest and lips at ease, todeal with the developed position created by the mere substitution ofa name for a nickname. 

"Ought there to be ... Anything to think about?" Thus Sally; and hermother sees, or thinks she sees, a little new colour in the girl'scheeks. Or is it only the sunset? Then Rosalind says to herselfthat perhaps she has made a mistake, had better have left it alone. Perhaps. But it's done now. She is not one that goes back on herresolutions. It is best not to be too tugging and solemn over it. Shespeaks with a laugh. 

"It's not my little daughter I'm afraid of, Sallykin. She's got thekey of the position. It's that dear good boy. "

"He's not a boy. He's thirty-one next February. Only he's not gota birthday, because it's not leap-year. Going by birthdays he's notquite half-past seven. "

"Then it won't do to go by birthdays. Even at thirty-one, though, some boys are not old enough to know better. He's very inexperiencedin some things. "

"A babe unborn--only he can write prescriptions. Only they don't doyou any good. ("Ungrateful child!"... "Well, they _don't_. ") You see, he hasn't any one to go to to ask about things except me. Of course_I_ can tell him, if you come to that!"

"There's his mother. "

"His mother! That old dianthus! Oh, mammy darling, what differentsorts of mothers do crop up when you think of it!" And Sally is somoved by this scientific marvel that she suddenly kisses her mother, there out on the public parade with a gentleman in check trousersand an eye-glass coming along!

"Why do you call the old lady a dianthus, chick? Really, the way youtreat that poor old body!... "

"Not when Prosy's there. I know my place.... We-ell, you know whata dianthus's figure is like? When the tentacles are in, I mean. "

But Rosalind tacitly condemns the analogy. Is she not herself amother, and bound to take part with her kind, however obese? "Whatwere you and the doctor talking about in the boat all that long timeyesterday?" she asks, skipping an interval which might easily havecontained a review of Mrs. Vereker inside-out like a sea-anemone. Sally is quite equal to it. 

"Resuscitation after drowning. Prosy says death is really due tocarbonic acid poisoning. Anybody would think it was choking, but it'snothing of the sort. The arterial blood is insufficiently fed withoxygen, and death ensues. "

"How long did you talk about that?"

"Ever so long. Till I asked him what he should do if a visitor weredrowned and couldn't be brought to. Not at the hotel; down here. Me, for instance. "

"What did he say?"

"He was jolly solemn over it, Prosy was. Said he should try hisbest, and as soon as he was sure it was no go, put an end to his ownexistence. I said that would be wrong, and besides, he couldn't doit. He said, oh yes, he could--he could inject air into a vein, andlots of things. He went on a physiological tack, so I quoted Hamlet. "

"What did he make of Hamlet?"

"Said the researches of modern science all tended to prove thatextinction awaited us at death, and he would take his chance. He wasquite serious over it. "

"And then you said?... "

"I said, suppose it turned out that modern science was tommy-rot, wouldn't he feel like a fool when all was said and done? He admittedthat he might, in that case. But he would take his chance, he said. And then we had a long argument, Prosy and I. "

"Has he ever resuscitated a drowned person?"

"Oh yes, two or three. But he says he should like a little morepractice, as it's a very interesting subject. "

"You really are the most ridiculous little kitten there ever was!Talking like the President of the Royal College of Surgeons! Nota smile. "

"We-ell, there's nothing in _that_. " Slightly offended dignity on MissSally's part. "I say, the 'bus is very late; it's striking seven. "

But just as St. Sennan ceases, and leaves the air clear for listening, Rosalind exclaims, "Isn't that it?" And this time it is it, andby ten minutes past seven Fenwick is in the arms of his family, whocongratulate him on a beautiful new suit of navy-blue serge, in whichhe looks very handsome. 

 * * * * *

Often now when she looks back to those days can Rosalind see beforeher the grave young face in the sundown, and hear the tale of Dr. Conrad's materialism. And then she sees once more over the smoothpurple sea of the day before the little boat sculled by Vereker, withSally in the stern steering. And the white sails of the Grace Darlingof St. Sennans, that had taken a large party out at sixpence eachperson three hours ago, and couldn't get back by herself for wantof wind, and had to be towed by a row-boat, whose oars soundedrhythmically across the mile of intervening water. She was doingnothing to help, was Grace, but her sails flopped a little now andagain, just enough to show how glad she would have been to do so witha little encouragement. Rosalind can see it all again quite plain, and the little white creamy cloud that had taken pity on the doctorsculling in the boat, and made a cool island of shadow, colouredimperial purple on the sea, for him and Sally to float in, and talkof how some unknown person, fool enough to get drowned, should oneday be recalled from the gate of Death. 

CHAPTER XXXII

HOW SALLY DIVED OFF THE BOAT, AND SHOCKED THE BEACH. OF THE SENSITIVE DELICACY OF THE OCTOPUS. AND OF DR. EVERETT GAYLER'S OPINIONS

Fenwick had been granted, or had appropriated, another week's holiday, and the wine-trade was to lose some of his valuable services duringthat time. Not all, because in these days you can do so much bytelegraph. Consequently the chimney-piece with the rabbits made ofshells on each side, and the model of the Dreadnought--with realplanks and a companion-ladder that went too far down, and almostserviceable brass carronades ready for action--and a sampler by MercyLobjoit (1763), showing David much too small for the stitches he wascomposed of, and even Goliath not big enough to have two lips--thischimney-piece soon become a magazine of yellow telegrams, which blewaway when the window and door were open at the same time. 

It was on the second of Fenwick's days on this visit that an unusualstorm of telegrams, as he came in to breakfast after an early dip inthe sea, confirmed the statement in the paper of the evening beforethat W. And S. W. Breezes might be expected later. "Wind freshening, "was the phrase in which the forecast threw doubts on the permanencyof its recent references to a smooth Channel-passage. However, faithhad already been undermined by current testimony to light easterlywinds backing north, on the coast of Ireland. Sally was denouncingmeteorology as imposture when the returning bather produced the effectrecorded. It interrupted a question on his lips as he entered, andpostponed it until the telegram papers had all been reinstated and thewindow closed, so that Mrs. Lobjoit might come in with the hot rollsand eggs and not have anything blown away. Then peace reigned and thequestion got asked. 

"What are we going to do to-day?" said Sally, repeating it. "I knowwhat I'm going to do first. I'm going to swim round the buoy. "

"My dear, they'll never put the machines down to-day. " This was hermother. 

"They'll do it fast enough, if I tell 'em to. It's half the fun, having it a little rough. "

"Well, kitten, I suppose you'll go your own way; only I shall be veryglad when you're back in your machine. Coffee, Gerry?"

"Yes, coffee--in the big cup with the chip, and lots of milk. You'rea dangerous young monkey, Sarah; and I shall get old Benjamin's boat, and hang about. And then you'll be happy, Rosey, eh?"

"No, I shan't! We shall have you getting capsized, too. (I put inthree lumps of sugar.... No, _not_ little ones--_big_ ones!) Whata thing it is to be connected with aquatic characters!"

"Never you mind the mother, Jeremiah. You get the boat. I should likeit to dive off. "

"All right, I'll get Vereker, and we'll row out. The doctor's not badas an oarsman. Bradshaw doesn't make much of it. (Yes, thanks; anotheregg. The brown one preferred; don't know why!) Yes, I'll get Dr. Conrad, and you shall come and dive off. "

All which was duly done, and Sally got into great disgrace byscrambling up into the boat with the help of a looped rope hung overthe side, and was thereafter known to more than one decorous familygroup frequenting the beach as that bold Miss Nightingale. But whatdid Sally care what those stuffy people thought about her, with sucha set-off against their bad opinion as the glorious plunge down intothe depths, and the rushing sea-murmur in her ears, the only sound inthe strange green silence; and then the sudden magic of the change backto the dazzling sun on the moving foam, and some human voice that wasspeaking when she dived only just ending off? Surely, after so long aplunge down, down, that voice should have passed on to some new topic. 

For that black and shining merpussy, during one deep dive into theunder-world of trackless waters, had had time to recollect anappointment with a friend, and had settled in her mind that, as soonas she was once more in upper air, she would mention it to the crewof the boat she had dived from. She was long enough under for that. Then up she came into the rise and fall and ripple overhead like asudden Loreley, and as soon as she could see where the boat had gotto, and was free of a long stem of floating weed she had caught upin the foam, she found her voice. And in it, as it rang out in themorning air, was a world of youth and life and hope from which carewas an outcast, flung to the winds and the waves. 

"I say, Jeremiah, we've got to meet a friend of yours on the pierthis afternoon. "

"Time for you to come out of that water, Sarah. " This name hadbecome nearly invariable on Fenwick's part. "Who's your friend?"

"A young lady for you! She's going to bring her dolly to beelectrified for a penny. She'll cry if we don't go; so will dolly. "

"Then we _must_ go, clearly. The doctor must come to see fair, ordolly may get electrocuted, like me. " Fenwick very rarely spoke of hisaccident now; most likely would not have done so this time but for amotive akin to his wife's nettle-grasping. He knew Sally would thinkof it, and would not have her suppose he shirked speaking of it. 

But the laugh goes for a moment out of the face down there in thewater, and the pearls that glittered in the sun have vanished and theeyes are grave beneath their brows. Only for a moment; then all theLoreley is back in evidence again, and Sally is petitioning for onlyone more plunge, and then she really will swim in. The crew protests, but the Loreley has her way; her sort generally has. 

"I always wonder, " says Dr. Conrad, as they row to shore withstudied slowness--one must, to keep down to the pace of the swiftestswimmer--"I always wonder whether they found that half-crown. " Probablyhe, too, only says this to accentuate the not-necessarily-to-be-avoidedcharacter of the subject. 

The reason Fenwick answered nothing, but remained thoughtfully silent, was, as Dr. Vereker perceived after he had spoken, that the half-crownwas mere hearsay to him, and, as such, naturally enforced speculationon the strange "B. C. " period of which he knew nothing. Time didbut little to minimise the painful character of such speculations, although it seemed to make them less and less frequent. Vereker saidno more, partly because he felt this, partly because he was soengrossed with the Loreley. He dropped the half-crown. 

"You needn't row away yet, " said the voice from the water. "Themachines are miles off. Look here, I'm going to swim under the boatand come up on the other side!"

Said Fenwick: "You'll be drowned, Sarah, before you've done! Doconsider your mother a little!"

Said the Loreley: "All right! good-bye!" and disappeared. She was solong under that it was quite a relief when she reappeared, well offthe boat's counter; for, of course, there was some way on the boat, and Sally made none. The crew's eyes had been watching the wrong waterover the beam. 

"Didn't I do that nicely?... 'Beautifully?' Yes, I should ratherthink I did! Good-bye; I must go to my machine! They won't leave itdown any longer. "

Off went the swimmer in the highest spirits, and landed with somedifficulty, so much had the south-west wind freshened; and the machinestarted up the beach at a brisk canter to rejoin its many unusedcompanions on their higher level. 

 * * * * *

Dr. Conrad, with the exhilaration of the Loreley in his heart, wasto meet with a damper administered to him by his affectionate parent, who had improved immensely in the sea air, and was getting quite anappetite. 

"There is nothing, my dear, that I detest more cordially thaninterference, " said she, after accepting, rather more easily thanusual, her son's apologies for coming in late to lunch, and also beingdistinctly gracious to Mrs. Iggulden about the beefsteak-pudding. "Your father disapproved of it, and the whole of my family. The words'never meddle' were on their lips from morning till night. Is itwonderful that I abstain from speaking, as I so often do? Whatever Isee, I am silent. " And accordingly was for a few illustrative seconds. 

But her son, conceiving that the pause was one very common in casesof incipient beefsteak-pudding, and really due to kidneys, made anautopsy of the centre of Mrs. Iggulden's masterpiece; but when he haddifferentiated its contents and insulated kidneys beyond a doubt, hestood exposed and reproved by the tone in which his mother resumed:

"Not for me; I have oceans. I shall never eat what I have, and it_is_ so wasteful!... No, my dear. You ask, 'What is it, then?' ButI was going to tell you when you interrupted me. " Here a pause forthe Universe to settle down to attention. "There is always so muchdisturbance; but my meaning is plain. When I was a girl young womenwere different.... I dare say it is all right. I do not wish to laymyself open to ridicule for my old-fashioned opinions.... What_is_ it? I came back early, certainly, because I found the sun sotiring; but surely, my dear, you cannot have failed to see that ourfront window commands a full view of the bathing-machines. But Iam silent.... Mrs. Iggulden does not understand making mustard. Hers runs. "

Dr. Conrad was not interested in the mustard. He _was_ about thecryptic attack on Sally's swimming and diving, which he felt to havebeen dexterously conveyed in his parent's speech with scarcely aword really to the point. There was no lack of skill in the Goody'smethod. He flushed slightly, and made no immediate reply--even toa superhumanly meek, "I know I shall be told I am wrong"--until afterhe had complied with a requisition for a very little more--so smalla quantity as to seem somehow to reduce the lady's previous totalmorally, though it added to it physically--and then he spoke, takingthe indictment for granted:

"I can't see what you find fault with. Not Miss Sally'sbathing-costume; nobody could!" Which was truth itself, for nothingmore elegant could have been found in the annals of bathing. "And ifshe has a boat to dive off, somebody must row it. Besides, her motherwould object if.... " But the doctor is impatient and annoyed--a rarething with him. He treats his beefsteak-pudding coldly, causing hismother to say: "Then you can ring the bell. "

However, she did not intend her text to be spoiled by irruptionsof Mrs. Iggulden, so she waited until the frequent rice-pudding hadelapsed, and then resumed at an advantage:

"You were very snappish and peevish with me just now, Conrad, withoutwaiting to hear what I had to say. But I overlook it. I am yourmother. If you had waited, I should have told you that I have no faultwhatever to find with Miss Nightingale's bathing-dress. It is, nodoubt, strictly _en rčgle_. Nor can I say, in these days, what I thinkof girls practising exercises that in _my_ day were thought unwomanly. All is changed now, and I am old-fashioned. But this I do say, thathad your father, or your great-uncle, Dr. Everett Gayler, been toldforty years ago that a time would come when it would be thought nodisgrace for an _English girl_ to jump off a boat with an _unmarriedman_ in it.... My dear, I am sure the latter would have made one ofthose acrid and biting remarks for which he was celebrated in his owncircle, and which have even, I believe, been repeated by Royalty. Thatis the only thing I have to say. I say nothing of girls learning toswim and dive. I say nothing of their bicycling. Possibly the younglady who passed the window this morning with a gentleman _on the samebicycle_ was properly engaged to him; or his sister. Even about thepractice of Sandow, or Japanese wrestling, I have nothing to say. Butif they are to dive off boats in the open sea, in the face of all thebeach, at least let the boats be rowed by married men. That is allI ask. It is very little. "

What fools mothers sometimes are about their sons! They contrivethat these sons shall pass through youth to early manhood withouta suspicion that even mothers have human weaknesses. Then, all ina moment, just when love has ridden triumphant into the citadel ofthe boys' souls, they will sacrifice all--all they have won in alifetime--to indulge some petty spleen against the new _régime_ thatthreatens their dethronement. And there is no surer way of undermininga son's loyalty than to suggest a want of delicate feeling in the newQueen--nothing that can make him question the past so effectually asto force him to hold his nostrils in a smell of propriety, puffedinto what seems to him a gale from heaven. 

The contrast between the recent merpussy in the freshening seas, andthis, as it seemed to him, perfectly gratuitous intrusion of moralcarbolic acid, gave Dr. Conrad a sense of nausea, which his love forhis mother enjoined ignorance of. His mind cast about, not for waysof excusing Sally--the idea!--but of whitewashing his mother, withoutseeming to suggest that her own mind had anything Fescennine about it. This is always the great difficulty skywardness has in dealing withthe moral scavenger. Are not the motives of purity unimpeachable?

Goody Vereker, however, did not suspect herself of being a fool. Onthe contrary, she felt highly satisfied with her speech, and may besaid to have hugged its peroration. Her son flushed slightly and bithis lip, giving the old lady time for a corollary in a subdued andchastened voice. 

"Had I been asked--had you consulted me, my dear--I should certainlyhave advised that Mr. Fenwick should have been accompanied by anothermarried man, certainly not by a young, single gentleman. The manhimself--I am referring to the owner of the boat--would have donequite well, whether married or single. Boatmen are seldom unmarried, though frequently tattooed with ladies' names when they have been inthe navy. You see something to laugh at, Conrad? In your mother! ButI am used to it. " The doctor's smile was in memory of two sun-brownedarms that had pushed the boat off two hours ago. One had Elinor andKate on it, the other Bessie and a Union Jack. 

"Don't you think, mother dear, " said the doctor at last, "that ifMrs. Fenwick, who knew all about it, had seen anything outrageousshe would have spoken? She really only seemed anxious none of usshould get drowned. "

"Very likely, my dear; she would be. You will, I am sure, do me thisjustice, that I have throughout said, from the very beginning, thatMrs. Fenwick is a most excellent person, though I have sometimesfound her tiring. "

"I am sorry she has tired you. You must always tell her, you know, when you're tired, and then she'll come and fetch me. " The doctorresisted a temptation to ask, "From the very beginning of _what_?"For the suggestion that materials for laceration were simmering waswithout foundation; was, in fact, only an example of the speaker'smethod. She followed it with another. 

"It is so often the case with women who have passed a good deal oftime in India. "

"Are women tiring when they have passed a good deal of time in India?"

"My dear Conrad, _is it likely_ I should talk such nonsense? You knowperfectly well what I mean. " But the doctor merely awaited naturaldevelopment, which came. "Mind, I do not say I _believe_ Mrs. JuliusBradshaw's story. But it would quite account for it--fully!"

What would account for what? Heaven only knew! However, the speakerwas getting the bit in her teeth, and earth would know very soon. Dr. Conrad was conscious at this moment of the sensation which had oncemade Sally speak of his mamma as an Octopus. She threw out a tentacle. 

"And, of course, Mrs. Julius Bradshaw's story may be nothing but idletalk. I am the last person to give credit to mere irresponsiblegossip. Let us hope it is ill founded. "

Whereupon her son, who knew another tentacle would come and entanglehim if he slipped clear from this one, surrendered at discretion. What_was_ Mrs. Julius Bradshaw's story? A most uncandid way of putting it, for the fact was he had heard it all from Sally in the strictestconfidence. So the insincerity was compulsory, in a sense. 

The Octopus, who was by this time anchored in her knitting-chairand awaiting her mixture--two tablespoonfuls after every meal--closedher eyes to pursue the subject, but warmed to the chace visibly. 

"Are you going to tell me, my dear Conrad, that you do _not_ knowthat it has been said--I vouch for nothing, remember--that MissNightingale's mother was divorced from her father twenty years agoin India?"

"I don't think it's any concern of yours or mine. " But having saidthis, he would have liked to recall it and substitute something else. It was brusque, and he was not sure that it was a fair way of statingthe case, especially as this matter had been freely discussed betweenthem in the days of their first acquaintance with Sally and hermother. Dr. Conrad felt mean for renegading from his apparentadmission at that time that the divorce was an affair they mightproperly speculate about. Mrs. Vereker knew well that her son wouldbe hard on himself for the slightest unfairness, and forthwith climbedup to a pinnacle of flawless rectitude, for his confusion. 

"My dear, it is absolutely _none_. Am I saying that it is? People'spast lives are no affair of ours. Am I saying that they are?"

"Well, no!"

"Very well, then, my dear, listen to what I do say, and do notmisrepresent me. What I say is this--(Are you sure Perkins has mixedthis medicine the same as the last? The taste's different)--Nowlisten! What I say is, and I can repeat it any number of times, thatit is useless to expect sensitiveness on such points under suchcircumstances. I am certain that your father, or your great-uncle, Dr. Everett Gayler, would not have hesitated to endorse my opinionthat on the broad question of whether a girl should or should not diveoff a boat rowed by an unmarried man, no one is less likely to form acorrect judgment than a lady who was divorced from her husband twentyyears ago in India. But I say nothing against Mrs. Fenwick. She is, sofar as she is known to me, an excellent person, and a good wife andmother. Now, my dear Conrad, I must rest, for I fear I have talkedtoo much. "

Poor Prosy! All the edge of his joy of the morning was taken off. Butnever mind! It would very soon be Sally herself again, and his thirstysoul would be drinking deep draughts of her at the pier-end, where theappointment was to be kept with the young lady and her dolly. 

CHAPTER XXXIII

OF AN INTERMITTENT CURRENT AT THE PIER-END, AND OF DOLLY'S FORTITUDE. HOW FENWICK PUT HIS HEAD IN THE JAWS OF THE FUTURE UNAWARES, AND PROSY DIDN'T COME. HOW SALLY AND HER STEP SAW PUNCH, AND OF A THIN END OF A FATAL WEDGE. BUT ROSALIND SAW NO COMING CLOUD

An iron pier, with a sense of lattice structure about it, is not toour old-fashioned minds nearly so fascinating as the wooden fabric ofour early memories at more than one seaside resort of our boyhood. St. Sennan was of another school, or had become a convert or pervert, ifa Saint may be judged by his pier. For this was iron or steel allthrough, barring the timber flooring whose planks were a quarter of aninch apart, so that you could kneel down to see the water through ifyou were too short to see over the advertisements a sordid spirit ofcommercialism had blocked the side-railings with. And if you werethree or four, and there was nobody to hold you up (because they werecarrying baby), you did so kneel, and as like as not got tar on yourknees, and it wouldn't come off. Anyhow, Miss Gwendolen Arkwright did, on her way to the appointment, and was reproved therefore. On whichshe also reproved dolly in identical terms, dolly having had a lookthrough as well, though, indeed, she can hardly be said to have knelt. 

But to console us for the loss of the solid groins and bolted timbersof our youth, and to make it palatable to us that the great seasshould follow each other for ever almost unopposed--instead of beingbroken into floods of drenching foam visitors get wet-through in--thisunsubstantial-looking piece of cage-work expanded as soon as it waswell out in the open channel, and almost provided John Bull withanother "other island. " And whereon the pier-company's sordidcommercialism had suggested the construction of a Chinese joss-house, or Indian bungalow--our description is a random one--that lent itself, or was lent by the company, at really an almost nominal figure, forentertainments in the afternoon all through the season. And round thisstructure were things desirable by all mankind, and supposed to bedesired by possessors of one penny willing to part with it. For apenny-in-the-slot you could learn your fate from a Sibyl, and repentof having spent your penny on it. For another you could scent yourpocket-handkerchief, and be sorry you hadn't kept your penny forchocolate. For another you could have the chocolate, and wish youhad waited and taken a cigarette. And for another you could take thecigarette, and realise how ill-assorted are the flavours of chocolateand the best Virginian tobacco. 

But the pennyworth that seemed the worthiest of its penny was, nodoubt, the old-fashioned galvanic battery, which shocked you fora sixth part of the smallest sum required by literature on firstpublication. It had brass handles you took hold of, and brass basinswith unholy water in them that made you curl up, and anybody elsewould do so too. And there was a bunch of wires to push in, andagonize the victim who, from motives not easily understood, laidhimself open to torture. And it certainly said "whizzy-wizzy-wizz. "But Gwenny's description had been wrong in one point. For it wasyourself, the investigator, not the machine, that said "e-e-e-e!"

Now this machine was in charge of a young woman, who was also thecustodian of an invisible lady, who was to be seen for a penny eachperson, children half-price. This appeared to be a contradiction interms, but public apathy accepted it without cavil. The taking ofthis phenomenon's gate-money seemed to be almost a sinecure. Not sothe galvanic battery, which never disappointed any one. It mightdisgust, or repel, those who had had no occasion to study thisbranch of science, but it always acted up to its professions. Thoseinvestigators who declined to have any more never could go away andcomplain that they had not had enough. And no one had ever beendiscontented with its baneful results when all the bundle of wireswas put in; indeed, the young person in charge said she had neverknown any one to drain this cup of scientific experience to the dregs. "Halfway in's enough for most, " was her report of human endurance. It was a spirited little machine, though old-fashioned. 

Miss Arkwright and her dolly, accompanied, as we have hinted, byher Nurse Jane and baby, whose violent temper had condemned hisperambulator, and compelled his attendant to carry him--so shesaid--were beforehand at the place and hour named. For securityagainst possible disappointment a fiction was resorted to that dollywouldn't cry if her mamma talked seriously to her, and it was pointedout that Mr. Fenwick was coming, and Mrs. Fenwick was coming, and MissNightingale was coming, and Dr. Vereker was coming--advantage beingtaken of an infant's love of vain repetitions. But all these fourevents turned on dolly being good and not crying, and the reflexaction of this stipulation produced goodness in dolly's mamma, withthe effect that she didn't roar, as, it seemed, she might otherwisehave done. 

Miss Gwendolen was, however, _that_ impatient that no dramaticsubterfuge, however skilfully engineered, could be relied upon tolast. Fortunately, a young lady she recognised, and a gentlemanwhom she did not personally know, but had seen on the beach, becameinterested in baby, who took no notice of them, and hiccupped. But, then, his eyes were too beady to have any human expression; perhapsit was more this than a contempt for vapid compliment that made himseem unsympathetic. The young lady, however, congratulated him on his_personnel_ and on the variety of his attainments; and this interestedMiss Gwendolen, who continued not to roar, and presently volunteereda statement on her own account. 

"My mummar zis a-comin', and Miss Ninedale zis a-comin', and MissNinedale's mummar zis a-comin', and.... " But Nurse Jane interposed, on the ground that the lady knew already who was coming. She had noreason for supposing this; but a general atmosphere of omniscienceamong grown-up classes is morally desirable. It was, however, limitedto Clause 1. Miss Gwenny went on to the consideration of Clause 2without taking a division. 

"To see dolly danvalised for a penny. My mummar says--see--sall--divme a penny.... "

"To galvanise dolly? How nice that will be!--Isn't she a dear littlething, Paggy?--And we're just in time to see it. Now, that _is_ nice!"Observe Lętitia's family name for her husband, born of Cattley's. 

"Isn't that them coming, Tish?" Yes, it is. They are conscientiouslynegotiating the turnstile at the pier-entrance, where one gets aticket that lets you on all day, and you lose it. Conscientiously, because the pier-company often left its side-gate open, and reliedon public spirit to acquiesce in its turnstile without dispute. 

But Bradshaw has the misfortune to fall in Nurse's good opinion. Forhe asks who the important-looking party is, and is called to order. 

"Sh-sh-iii-sh, love! Do take care! Gwenny's mamma--Mrs. ChesterfieldArkwright. They've a house at Boxley Heath--friends of the HughJameses--those very high-flying people. " This is not _ą pleine voix_, and a well-disciplined Nurse knows better than to hear it. 

Miss Gwenny and dolly consent to accompany the lady and gentleman tomeet the party, the former undertaking to point out her mamma. "I sailsow you wiss, " she says; and then gives descriptive particulars ofthe conduct of the galvanic battery, and forecasts its effect on dolly. 

"There's that dear little pet, " says Sally; and resumes the operationof spoiling the little pet on the spot. She isn't sorry to tally thepet (whose phonetics we employ) "dest wunced round the p on hersoulders, only zis wunced. " She is a little silent, is Sally, andpreoccupied--perhaps won't object to a romp to divert her thoughts. Because she is afraid poor Prosy is in the tentacles of the Octopus. She evidently is not in love with him; if she were she would befeeling piqued at his not being in time to the appointment, notfidgeting about his losing the fun. She made some parade, at any rate, of her misgivings that poor Dr. Conrad had got hooked by his Goody, and would be late. If she _was_ piqued she concealed it. Whicheverit was, she found it congenial to "tally" Miss Arkwright on her"soulders" twiced round the pier-end before the party arrived withinrange of the battery. They meanwhile--that is to say, Rosalind and herhusband, Lętitia and hers, with Sally and Gwenny's mamma--lingeredslowly along the pier listening to the experiences of the latter, ofmen, women, and things among the right sort of people. 

"You really never know, and one cannot be too careful. So much turnson the sort of people you let your daughter get mixed up with. I'msure Mrs. Fenwick will agree with me that Mrs. Hugh James was right. You see, I've known her from a child, and a more unworldly creaturenever breathed. But she asked me, and I could only say what I did:'Take the child at once to Paris and Ems and Wiesbaden--anywhere fora change. Even a tradesman is better than a professional man. In thatcase there may be money. But nowadays none of the professions pay. And their connexions are most undesirable. '"

"Now _I_ should call that a brig. " Thus Bradshaw, pursuing the greatcontroversy. But Fenwick knows better, or thinks he does. She's abrigantine, and there are sprits'ls on both masts, and only one squaresail on the foremast. He may be right, for anything we know. Anyhow, her sheets are white in the sun, as she tacks down channel against thewest or south-west wind, which has freshened. And she is a glorioussight as she comes in quite close to the pier-head, and goes intostays--(is that right?)--and her great sails flap and swing, and aperson to whom caution is unknown, and who cares for nothing in heavenor earth, sits unconcerned on a string underneath her bowsprit, andgets wet through every time she plunges, doing something nautical inconnexion with her foresail overhead. And then she leans over in thebreeze, and the white sheets catch it full--so near you can hear theboom click as it swings, and the rattle of the cordage as it runsthrough the blocks--and then she gets her way on her, and shoots offthrough a diamond-drench of broken seas, and we who can borrow thecoastguard's telescope can know that she is the Mary of Penzance, butare none the wiser. And a man stripped to the waist, who is washingradishes on the poop, continues washing radishes unmoved, and ignoresall things else. 

"As far as the young man himself goes, I believe there is nothing tobe said. But the mother is quite unpresentable, perfectly impossible. And the eldest sister is married to a Dissenting clergyman--a veryworthy man, no doubt, but not exactly. And the girls are loud, etc. , etc. , etc. " Miss Arkwright's mamma ripples on, even as persons ofcondition ripple; and Tishy, whose views in this direction haveundergone expansion, manages to forget how she has done the sameherself--not long ago, neither!--and decides that the woman isdetestable. 

Not so her daughter, who, with Sally as guardian and dolly as ward, is awaiting the arrival of the party at the galvanic battery. She isyearning for the great event; not for a promised land of jerks andspasms for herself, but for her putative offspring. She encouragesthe latter, telling her not to be pitened and kye. Dolly doesn't seemapprehensive--shows great self-command, in fact. 

But this detestable mother of a lovable daughter and an untemptinggranddaughter is destined to become still more detestable in the eyesof the Julius Bradshaws before she exhausts her topic. For as theparty draws near to the scene of scientific recreation--and progressis slow, as she is deliberate as well as detestable; and, of course, is the pace-maker--she climbs up to a higher platform, as it were, for the contemplation of a lower deep. She assumes, for purposes oftemporary handling of the subject, the air of one too far removed toknow more about its details than the seismograph at Greenwich knowsabout the earthquake in the Andes. A dim contemplation of a thingafar--to be forgotten on the spot, after record made. 

"Luckily, it's not so bad in this case as--(Gwenny, you're tiringMiss Nightingale. Come down!)--not so bad in this case as--(no, mydear! you _must_ wait for dolly to be galvanised. Come down at once, and don't make conditions. )"

"But I love having her dearly--do let me keep her!" from Sally. 

And from the human creature on her shoulders, "Miss Ninedale says'_No!_'"

"Not so bad, you were saying, as... ?" Thus Rosalind, to divert theconversation from the child. 

"Oh dear! What _was_ I saying? That child! What plagues the littlethings are!" The lady closes her eyes for two seconds behind ahorizontal gloved hand, a seclusion to recollect in; then continues:"Oh yes, when it's a shopman. I dare say you've heard of that verypainful case--daughter of a well-known Greek Pr.... "

But the speaker has tact enough to see her mistake from thesimultaneous loud speech it provokes. Every one seems to havesomething vociferous to say, and all speak at once. Sally'scontribution is a suggestion that before dolly is put to the torturewe shall go into the downstairs place and see the gentleman who'sfishing catch a big grey mullet. It is adopted. Rosalind only remainsupstairs, and takes the opportunity to communicate the Julius Bradshawepic to Gwenny's mamma, who will now be more careful than ever aboutthe sort of people you pick up at the seaside and drop. She putsthese words by in her mind, for Gwenny's papa, later on. 

The gentleman who is to be seen catching the big grey mullet hadn'tcaught it, so far--not when the party arrived on the strangemiddle-deck of the pier the water reaches at high tide, and persuadesoccasional molluscs to grow on the floor of, with promises of a bathnext month. The green reflected light from the endless rise and fallof the waves Gwenny could see (without getting down) through thefloor-gaps, seemed to be urging the fisher-gentleman to give it up, and pointing out that the grey mullet was down here, and didn't meanto be caught. But he paid no attention, and only went on doing all thethings that fishers do. He ascribed the fishes' reluctance to bite tothe sort of sky, and not to common-sense on their part. He tried theother side instead. He lost his worm, and blamed him for going off thehook--which he would have done himself, and he knew it! He believed, honestly, that a fish of fabulous dimensions had thought seriouslyof biting, and would have bitten, only you got in the light, or madea noise. 

But there was no noise to speak of, really, except the clunk-clunk ofone or two moored rowboats down below, and the sh-r-r-r-r-p (if thatspells it) of their corrugated plank-sides, as they dipped and drippedalternately. They were close to the bottom flight of stairs, whoselowest step was left forlorn in the air, and had to be jumped off whena real spring-tide came that knew its business. 

Gwenny's remark, "Ze man is fissin', " seemed to point to an incubationof an idea, familiar to maturer life, that fishing is more truly astate than an action. But the addendum--that he didn't cass anyfiss--betrayed her inexperience. Maturity does not call attentionto ill-success; or, if it does, it lays it at the door of the fish. 

"What a jolly header one could have from here! No railings oranything. No--ducky! I won't put you down to look over the edge. That's not a thing for little girls to do. "

"You'd never get up again, Sarah. You'd have to swim ashore. "

"One could swim round the steps, Jeremiah--at least, according tothe tide. It's slack water now. "

"I wish, Mr. Fenwick--(so does Julius)--that you would make thatgirl reasonable. She'll drown herself before she's done. "

"I know she will, Mrs. Paganini. Sure and certain! Nobody can stopher. But Vereker's going to bring her to. "

"Where _is_ the doctor, Tish? Didn't he say he was coming?" This wasBradshaw. He usually says things to his wife, and leaves publicationto her. 

"Of course he said he was coming. I wonder if anything's the matter?"

"Oh, no! It's his ma! The Goody's put an embargo on him, and kept himat home. Poor Prosy!" Sally is vexed, too. But observe!--she knowsperfectly well that nothing but the Goody would have kept Prosy fromhis appointment. 

No one in particular, but every one more or less, supposes that nowwe must go back for dolly to be galvanised, Tishy rather reluctantly, for she does not share her husband's indifference about what thedetestable one above says on the subject of shopmen; Miss Arkwrightgreedily, being reminded of a higher object in life than mere greymullet catching. She, however, ascribes her avidity to dolly, callingon public credulity to believe that the latter has spoken to thateffect. 

The arrangement of dolly in connexion with the two brass handlesoffers difficulties, but a felicitous solution is discovered, for notonly will dolly remain in contact with both if her arms are thrustinside them, but insomuch as her sleeves are stiff and expansive, andrequire a perceptible pull to withdraw them, will remain suspended inmid-air without further support, to enjoy the rapture or endure thetorture of the current, as may prove to be the case. From thisarises an advantage--namely, that her mamma will be able to give herattention to the regulator, and shift the wire bundle in and out, with a due regard to dolly's powers of endurance. 

What little things the lives of the folk in this story have turnedon! Now, suppose Gwenny had never been allowed to take charge of thatregulator! However, this is anticipation. 

When dolly had endured unmoved the worst that science could inflict, nothing would satisfy Miss Gwenny but that every one else should takehold in a circle, as on a previous occasion, and that she shouldretain control of the regulator. The experiment was tried as proposed, all present joining in it except Mrs. Arkwright, who excused herselfowing to the trouble of taking her gloves off. Including nurse, therewere six persons. However, as nurse couldn't abide it, almost beforeit had begun to say whizzy-wizzy-wizz, this number was reduced tofive. 

"Keep your eye on the kid, my dear, " said Fenwick, addressing thepresiding young lady in his easy-going way; "don't let her put iton all at once. Are you ready, Sarah? You ready, Mrs. Paganini? Allright--fire away!"

The young lady in charge kept a careful hand near Miss Gwenny's, who was instructed or guided to increase the current gradually. Herattitude was docile and misleading. 

"Go on--a little more--yes, a little more.... No, that's enough!... Oh, what nonsense! that's nothing!... Oh, Sally, do let _go_!... Oh, Tishy, what a goose you are! That's nothing.... E-ow! It's horrible. _I_ won't have any more of it. " The chorus of exclamations, whichyou may allot at choice, ended in laughter as the galvanised circlebroke up. 

"Well, you are a lot of weak-kneed ... Conductivities, " said Fenwick, feeling for the word. "That was nothing, as Sarah says. "

"Look here, " suggested Sally. "Me get between you two men, and Gwennystick it in full up. " This was done, and Sally heroically endured the"full up" current, which, as you doubtless are aware, increases inviciousness as it has fewer and fewer victims. But she wasn't sorrywhen it was over, for all that. 

"You and I could take it full up, " said Fenwick to Bradshaw, whoassented. But Paganini evidently didn't like it when it came tothree-quarters. Also, his wife said to him, "You'll spoil yourfingering, Julius. "

Fenwick seemed to think them all over-sensitive. "I could stand thatby myself, " said he, and took both handles. 

But just at this moment a strange event happened. Somebody actuallyapplied to see the invisible lady. The eyes of the damsel in chargewere for one moment withdrawn from Miss Gwenny, who promptly seizedthe opportunity to thrust in the regulator "full up. "

Fenwick wasn't going to cry for mercy--not he! But his lips clenchedand his eyes glared, and his hands shook. "How can you be such a_goose_, Jeremiah?" said Sally, who was standing close by the battery, opposite to Gwenny. She thrust back the regulator, and put an end toFenwick's excruciations. 

He said, "What did you do that for, Sarah? I could have stood it forsix months. "

And Sally replied: "For shame, you wicked story! And after you'd beenelectrocuted once, too!"

Fenwick burst into a great laugh, and exclaimed, "What on earth arewe all torturing ourselves for? Do let's go and get some tea. " Andthen carried Gwenny on his shoulders to the pier-entrance, wherehe delivered her to her proprietors, and then they all saunteredteawards, laughing and chatting. 

Rosalind thought she had never seen Gerry in such health andspirits. On their way up to the house they passed Punch, leaningover the footlights to rejoice in his iniquity. Few persons ofhealthy sympathies can pass Punch, and these only under the strongesttemptation, such as tea. Rosalind and Lętitia and her husband belongedto the latter class, but Fenwick and Sally elected to see the immortaldrama to a close. It lasted nearly through the remainder of Fenwick'scigar, and then they came away, reluctant, and wanting more of thesame sort. 

It was then that Sally's stepfather said a rather singular thing toher--a thing she remembered afterwards, though she noticed it butslightly at the time. She had said to him:

"Codling and Short will be quite rich men! What a lot of money you'vegiven them, Jeremiah!"

And he had replied: "Don't they deserve it?"

They had then walked on together up the road, he taking her arm in hishand, as is the way nowadays, but saying nothing. Presently he said, as he threw away the very last end of the cigar:

"It was the first lesson of my early boyhood in retributive injustice. It's a poor heart that never rejoices at Punch. "

It was the first time Sally had ever heard him speak of his boyhoodexcept as a thing he had forgotten. 

 * * * * *

Much, so much, of this chapter is made up of matter so trifling. Wasit worth recording? The chronicler might plead again as excuse histemptation to linger over the pleasant hours it tells of, the utterfreedom of its actors from care, and his reluctance to record theirsequel. But a better apology for his prolixity and detail would befound in the wonder felt by those actors when in after-life theylooked back and recalled them one by one; and the way each memorylinked itself, in a way unsuspected at the time, with an absolutelyunanticipated future. For even Rosalind, with all her knowledge of thepast, had no guess, for all her many misgivings and apprehensions, ofthe way that things would go. Never had she been freer from a senseof the shadow of a coming cloud than when she looked out from thewindow while the tea she had just made was mellowing, and saw herhusband and daughter coming through the little garden gate, linkedtogether and in the best of spirits. 

CHAPTER XXXIV

OF THE REV. SAMUEL HERRICK AND A SUNSET. THE WEDGE'S PROGRESS. THE BARON AGAIN, AND THE FLY-WHEEL. HOW FENWICK KNEW HIS NAME RIGHT, AND ROSALIND DIDN'T. HOW SALLY AND HER MEDICAL ADVISER WERE NOT QUITE WET THROUGH. HOW HE HAD MADE HER THE CONFIDANTE OF A LOVE-AFFAIR. OF A GOOD OPENING IN SPECIALISM. MORE PROGRESS OF THE WEDGE. HOW GERRY NEARLY MADE DINNER LATE

It was quite true, as Sally had surmised, that poor Prosy had beenentangled in the meshes of his Octopus. But Sally had also recordedher conviction that he would turn up at tea. He did so, withapologies. You see, he hadn't liked to come away while his motherwas asleep, in case she should ask for him when she woke up, andshe slept rather longer than usual. 

"She may have been trying to do too much lately, " said he, with abeautiful faith in some mysterious activities practised by the Goodyunseen. Sally cultivated this faith also, to the best of her ability, but she can hardly be said to have embraced it. The way in which sheand her mother lent themselves to it was, nevertheless, edifying. 

"You mustn't let her overdo it, doctor, " said Rosalind, seriouslybelieving herself truthful. And Sally, encouraged by her evidentearnestness, added, "And make her take plenty of nourishment. That'shalf the battle. "

Whereupon Lętitia, swept, as it were, into the vortex of a creed, found it in her to say, "As long as she doesn't get low. " It was notvigorous, and lacked completion, but it reassured and enforced. By thetime the little performance was done every one in the room believedthat Mrs. Vereker did down the stairs, or scoured out saucepans, orat least dusted. Even her son believed, so forcibly was the unanimity. Perhaps there was a taint of the incredulous in the minds of Fenwickand Bradshaw. But each thought the other was heart-whole, and neithersuspected himself of insincerity. 

Sally was curious to know exactly what lines the Octopus had operatedon. That would do later, though. She would get Prosy by himself, andmake him tell her all about it. In the course of time tea died anatural death. Fenwick indulged in a yawn and a great shake, andremembered that he had no end of letters to answer. Mr. And Mrs. Julius Bradshaw suddenly thought, for no reasonable reason, that theyought to be getting back. But they didn't really go home. They wentfor a walk landward; as it was so windy, instead--remember thatthey were only in the third week of their honeymoon! Sally, withTalleyrand-like diplomacy, achieved that she and Dr. Conrad shouldgo for another walk in another direction. The sea was getting up andthe glass was going down, and it would be fun to go and see the wavesbreak over the jetty. So said Sally, and Dr. Conrad thought so too, unequivocally. They walked away in the big sea-wind, fraught witha great inheritance from the Atlantic of cool warmth and dry moisture. And if you don't know what that means, you know mighty little of theocean in question. 

Rosalind watched them through the window, closed perforce, and sawthem disappear round the flagstaff with the south cone hoisted, holding their heads on to all appearance. She said to herself:"Foolish fellow, why can't he speak?" And her husband answered eitherher thought or her words--though he could hardly have heard them ashe sat driving his pen furiously through letters--with: "He'll haveto confess up, Rosey, you'll see, before he goes. "

She made no reply; but, feeling a bit tired, lay down to rest onthe sofa. And so powerful was the sea air, and the effect of a fairallowance of exercise, that she fell into a doze in spite of theintensely wakeful properties of Mrs. Lobjoit's horsehair sofa, whichonly a corrugated person could stop on without a maintained effort, sothat sound sleep was impossible. She never became quite unconscious ofthe scratching pen and the moaning wind; so, as she did not sleep, yetdid not want to wake, she remained hovering on the borderland ofdreams. One minute she thought she was thinking, sanely, about Sallyand her silent lover--always uppermost in her thoughts--the next, shewas alive to the absurdity of some dream-thing one of them hadsuddenly changed to, unnoticed. Once, half awake, she was beginningto consider, seriously, whether she could not legitimately approachthe Octopus on the subject, but only to find, the moment after, thatthe Octopus (while remaining the same) had become the chubby littleEnglish clergyman that had married her to Gerry at Umballa, twentyyears ago. Then she thought she would wake, and took steps towardsdoing it; but, as ill-luck would have it, she began to speak beforeshe had achieved her purpose. And the result was: "Do you remember theReverend Samuel Herrick, Gerry, at Umb----Oh dear! I'm not awake.... I was talking nonsense. " Gerry laughed. 

"Wake up, love!" said he. "Do your fine intelligence justice! What wasit you said? Reverend Samuel who?"

"I forget, darling. I was dreaming. " Then, with a nettle-graspinginstinct, as one determined to flinch from nothing, "Reverend SamuelHerrick. What did you think I said?"

"Reverend Samuel Herrick or Meyrick.... 'Not negotiable. ' I don't meanthe Reverend Sam, whoever he is, but the payee whose account I'menriching. " He folded the cheque he had been writing into its letterand enveloped it. But he paused on the brink of its gummed edge, looking over it at Rosalind, who was still engaged getting quiteawake. "I know the name well enough. He's some chap! I expect you sawhim in the 'Chronicle. '"

"Very likely, darling! He must be some chap, when you come to thinkof it. " She says this slightly, as a mere rounding-off speech. Thengoes behind her husband's chair and kisses him over his shoulder as hedirects the envelope. 

"Marmaduke, Copestake, Dickinson, and Humphreys, " says he, as hewrites the names. "Now I call that a firm-and-a-half. Old BroadStreet, E. C. _That's_ all!--as far as _he_ goes. Now, how aboutPuckeridge, Limited?"

"Don't write any more, Gerry dear; you'll spoil your eyes. Come andlook at the sunset. Come along!" For a blood-red forecast of storm inthe west, surer than the surest human barometer, is blazing throughthe window that cannot be opened for the blow, and turning theshell-work rabbit and the story of Goliath into gold and jewels. Thesun is glancing through a rift in the cloud-bank, to say good-night tothe winds and seas, and wish them joy of the high old time they meanto have in his absence, in the dark. 

The lurid level rays that make an indescribable glory of Rosalind'shalo-growth of hair as Gerry sees it against the window, have noill-boding in them for either--no more, that is, than always hasbelonged to a rough night closing over the sea, and will do so alwaysuntil the sea is ice again on a planet sick to death. As he draws herarm round his neck and she his round her waist, and they glance ateach other in the flaming glow, there is no thought in either of anyill impending for themselves. 

"I wish Sarah were here to see you now, Rosey. "

"So should I, love! Only she would see you too. And then she'd makeyou vainer than you are already. All men are patches of Vanity. ButI forgive you. " She kisses him slightly in confirmation. They certainlywere a wonderful sight, the two of them, a minute ago, when the lightwas at its best. Yes!--they wish Sally had been there, each on theother's account. It was difficult to say which of the two had thoughtof Sally first. Both had this habit of registering the _rapport_ ofeverything to Sally as a first duty. 

But a sunset glow, like this one, lasts, maybe, little longer thana highest song-note may be sustained. It was to die. But Rosalind andGerry watched it out. His cheek was resting in the thick mass of softgold, just moving slightly to be well aware of it. The sun-ray touchedit, last of anything in the room, and died.... 

"What's that, dear love? _Why?_... " It was Rosalind that spoke. 

"Nothing, dearest! No, nothing!... Indeed, nothing at all!"

"Gerry, what _was_ it?"

"What was what, dear?"

"What made you leave off so suddenly?"

For the slightly intermittent movement of his cheek on her hair--whathairy thing is there that does not love to be stroked?--had stopped;and his hand that held hers had slipped from it, and rested for amoment on his own forehead. 

"It's gone now. It was a sort of recurrence. I haven't been havingthem lately.... "

"Come and sit down, love. There, now, don't fidget! What was itabout?" Does he look pale?--thinks Rosalind--or is it only thevanished glow?

He is uncommunicative. Suppose they go out for a turn before dinner, he suggests. They can walk down to the jetty, to meet Sarah and hermedical adviser. Soon said, soon settled. Ten minutes more, and theyare on their way to the fisher dwellings: experiencing three-quartersof a gale, it appears, on the testimony of an Ancient Mariner in ablue and white-striped woollen shirt, who knows about things. 

"That was _very_ queer, that recurrence!" Thus Gerry, after leavingthe Ancient Mariner. "It was just as the little edge of the sun wentbehind the bank. And what do you think my mind hooked it on to, of allthings in the world?" Rosalind couldn't guess, of course. "Why, a bigwheel I was trying to stop, that went slowly--slowly--like the sunvanishing. And then just as the sun went it stopped. "

"Was there anything else?" Entire concealment of alarm is all Rosalindcan attend to. 

"No end of things, all mixed up together. One thing very funny. A greatbig German chap.... I say, Rosalind!"

"What, Gerry darling?"

"Do you recollect, when we were in Switzerland, up at that lasthigh-up place, Seelisberg--Sonnenberg--do you remember the great fatBaron that gave me those cigars, and sang?"

"Remember the Baron? Of course I do. Perfectly!" Rosalind contriveda laugh. "Was he in it?" Perhaps this was rash. But then, not to sayit would have been cowardice, when it was on her tongue-tip. Let thenettle be grasped. 

"He was in it, singing and all. But the whole thing was mixed up andqueer. It all went, quite suddenly. And I should have lost him outof it, as one loses a dream, if it hadn't been for seeing him inSwitzerland. It was something to hold on by. Do you understand?"

"I think I do. _I_ had forgotten what I was dreaming about when Iwoke on the sofa and talked that nonsense. But I held on to the name, for all that. "

"But then that wasn't a real person, the Reverend--what washe?--Herrick or Derrick. "

Rosalind passed the point by. "Gerry darling! I want you to do as Itell you. Don't worry your head about it, but keep quiet. If memoryis coming back to you, it will come all the quicker for letting yourmind rest. Let it come gradually. "

"I see what you mean. You think it was really a recollection of B. C. ?"

"I think so. Why should it not?"

"But it's all gone clean away again! And I can't remember anythingof it at all--and there was heaps!"

"Never mind! If it was real it will come back. Wait and be patient!"

Rosalind's mind laid down this rule for itself--to think and actexactly as though there had been nothing to fear. Even if all thepast had been easy to face it would have shrunk from suggestions. So thought she to herself, perhaps with a little excusableself-deception. Otherwise the natural thing would have been torepeat to him all the Baron's story. 

No! She would not say a word, or give a hint. If it was all to comeback to him, it would come back. If not, she could not bring it back;and she might, in the attempt to do so, merely plunge his injuredmind into more chaotic confusion. Much safer to do nothing!

But why this sudden stirring of his memory, just now of all times?Had anything unusual happened lately? Naturally, the inquiry senther mind back, to yesterday first, then to the day before. No!--therewas nothing there. Then to generalities. Was it the sea bathing?--thesea air? And then on a sudden she thought of the thing nearest athand, that she should have thought of at first. Yes!--she would askDr. Conrad about _that_: Why hadn't she thought of that before--thatgalvanic battery?

Meanwhile, despite her injunctions to her husband to wait and bepatient, his mind kept harking back on this curious recollection. Luckily, so it seemed to her--at any rate for the present--he did notseem to recall the Baron's recognition of himself, or to connect itwith this illusion or revival. He appeared to recollect the Baron'spersonality, and his liberality with cigars, but little else. If hewas to be reminded of this, it must be after she had talked over itwith Vereker. 

They struggled with the weather along the seaward face of the littleold fisher-town. The great wind was blowing the tar-laden atmosphereof the nets and the all-pervading smell of tar landward; andsubstituting flecks of driven foam, that it forced to follow landwardtoo, for all they tried to stop and rest. The population was mostlyemployed getting the boats up as close to the houses as practicepermitted, and the capstans were all a-creak with the strain; and oneshrieked for a dab of lard, and got it, just as they passed. The manwith Bessie and the anchor on his arms--for it was his--paused in hisrotations with one elbow on his lever, and one foot still behindthe taut cable he was crossing. His free hand saluted; and then, hisposition being defined, he was placed on a moral equality with hissuperiors, and could converse. The old-fashioned hat-touch, now dyingout, is just as much a protest against the way social order parts manfrom man as it is an acknowledgment of its necessity. 

The lover of Bessie and Elinor and Kate was disposed to ignore theefforts of the wind. There might, he said, be a bit of sea on, cometwo or three in the marn'n--at the full of the tide. The wind mightget up a bit, if it went round suth'ard. The wind was nothing initself--it was the direction it came from; it got a bad characterfrom imputed or vicarious vice. It would be a bit rough to get aboat off--the lady might get a wetting.... At which point Rosalindinterrupted. Nothing was further from her thoughts, she said, thannavigation in any form. But had the speaker seen her daughter goby--the young lady that swam? For Sally was famous. He hadn't, himself, but maybe young Benjamin had. Who, taking leave to speak fromthis, announced frankly that he _had_ seen a young lady, in companywith her sweetheart, go by nigh an hour agone. The tattooed onediluted her sweetheart down to "her gentleman" reluctantly. In hisland, and the one there would soon be for the freckled and blue-eyedBenjamin, there was no such artificial nonsense. Perhaps some senseof this showed itself in the way he resumed his work. "Now, youngBenjamin--a-action!" said he; and the two threw themselves againagainst the pole of the mollified capstan. 

If Rosalind fancied this little incident had put his previousexperience out of her husband's mind she was mistaken. He said, asthey passed on in the direction of the jetty, "I think I should liketo wind up capstans. It would suit me down to the ground. " But thenbecame thoughtful; and, just as they were arriving at the jetty, showed that his mind had run back by asking suddenly, "What was thefat Baron's name?"

"Diedrich Kammerkreutz. " Rosalind gave him her nearest recollection, seeing nothing to be gained by doing otherwise. Any concealment, too, the chances were, would make matters worse instead of better. 

"It was Kreutzkammer, in my--dream or whatever you call it. " Theystopped and looked at each other, and Rosalind replied, "It _was_Kreutzkammer. Oh dear!" rather as one who had lost breath from somekind of blow. 

He saw her distress instantly, and was all alive to soothe it. "Don't be frightened, darling love!" he cried, and then his greatgood-humoured laugh broke into the tenderness of his speech, withoutspoiling it. He was so like Gerry, the boy that rode away that dayin the dog-cart, when there was "only mamma for the girl. "

"But when all's said and done, " said she, harking back for a reprieve, "perhaps you only recollected Sonnenberg in your dream better thanI did ... Just now.... " She hung fire of repeating the name Herrick. 

"_Ach zo_, " he answered, teutonically for the moment, from associationwith the Baron. "But suppose it all true, dearest, and that I'm goingto come to life again, what does it matter? It can't alter _us_, thatI can see. Could anything that you can imagine? I should be Gerry foryou, and you would be Rosey for me, to the end of it. " Her assent hada mere echo of hesitation. But he detected it, and went on: "Unless, you mean, I remembered the hypothetical wife?... "

"Ye--es!--partly. "

"Well! I tell you honestly, Rosey darling, if I do, I shall keep herto myself. A plaguing, intrusive female--to come between _us_. Butthere's no such person!" At which they both laughed, remembering thegreat original non-exister. But even here was a little thorn. For Mrs. Harris brought back the name the Baron had known Gerry by. He did notseem to have resumed it in his dream. 

The jetty ran a little way out to sea. Thus phraseology in use. Itmight have reconsidered itself, and said that the jetty had at somevery remote time run out to sea and stopped there. Ever since, the seahad broken over it at high tides, and if you cared at all about yourclothes you wouldn't go to the end of it, if you were me. Because thesalt gets into them and spoils the dye. Besides, you have to changeeverything. 

There was a dry place at the end of the jetty, and along the edge ofthe dry place were such things as cables go round and try hard todraw, as we drew the teeth of our childhood with string. But they failalways, although their pulls are never irresolute. On two of these satSally and the doctor in earnest conversation. 

Rosalind and her husband looked at each other and said, "No!" Thismight have been rendered, "Matters are no forwarder. " It connecteditself (without acknowledgment) with the distance apart of the twocable-blocks. Never mind; let them alone!

"Are you going to sit there till the tide goes down?"

"Oh, is that you? We didn't see you coming. "

"You'll have to look sharp, or you'll be wet through.... "

"No, we _shan't_! You only have to wait a minute and get inbetween.... "

Easier said than done! A big wave, that was just in time to overhearthis conversation imperfectly, thought it would like to wet Sallythrough, and leaped against the bulwark of the jetty. But it spentitself in a huge torrential deluge while Sally waited a minute. Afriend followed it, but made a poor figure by comparison. Then Sallygot in between, followed by the doctor.... Well! they were really notso _very_ wet, after all! Sally was worst, as she was too previous. She got implicated in the friend's last dying splash, while Prosygot nearly scot-free. So said Sally to Fenwick as they walked brisklyahead towards home, leaving the others to make their own pace. Becauseit was a case of changing everything, and dinner was always so earlyat St. Sennans. 

"Let them go on in front. I want to talk to you, Dr. Conrad. "Rosalind, perhaps, thinks his attention won't wander if she takes afirm tone; doesn't feel sure about it, otherwise. Maybe Sally is toodefinitely in possession of the citadel to allow of an incursion fromwithout. She continues: "I have something to tell you. Don't lookfrightened. It is nothing but what you have predicted yourself. Myhusband's memory is coming back. I don't know whether I ought to sayI am afraid or I hope it is so.... "

"But are you sure it is so?"

"Yes, listen! It has all happened since you and Sally left. " And thenshe narrated to the doctor, whose preoccupation had entirely vanished, first the story of the recurrence, and Fenwick's description of itin full; and then the incident of the Baron at Sonnenberg, but lessin detail. Then she went on, walking slower, not to reach thehouse too soon. "Now, this is the thing that makes me so sure it isrecollection: just now, as we were coming to the jetty, he asked mesuddenly what was the Baron's name. I gave a wrong version of it, andhe corrected me. " This does not meet an assent. 

"That was nothing. He had heard it at Sonnenberg. I think much more ofthe story itself; the incident of the wheel and so on. Are you quitesure you never repeated this German gentleman's story to Mr. Fenwick?"

"Quite sure. "

"H'm... !"

"So, you see, I want you to help me to think. "

"May I talk to him about it?--speak openly to him?"

"Yes; to-morrow, not to-day. I want to hear what he says to-night. Healways talks a great deal when we're alone at the end of the day. Hewill do so this time. But I want you to tell me about an idea I have. "

"What idea?"

"Did Sally tell you about the galvanic battery on the pier?" Dr. Conrad stopped in his walk, and faced round towards his companion. He shook out a low whistle--an _arpeggio_ down. "Did she tell you?"repeated Rosalind. 

"Miss Sa.... "

"Come, come, doctor! Don't be ridiculous. Say Sally!" The young man'sheart gave a responsive little jump, and then said to itself, "Butperhaps I'm only a family friend!" and climbed down. However, oneither count, "Sally" was nicer than "Miss Sally. "

"Sally told me about the electric entertainment at the pier-end. I'msorry I missed it. But if _that's_ what's done it, Fenwick must tryit again. "

"_Mustn't_ try it again?"

"No--_must_ try it again. Why, do you think it bad for him toremember?"

"I don't know what to think. "

"My notion is that a man has a right to his own mind. Anyhow, onehas no right to keep him out of it. "

"Oh no; besides, Gerry isn't out of it in this case. Not out of hismind.... "

"I didn't mean that way. I meant excluded from participation inhimself ... You see?"

"Oh yes, I quite understand. Now listen, doctor. I want you to do me akindness. Say nothing, even to Sally, till I tell you. Say _nothing_!"

"You may trust me. " Rosalind feels no doubt on that point, the more sothat the little passage about Sally's name has landed her at somehaven of the doctor's confidence that neither knows the name of justyet. He is not the first man that has felt a welcome in some triflingword of a very special daughter's mother. But woe be to the mother whois premature and spoils all! Poor Prosy is too far gone to be a riskysubject of experiment. But _he_ won't say anything--not he! "Afterall, you know, " he continues, "it may all turn out a false alarm. Orfalse hope, should I say?"

No answer. And he doesn't press for one. He is in a land of pitfalls. 

 * * * * *

"What have you and your medical adviser been talking about all thewhile, there in mid-ocean?" Fenwick forgets the late event withpleasure. Sally, with her hair threatening to come down in the wind, is enough to stampede a troop of nightmares. 

"Poor Prosy!" is all the answer that comes at present. Perhaps if thatuncontrolled black coil will be tractable she will concede more anon. You can't get your hair back under your hat and walk quick and talk, all at the same time. 

"Poorer than usual, Sarah?" But really just at this corner it's asmuch as you can do, if you have skirts, to get along at all; to saynothing of the way such loose ends as you indulge in turn on you andflagellate your face in the wind. Oh, the vicious energy of thatstray ribbon! Fancy having to use up one hand to hold that!

But a lull came when the corner was fairly turned, in the lee of ahome of many nets, where masses of foam-fleck had found a respite, andleisure to collapse, a bubble at a time. You could see the prism-scaleeach had to itself, each of the millions, if you looked close enough. Collectively, their appearance was slovenly. A chestnut-coloured mana year old, who looked as if he meant some day to be a boatswain, was seated on a pavement that cannot have soothed his unprotectedflesh--flint pebbles can't, however round--and enjoying the mysteriousimpalpable nature of this foam. However, even for such hands ashis--and Sally wanted to kiss them badly--they couldn't stop. Shegot her voice, though, in the lull. 

"Yes--a little. I've found out all about Prosy. "

"Found out about him?"

"I've made him talk about it. It's all about his ma and a young ladyhe's in love with.... " Fenwick's _ha!_ or _h'm!_ or both joinedtogether, was probably only meant to hand the speaker on, but thetone made her suspicious. She asked him why he said that, imitatingit; on which he answered, "Why shouldn't he?" "Because, " said Sally, "if you fancy Prosy's in love with me, you're mistaken. "

"Very good! Cut along, Sarah! You've made him talk about the younglady he's in love with... ?"

"Well, he as good as talked about her, anyhow! _I_ understood quiteplain. He wants to marry her awfully, but he's afraid to say so toher, because of his ma. "

"Doesn't Mrs. Vereker like her?"

"Dotes upon her, he says. Ug-g-h! No, it isn't that. It's the luggingthe poor girl into his ma's sphere of influence. He's conscious ofhis ma, but adores her. Only he's aware she's overwhelming, and alwaysgets her own roundabout way. I prefer Tishy's dragon, if you ask_me_. "

At that point Sally is quite unconscious of Fenwick's amused eyesfixed on her, and his smile in ambush. She says the last wordsthrough a hairpin, while her hands take advantage of the lull tomake a good job of that rope of black hair. She will go on and tellall the story; so Fenwick doesn't speak. Surprised at first by thetale of Dr. Conrad's young lady, his ideas have by now fructified. Sally continues:

"He's often told me he thought G. P. 's were better single, for theirwives' sakes--that sounds wrong, somehow!--but it isn't that. It'shis ma entirely. I suppose he's told you about the epileptiformdisorders?" No, he hadn't. "Well, now! Fancy Prosy not telling youthat! He's become quite an authority since those papers he had inthe 'Lancet, ' and he's thinking of giving up general practice. SirDioscorides Gayler's a cousin of his, you know, and would pass onhis practice to Prosy on easy terms. House in Seymour Street, PortmanSquare. Great authority on epilepsy and epileptiform disorders. Wantsa successor who knows about 'em. Naturally. Wants three thousandpounds. Naturally. Big fees! But he would make it easy for Prosy. "

"That would be all right; soon manage that. " Fenwick speaks withthe confidence of one in a thriving trade. The deity of commerce, security, can manage all things. Insecurity is atheism in the City. "But then, " he adds, "Vereker wouldn't marry, even with a house andbig-fee consultations, because he's afraid his mother would hectorover his wife. Is that it?"

"That's it! It's his Goody mother. I say, it _is_ blowing!" It was, and they had emerged from the shelter into the wind. No more talk!

 * * * * *

As Fenwick, sea-blown and salted, resorted to the lodging-houseallowance of fresh water and soap, in a perfunctory and formalpreparation for dinner, his mind ran continually on Sally'scommunication. As for the other young lady being valid, that hedismissed as nonsense not worth consideration. Vereker had beenresorting to a furtive hint of a declaration, disguised as fiction. It was a _fabula narrata de_ Sally, _mutato nomine_. If she didn'tsee through it, and respond in kind, it would show him how merelya friend he was, and nothing more. "Perhaps he doesn't understandour daughter's character, " said Fenwick to Rosalind, when he hadrepeated the conversation to her. "Of course he doesn't, " shereplied. "No young man of his sort understands girls the least. The other sort of young man understands the other sort of girls. "

And then a passing wonderment had touched her mind, of how strangeit was that Sally should be one of her own sort, so very distinctly. How about inheritance? She grew reflective and silent over it, andthen roused herself to wonder, illogically, why Gerry hadn't goneon talking. 

The reason was that as his mind dwelt happy and satisfied on thegood prospect Vereker would have if he could step into his cousin'sspecialist practice as a consulting physician, with a reputationalready begun, his thoughts were caught with a strange jerk. Whatand whence was a half-memory of some shadowy store of wealth that wasto make it the easiest thing in the world for him to finance the newdeparture? It had nothing to do with the vast mysterious possibilitiesof credit. It was a recollection of some resourceful backing he wasentitled to, somehow; and he was reminded by it of his dream about thefurniture--(we told you of that?)--but with a reservation. When hewoke from the sleep-dream of the furniture, he in a short time coulddistinctly identify it as a dream, and was convinced no such furniturehad ever existed. He could not shake off this waking dream, and itclogged his mind painfully, and made him silent. 

So much so that when Rosalind, soon completed for the banqueting-board, looked into the adjoining room to see what progress Gerry was making, and why he was silent, she only saw the back of a powerful frame inits shirt-sleeves, and a pair of hands holding on each side anunbrushed head. The elbows indispensable to them rested on thewindow-bar. 

"Look alive, Gerry darling!--you'll make dinner late.... Anythingwrong, dear love?" Sudden anxiety in her voice. "Is it another... ?"Another what? No need to define, exactly!

"A sort of one, " Fenwick answers. "Not so bad as the last. Hardlydescribable! Never mind. "

He made no effort towards description, and his wife did not presshim for it. What good end could be gained by fidgeting him?

But she knew now that her life would be weighted with an anxietyhard to bear, until his hesitating return of memory should make itsdecision of success or failure. A guarantee of the latter would havebeen most to her liking, but how could she hope for that now?

CHAPTER XXXV

HOW A STONE THROWN DROVE THE WEDGE FURTHER YET. OF A TERRIBLE NIGHT IN A BIG GALE, AND A DOOR THAT SLAMMED. THE WEDGE WELL IN

The speculative weather-wisdom of the tattooed capstan-driver wasconfirmed when three in the morning came, and the full of the tide. The wind must have gone round to the southward, or to some equallystimulating quarter, to judge by the work it got through that night inthe way of roofs blown off and chimney-pots blown down; standing cropslaid flat and spoiled for reaping; trees too full of leaf to bear suchrough treatment compelled to tear up half their roots and fall, or paytribute to the gale in boughs snapped asunder in time to spare theirparent stem. All these results we landsmen could see for ourselvesnext day, after the storm had died down, and when the air was sodelightful after it that we took walks in the country on purpose toenjoy it. But for the mischief it did that night at sea, fromsportively carrying away the spars of ships, which they wanted fortheir own use, or blowing a stray reefer from the weather-earring, tosending a full crew to the depths below, or on jagged rocks no messagefrom the white foam above could warn the look-out of in time--for therecord of this we should have belated intermittent newspaperparagraphs, ever so long after. 

But the wind had not reached its ideal when, at the end of a pleasantevening, Sally and her belongings decided that they must just go downto the beach and see the waves before going to bed. Wasn't there amoon? Well--yes, there was a moon, but you couldn't see it. That madea difference, certainly, but not a conclusive one. It wasn't a badsort of a night, although it certainly was blowing, and the waveswould be grand seen close. So the party turned out to go down to thebeach. It included the Julius Bradshaws and Dr. Conrad, who had lookedin as usual. But the doctor found out that it was past eleven, and, recalled by duty, returned to his Octopus. 

The waves, seen close, would have been grand if you could have seenthem from the beach, or as much of it as they had left you to standon. But you really could only guess what was going on out in thatgreat dark world of deep thunder, beyond the successive rushes of madfoam, each of which made up its mind to tear the coast up this time;and then changed it and went back, but always took with it stonesenough for next attempt. And the indignant clamour of the rushingshoals, dragged off to sea against their will, rose and fell in thelulls of the thunder beyond. Sally wanted to quote Tennyson's "Maud"about them, but she couldn't for the tremendous wind. 

The propensity to throw stones into the water, whenever there arestones and water, is always a strong one, even when the water is blackmountain ranges, foam-ridged Sierras coming on to crush us, appallingus, even though we know they are sure to die in time. Stones werethrown on this occasion by Sally and her stepfather, who was credulousenough to suppose that his pebbles passed the undertow and reachedthe sea itself. Sally was prevented by the elements from misusingan adjective; for she wanted to say that the effect of a stone throwninto such a sea was merely "homoeopathic, " and abstained because herremark would have been unheard. 

Fenwick wanted to say that it was like the way a man dies and vanishesinto the great unknown. He, too, refrained from this, but only partlyfor the same reason. Its want of novelty made another. 

All the others soon wanted to say it was time to go home to bed, andtried to say it. But practice seemed easier, and they all turned togo, followed by Fenwick and Sally, cheerfully discussing the point ofwhether Sally could have swum out into that sea or not. Sally wantedto know what was to prevent her. Obvious enough, one would have said!

 * * * * *

But Rosalind noticed one thing that was a pleasure to her. Themoment Sally came in, her husband's dream-afflictions went out. Hadhe ever spoken of one in her presence? She could recall no instance. This evening the return to absolute cheerfulness dated from thereappearance of Sally after she had changed everything, and made herhair hold up. It lasted through fried soles and a huge fowl--doneenough this time--and a bread-and-butter pudding impaired by too manyraisins. Through the long end of a game of chess begun by Sally andDr. Conrad the evening before, and two rubbers of whist, in whicheverybody else had all the good cards in their hands, as is the casein that game. And through the visit to Neptune above recorded. 

But when, after half-an-hour's chat over the day's events withRosalind, midnight and an extinguished candle left Fenwick to himselfand his pillow in the little room next hers with no door between, which Mrs. Lobjoit's resources dictated, there came back to him firsta recollection of his suppressed commonplace about the stone that hadvanished for ever in the world of waters; then a hazy memory of thesame thing having happened before and the same remark having beenmade by himself; then a sudden jerk of surprise, when, just as he wasthinking of sleep, he was able to answer a question Space asked himspontaneously about where this happened, with what would have been, had he been quite awake, words spoken aloud to himself. "That timeat Niagara, of course!" And this jerk of surprise left him wide-awake, struggling with an army of revived memories that had come on himsuddenly. 

He was so thoroughly waked by them that a difficulty he always hadof remaining in bed when not asleep dictated a relighted candleand a dressing-gown and slippers. It was akin to his aversion toover-comfortable chairs; though he acknowledged beds as properimplements of sleep, sleep being granted. And sleep seemed now socompletely out of the question, even if there had been no roaring ofthe gale and no constant thunder of the seas on the beach below, that Fenwick surrendered at discretion, and gave himself up a helplessprisoner in the grasp of his own past. 

Not of the whole of it. But of as much as he could face here and now. Another mind that could have commanded some strange insight into thewhole of this past, and his power or powerlessness to look it in theface, might have striven to avert its revival. That blow might havebeen too overwhelming. But there was enough, as we shall see, inthe recollection that came back of the decade before his return toEngland, to make his breath catch and a shudder run through his strongframe as he pressed his palms hard on his eyelids, just as though byso doing he could shut it out. 

Thank God Rosey was asleep, or would be soon. He would have time tothink how he could tell the story he could not be silent about--that, he felt, might be impossible--and yet keep back one ominous portentousfact that had come to him, as a motive force in his former life, without the details of his early history that belonged to it. Thatfact Rosey must never know, even if ... Well!--so many things turnedon it. All he could see now--taken by surprise as he was--was that, come what might, that fact should always be kept from _her_. But asto concealing from her his strange experience altogether, that washardly to be thought of. He would conceal it while he could, though, provisionally. 

One o'clock by his watch on the dressing-table under the candle. St. Sennans must have struck unheard. No wonder--in this wind! Surely ithad rather increased, if anything. Fenwick paced with noiseless careabout the little room; he could not be still. The sustained monotoneof wind and sea was only crossed now and then by a sound of fall orbreakage, to chronicle some little piece of mischief achieved by theformer on land, and raise the latter's hopes of some such success inits turn before the night should end.... 

Two o'clock by the dressing-table watch, and still the noiselessslippered feet of the sleepless man came and went. Little fear of anyone else hearing him! For the wind seemed to have got up the bit thatwas predicted of it, and had certainly gone round to the suth'ard. Ifany sleeper could cling to unconsciousness through the rattle of thewindows and the intermittent banging of a spectral door that defiedidentification--the door that always bangs in storms everywhere--themere movement of a cautious foot would have no effect. If unable tosleep for the wind, none would be alive to it. It would be lost inthe storm.... 

Three o'clock! Did you, who read this, ever watch through a nightwith something on your mind you are to be forced to speak of in themorning--a compulsion awaiting you as a lion awaiting the _début_ ofa reluctant martyr in the arena of the Coliseum? Did you, so watching, feel--not the tedium--but the maddening speed of the hours, thecruelty of the striking clocks? Were you conscious of a gratefulreliance on your bedroom door, still closed between you and _your_lion, as the gate that the eager eyes of Rome were fixed on was stilla respite from _his_? Fenwick was; keenly conscious. And when ona sudden he heard with a start that a furtive hand was on theold-fashioned door-latch, he, knowing it could be none other thanRosalind, sleepless in the storm, felt that the lion had stolen amarch on him, and that he must make up his mind sharp whether he wouldgo for complete confidence or partial reserve. Certainly the latter, of necessity, said Alacrity. There could be no doubt of it, on heraccount--for the present, at any rate. 

For he had recollected, look you, that at the time of that stone-throwinto the rapids above Niagara he was a married man somehow separatedfrom his wife. And the way that he knew this was that he couldremember plainly that the reason he did not make an offer of marriage, there by the great torrent that was rushing to the Falls, to a Frenchgirl (whose name he got clearly) was that he did not know if his wifewas dead or living. He did not know it now. The oddity of it was that, though he remembered clearly this incident hinging on the fact thathe was then a married man, he could remember neither the wife he hadmarried nor anything connected with her. He strove hard against thispartial insight into his past, which seemed to him stranger thancomplete oblivion. But he soon convinced himself that a slight hazyvision he conjured up of a wedding years and years ago was only areflex image--an automatic reaction--from his recent marriage. Fordid not the wraith of his present wife quietly take its place beforethe altar where by rights he should have been able to recall herpredecessor? It was all confusion; no doubt of it. 

But his mind had travelled quickly too; for when Rosalind looked inat his door he knew what he had to say, for her sake. 

"Gerry darling, have you never been to bed?"

"For a bit, dearest. Then I found I couldn't sleep, and got up. "

"Isn't it awful, the noise? One hears it so in this house.... Well, I suppose it's the same in any house that looks straight over the sea. "

"Haven't you slept?"

"Oh yes, a little. But then it woke me. Then I thought I heard youmoving. "

"So I was. Now, suppose we both go to bed, and try to sleep. I shallhave to, because of my candle. Is that all you've got left?"

"That's all, and it's guttering. And the paper will catch directly. "She blew it out to avoid this, and added: "Stop a minute and I'lltake the paper off, and make it do for a bit. "

"You can have mine. Leave me yours. " For Fenwick's was, even now, after burning so long, the better candle-end of the two. He tookit out of the socket, and slipped its paper roll off, an economysuggested by the condition of its fellow. 

But as he did so his own light flashed full on his face, and Rosalindsaw a look on it that scarcely belonged to mere sleeplessness like herown--unrest that comes to most of us when the elements are restless. 

"Gerry, you've been worrying. You know you have, dear. Speak thetruth! You've been trying to recollect things. "

"I had nobody here to prevent me, you see. " He made no denial; infact, thought admission of baffled effort was his safest course. "Iget worried and fidgeted by chaotic ideas when you're not here. Butit's nothing. " Rosalind did not agree to this at all. 

"I wish Mrs. Lobjoit could have put us both in one room, " she said. 

"Well, _we_ didn't see our way, you know, " he replied, referringto past councils on sleeping arrangements. "It's only for a week, after all. "

"Yes, darling; but a week's a week, and I can't have you worried todeath. " She made him lie down again, and sat by him, holding his hand. So unnerved was he by his glance back into his past, so long unknownto him, and so sweet was the comfort of her presence and the touch ofher living hand after all those hours of perturbation alone, thatFenwick made no protest against her remaining beside him. But apassiveness that would have belonged to an invalid or a sluggishtemperament seemed unlike the strong man Rosalind knew him for, andshe guessed from it that there was more behind. Still, she saidnothing, and sat on with his hand grasping hers and finding in it hisrefuge from himself. To her its warm pressure was a sure sign thathis memory had not penetrated the darkness of his earlier time. IfGod willed, it might never do so. Meanwhile, what was there for itbut patience?

As she sat there listening to the roaring of the gale outside, andwatching with satisfaction the evident coming of sleep, she said toherself that it might easily be that some new thing had come back tohim which he would be unwilling she should know about, at least untilhis own mind was clearer. He might speak with less reserve to Vereker. She would give the doctor leave to talk to him to-morrow. Fear ofwhat she would hear may have influenced her in this. 

So when, sooner than she had expected, she caught the sound of thefirst breath of indisputable sleep, she rose and slipped away quietly, and as she lay down again to rest again asked herself the question:Was it the galvanism that had done it?

CHAPTER XXXVI

HOW FENWICK AND VEREKER WENT FOR A WALK, AND MORE MEMORIES CAME BACK. HOW FENWICK WAS A MILLIONAIRE, OR THEREABOUTS. OF A CLUE THAT KILLED ITSELF. HARRISSON'S AFFAIR NOW! BOTHER THE MILLIONS! IS NOT LOVE BETTER THAN MONEY? ONLY FENWICK'S NAME WASN'T HARRISSON NEITHER

"We thought it best to let you have your sleep out, dear. Sallyagreed. No, leave the pot alone. Mrs. Lobjoit will make some freshcoffee. "

"Who's the other cup?"

"Vereker. He came in to breakfast; to see if we were blown away. "

"I see. Of course. Where are they now?"

"They?... Oh, him and Sally! They said they'd go and see if Tishyand her husband were blown away. "

"Well, I have had my sleep out with a vengeance. It's a quarterto ten. "

"Never mind, darling. So much the better. Let's have a look atyou.... " And the little self-explanatory colloquy ends with Rosalindkissing her husband and examining him with anxious eyes. She seesa face less haggard than the one she saw last night, for is it notdaylight and has not the wind fallen to a mere cheerful breeze you canquite stand upright in, leaning slightly seawards? And are not thevoices and the footsteps of a new day outside, and the swift exchangesof sunlight and cloud-shadow that are chasing each other off theBritish Channel? And has not a native of eighty years of age (whichhe ignores) just opened the street door on his own responsibilityand shouted along the passage that pra'ans are large this morning? Heis more an institution than a man, and is freely spoken of as "TheShrimps. " A flavour of a Triton who has got too dry on the beach comesin with the sea air, and also a sense of prawns, emptied from a woodenmeasure they have been honourably shaken down into, falling on a dishheld out to receive them by an ambassador of four, named by Sallylittle Miss Lobjoit, the youngest of her race. 

But for all that the rising life of the hours and the subsiding galemay do to chase away the memory of the oppressions of the night fromone who was defenceless in its solitude, Rosalind can see how muchthey leave behind. Her husband may do his best to make light of it--tolaugh it off as nothing but the common bad night we all know so well;may make the most of the noises of the storm, and that abominablebanging door; but he will not conceal from her the effort that itcosts him to do so. Besides, had he not admitted, in the night, thathe "got worried and fidgeted by chaotic ideas"? What were these ideas?How far had he penetrated into his own past? She was not sorry for thefew words she had had time to exchange with Dr. Conrad while Sallywent to seek her hat. She had renewed and confirmed her permission tohim to speak to her husband freely about himself. 

"Are Mr. And Mrs. Paganini gone to sea?" This is said as Fenwick opensnegotiations rather mechanically with the fresh coffee Mrs. Lobjoithas produced, and as that lady constructs for removal a conglomerateof plates and effete eggs. 

"Gone to sea, Gerry? Not very likely. What's the meaning of that?Explain. "

"Why, Sally and her doctor are staring out at the offing.... "

"Well?"

"And didn't you say they had gone to find out if they were blownaway?"

"I supposed they changed their minds. " Rosalind talks absently, asif they didn't matter. All her thoughts are on her husband. But shedoesn't fancy catechizing him about his experiences in the night, neither. She had better let him alone, and wait new oblivion or ahealthy revival. 

He is also _distrait_, and when he spoke of Sally and the doctor hehad shown no interest in his own words. His eyes do not kindle at hersin his old way, and might be seeing nothing, for all there is in themto tell of it. He makes very short work of a cup of coffee, and a merepretence of anything else; and then, suddenly rousing himself witha shake, says this won't do, and he must go out and get a blow. Allright, says Rosalind, and he'd better get Dr. Conrad, and make him gofor a walk. Only they are not to fall over the cliff. 

"Fall over the cliff!" repeats Fenwick. He laughs, and she is glad atthe sound. "You couldn't fall over the cliff against such a wind asthis. I defy any one to. " He kisses her and goes out, and she hearshim singing, as he hunts for a stick that has vanished, an old Frenchsong:

 "Auprčs de ma blond-e Comme c'est bon--c'est bon--c'est bon.... "

Only, when he has found the stick and his hat, he does not go at once, but comes back, and says, as he kisses her again: "Don't fidget aboutme, darling; I'm all right. " Which must have been entirely brain-waveor thought-reading, as Rosalind had said never a word of her anxiety, so far. 

Fenwick walked away briskly towards the flagstaff where Sally andVereker had been looking out to sea. In the dazzling sunshine--allthe more dazzling for the suddenness of its come and go--and theintoxicating rush of well-washed air that each of those crested wavesout yonder knew so much about--and they were all of a tale--and such acompanion in the enjoyment of it as that white sea-bird afloat againstthe blue gap of sky or purple underworld of cloud, what could he doother than cast away the thoughts the night had left, the cares, whatever they were, that the revival of memory had brought back?

If he could not succeed altogether in putting them aside, at leasthe could see his way to bearing them better, with a kiss of his wifestill on his face, and all St. Sennans about him in the sunshine, andSally to come. However, before he reached the flagstaff he met thedoctor, and heard that Miss Sally had actually gone down to themachines to see if Gabriel wouldn't put one down near the water, so that she could run a little way. She was certain she couldswim in that sea if she could once get through what she called theselvage-wave. If Gabriel wouldn't, she should take her things up tothe house and put them on and walk down to the sea in a cloak. It wasquite ridiculous, said the merpussy, people making such a fuss abouta few waves. What was the world coming to?

"She'll be all safe, " was Fenwick's comment when he heard this. "Theywon't let her go in, at the machines. They won't let her leave theTurkey-twill knickers and the short skirt. She always leaves themthere to dry. _She's_ all right. Let's take a turn across the field;it's too windy for the cliff. "

"You had a bad night, Fenwick. "

"All of us had. About three in the morning I thought the house wouldblow down. And there was a door banged, etc.... "

"You had a worse night than the rest of us. Look at me straight inthe face. No, I wasn't going to say show me your tongue. " They hadstopped a moment at the top of what was known as The Steps--_parexcellence_--which was the shortest cut up to the field-path. Dr. Conrad looks a second or so, and then goes on: "I thought so. You'vegot black lines under your eyes, and you're evidently conscious of thelids. I expect you've got a pain in them, one in each, tied togetherby a string across here. " That is to say, from eyebrow to eyebrow, as illustrated fingerwise. 

Fenwick wasn't prepared to deny it evidently. He drew his own fingersacross his forehead, as though to feel if the pain were really there. It confirmed a suspicion he couldn't have sworn to. 

"Yes; I suppose I did have a worse night than the rest of you. Atleast, I hope so, for your sakes. " His manner might have seemed towarrant immediate speculation or inquiry about the cause of hissleeplessness, but Vereker walked on beside him in silence. The waywas along a short, frustrated street that led to the field-pathwaythat was grass-grown, more or less, all but the heaps of flints thatwere one day to make a new top-dressing, but had been forgotten by thelocal board, and the premature curb-stones whose anticipations abouttraffic had never been fulfilled. The little detached houses on eitherside were unselfish little houses, that only wanted to be useful andafford shelter to the wanderer, or provide a refuge for old age. Allmade use, on placards, of the cautious expression "Apartments"; whilesome flung all reserve to the winds and said also they were "To let"outright. The least satisfactory one of the lot was almost invisibleowing to its egotism, but distinguishable from afar because thecross-board on a standard that had been placed in the garden-fronthad fallen forward over the palings like Punch's gallows. It didn'tmuch matter, because the placard attached was dissolving off in therains, and hanging down so low that a goat was eating it with relish, standing against the parapet of the garden-fence. 

They reached the point at which Albion Villas had been thwarted by ahedge, rich in unripe sloes and green abortive blackberries, in theirattempt to get across a stubble-field to the new town, and passed ininstalments through its turnstile, or kissing-gate. Neither spoke, except that Fenwick said, "Look at the goat, " until, after they hadturned on to the chalk pathway, nearly dry in the warm sun and wind, he added a question:

"Did you ever taste a sloe?"

"Yes, once. "

"That is what every one says if you ask him if he ever tasted a sloe. Nobody ever does it again. "

"But they make sloe-gin of them?"

"That, my dear Vereker, is what everybody always says next. Sallytold me they did, and she's right. They console themselves for thetaste of the sloe by an imaginary _liqueur_ like _maraschino_. Butthat's because they never tasted sloe-gin. "

Vereker thinks he may conclude that Fenwick is talking for talk'ssake, and humours him. He can get to the memory-subject later. 

"A patient of mine, " he says, "who's been living at Spezzia, wastelling me about a fruit that was very good there, _diosperi_ hecalled them. They must be very unlike sloes by his description. "

"And naturally sloes made you think of them. I wonder what theyare--_diosperi_--_diosperi_----" He repeated the word as thoughtrying to recall it. Dr. Conrad helped the identification. 

"He said they are what the Japs call jelly-plums--great big fruit, very juicy. "

"I know. They're persimmons, or a sort of persimmons. We used to getlots of them in California, and even up at the Klondyke.... "

He stopped abruptly and remained silent. A sudden change in him wastoo marked to escape notice, and there could be no doubt about thecause. The doctor walked beside him, also silent, for a few paces. Then he spoke:

"You will have to bear this, Fenwick, and keep your head. It is justas I told you it would be. It is all coming back. " He laid his lefthand on his companion's shoulder as they stood side-by-side on thechalk pathway, and with his right felt the wrist that was nearesthim. Fenwick was in a quiver all through his frame, and his pulse wasbeating furiously as Dr. Conrad's finger touched it. But he spokewith self-control, and his step was steady as they walked on slowlytogether the moment after. 

"It's all coming back. It _has_ come back. I shall remember all intime. " Then he repeated Vereker's words, "I must keep my head. I shallhave to bear this, " and walked on again in silence. The young manbeside him still felt he had best not speak yet. Just let the physicalperturbation subside. Talking would only make it worse. 

They may have walked so for two minutes before Fenwick spoke again. Then he roused himself, to say, with but little hint in his voice ofany sense of the oddity of his question: "Which is my dream?--this orthe other?" Then added: "That's the question I want to ask, and nobodycan answer. "

"And of course all the while each of us knows perfectly well theanswer is simply 'Neither. ' You are a man that has had an accident, and lost his memory. Be patient, and do not torment yourself. Let ittake its own time. "

"All right, doctor! Patience is the word. " He spoke in an undertone--avoice of acquiescence, or rather obedience. "Perhaps it will not be sobad when I remember more. " They walked on again. 

Then Vereker, noting that during silence he brooded under theoppression of what he had already recovered from the past, and toall appearance struck, once or twice, on some new unwelcome vein ofthought, judging from a start or a momentary tension of the arm thatnow held his, decided that it would be as well to speak to him now, and delay no longer. 

"Has anything come back to you, so far, that will unsettle yourpresent life?"

"No, no--not that, thank God! Not so far as I can see. But much thatmust disquiet it; it cannot be otherwise. "

"Do you mind telling me?"

"No, surely, dear fellow!--surely I will tell you. Why should I not?But what I say to you don't repeat to Sally or her mother. Not justnow, you know. Wait!"

There was a recess in the wall of mortar-bedded flints that ran alongthe path, which would give shelter from the wind to light a cigar. Fenwick stopped and took two from a cigar-case, Sally's present to himlast Christmas, and offered one to Dr. Conrad, who, however, didn'twant to smoke so early. He lighted his own in the recess, withonly a slight tremor of the hand, barely visible even to Vereker'sexperienced eye; and then, as he threw away the match, said, withoutanything that could be called emotion, though always with an apparentsense of his bewilderment at his own words:

"I am that man Harrisson that was in all the newspapers just aboutthe time of the--you remember--when I.... "

Vereker failed for the moment to grasp the degree of his ownastonishment, and used the residuum of his previous calmness to say:

"I remember. The time of your accident. "

"_Am_ I that man? I mean ought I to say 'I _am_ that man'? I knowI _was_ that man, in my old dream. I know it now, in this one. "

"Well, but--so much the better! You are a millionaire, Fenwick, withmines at Klondyke.... "

Dr. Conrad had been so taken aback at the suddenness of theextraordinary revelation that his amazement was quite at a loss formeans of expression. A delayed laugh, not unmixed with a gasp, expressed nothing--merely recorded a welcome to the good side of it. For, of course, when one hears of Golconda one is bound to think itgood, failing evidence to the contrary. 

"Yes, I _was_ that man--Algernon Harrisson. Now, the question is--andyou'll have to help me here, Vereker. Don't look so thunderstruck, old chap--Shall I be that man again or not?"

"Why not, in Heaven's name? How can you help it?" The speaker is toodumbfounded, so far, to be able to get the whip hand of thecircumstances. But the pace may be slacker presently. 

"Let's be steady!" Fenwick's voice, as he says this, has a sense ofease in it, as though he were relieved by his disclosure. He takesVereker's arm in his again, and as they walk on together is evidentlyon good terms with his cigar--so the doctor thinks--and the tremor hasgone from his hands. A short pause, and he goes on speaking: "Untilwe pitched on the Klondyke just now I knew nothing of this. I shallget it all back in time. Let me see!... "

The doctor recovered his presence of mind. "Stop a minute, " said he. "Do you know, Fenwick, if I were you I shouldn't try to tell anythinguntil you're clearer about the whole thing. Don't talk to me now. Wait till you are in a state to know how much you wish to tell. "But Fenwick would have none of this. He shook his head decidedly. 

"I _must_ talk to some one about it. And my wife I cannot.... "

"Why not?"

"You will see. You need not be frightened of too many confidences. I haven't recollected any grave misdemeanours yet. I'll keep themto myself when they come. Now listen to what I can and do recollectpretty clearly. " He paused a second, as if his first item was shaky;then said, "Yes!--of course. " And went on as though the point werecleared up. 

"Of course! I went up to the Klondyke almost in the first rush, in'97. I'll tell you all about that after. Others besides myself becameenormously rich that summer, but I was one of the luckiest. However, I don't want to tell you about Harrisson at Klondyke--(that's how Ifind it easiest to think of myself, third person singular!)--but to getat the thing in the dream, that concerns me most _now_. Listen!... Onlyremember this, Vereker dear! I can only recall jagged fragments yetawhile. I have been stunned, and can't help that.... " He stopped thedoctor, who was about to speak, with: "I know what you are going tosay; let it stand over a bit--wait and be patient--all that sort ofgame! All very good and sensible, but I _can't_!"

"Can't?"

"No! Can't--simply _can't_. Because, look you! One of the thingsthat has come back is that I am a married man--by which I meanthat Harrisson was. Oh dear! It _is_ such an ease to me to think ofHarrisson as somebody else. You can't understand that. " But Verekeris thoroughly discomposed. 

"But didn't you say--only just now--there was nothing--_nothing_--tounsettle your present life? No; I can't understand--I _can't_understand. " His reply is to Fenwick's words, but the reference isto the early part of his speech. 

"You will understand it better if I tell you more. Let me do it myown way, because I get mixed, and feel as if I might lose the clueany moment. All the time I was with the Clemenceaux at Ontario I wasa married man--I mean that I _knew_ I was a married man. And I rememberknowing it all that time. Indeed, I did! But if you ask me who my wifewas--she wasn't there, you know; you've got all that clear?--why, Ican't tell you any more than Adam! All I know is that all that timelittle Ernestine was growing from a girl to a woman, the reason I feltthere could be no misunderstanding on that score was that Clemenceauand his wife knew quite well I had been married and divorced orsomething--there was something rum, long before--and you know Papistswould rather the Devil outright than have their daughter marry adivorced man. But as to who the wife had been, and what it was allabout.... "

He stopped again suddenly, seizing Vereker by the arm with a stronghand that trembled as it had done before. His face went very white, but he kept self-possession, as it were mechanically; so completelythat the long ash on his half-smoked cigar remained unbroken. Hewaited a moment, and then spoke in a controlled way. 

"I can remember nothing of the story; or what seems to come I _know_is only confusion ... By things in it.... " Vereker thought it mightbe well to change the current of his thoughts. 

"Who were the Clemenceaux at Ontario?" said he. 

"Of course, I ought to tell you that. Only there were so many things. Clemenceau was a jeweller at Ontario. I lived in the flat over hisshop, and used to see a great deal of his family. I must have livedalmost entirely among French Canadians while I was there--it wasquite three or four years.... "

"And all that time, Fenwick, you thought of yourself as a married man?"

"Married or divorced--yes. And long before that. "

"It is quite impossible for me--you must see it--to form any picturein my mind of how the thing presents itself to you. "

"Quite. "

"It seems--to me--perfectly incredible that you should have norecollection at all of the marriage, or divorce, or whatever itwas.... "

"I did not say I had no recollection _at all_. Listen. Don't you knowthis, Vereker?--of course you do, though--how one wakes from a hideousdream and remembers exactly the feeling it produced, and how thesame feeling comes back when one recalls from the dream some fragmentpreserved from all one has forgotten of it--something nowise horriblein itself, but from its associations in the dream?"

"Oh yes, perfectly!"

"Well--that's my case. When I try to bring back the memories I knowI _must_ have had at that time in Canada, nothing comes back but ahorror--something like a story read in boyhood and shuddered at inthe night--but all details gone. I mean all details with horror inthem. Because, do you know?... "

"Yes----?" Vereker stopped beside him on the path, as Fenwick stoppedand hesitated. Utter perplexity almost forbidding speech was theimpression the doctor received of his condition at this moment. Aftera moment's silence he continued:

"You will hardly believe me, but almost the only thing I canrevive--that is, have revived so far--is an occurrence that mustneeds at the time have been a happiness and a delight. And yet it nowpresents itself to me as an excruciating torment--as part of sometragedy in which I had to be an actor, but of which I can seize nodetail that does not at once vanish, leaving mere pain and confusion. "

"What was it? You don't mind.... "

"Mind telling you? Oh no!--why should I? I may be happier if I cantell it. It's like this. I am at a railway-station in the heatsomewhere, and am expecting a girl who is coming to marry me. I canremember the heat and our meeting, and then all is Chaos again. Then, instead of remembering more, I go over and over again the old thing asat first.... No! nothing new presents itself. Only the railway-stationand the palm-trees in the heat. And the train coming slowly in, andmy knowing that she is in it, and coming to marry me. "

"Do you mean that the vision--or scene--in your mind stops dead, andyou don't see her get out of the carriage?"

They had walked on slowly again a short distance. Fenwick made anotherhalt, and as he flicked away a most successful crop of cigar-ash thathe had been cultivating--so it struck Vereker--as a kind of gauge ortest of his own self-control, he answered:

"I couldn't say that. Hardly! I see a girl or woman get out of thecarriage, but _not her_... !"

Vereker was completely at a loss--began to be a little afraid hiscompanion's brain might be giving way. "How _can_ you tell that, "said he, "unless you know who she ought to have been?"

Fenwick resumed his walk, and when he replied did so in a voice thathad less tension in it, as though something less painful had touchedhis mind:

"It's rum, I grant you. But the whole thing is too rum to bearthinking of--at least, to bear talking about. As to the exact reason_why_ I know it's not her, that's simple enough!"

"What is it?"

"Because Mrs. Fenwick gets out of the train--my Rosey, here, Sally'smother. And it's just the same with the only other approach to amemory that connects itself with it--a shadowy, indistinct ceremony, also in the heat, much more indistinct than the railway-station. My real wife's image--Rosey's, here--just takes the place at thealtar where the other one should be, and prevents my getting at anyrecollection of her. It is the only thing that makes the dreambearable. "

Vereker said nothing. He did not want to disturb any lull in the stormin his companion's mind. After a slight pause the latter continued:

"The way I account for it seems to me sufficient. I cannot conceiveany woman being to me what ... Or, perhaps I should express it betterby saying I cannot connect the _wife-idea_ with any image except hers. And, of course, the strong dominant idea displaces the feeble memory. "

Vereker was ready with an unqualified assent at the moment. For thoughSally, as we have seen, had taken him into her confidence the dayafter her mother's wedding--and, indeed, had talked over the mattermany times with him since--the actual truth was far too strange tosuggest itself offhand, as it would have been doing had the doctorconnected the fact that Sally's mother went out to India to bemarried with this meeting of two lovers at a simmering railway-station, name not known. The idea of the _impossible per se_ is probably theone a finite intelligence most readily admits, and is always cordiallywelcome in intellectual difficulties--a universal resolution oflogical discords. In the case of these two men, at that moment, neitherwas capable of knowing the actual truth had he been told it, whateverthe evidence; still less of catching at slight connecting-links. Fenwick went on speaking:

"I don't know whether you will understand it--yes! I think, perhaps, you might--that it's a consolation to me this way Mrs. Fenwick comesin. It seems to bring fresh air into what else would be--ugh!" Heshuddered a half-intentional shudder; then, dropping his voice, wenton, speaking quickly: "The thing makes part of some tragedy--some sadstory--something best forgotten! If I could only dare to hope I mightremember no more--might even forget it altogether. "

"Perhaps if you could remember the whole the painfulness mightdisappear. Does not anything in the image of the railway-station givea clue to its whereabouts?"

"No. It hardly amounts to an image at all--more a fact than an image. Butthe heat was a fact. And the dresses were all white--thin--tropical.... "

"Then the Mrs. Fenwick that comes out of the train isn't dressed as shedresses here?"

"Why, n-n-no!... No, certainly not. But that's natural, you know. Of course, my mind supplies a dress for the heat. "

"It doesn't diminish the puzzlement. "

"Yes--yes--but it does, though. Because, look here! It's not the_only_ thing. I find myself consciously making Rosey look _younger_. I can't help my mind--my _now_ mind--working, do what I will! But asto where it was, I fancy I have a clue. I can remember remembering--ifyou understand me--that I had been in Australia--remembered it atOntario--talked about it to Tina Clemenceau.... "

If Vereker had had any tendency to get on a true scent at this point, the reference to Australia would have thrown him off it. And thethought of the Canadian girl took Fenwick's mind once more to hisAmerican life: "It was my thinking of that girl made all this comeback to me, you know. Just after you left us, when we were throwingstones in the sea, last night.... "

"Throwing stones in the sea?... "

"Yes--we went down to the waves on the beach, and my throwing a stonein reminded me of it all, after. I was just going to get to sleep, when, all of a sudden, what must I think of but Niagara!--at least, the rapids. I was standing with Mademoiselle Tina--no one else--ona rock overlooking the great torrent, and I threw a stone in, and shesaid no one would ever see that stone again. I said, 'Like a man whenhe dies and is forgotten, ' or something of that sort. I recollect hernow--poor child!--turning her eyes full on me and saying, 'But Ishould not forget you, Mr. Harrisson. ' You see how it was? Only itseems a sort of disloyalty to the poor girl to tell it. It was allplain, and she meant it to be. I can't remember now whether I said, 'I can't marry you, Tina, because I don't know that my wife is dead, 'or whether I only thought it. But I know that I then knew I was, orhad been, married and divorced or deserted. And it was that unhappystone that brought it all back to me. "

"Are you sure of that?"

"Quite sure that began it. I was just off, and some outlying scrapof my mind was behindhand, and that stone saw it and pounced on it. I remembered more after that. I know I was rather glad to start offto the new gold river, because of Ernestine Clemenceau. I don't thinkI should have cared to marry Ernestine. Anyhow, I didn't. She seemsto me Harrisson's affair now. Don't laugh at me, doctor!"

"I wasn't laughing. " And, indeed, this was true. The doctor was veryfar from laughing. 

They had walked some little way inland, keeping along a road sunk inthe chalk. This now emerged on an exposed hill-side, swept by thesea wind; which, though abated, still made talk less easy than in thesheltered trench, or behind the long wall where Fenwick lit his cigar. Vereker suggested turning back; and, accordingly, they turned. Thedoctor found time to make up his mind that no harm could be done nowby referring to his interview with Rosalind, the day before. 

"Your wife told me yesterday that you had just had a tiresomerecurrence when you came out after us--at the jetty-end, you know. "

"Surely! So I had. Did she tell you what it was?" Evidently, in thestress and turmoil of his subsequent experience in the night, it hadslipped from him. The doctor said a reminding word or two, and itcame back. 

"I know, I know. I've got it now. That was last night. But now--thatagain! _Why_ was it so horrible? That was dear old Kreutzkammer, at'Frisco. What could there be horrible about _him_?... " A clear ideashot into the doctor's mind--not a bad thing to work on. 

"Fenwick!--don't you see how it is? These things are only horribleto you _because_ you half recollect them. The pain is only the baffledstrain on the memory, not the thing you are trying to recover. "

"Very likely. " He assents, but his mind is dwelling on Kreutzkammer, evidently. For he breaks into a really cheerful laugh, pleasant inthe ears of his companion. "Why, _that_ was Diedrich Kreutzkammer!"he exclaims, "up at that Swiss place. And I didn't know him from Adam!"

"Of course it was. But look here, Fenwick--isn't what I say true?Half the things that come back to you will be no pain at all whenyou have fairly got hold of them. Only, _wait_! Don't struggle toremember, but let them come. "

"All right, old chap! I'll be good. " But he has no very strongconvictions on the subject, clearly. The two walk on together insilence as far as the low flint wall, in another recess of whichFenwick lights another cigar, as before. Then he turns to the doctorand says:

"Not a word of this to Rosey--nor to Sallykin!" The doctor seemsperplexed, but assents and promises. "Honest Injun!--as Sally says, "adds Fenwick. And the doctor repeats that affidavit, and then says:

"I shall have to finesse a good deal. I can manage with Mrs. Fenwick. But--I wish I felt equally secure with Miss Sally. " He feels veryinsecure indeed in that quarter, if the truth is told. And he isafflicted with a double embarrassment here, as he has never left Sallywithout her "miss" in speaking to Fenwick, while, on the other hand, he holds a definite licence from her mother--is, as it were, achartered libertine. But that's a small matter, after all. The realtrouble is having to look Sally in the face and conceal anything. 

"Miss who?" says Fenwick. "Oh--Sally, you mean! Of course she'llrush the position. Trust her!" He can't help laughing as he thinksof Sally, with Dr. Conrad vainly trying to protect his outworks. 

The momentary hesitation about how to speak of Sally may havesomething to do with Vereker's giving the conversation a twist. Itturns, however, on a point that has been waiting in his mind allthrough their interview, ever since Fenwick spoke of his identitywith Harrisson. 

"Look here, Fenwick, " he says. "It's all very fine your talking aboutkeeping Mrs. Fenwick in the dark about this. I know it's for her ownsake--but you can't. "

"And why not? I can't have Rosey know I have another wife living.... "

"You don't know she's alive, for one thing!"

"H'm!... I don't _know_, certainly. But I should have known, somehow, if she were dead. Of course, if further memory or inquiry proves thatshe _is_ dead, that's another matter. "

"But, in the meanwhile, how can you prove your identity with Harrissonand claim all your property without her knowing?... What I mean is, I can't think it out. There may be a way.... "

"My dear boy"--Fenwick says this very quietly--"that's exactly thereason why I said you would have to help me to settle whether I shouldbe that man again or not. I say _not_, if the decision lies with me. "

"Not?--not _at all_?" The doctor fairly gasps; his breath is takenaway. Never perhaps was a young man freer from thought and influenceof money than he, more absorbed in professional study and untaintedby the supremacies of property. But for all that he was human, andEnglish, and theoretically accepted gold as the thing of things, theone great aim and measure of success. Of other men's success, thatis, and _their_ aim, not his. For he was, in his own eyes, a humbleplodder, not in the swim at all. But he ascribed to the huge sums realpeople had a right to, outside the limits of the likes of him, a kindof sacredness that grew in a geometrical ratio with their increase. It gave him much more pain to hear that a safe had been robbed ofthousands in gold than he felt when, on opening a wrapped-up fee, what seemed a guinea to the touch turned out a new farthing and ashilling to the sight. It was in the air that he lived in--that allof us live in. 

So, when Fenwick made in this placid way a choice of conduct that mustneeds involve the sacrifice of sums large enough to be spoken of withawe, even in the sacred precincts of a bank, poor Dr. Conrad felt thatall his powers of counsel had been outshot, and that his mind wasreeling on its pedestal. That a poor man should give up his savings_en bloc_ to help a friend would have seemed to him natural andreasonable; that he should do so for honest love of a woman stillmore so; but that a millionaire should renounce his millions! Wasit decent? was it proper? was it considerate to Mammon? But thatmust have been Fenwick's meaning, too. The doctor did not recover hisspeech before Fenwick spoke again:

"Why should I claim all my property? How should I be the gainer ifit made Rosey unhappy?"

"I see. I quite see. I feel with you, you know; feel as you do. Butwhat will become of the money?"

"The poor darling money? Just think! It will lie neglected at thebank, unclaimed, forsaken, doing no more mischief than when it washarmless dust and nuggets in the sand of the Klondyke. While it wasthere, gold was a bit--a mighty small bit--dearer than it has becomesince. Now that it is in the keeping of chaps who won't give it uphalf as easily as the Klondyke did, I suppose it has appreciatedagain, as the saying is. The difference of cost between getting it outof the ground and out of the bank is a negligible factor.... " Fenwickseemed to find ease in chatting economics in this way. Some of it wasso obviously true to Vereker that he at once concluded it would beclassed among fallacies; he had had experience of this sort of thing. But he paid little attention, as he was thinking of how much of thisinterview he could repeat to Sally, to whom every step they tookbrought him nearer. The roar of a lion in his path was every momentmore audible to the ears of his imagination. And it left him silent;but Fenwick went on speaking:

"We won't trouble about the darling dust and nuggets; let them liein pawn, and wait for a claimant. They won't find Mr. Harrisson'sheir-at-law in a hurry. If ever proof comes of the death of Mrs. Harrisson--whoever she was--I'll be Mr. Harrisson again. Tillthen.... "

"Till then what?"

"Till then, Vereker dear"--Fenwick said this very seriously, withemphasis--"till then we shall do most wisely to say nothing furtherto Mrs. Fenwick or to Sally. You must see that it won't be possibleto pick and choose, to tell this and reserve that. I shall speak of therecurrences of memory that come to me, as too confused for repetition. I shall tell lies about them if I think it politic. Because I can'thave Rosey made miserable on any terms. As for the chick, you'll haveto manage the best you can. "

"I'll do my best, " the doctor says, without a particle of confidencein his voice. "But about yourself, Fenwick?"

"I shall do very well, as long as I can have a chat with you now andagain. You've no idea what a lot of good it has done me, this talkingto you. And, of course, I haven't told you one-tenth of the thingsI remember. There was one thing I wanted to say though just now, andwe got off the line--what was it now? Oh, I know, about my name. Itwasn't really Harrisson. "

"Not really Harrisson? What was it then?" What next, and next?--isthe import of the speaker's face. 

"I'll be hanged if I know! But it's true, rum as it seems. I know Iknew it wasn't Harrisson every time I signed a cheque in America. Butas for what it _was_, that all belongs to the dim time before. Isn'tthat them coming to meet us?"

Yes, it was. And there was something else also the doctor had had iton his tongue to say, and it had got away on a siding. But it didn'tmatter--it was only about whether the return of memory had or had notbeen due to the galvanic battery on the pier. 

CHAPTER XXXVII

OF THE DOCTOR'S CAUTIOUS RESERVE, AND MRS. FENWICK'S STRONG COMMON-SENSE. AND OF A LADY AT BUDA-PESTH. HOW HARRISSON WAS ONLY PAST FORGOTTEN NEWSPAPERS TO DR. VEREKER. OF THE OCTOPUS'S PULSE, HOW THE HABERDASHER'S BRIDE WOULD TRY ON AT TWO GUAS. A WEEK, AND OF A PLEASANT WALK BACK FROM THE RAILWAY STATION

"You never mean to say you've been in the water?"

It was quite clear, from the bluish finger-tips of the glovelessmerpussy--for at St. Sennans sixes are not _de rigueur_ in themorning--that she _has_ been in, and has only just come out. ButFenwick, who asked the question, grasped a handful of loose black hairfor confirmation, and found it wet. 

"Haven't I?" says the incorrigible one. "And you should have heard therumpus over getting a machine down. "

"She's a selfish little monkey, " her mother says, but forgivingly, too. "She'll drown herself, and not care a penny about all the troubleshe gives. " You see, Rosalind wouldn't throw her words into thiscallous form if she was really thinking about the merpussy. But justnow she is too anxious about Gerry to be very particular. 

What has passed between him and Dr. Conrad? What does the latter knownow more than she does herself? She falls back with him, and allowsthe other two to go on in front. Obviously the most naturalarrangement. 

"What has he told you, Dr. Conrad?" This is not unexpected, and theanswer is a prepared one, preconcerted under pressure between thedoctor and his conscience. 

"I am going to ask you, Mrs. Fenwick, to do me a very greatkindness--don't say yes without hearing what it is--to ask you toallow me to keep back all your husband says to me, and to take forgranted that he repeats to you all he feels certain of himself inhis own recollections. "

"He _has_ told you more?"

"Yes, he has. But I am far from certain that anything he has said canbe relied upon--in his present state. Anyway, I should be very sorryto take upon myself the responsibility of repeating it. "

"He wishes you not to do so?"

"I think so. I should say so. Do you mind?"

"I won't press you to repeat anything you wish to keep back. But ishis mind easier? After all, that's the main point. "

"That is my impression--much easier. " He felt he was quite warrantedin saying this. "And I should say that if he does not himself tellyou again whatever he has been saying to me, it will only show howuncertain and untrustworthy all his present recollections are. Icannot tell you how strongly I feel that the best course is to leavehis mind to its own natural development. It may even be that thepartial and distorted images of events such as he has been speakingof to me.... "

"I mustn't ask you what they were?... Yes, go on. "

"May again become dim and disappear altogether. If they are to do so, nothing can be gained by dwelling on them now--still less by tryingto verify them--and least of all by using them as a stimulus to furtherrecollection. "

"You think I had better not ask him questions?"

"Exactly. Leave him to himself. Keep his mind on other matters--healthyoccupations, surrounding life. I am certain of one thing--that theeffort to disinter the past is painful to him in itself, quiteindependent of any painful associations in what he is endeavouring torecall. "

"I have seen that, too, in the slight recurrences he has had whenI was there. I quite agree with you about the best course to pursue. Let us have patience and wait. "

Of course, Vereker had not the remotest conception that the lessFenwick remembered, the better his wife would be pleased. So theprincipal idea in his mind at that moment was, what a very sensibleas well as handsome woman he was talking to! It was the way in whichmost people catalogued Rosalind Fenwick. But her ready assent to hiswishes had intensified the doctor's first item of description. Asubordinate wave of his thought created an image of the girl Fenwickmust have pictured to himself coming out of the railway carriage. Heonly repeated: "Let us have patience, and wait, " with a feeling ofrelief from possible further catechism. 

But in order to avoid showing his wish to abate inquiry, he could talkabout aspects of the case that would not involve it. He could tell ofanalogous cases well known, or in his own practice. For instance, thatof a Frenchwoman who wandered away from Amiens, unconscious of herpast and her identity, and somehow got to Buda-Pesth. There, havingretained perfect powers of using her mother-tongue, and also speakingGerman fluently, she had all but got a good teachership in a school, only she had no certificate of character. With a great effort sherecalled the name of a lady at Amiens she felt she could write to forone, and did so. "Fancy her husband's amazement, " said Dr. Conrad, "when, on opening a letter addressed to his wife in her ownhandwriting, he found it was an application from Fräulein Schmidt, orsome German name, asking for a testimonial!" He referred also to themany cases of the caprices of memory he had met with in his studies ofthe _petit-mal_ of epilepsy, a subject to which he had given specialattention. It may have crossed his mind that his companion had fallenvery thoroughly in with his views about not dissecting her husband'scase overmuch for the present. But he put it down, if it did, to herstrong common-sense. It is rather a singular thing how very ready menare to ascribe this quality--whatever it is--to a beautiful woman. Especially if she agrees with them. 

Nevertheless the doctor was not very sorry when he saw that Sally andFenwick, on in front, had caught up with--or been caught up with by--amixed party, of a sort to suspend, divert, or cancel all conversationof a continuous sort. Miss Gwendolen Arkwright and her next eldestsister had established themselves on Fenwick's shoulders, and theJulius Bradshaws had just intersected them from a side-alley. Thelatter were on the point of extinction; going back to London by the3. 15, and everything packed but what they had on. It was a clearreprieve, till 3. 15 at any rate. 

There could be no doubt, thought Rosalind to herself, that herhusband's conversation with Vereker had made him easier in his mindthan when she saw him last, just after breakfast. No doubt he was allthe better, too, for the merpussy's account of her exploit on thebeach; of how she managed to overrule old Gabriel and get amachine put down, contrary to precedent, common caution, and publicopinion--even in the face of urgent remonstrance from her Swissacquaintance, almost as good a swimmer as herself; how she had pickedout a good big selvage-wave to pop in under, and when she got beyondit enjoyed all the comfort incidental to being in bed with the doorlocked. Because, you see, she exaggerated. However, one thing shesaid was quite true. There were no breakers out beyond the saidselvage-wave, because the wind had fallen a great deal, and seemedto have given up the idea of making any more white foam-crests forthe present. But there would be more wind again in the night, saidauthority. It was only a half-holiday for Neptune. 

Sally's bracing influence was all the stronger from the fact of hercomplete unconsciousness of anything unusual. Her mother had saidnothing to her the day before of the revival of Baron Kreutzkammer, nor had Dr. Conrad, acting under cautions given. And all Sally knew ofthe wakeful night was that her mother had found Fenwick walking about, unable to sleep, and had said at breakfast he might just as well havehis sleep out now. To which she had agreed, and had then gone away tosee if "the Tishies, " as she called them, were blown away, and had metthe doctor coming to see if _she_ was. So she was in the best of moodsas an antidote to mind-cloudage. And Fenwick, under the remedy, seemedto her no more unlike himself than was to be expected after not a winktill near daylight. The object of this prolixity is that it may beborne in mind that Sally never shared her mother's or her undeclaredlover's knowledge of the strange mental revival caused--as seemed mostprobable--by the action of the galvanic battery on the previous day. 

 * * * * *

Vereker walked back to his Octopus, whom he had forsaken for anunusually long time, with his brain in a whirl at the strangerevelation he had just heard. His medical experience had put him wellon his guard anent one possibility--that the whole thing might bedelusion on Fenwick's part. How could such an imperfect memory-recordbe said to prove anything without confirmation from without?

His habits of thought had qualified him to keep this possibilityprovisionally in the background without forgetting it. There wasnothing in the mere knowledge of its existence to prevent his tryingto recall all he could of the story of the disappearance of Harrisson, as he read it in the newspapers a year and a half ago. There had beena deal of talk about it at the time, and great efforts had been madeto trace Harrisson, but without success. The doctor lingered alittle on his way, conscious that he could recall very little ofthe Harrisson case, but too interested to be able to leave hisrecollections dormant until he should get substantial information. The Octopus could recollect all about it no doubt, but how venture toapply to her? Or how to Sally? Though, truly, had he done so, it wouldhave been with much less hope of a result. Neither Sally nor hermother were treasure-houses of the day's gossip, as _his_ mother was. "We must have taken mighty little notice of what was going on in theworld at the time, " so thought the doctor to himself. 

What _did_ he actually recollect? A paragraph headed "Disappearanceof a Millionaire" in a hurried perusal of an evening paper as he rodeto an urgent case; a repetition--several repetitions--on the newspaperposters of the name Harrisson during the fortnight following, chieflydisclosing supposed discoveries of the missing man, sandwiched withother discoveries of their falsehood--clue and disappointment byturns. He could remember his own perfectly spurious interest in thecase, produced by such announcements staring at him from all pointsof the compass, and his own preposterous contributions to talk-makingabout them, such as "Have they found that man Harrisson yet?" knowinghimself the merest impostor all the while, but feeling it dutifulto be up-to-date. How came no one of them all to put two and twotogether?

A gleam of a solution was supplied to the doctor's mind when heset himself to answer the question, "How should I have gone aboutsuspecting it?" How, indeed? Ordinary every-day people--_you_'sand _me_'s--can't lightly admit to our minds the idea that wehave actually got mixed up with the regular public people in thenewspapers. Have not even our innocent little announcements that wehave been born, or died, or got married, always had a look of havinggot in by accident, or under some false pretence? Have we not feltinflated when a relation of ours has had a letter to a newspaperinserted, in real print, with his own name as bold as brass? Verekerwas not surprised, on thinking it over, that he personally had missedthe clue. And if he, why not others? Besides, all the Harrisson talkhad been superseded by some more exciting matter before it had beenrecognised as possible that Fenwick's memory might never come back. 

Just as he arrived at Mrs. Iggulden's a thought struck him--notheavily; only a light, reminding flick--and he stopped a minute tosee what it had to say. It referred to his interview with ScotlandYard, some six weeks after Fenwick's first appearance. 

He could recall that in the course of his interview one of theyounger officials spoke in an undertone to his chief; who thereon, after consideration, turned to the doctor and said, "Had not yourman a panama hat? I understood you to say so;" and on receiving anaffirmative reply, spoke again in an undertone to his subordinateto the effect, half-caught by Vereker, that "Alison's hat was blackfelt. " Did he say by any chance Harrisson, not Alison? If so, mightnot that account for a rather forbidding or opposive attitude on theYard's part? He remembered something of fictitious claimants comingforward, representing themselves as Harrisson--desperate bidders fora chance of the Klondyke gold. They might easily have supposed thisman and his quenched memory another of the same sort. Evidently ifinvestigation was not to suffer from overgrown suspicion, only youngand guileless official instinct could be trusted--plain-clothes_ingénus_. Dr. Conrad laughed to himself over a particularlyoutrageous escapade of Sally's, who, when her mother said they alwayssent such very young chicks of constables to Glenmoira Road in themorning, impudently ascribed them to inspector's eggs, laid overnight. 

 * * * * *

"My pulse--feel it!" His Goody mother greeted the doctor with a feeblevoice from inarticulate lips, and a wrist outstretched. She was beingmoribund; to pay him out for being behindhand. 

He skipped all interims, and said, with negligible inaccuracy, "It'sonly a quarter past. "

"Don't talk, but feel!" Her failing senses could indulge a littleimpatience; but it was like throwing ballast out of a balloon. Shemeant to be all the worse directly. 

Her son felt the outstretched wrist, and was relieved to find itnormal--almost abnormally normal, just before lunch! But he had topretend. A teaspoonful of brandy in half a glass of water, clearly!He knew she hated it, but she had better swallow it down. _That_ wasright! And he would hurry Mrs. Iggulden with lunch. However, Mrs. Iggulden had been beforehand, having seen her good gentleman comingand the table all laid ready, so she got the steak on, only she knewthere would something happen if too much hurry and sure enough shebroke a decanter. We do not like the responsibility of punctuationin this sentence. 

"I thought you had forgotten me, " quoth the revived Goody to her son, assisting her to lunch. But the excellent woman said _me_ (as if itwas the name of somebody else, and spelt _M_ double _E_) with acompassionate moan. 

Rosalind was glad to see her husband in good spirits again. He wasquite like himself before that unfortunate little galvanic batteryupset everything. Perhaps its effect would go off, and all he hadremembered of the past grow dim again. It was a puzzle, even toRosalind herself, that her natural curiosity about all Gerry'sunknown history should become as nothing in view of the unwelcomecontingencies that history might disclose. It spoke well for thehappiness of the _status quo_ that she was ready to forego thesatisfaction of this curiosity altogether rather than confront itspossible disturbing influences. "If we can only know nothing aboutit, and be as we are!" was the thought uppermost in her mind. 

It certainly was a rare piece of good luck that, owing to Sally'sleaving the house before Fenwick appeared, and running away to hermadcap swim before he could join her and the doctor, she had justavoided seeing him during the worst of his depression. Indeed, hisremark that he had not slept well seemed to account for all she hadseen in the morning. And in the afternoon, when the whole party, minusthe doctor, walked over to St. Egbert's Station for the honeymoonportion of it to take its departure for town, and the other three tosay farewells, Fenwick was quite in his usual form. Only his wifewatched for any differences, and unless it was that he gave way rathermore freely than usual to the practice of walking with his arm roundherself or Sally, or both, she could detect nothing. As the road theytook was a quiet one, and they met scarcely a soul, no exception onthe score of dignity was taken to this by Rosalind; and as for Sally, her general attitude was "Leave Jeremiah alone--he shall do as helikes. " Lętitia's mental comment was that it wasn't Oxford Streetthis time, and so it didn't matter. 

 * * * * *

"I shall walk straight into papa's library, " said that young marriedlady in answer to an inquiry from Sally, as they fell back a littleto chat. "I shall just walk straight in and say we've come back. "

"What do you suppose the Professor will say?"

"My dear!--it's the merest toss up. If he's got some very interestingGreek or Phoenician nonsense on hand, he'll let me kiss him overhis shoulder and say, 'All right--I'm busy. ' If it's only theCosmocyclopędia work--which he doesn't care about, only it pays--hemay look up and kiss me, or even go so far as to say: 'Well!--andwhere's master Julius?' But I don't expect he'll give any active helpin the collision with mamma, which is sure to come. I rather hope shewon't be at home the first time. "

"Why? Wouldn't it be better to have it over and done with?" Sallyalways wants to clinch everything. 

"Yes, of course; only the second time mamma's edge will be all takenoff, and she'll die down. Besides, the crucial point is Paggy kissingher. It's got to be done, and it will be such a deal easier if I canget Theeny and Classy kissed first. " Classy was the married sister, Clarissa. "After all, mamma must have got a shred of common-sensesomewhere, and she must know that when things can neither be curednor endured you have to pretend, sooner or later. "

"You bottle up when it comes to that, " said Sally philosophically. "But I shouldn't wonder, Tishy, if you found your Goody aggravating, too. She'll talk about haberdashers. "

"Oh, my dear, haberdashers are a trifle! If that was all she mighttalk herself hoarse. Besides, I can stop that by the mantledepartment. "

"What about it? Oh, I know, though!--about your being worth two guineasa week to try on. She would know you were not serious, though. "

"Would she? I'm not so sure about it myself--not sure I'm not serious, I mean. "

"Oh, Tishy! You don't mean you would go and try on at two guineasa week?"

"I really don't know, Sally dear. If I'm to have my husband'sprofession flung in my face at every turn, I may just as well have theadvantage of it by a side-wind. Think what two guineas a week means!A hundred and four guineas a year--remember! guineas, not pounds. And Paggy thinks he could get it arranged for us to go out and dinetogether in the middle of the day at an Italian restaurant.... "

"I say, what a lark!" Sally immediately warms up to the scheme. "Icould come, too. Do you know, Tishy dear, I was just going to twityou with the negro and his spots. But now I won't. "

 * * * * *

The Julius Bradshaws must have reached home early, as our story willshow later that the anticipated collision with the Dragon took placethe same evening. No great matter for surprise, this, to any one whohas noticed the energetic impatience for immediate town-event in folkjust off a holiday. These two were too keen to grapple with theirdomestic problem to allow of delays. So, after getting some dinner ina hurry at Georgiana Terrace, Bayswater, they must needs cab straightaway to Ladbroke Grove Road. As for what happened when they got there, we shall know as much as we want of it later. For the present ourbusiness lies with Fenwick and his wife; to watch, in sympathy withthe latter, for the next development in the strange mental state of theformer, and to hope with her, as it must be confessed, for continuedquiescence; or, better still, for a complete return of oblivion. 

It seemed so cruelly hard to Rosalind that it might not be. What hadshe to gain by the revival of a forgotten past--a past her own shareof which she had for twenty years striven to forget? Utterly guiltlessas, conceivably, she may have known herself to be, she had strivenagainst that past as the guilty strive with the memory of a concealedcrime. And here was she, at the end of this twenty years, with allshe most longed for at the beginning in her possession, mysteriouslyattained with a thoroughness no combination of circumstances, nopatience or forbearance of her own, no self-restraint or generosity ofher young husband's could possibly have brought about. Think only ofwhat we do know of this imperfect story! Conceive that it should havebeen possible for the Algernon Palliser of those days to know andunderstand it to the full; indulge the supposition, however strainedit may be, that his so knowing it would not have placed him in afelon's dock for the prompt and righteous murder of the betrayer--wetake the first convenient name--of the woman he loved. Convinceyourself this could have been; figure to yourself a happy weddedlife for the couple after Miss Sally had made her unconscious _début_with the supremest indifference to her antecedents; construct ahypothetical bliss for them at all costs, and then say if you canfill out the picture with a relation between Sally and her putativefather to be compared for a moment to the one chance has favourednow for the stepfather and stepdaughter of our story. 

Our own imagination is at fault about the would-have-beens andmight-have-beens in this case. The only picture our mind can form ofwhat would have followed a full grasp of all the facts by AlgernonPalliser may be dictated or suggested by a memory of what sent Mr. Salter, of Livermore's Rents, 1808, to the hospital. Rosalind knewnothing of Mr. Salter, but she could remember well all Gerry's featsof strength in his youth--all the cracking of walnuts in hisarm-joints and bending of kitchen-pokers across his neck--and also, too well, an impotence against his own anger when provoked; it haddied down now to a trifle, but she could detect the trifle still. Was such an executive to be trusted not to take the law into its ownhands, to fall into the grasp of an offended legislative functionlater--one too dull to be able to define offence so as to avoid thecondemnation, now and again, of a culprit whose technical crime hasthe applause of the whole human race? Had the author of all herwrongs met his death at the hands of her young husband, might notthis husband of her later life--beside her now--be still serving histime at the galleys, with every compulsory sharer in his condemnationthinking him a hero?

It was all so much better as it had turned out. Only, could itremain so?

At least, nothing was wrong now, at this moment. Whatever her husbandhad said to Vereker in that morning walk, the present hour was abreathing-space for Rosalind. The Kreutzkammer recurrence of theprevious evening was losing its force for her, and there had beennothing since that she knew of. "Chaotic ideas"--the phrase he hadused in the night--might mean anything or nothing. 

They came back from the railway-station by what was known to them asthe long short cut in contradistinction to the short short cut. Thelatter, Sally said, had the courage of its opinions, while the formerwas a time-serving cut. Could she have influenced it at the firstgo-off--when it originally started from the V-shaped stile your skirtsstuck in, behind the Wheatsheaf--it might have mustered the resolutionto go straight on, instead of going off at a tangent to Gattrell'sFarm, half a mile out of the way. Was it intimidated by a statementthat trespassers would be prosecuted, nailed to an oak-tree, legiblea hundred years ago, perhaps, when its nails were not rust, and reallyheld it tight--instead of, as now, merely countenancing its wish toremain from old habit? It may have been so frightened in its timidyouth; but if so, surely the robust self-assertion of its straightstart for Gattrell's had in it something of contempt for the poor oldboard, coupled with its well-known intention of turning to the leftand going slap through the wood the minute you (or it) got there. Itmay even have twitted that board with its apathy in respect oftrespassers. Had the threat _ever_ been carried out?

The long short cut was, according to the aborigines, a goodishstep longer than the road, geometrically. But there was someinner sense--moral, ethical, spiritual--somehow metaphysical orsupraphysical--in which it was a short cut, for all that. The roadwas a dale farther, some did say, along of the dust. But, then, therewas no dust now, because it was all laid. So the reason why was allowedto lapse, and the fact to take care of itself for once. Helped by anillusion that a path through an undergrowth of nut-trees and anovergrowth of oak on such a lovely afternoon as this wasn't distanceat all--even when you got hooked in the brambles--and by otherpalliative incidents, it was voted a very short cut indeed. Certainlynot too long for Rosalind's breathing-space, and had it been evena longer short cut she would have been well contented. 

Every hour passed now, without a new recurrence of some bygone, wasgoing to give her--she knew it well beforehand--a sense of greatersecurity. And every little incident on the walk that made achange in the rhythm of event was welcome. When they paused forrefreshments--ginger-beer in stone bottles--at Gattrell's, and oldMrs. Gattrell, while she undid the corks, outlined the troubles of herhusband's family and her own, she felt grateful for both to have keptclear of India and "the colonies. " No memories of California or theArctic Circle could arise from Mrs. Gattrell's twin-sister Debory, who suffered from information--internal information, mind you; anexplanation necessary to correct an impression of overstrain to themind in pursuit of research. Nor from her elder sister Hannah, whoseneuralgic sick headaches were a martyrdom to herself, but apparentlya source of pride to her family. Of which the inflation, strange tosay, was the greater because Dr. Knox was of opinion that they wouldyield to treatment and tonics; though the old lady herself was opposedto both, and said elder-flower-water. She was a pleasant old personage, Mrs. Gattrell, who always shone out as a beacon of robust health abovea fever-stricken, paralysed, plague-spotted, debilitated, anddisintegrating crowd of blood-relations and connexions by marriage. But not one of all these had ever left the soil they were born on, none of Mrs. Gattrell's people holding with foreign parts. And nothingwhatever had ever taken place at St. Egbert's till the railway come;so it wasn't likely to arouse memories of the ice-fields of thenorthern cold or the tiger-hunts of the southern heat. 

Rosalind found herself asking of each new thing as it arose: "Willthis bring anything fresh to his mind, or will it pass?" The wood-paththe nut-tree growth all but closed over on either side she decidedwas safe; it could taste of nothing but his English school-boyhood, before ever she knew him. But the sudden uprush of the covey ofpartridges from the stubble, and their bee-line for a haven in thenext field--surely danger lay that way? Think what a shot he was in theold days! However, he only said, "Poor dears, they don't know how nearthe thirty-first is, " and seemed to be able to know that much frompast experience without discomfort at not knowing more. 

When Sally proposed fortune-telling in connexion with a _bona-fide_gipsy woman, who looked (she said) exactly like in "Lavengro, " hermother's first impulse was to try and recall if she and the Gerryof old times had ever been in contact with gipsies, authentic orotherwise, and, after decision in the negative, to feel that thiswanderer was more welcome than not, as having a tendency to conducthis mind safely into new channels. Even the conclave of cows he hadto disperse that they might get through a gate--cows that didn't mindhow long they waited at it, having time on their hands--suggested thesame kind of query. She was rapidly getting to look at everythingfrom the point of view of what it was going to remind her husbandof. She must struggle against the habit that was forming, or itwould become insupportable. But then, again, the thought would comeback that every hour that passed without an alarm was another steptowards a safe haven; and who could say that in a week or so thingsmight not be, at least, no worse than they were before this pestilentlittle galvanic battery broke in upon her peace?

The fact that he had spoken of new memories to Vereker and had notrepeated them to her was no additional source of uneasiness; rather, if anything, the contrary. For she could not entertain the idea thatGerry would keep back from her anything he could tell to Vereker. Whathad actually happened was necessarily inconceivable by her--thata _recollected recollection_ of his own marriage with her should beinterpreted by him as a memory of a marriage with some other womanunknown, who might, for anything he knew, be still living; that hisinference as to the bearing of this on his own conduct was that heshould refrain, at any cost to himself, from claiming, so to speak, his own identity; should accept the personality chance had forced uponhim for her sake; should even forego the treasure of her sympathy, more precious far to him than the heavy score to his credit at thebanks of New York and San Francisco, rather than dig up what needsmust throw doubt on the validity of their marriage, and turn her pathof life, now smooth, to one of stones and thorns. For that was thecourse he had sketched out for himself; and had it only been possiblefor oblivion to draw a sharp line across the slowly reviving record, and to say to memory: "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther, "Fenwick might have persevered in this course successfully till now. And then all our story would have been told--at least, as far asRosalind and Fenwick go. And we might say farewell to them at thismoment as the cows reluctantly surrender passage-way of the long shortcut, and Gerry saunters on, seemingly at ease from his own mind'sunwelcome activities, with Sally on one arm and his wife in the other, and Mrs. Grundy nowhere. But no conspiracies are possible to memoryand oblivion. They are a couple that act independently and consultnobody's convenience but their own. 

It may easily be that Rosalind, had she been mistress of all the factsand taken in the full position, would have decided to run the risksincidental to confronting her husband with his own past--taken himinto her confidence and told him. With the chance in view that hisreason might become unsettled from the chronic torment of constanthalf-revivals of memory, would it not almost be safer to face theacute convulsion of a sudden _éclaircissement_--to put happinessto the touch, and win or lose it all? Sally could be got out of theway for long enough to allow of a resumption of equilibrium afterthe shock of the first disclosure and a completely establishedunderstanding that she _must not be told_, come what might. Supposingthat she could tell, and he could hear, the whole story of twentyyears ago better than when a terrible position warped it forteller and hearer in what had since become to her an intolerabledream--supposing this done, and each could understand the other, mightnot the very strangeness of the fact that the small new life thatplayed so large a part in that dream had become Sally since, and wasthe only means by which Sally could have been established, might notthis tell for peace? Might it not even raise the question, "What doesa cloud of twenty years ago matter at all?" and suggest the answer, "Nothing? For did not Sally come to us out of the cloud, and couldwe do without her?"

But Rosalind's half-insight into the patchwork of her husband'sperceptions warranted no step so decisive. Rather, if anything, itpointed to a gradual resumption of his _status quo_ of a few days ago. After all, had he not had (and completely forgotten) recurrences likethat of the Baron and the fly-wheel? Well, perhaps the last was ashade more vivid than the others. But then see now, had he notforgotten it already to all outward seeming?

So that the minds of the two of them worked to a common end--silence. Hers in the hope that the effects of the galvanic current--if that didit--would die away and leave him rest for his; his in the fear thatbehind the unraised curtain that still hid his early life from himselfwas hidden what might become a baleful power to breed unrest for hers. 

But it all depended on his own mastery of himself. Except he told it, who should know that he was Harrisson? And _how_ he felt the shelterof the gold! Who was going to suspect that a man who could commandwealth in six figures by disclosing his identity, would keep ita secret? And for his wife's sake too! A pitiful four-or five-figureman might--yes. But hundreds of thousands!--think of it!

CHAPTER XXXVIII

OF AN EXPEDITION AGAINST A GOODY, AND THE WALK BACK TO LOBJOIT'S. AND THE WALK BACK AGAIN TO IGGULDEN'S. HOW FENWICK TOOK VEREKER'S CONFIDENCE BY STORM. OF A COLLIER THAT PUT TO SEA. SUCCESSFUL AMBUSCADE OF THE OCTOPUS. PROVISIONAL EQUILIBRIUM OF FENWICK'S MIND. WHY BOTHER ABOUT HORACE? WHY NOT ABOUT PICKWICK JUST AS MUCH? THE KITTEN WASN'T THERE--CERTAINLY NOT!

So it came about that during the remainder of that day and part of thenext Fenwick either made no further exploration of his past; or, ifhe did so, concealed his discoveries. For he not only kept silencewith Rosalind, but even with Vereker was absolutely reserved, neveralluding to their conversation of the morning. And the doctor acceptedthis reserve, and asked no questions. 

As for Rosalind, she was only too glad to catch at the support of themedical authority and to abstain from question or suggestion; for thepresent certainly, and, unless her silence--as might be--should seemto imply a motive on her part, to maintain it until her husbandrevived the subject by disclosing further recollections of the bygonetime. Happily Sally knew nothing about it; _that_ her mother wasconvinced of. And Sally wasn't likely to know anything, for Vereker'sprofessional discretion could be relied on, even if her suspicionswere excited. And, really, except that Fenwick seemed a little drowsyand reflective, and that Rosalind had a semitone of consolation in hermanner towards him, there was nothing to excite suspicion. 

 * * * * *

After the cows--this is an expression borrowed from Sally, later inthe afternoon--conversation flagged through the rest of the walk home. Except for regrets, more than once expressed, that it would be muchtoo late for tea when we got in, and a passing word on the fact thatat the seaside one got as greedy as some celebrated glutton--a Romanemperor, perhaps--very few ideas were interchanged. But a littleconversation was made out of the scarcity of a good deal, for thepersistent optimism of Sally recognised that it was awfully jollysaying nothing on such a lovely evening. Slight fatigue, combinedwith the beauty of sky and sea and distant downland, the lengtheningshadows of the wheatsheaves, and the scarlet of poppies in thestubble, seemed good to justify contemplation and silence. It was anhour to caress in years to come, none the less that it was accepted asthe mere routine of daily life in the short term of its existence. Itwas an hour that came to an end when the party arrived at the hedge ofthe unripe sloes that had checked the onset of Albion Villas towardsthe new town, and passed through the turnstile Fenwick and Vereker hadpassed through in the morning. Then speech came back, and each didwhat all folk invariably do after a long spell of silence--revealedwhat they were being silent about, or seemed to be. Most likelyFenwick's contribution was only a blind, as his mind must have beenfull of many thoughts he wished to keep to himself. 

"I wonder when Paganini's young woman's row with her mother's goingto come off--to-day or to-morrow?"

"I was wondering whether it would come off at all. I dare say she'llaccept the inevitable. " Thus Rosalind, and for our part we believethis also was not quite candid--in fact, was really suggested by herhusband's remark. But Sally's was a genuine disclosure, and reallyshowed what her mind had been running on. 

"I've been meditating a Crusade, " she said, with remoteness fromcurrent topics in her voice. And both her companions immediatelymade concessions to one that seemed to them genuine as compared withtheir own. 

"Against whom, kitten?" said her mother. 

And Fenwick reinforced her with, "Yes, who's the Crusade to beagainst, Sarah?"

"Against the Octopus. " And Sally says this with the most perfectlyunconscious gravity, as though a Crusade against an octopus was avery common occurrence in every-day life. The eyes of her companionstwinkle a little interchange across her unseen, but are careful tokeep anything suggesting a smile out of their voices as they applyfor enlightenment. 

"Because of poor Prosy, " Sally explains. "You'll see now. She won'tallow him to come round this evening, you see if she does!" She isso intent upon her subject-matter that they might almost have smiledaloud without detection, after all. 

"When's it to come off, Sarah--the Crusade?"

"I was thinking of going round this evening if he doesn't turn up. "

"Suppose we all go, " Fenwick suggests. And Rosalind assents. The Crusade may be considered organized. "We'll give him tilleight-forty-five, " Sally says, forecasting strategy, "and then ifhe doesn't come we'll go. "

Eight-forty-five came, but no doctor. So the Crusade came off asarranged, with the result that the Christian forces, on arriving inthe neighbourhood of Jerusalem, found that the Octopus responsiblefor the personation of the Saracens had just gone to bed. It was anill-advised Crusade, because if the Christians had only had a littlepatience, the released prisoner would have looked round as soon ashis janitor was asleep. As it turned out, no sooner were the visitors'voices audible than the Octopus became alive to the pleasures ofsociety, and renounced sleep in its favour. She would slip somethingon and come down, and did so. Her doing so was out of keeping with theleading idea of the performance, presenting the Paynim as an obligingrace; but a meek and suffering one, though it never aired itsgrievances. These, however, were the chief subjects of conversationduring the visit, which, in spite of every failure in dramaticpropriety, was always spoken of in after days as "the Crusade. " Itcame to an end in due course, the Saracen host retiring to bed, withbenedictions. 

 * * * * *

Vereker walked back with our friends to Mrs. Lobjoit's through thesweet night-air a considerate little shower of rain, that came downwhile they were sympathetically engaged, had just washed clean. Vapour-drifts that were wavering between earth and sky, andsacrificing their birthright of either cloudship or foghood, wereaccompanying a warm sea-wind towards the north. Out beyond, and quiteclear of all responsibility for them and theirs, was a flawlessheaven with the stellar and planetary universe in it, pitiless andpassionless eyes perhaps--as Tennyson calls them--and strange fires;but in this case without power to burn and brand their nothingnessinto the visitors to St. Sennans, who laughed and talked and smokedand took no notice; and, indeed, rather than otherwise, consideredthat Orion's Belt and Aldebaran had been put there to make it a finenight for them to laugh and talk and smoke in. 

It was pleasant to Vereker, after his walk with Fenwick in themorning, to find the latter like his usual cheerful self again. Thedoctor had had rather a trying time with his Goody mother, so that theday had been more one of tension than of peace, and it was a heavenlyrespite to him from filial duties dutifully borne, to walk home withthe goddess of his paradise--the paradise that was so soon to come toan end and send him to the release of his "locum, " Mr. Neckitt. Nevermind. The having such a time to look back to in the future was quiteas much as one general practitioner, with a duty to his mother, couldin reason expect. Was Dr. Conrad aware, we wonder, how much thephilosophical resignation that made this attitude of thought possiblewas due to the absence of any other visible favoured applicant forMiss Sally, and the certainty that he would see her once or twicea week at least after he had gone back to his prescriptions and hisdiary of cases?

Probably he wasn't; and when, on arriving at Lobjoit's, Fenwickannounced that he didn't want to go in yet, and would accompany thedoctor back to Iggulden's and take a turn round, the only misgivingthat could try for an insecure foothold in the mind now given up to adelirium it called Sally was one that Fenwick might have some newpainful memory to tell. But he was soon at rest about this. Fenwickwasn't going to talk about himself. Very much the reverse, if one's ownreverse is some one else. He was going to talk about the doctor, intowhose arm he slipped his own as soon as he had lighted his second cigar. For they had not walked quick from Iggulden's. 

"Now tell me about Sir Dioscorides Nayler and the epileptiformdisorders. "

"Miss Sally's been telling you.... "

"No, she didn't--Sally did. " Both laughed. The doctor will make itSally next time--that's understood. "You told Sally and she told me. What's the damage to be?"

"How much did Sally tell you?" The little formality comes easier tothe doctor's shyness as it figures, this time, quotation-wise. It isa repeat of Fenwick's use of it. 

"Sally said three thousand. "

"Yes, that's what I told her. But it's not official. He may want more. He may let me have it for three. Only I don't know why I should haveit for less than any one else. "

"Never you mind why! That's no concern of yours, my dear boy. Whatyou've got to think of is of yourself and Mrs. Vereker. Dioscorideswill take care of himself--trust him!"

"Yes, of course, I have to think of my mother. " One can hear in thespeaker's voice what may be either self-reproach for having neglectedthis aspect of the case, or very tolerant indictment of Fenwick forhaving mistakenly thought he had done so. 

"What's the man thinking of? Of course you have, but I didn't meanyour mother. She's a dear old lady"--this came grudgingly--"butI didn't mean her. I meant the Mrs. Vereker that's to come. Your wife, dear fellow, your wife. "

The way the young man flushed up, hesitated, stammered, couldn'torganize a sane word, amused Fenwick intensely. Of course he was, soto speak, quite at home--understood the position thoroughly. But hewasn't going to torment the doctor. He was only making it impossiblefor him to avoid confession, for his own sake. He did not wait forthe stammering to take form, but continued:

"I mean the young lady you told Sally about--the young lady youare hesitating to propose to because there'll be what you callcomplications in medicine--complications about your mamma, to put itplainly.... Oh yes, of course, Sally told me all about it directly. "Vereker cannot resist a laugh, for all his embarrassment, a laughwhich somehow had the image of Sally in it. "She _would_, you know. Sally's the sort of party that--that, if she'd been Greek, wouldhave been the daughter of an Arcadian shepherdess and a thunderbolt. "

"Of course she would. I say, Fenwick, look here.... "

"Have another cigar, old man. "

"No, I've smoked enough. That one's lasted all the time since we cameout. Look here--what I want to say is ... Well, that I was a greatfool--did wrong in fact--to talk to Sally about that young lady.... "

"And to that young lady about Sally, " Fenwick says quietly. For halfa second--such alacrity has thought--Vereker takes his meaning wrong;thinks he really believes in the other young lady. Then it flasheson him, and he knows how his companion has been seeing through himall the while. But so lovable is Fenwick, and so much influence isthere in the repose of his strength, that there is no resentmenton Vereker's part that he should be thus seen through. He surrendersat discretion. 

"I see you know, " he says helplessly. 

"Know you love Sally?--of course I do! So does her mother. So doesyours, for that matter. So does every one, except herself. Why, evenyou yourself know it! _She_ never will know it unless she hears it onthe best authority--your own, you know. "

"Ought I to tell her? I know I was all wrong about that humbug-girl Icooked up to tell her about. I altogether lost my head, and was a fool. "

"I can't see what end you proposed to yourself by doing it, " saysFenwick a little maliciously. "If Sally had recommended you to speakup, because it was just possible the young lady might be pining foryou all the time, you couldn't have asked her _her_ name, and thensaid, 'That's hers--you're her!' like the fat boy in 'Pickwick. 'No!--I consider, my dear boy, that you didn't do yourself any good bythat ingenious fiction. You know all the while you wouldn't have beensorry to think she understood you. "

"I don't know that I didn't think she did. I really don't know what Idid or didn't think. I quite lost my head over it, that's the truth. "

"Highly proper. Quite consistent with human experience! It's the sortof job chaps always do lose their heads over. The question now is, What are we going to do next?" Which meant what was Vereker going todo next? and was understood by his hearer in that sense. He made noanswer at the moment, and Fenwick was not going to press for one. 

A Newcastle collier had come in to deliver her cargo some days since, before the wind sprang up, and the coal-carts had been passing andrepassing across the sands at low water; for there was a new moonsomewhere in the sky when she came, as thin as a sickle, clingingtight round the business moon that saw to the spring-tides, a phantomsphere an intrepid star was daring to go close to. This brig had notbeen disappointing her backers, for wagers had been freely laid thatshe would drag her moorings in the wind, and drift. Fenwick andVereker stopped in their walk to lean on the wooden rail above thebeach that skirted the two inclines, going either way, up which thewaggons had been a couple of hours ago scrambling over the shingleagainst time, to land one more load yet while the ebb allowed it. They could hear the yeo-yeo! of the sail-hoisters at work on the bigmainsail abaft, and wondered how on earth she was going to be gotclear with so little sea-way and the wind dead in shore. But they werereassured by the ancient mariner with the striped shirt, whose missionin life seemed to be to stand about and enlighten land-minds aboutsea-facts. The master of yander craft had doon that much afower, andhe'd do it again. Why, he'd known him from three year old, the stripedshirt had! Which settled the matter. Then presently the clink-clink ofthe windlass dragging at the anchor. They watched her in silence till, free of her moorings, any one could have sworn she would be on shoreto a certainty. But she wasn't. She seemed mysteriously to be able tomanage for herself, and just as a berth for the night on the shingleappeared inevitable, leaned over to the wind and crept away from theland, triumphant. 

Then, the show being over, as Fenwick and Vereker turned to look thelateness of the hour in the face, and get home to bed, the latteranswered the question of the former, as though he had but just asked it. 

"Speak to Sally. I shall have to. " And then added, with an awestruckface and bated breath: "But it's _awful_!" A moment after he waslaughing at himself, as he said to his companion, referring to a verypalpable fact, "I don't wonder I made you laugh just now. "

They walked on without much said till they came to Iggulden's; whenthe doctor, seeing no light in the sitting-room, hoped his worthymother had fulfilled a promise made when they came away, and gone tobed. It was then past eleven. But he was reckoning without his host. 

Fenwick said to him, as they stood on Iggulden's threshold and doormatrespectively--presuming rashly, on imperfect information, to delayfarewells--"Now look here, Conrad, my dear boy (I like your nameConrad), don't you go and boil over to Sally to-morrow, nor next day. You'll only spoil the rest of your stay, maybe.... What! well--whatI mean is that nothing I say prejudices the kitten. You'll understandthat, I'm sure?"

"Perfectly. Of course, if Sally were to say she knew somebody shewould like a deal better, there's no reason why she shouldn't.... I mean _I_ couldn't complain. "

"Yes--yes! I see. You'd exonerate her. Good boy! Very proper. " Andindeed the doctor had felt, as the words passed his lips, that he wasrather a horrid liar. But the point didn't matter. Fenwick laughed itoff: "Just you take my advice, and refer the matter to the kitten thelast day you're here. Monday, won't it be? And don't think about it!"

"Oh no! I'm a philosophical sort of chap, I am! Never in extremes. Good-night!"

"I see. _Sperat infestis metuit secundis alteram sortem benepręparatum pectus_--Horace. " Fenwick ran this through in a breath;and the doctor, a little hazy in school-memories of the classics, said, "What's that?" and began translating it--"The bosom wellprepared for either lot, fears.... " Fenwick caught him up andcompleted the sentence:

"Fears what is good, and hopes for what is not. Cut away to bed, oldchap, and sleep sound.... " Then he paused a moment, as he saw thedoctor looking a question at him intently, and just about to speakit. He answered it before it came:

"No, no! Nothing more. I mean to forget all about it, and take my lifeas it stands. Bother Mr. Harrisson!" He dropped his voice to say this;then raised it again. "Don't you fret about me, doctor. Remember, I'mAlgernon Fenwick! Good-night!"

"Good-night!" And then the doctor, with the remains of heart-turmoilin him, and a brain reeling, more or less, went up into what heconceived to be an empty dark room, and was disconcerted by anill-used murmur in the darkness--a meek, submissive voice of oneaccustomed to slights:

"I told her to blow it out and go to bed. It is all--quite--right, mydear. So do not complain. Now help me with my things, and I will getto bed. "

"My dear mother! I _am_ so sorry. I had no idea you had not gone longago!"

"My dear!--it does not matter in the least now. What is done, is done. Be careful with the grease over my work. These candles dropdreadfully, unless you hold them exactly upright. And gutter. Now giveme your arm, and I will go to bed. I _think_ I shall sleep. " And theworthy woman was really--if her son could only have got his eyes freedfrom the scales of domestic superstition, and seen it--intensely happyand exultant at this fiendish little piece of discomfort-mongering. She had scored; there was no doubt of it. She was even turning it overin her own mind whether it would not bear repetition at a futuretime; and quite intended, if so, to enjoy herself over it. Now thedoctor was contrite and heavy at heart at his cruel conduct; walkingabout--just think!--and talking over his own affairs while hisself-sacrificing mother was sitting in the dark, with the lamp out!To be sure there was no visible reason why she should have had itput out, except as a picturesque and imaginative way of rubbing heraltruism into its nearest victim. Unless, indeed, it was done in orderthat the darkened window should seem to announce to the returningtruant that she had gone to bed, and to lull his mind tounconsciousness of the ambush that awaited him. 

Anyhow, the doctor was so impressed with his own delinquency that hefelt it would be impossible, the lamp having been put out, to take hismother into his confidence about his conversation with Fenwick. Whichhe certainly would have done--late as the hour was--if it had beenleft in. So he said good-night, and carried the chaos of his emotionsaway to bed with him, and lay awake with them till cock-crow. 

 * * * * *

As Fenwick walked back home, timing his pace by his expectation ofhis cigar's duration, he wondered whether, perhaps, he had not beena little rash. He felt obliged to go back on interviews with Sally, inwhich the doctor had been spoken of. He recalled for his justificationone in particular. The family conclave at Krakatoa Villa had recurredto a remark of Rosalind's about the drawback to Vereker's practice ofhis bachelorhood. He was then, as it were, brought up for a secondreading, and new clauses added to him containing schedules of possiblewives. Fenwick had noticed, then, that Sally's assent to the insertionof any candidate's name turned on two points: one, the lady's consentbeing taken for granted; the other, that every young single femalehuman creature known by name or describable by language was actuallyout of the question, or inadmissible in its answer. She rejectedalmost all applicants for the post of a doctor's wife withoutexamining their claims, on the ground of moral or physical defect--as, for instance, you never would go and tie up poor Prosy to a wife thatgolloped. Sylvia Peplow, indeed! Interrogated about the nature of"golloping, " Sally could go no nearer than that Miss Peplow looked asif she couldn't help it. And her sister was worse: she was perfectlypecky, and shut up with a click. And as for the large Miss Baker--why, you knew how large _she_ was, and it would be quite ridiculous!Besides, her stupidity!

The only candidates that got the least consideration owed theirsuccess to their names or expectations. Caroline Smith had, or wouldhave sometime, a thousand a year. But she squinted. Still, she mightbe thought over. Mrs. Pollicitus Biggs's cousin Isabella would havetwo thousand when her mother died, but the vitality of the latter wasindescribable. Besides, she was just like her name, Isabella, and didher hair religiously. There was Chariclea Epimenides, certainly, whohad got three thousand, and would have six more. She might be worththinking of.... 

"Why don't you have him yourself, Sarah?" Fenwick had asked at thispoint. Rosalind had just left the room to speak to Ann. But he didn'twant Sarah to be obliged to answer, so he went on: "Why are all theseyoung ladies' incomes exactly in round thousands?"

To which Sally had replied: "They always are, when you haven't got'em. " But had fallen into contemplation, and presently said--out ofthe blue--"Because I'm an unsettled sort of party--a vagrant. Ishouldn't do for a G. P. 's wife, thank you, Jeremiah! I should liketo live in a caravan, and go about the country, and wood fires outof doors. " Was it, Fenwick wondered, the gipsies they had seen to-daythat had made her think of this? and then he recalled how he afterwardsheard the kitten singing to herself the old ballad:

 "What care I for my goose-feather bed? What care I for my money oh?"

and hearing her so sing had somehow imputed to the parade of bravadoin the swing of its rhythm a something that might have belonged to atouched chord. Like enough a mistake of his, said Reason. But for allthat the reminiscence played its part in soothing Fenwick's misgivingsof his own rashness. 

"The kitten's all right, " said he to himself. "And if she doesn't wantMaster Conrad, the sooner he knows it the better!" But he had littledoubt of the course things would take as he stopped to look at thatventuresome star, that seemed to be going altogether too near the moonfor safety. 

In a few moments he turned again towards home. And then his mindmust needs go off to the thing of all others he wished not to thinkof--_himself_. He had come to see this much clearly, that untilthe veil floated away from between him and his past and left thewhole atmosphere transparent, there could be no certainty that arecrudescence of that past would not be fatal to his wife's happiness. And inevitably, therefore, to his own. Having once formulated the ideathat for the future _he_ was to be one person and Harrisson another, hefound its entertainment in practice easier than he had anticipated. Hehad only to say to himself that it was for her sake that he did it, andhe did not find it altogether impossible to dismiss his own identityfrom the phantasmagoria that kept on coming back and back before hismind, and to assign the whole drama to another person; to whom heallowed the name of Harrisson all the easier from his knowledge thatit never had been really his own. Very much the easier, too, nodoubt, from the sense that the function of memory was still diseased, imperfect, untrustworthy. How could it be otherwise when he still wasunable to force it back beyond a certain limit? It was mainly a visionof America, and, previous to that, a mystery of interminable avenuesof trees, and an inexplicable horror of a struggle with death. Therehe always lost himself. In the hinterland of this there was that visionof a wedding somewhere. And then bewilderment, because the image ofhis living wife, his very soul of the world he now dwelt in, the womanwhose daughter had grown into his heart as his own--yes, not only theimage, but the very name of her--had come in and supplanted that of theforgotten wife of that forgotten day. So much so that more than once, in striving to follow the clue given by that railway-carriage, his mindhad involuntarily called the warm living thing that came into his armsfrom it "Rosey. " In the face of that, what was the worth of anything heshould recollect now, that he should not discard it as a mere phantasm, for her sake? How almost easy to say to himself, "that was Harrisson, "and then to add, "whoever he was, " and dismiss him. 

Do you--you who read--find this so very difficult to understand? Canyou recall no like imperfect memory of your own that, multiplied ahundredfold, would supply an analogy, a standpoint to look intoFenwick's disordered mind from?

After his delirious collision with his first vigorous revival of thepast, he was beginning to settle down to face it, helped by thetalisman of his love for Rosalind, whom it was his first duty toshield from whatever it should prove to hold of possible injury toher. That happy hour of the dying sunset in the shorn cornfields, withher and Sally and the sky above and the sea beyond, had gone far tosoothe the perturbation of the night. And his talk of the morning withthis young man he had just left had helped him strongly. For he knewin his heart he could safely go to him again if he could not bear hisown silence, could trust him with whatever he could tell at all to anyone. Could he not, when he was actually ready to trust him with--Sally?

So, though he was far from feeling at rest, a working equilibrium wasin sight. He could acquiesce in what came back to him, as it came;need never struggle to hasten or retard it. Little things would floatinto his mind, like house-flies into the ray from a shutter-crack ina darkened room, and float away again uncaptured, or whizz and burrround and against each other as the flies do, and then decide--as theflies do--that neither concerns the other and each may go his way. Buthe was nowise bound to catch these things on the wing, or persuadethem to live in peace with one another. If they came, they came; andif they went, they went. 

Such a one caught his thoughts, and held them for a moment as, satisfied that astronomy would see to that star, he turned to gostraight home to Lobjoit's. That would just last out the cigar. Butwhat was it now? What was the fly that flew into his sun-ray thistime, that it should make him remember a line of Horace, to be sopat with it, and to know what it meant, too?

But this fact, that he could not tell how he came to know its meaning, showed him how decisively the barrier line across the memory of hisboyhood was drawn, or, it might be, his early manhood. He could notremember, properly speaking, the whole of his life in the States, buthe could remember telling a man--one Larpent, a man with a club-foot, at Ontario--that he had been there over fifteen years. This manhas nothing to do with this story, but he happens to serve as anillustration of the disjointed way in which small details would tellout clear against a background of confusion. Why, Fenwick couldremember his face plainly--how close-shaven he was, and black over therazor-land; how his dentist had inserted an artificial tooth thatdidn't match, and shone out white. But as to the fifteen years he hadspent in the States, that he had told Mr. Larpent of, they grew dimmerand dimmer as he tried to carry his recollection further back. Beyondthem--or rather, longer ago than they, properly speaking--came thatendless, intolerable labyrinth of trees, and then, earlier still, thatrailway-carriage. It was getting clearer; but the worst of it was thatthe clearer it got, the clearer grew the Rosey that came out of it. As long as that went on, there was nothing of it all he could placefaith in. He had been told that no man could be convinced, by his ownreason, of his own hallucination. He would supply a case to thecontrary. It would amuse him one day, if ever he came to know thatgirl of the railway-carriage was dead, to tell Rosalind all hisexperiences, and how bravely he fought against what he knew to bedelusion. 

But he must make an effort against this sort of thing. Here was he, who had just made up his mind--so he phrased it--to remain himself, and refuse to be Harrisson, no sooner was he left alone for a fewminutes than he must needs be raking up the past. And that, too, because of a line of Horace!--sound in itself, but quite cut asunderfrom its origin, the book he read it in, or the voice he heard readit. What did that line matter? Leave it for Mr. Harrisson in thatstate of pre-existence. As well make a point of recalling the_provenance_ of any little thing that had happened in this his presentlife. Well, for instance, Mary and the fat boy in "Pickwick. " Rosalindhad read him that aloud, he knew, but he couldn't say when. Was hegoing to worry himself to recall that which could do him no harm toknow? Surely not. And if so, why strive to bring back things betterforgotten? It is useless to endeavour to make the state of Fenwick'smind, at this point of the imperfect revival of memory, appear otherthan incredible. A person who has had the painful experience offorgetting his own name in a dream would perhaps understand it best. Or, without going so far, can no help be got towards it from ourfrequent certainties about some phrase (for instance) that we think wecannot possibly forget? about some date that we believe no human powerwill ever obliterate? And in five minutes--gone--utterly gone! Truly, there is no evidence but a man's own word for what he does or doesnot, can or cannot, recollect. 

 * * * * *

"I say, Rosey, when was it you read to me about Mary and the fat boyin 'Pickwick'?" Fenwick, having suggested a doubt to himself about hispower to recall what he supposed to have happened recently, had, ofcourse, set about doing it directly. His question was asked of hiswife as he came into her bedroom on his return. He mounted the stairssinging to himself, "Que nous mangerons Marott-e, Bec-ą-bec et toi et moi, "

till he came in to where Rosalind was sitting reading, with herwonderful hair combed free--probably by Sally for a treat. Then heasked his question rather suddenly, and it made her start. 

"I was in the middle of my book, and you made me jump. " He gave hera kiss for apology. "What's the question? When did I read to you aboutMary and the fat boy? I couldn't say. I feel as if I had, though. "

"Was it out in the garden at K. Villa? It wasn't here. " He usuallycalled Krakatoa "K. " for working purposes. 

"No, it certainty wasn't here. It must have been at home, only Ican't recollect when. Ask Sally. "

"The kitten wasn't there. "

"She would know, though. She always knows. She's not asleep yet ... Sallykin!" The young person is on the other side of a mere woodenpartition, congenial to the architecture of Lobjoit's, and her replyconveys the idea of a speaker in bed who hasn't moved to answer. 

"What? Be quick. I'm going to sleep. "

"I'm so sorry, chick. When was it I read to this man Mary and thefat boy in 'Pickwick'?"

"How should I know? Not when I was there. "

"All right, Sarah. " Thus Fenwick, to whom Sarah responds:

"Good-night, Jeremiah. Go to bed, and don't keep decent Christianpeople awake at this hour of the night. Take mother's book away, and cut it. "

Rosalind closes her book and says: "_I_ don't know, darling, ifSally doesn't. Why do you want to know?"

"Couldn't say. It crossed my mind. I know the kitten wasn't there, though. Good-night, love.... Oh yes, I shall sleep to-night. Ta, ta, Sarah--pleasant dreams!"

But he had not reached the door when the voice of Sarah came again, with the implication of a mouth that had come out into the open. 

"Stop, Jeremiah!" it said. "It wasn't at K. Villa. "

"Why not, chick?"

"Because Pickwick's _lost_! It was lent to those impossible peopleat Turnham Green, and they stole it. I know they did. Name likeMarylebone. "

"The Haliburtons? Why, that's ever so long ago. " Thus Rosalind. 

"Of course it is. It's been gone ages. I'm going to sleep. Good-night!" And Jeremiah said good-night once more and departed. 

Sally didn't go straight to sleep, but she made a start on her waythere. It was not a vigorous start, for she had hardly begun uponit when she desisted, and sat up in bed and listened. 

"What's that, mother? Nothing wrong, is there?"

"No, darling child, what should be wrong? Go to sleep. "

"I thought I heard you gasp, or snuffle, or sigh, or sob, or clickin your throat. That's all. Sure you didn't?"

"Quite sure. Now, do be a reasonable kitten, and go to sleep; Ishall be in bed in half-a-second. "

And Sally subsides, but first makes a stipulation: "You _will_ sleepin your hair, mother darling, won't you? Or, at least, do it up, andnot that hateful nightcap?"

But though Rosalind felt conscientiously able to disclaim any ofthe sounds Sally had described, something audible had occurred in herbreathing. Sally's first word had gone nearest, but it was hardlya full-grown gasp. 

Her husband's question about "Pickwick" had scarcely taken herattention off an exciting story-climax, and she really did want toknow why the Archbishop turned pale as death when the Countess kissedhim. Gerry was looking well and cheerful again, and there was nothingto connect his inquiry with any reminiscence of "B. C. " So, as soonas he had gone, she reopened her book--not without a mental allusionto a dog in Proverbs--and went on where she had left off. The writerhad not known how to manage his Archbishop and Countess, and the storywent flat and slushy like an ill-whipped _zabajone_. She put the bookaside, and wondered whether "Pickwick" really _had_ been alienated bythe impossible Haliburtons; sat thinking, but only of the thing of_now_--nothing of buried records. 

So she sat, it might be for two minutes. Then, quite suddenly, she hadbitten her lip and her brows had wrinkled. And her eyes had locked toa fixed look that would stay till she had thought this out. So herface said, and the stillness of her hand. 

For she had suddenly remembered when and where it was she had read tothat man about Mary and the fat boy. It was in the garden at hermother's twenty-two years ago. She remembered it well now, and quitesuddenly. She could remember how Gerry, young-man-wise, had tried toutilise Thackeray to show his greater knowledge of the world--hadflaunted Piccadilly and Pall Mall before the dazzled eyes of anastonished suburban. She could remember how she read it aloud to him, because, when he read over her shoulder, she always turned the pagebefore he was ready. And his decision that Dickens's characters werenever gentlemen, and her saying perhaps that was why he was soamusing. And then how he got the book from her and went on readingwhile she went away for her lawn-tennis shoes, and when she cameback found he had only two more pages to read, and then he wouldcome and play. 

But it spoke well for her husband's chances of a quiet time to-nightthat he should hold this memory in his mind, and yet be secure againsta complete resurrection of the past. Nothing else might grow from it. He evidently thought the reading had been at Shepherd's Bush. He wouldhardly have said, "the kitten wasn't there, " unless his ideas had beenglued to that spot. But then--and Rosalind's mind swam to think ofit--how very decisively the kitten was "not there" in that othergarden two-and-twenty years ago. 

It was at that moment the gasp, or sigh, or sob, or whatever itwas, awoke Sally. Her mother had been strong against the mere memoryof the happy hour of thoughtless long ago; but then, this that wasto come--this thing the time was thoughtless of! Was it not enoughto force a gasp from self-control itself? a cry from any creatureclaiming to be human? "_The kitten wasn't there!_" No, truly shewas not. 

CHAPTER XXXIX

HOW MEMORY CREPT BACK AND BACK, AND FENWICK KEPT HIS OWN COUNSEL. ROSALIND NEED NEVER KNOW IT. OF A JOLLY BIG BLOB OF MELTED CANDLE, AND SALLY'S HALF-BROTHER. OF FENWICK'S IMPROVED GOOD SPIRITS

That was a day of many little incidents, and a fine day into thebargain. Perhaps the next day was helped to be a flat day by thebarometer, which had shown its usual untrustworthiness and gone down. The wind's grievance--very perceptible to the leeward of keyholes andwindow-cracks--may have been against this instability. It had beenlooking forward to a day's rest, and here this meteorology must needsbe fussing. Neptune on the contrary was all the fresher for hishalf-holiday, and was trotting out tiny white ponies all over hisfields, who played bo-peep with each other in and out of the valleysof the plough-land. But they were grey valleys now, that yesterdaywere smiling in the sun. And the sky was a mere self-coloured sky(a modern expression, as unconvincing as most of its congeners), andwanted to make everything else as grey as itself. Also there camedrifts of fine rain that wetted you through, and your umbrella wasn'tany good. So a great many of the visitors to St. Sennans thought theywould stop at home and get those letters written. 

Sally wouldn't admit that the day was flat _per se_, but only that ithad become so owing to the departure of Lętitia and her husband. Shereviewed the latter a good deal, as one who had recently been wellunder inspection and had stood the test. He was really a very nicefellow, haberdasher or no, wasn't he, mother? To which Rosalindreplied that he was a very nice fellow indeed, only so quiet. If hehad had his violin with him, he would have been much more perceptible. But she supposed it was best to travel with it as little as possible. For it had been decided, all things considered, that the preciousStrad should be left locked up at home. "It's got an insurance policyall to itself, " said Sally, "for three hundred pounds. " She was quiteawestruck by the three hundred golden sovereigns which these poundswould have been if they had had an existence of their own off paper. 

"_You_ ought to have an insurance policy all to yourself, Sarah, " saidFenwick. "Only I don't believe any office would accept you. Fancy yourswimming out like that yesterday! How far did you go?"

"Round the buoy and aback again. I say, Jeremiah, if ever I getdrowned, mind you rush to the bathing-machine and see if there's acopy of 'Ally Sloper' or 'Tit-Bits'. Because there'd be fifty poundsfor each. Think of that!" Sally is delighted with these sums, too, tothe extent of quite losing sight of the sacrifice necessary for theiracquisition. 

"Two whole fifties!" Fenwick says, adding after consideration: "Ithink we had sooner keep our daughter, eh, Rosey?" And Rosalindagreed. Only she really was a shocking madcap, the kitten!

Had some flavour of Fenwick's mental history got in the air, thatSally, presumably with no direct information about its last chapter, should say to him suddenly: "It _is_ such a puzzle to me, Jeremiah, that you've never recollected the railway-carriage"? He was saved fromtelling fibs in reply--for he _had_ recollected the railway-carriage, and left it, as it were, for Mr. Harrisson--by Sally continuing: "Whenyou were Mr. Fenwick, and I wasn't at liberty to kiss you. " She didso to illustrate. 

"I don't see how I could reasonably have resented your kissing me, Sarah. And I'm Mr. Fenwick now. "

"On the contrary, you're Jeremiah. But if you were he ever so, I'mpuzzled why Mr. Fenwick _now_ can't remember Mr. Fenwick _then_. "

"He _can't_, Sarah dear. He can no more remember Mr. Fenwick_then_ than if no such person had ever existed. " It was a cleverequivocation, for though he had so far made nothing of the name on hisarm, he was quite clear he came back to England Harrisson. His gravityand sadness as he said it may have been not so much duplicity as areflection from his turgid current of thought of the last two days. It imposed on Sally, who decided in her own mind on changing the topicas soon as she could do it without a jerk. Meanwhile, a stepping-stonewas available--extravagant treatment of the subject with a view tohelp from laughter. 

"I wonder what Mr. Fenwick _then_ would have thought if I had kissedhim in the railway-carriage. "

"He'd have thought you must be Sally, only he hadn't noticed it. _He_ wouldn't have made a rumpus on high moral grounds, I'm sure. ButI don't know about the old cock that talked about the terms of theCompany's charter.... "

"Hullo!" Sally interrupts him blankly. He had better have let italone. But it wouldn't do to admit anything. 

"What's 'hullo, ' Sarah?"

"See how you're recollecting things! Jeremiah's recollecting therailway-carriage, mother--the electrocution-carriage. "

"Are you, darling?" Rosalind, coming behind his chair, puts her handsround his neck. "What have you recollected?"

"I don't think I've recollected anything the kitten hasn't told me, "says Fenwick dreamily. But Sally is positive she never told himanything about the terms of the Company's charter. 

Rosalind adheres to her policy of keeping Sally out of it as much aspossible. In this case a very small fib indeed serves the purpose:"You must have told him, chick; or perhaps I repeated it. I rememberyour telling _me_ about the elderly gentleman who was in a rage withthe Company. " Sally looked doubtful, but gave up the point. 

Nevertheless, Fenwick felt certain in his own heart that "the termsof the Company's charter" was a bit of private recollection of hisown. And Rosalind had never heard of it before. But it was true shehad heard of the elderly gentleman. Near enough!

 * * * * *

As to the crowd of memories that kept coming, some absolutely clear, some mere phantoms, into the arena of Fenwick's still disordered mind, they would have an interest, and a strong one, for this story if itsobject were the examination of strange freaks of memory. But the onlypoint we are nearly concerned with is the rigid barrier drawn acrossthe backward pathway of his recollection at some period between tenand fifteen years ago. Till this should be removed, and the dim imageof his forgotten marriage should acquire force and cohesion, he andhis wife were safe from the intrusion of their former selves onthe scene of their present happiness--safe possibly from a power ofinterference it might exercise for ill--safe certainly from risk of arevelation to Sally of her mother's history and her own parentage--butsafe at a heavy cost to the one of the three who alone now held thekey to their disclosure. 

However vividly Fenwick had recalled the incidents of his arrival inEngland, and however convinced he was that no part of them was meredream, they all belonged for him to that buried Harrisson whoseidentity he shrank from taking on himself--_would_ have shrunk from, at the cost that was to be paid for it, had the prize of itsinheritance been ten times as great. Still, one or two connectinglinks had caught on either side, the chief one being Sally, who hadactually spoken with him whilst still Harrisson--although it must beadmitted she had not kissed him--and the one next in importance, thecabman. The pawnbroker made a very bad third--in fact, scarcelycounted, owing to his own moroseness or reserve. But the cabman! Why, Fenwick had it all now at his fingers' ends. He could recall the startfrom New York, the wish to keep the secret of his gold-mining successto himself on the ship, and his satisfaction when he found his nameprinted with one _s_ in the list of cabin passengers. Then a pleasantvoyage on a summer Atlantic, and that nice young American couple whoseacquaintance he made before they passed Sandy Hook, every penny ofwhose cash had been stolen on board, and how he had financed them, careless of his own ready cash. And how then, not being sure if heshould go to London or to Manchester, he decided on the former, andwired his New York banker to send him credit, prompt, at the bank henamed in London; and then Livermore's Rents, 1808, and the joy of thecabman; and then the Twopenny Tube; and then Sally. He tried what hecould towards putting in order what followed, but could determinenothing except that he stooped for the half-crown, and somethingstruck him a heavy blow. Thereupon he was immediately a person, or aconfusion, sitting alone in a cab, to whom a lady came whom he thoughthe knew, and to this lady he wanted to say, "Is that you?" for noreason he could now trace, but found he could scarcely articulate. 

Recalling everything thus, to the full, he was able to supply linksin the story that we have found no place for so far. For instance, the loss of a small valise on the boat that contained credentials thatwould have made it quite unnecessary for him to cable to New York forcredit, and also an incident this reminded him of--that he had notonly parted with most of his cash to the young Americans, but hadgiven his purse to the lady to keep her share of it in, saying he hada very good cash pocket, and would have plenty of time to buy another, whereas _they_ were hurrying through to catch the tidal boat forCalais. This accounted for that little new pocket-book without a cardin it that had given no information at all. He could remember havingmade so free with his cards on the boat and in the train that he hadonly one left when he got to Euston. 

He found himself, as the hours passed, better and better able to dreamand speculate about the life he now chose to imagine was Harrisson'sproperty, not his; and the more so the more he felt the force of thebarrier drawn across the earlier part of it. Had the barrier remainedintact, he might ultimately have convinced himself, for all practicalpurposes, that Harrisson's life was all dream. Yes, all a dream! Thecold and the gold of the Klondyke, the French Canadians at Ontario, four years on a cattle-ranch in California, five of unsuccessfulattempts to practise at the American Bar--all, all a dream of anotherman named Harrisson, dreamed by Algernon Fenwick, that big hairy manat the wine-merchant's in Bishopsgate, who has a beautiful wife and adaughter who swims like a fish. One of the many might-have-beens thatwere not! But a decision against its reality demanded time, and hisrevival of memory was only forty-eight hours old so far. 

Of course, he would have liked, of all things, to make fullconfession, and talk it all out--this quasi-dream--to Rosalind; buthe could not be sure how much he could safely bring to light, how muchwould be best concealed. He could not run the _slightest_ risk whenthe thing at stake was her peace of mind. No, no--Harrisson be hanged!Him and his money, too. 

So, though things kept coming to his recollection, he could hold hispeace, and did so. There was nothing to come--not likely to be--thatcould unsay that revelation that he had been a married man, and didnot know of his wife's death; not even that he and she had beendivorced, which would have been nearly as bad. He knew the worst ofit, at any rate, and Rosalind need never know it if he kept it allto himself, best and worst. 

So that day passed, and there was nothing to note about it, unlesswe mention that Sally was actually kept out of the Channel byNeptune's little white ponies aforesaid, which spoiled the swimmingwater--though, of course, it wasn't rough--backed by the fact thatthese little sudden showers wetted you through, right through yourwaterproof, before you knew where you were. Dr. Conrad came in asusual in the evening, reporting that his mother was "rather better. "It was a discouraging habit she had, when she was not known to havebeen any worse than usual. This good lady always caught Commiserationnapping, if ever that quality took forty winks. The doctor was verysilent this evening, imbibing Sally without comment. However, St. Sennans was drawing to a close for all others. That was enough toaccount for it, Sally thought. It was the last day but one, and poorProsy couldn't be expected to accept her own view--that the awfuljolliness of being back at Krakatoa Villa would even compensate--morethan compensate--for the pangs of parting with the Saint. Sally'soptimism was made of a stuff that would wash, or was all wool. 

According to her own account, she had spent the whole day wonderingwhether the battle between Tishy and her mother had come off. Shesaid so last thing of all to _her_ mother as she decanted the meltedparaffin of a bedroom candle whose wick, up to its neck therein, wasunable to find a scope for its genius, and yielded only a spectralblue spark that went out directly if you carried it. Tilted over, it would lick in the end--this was Sally's testimony; and if youdropped the grease on the back of the soap-dish and thickened it upto a good blob, it would come off click when it was cold, and notmake any mess at all. 

"Yes, I've been wondering all day long, " said she. "How I should enjoybeing there to see! How freezing and dignified the Dragon will be!Mrs. Sales Wilson! Or perhaps she'll flare. (I wish this wick would;and it's such disgraceful waste of good candle!)"

"I do think, kitten, you're unkind to the poor lady. Just think howshe must have dreamed about the splendid match her handsome daughterwas going to make! And, you know, it _is_ rather a come down.... "

"Yes, of course it's a come down. But I don't pity the Dragon one bit. She should have thought more of Tishy's happiness, and less of hergrandeur. (It's just beginning; the flame will go white directly. )"

"She'd got some one else in view then?" Rosalind was quicklyperceptive about it. 

"Oh yes; don't you know? Sir Penderfield. (That'll do now, nicely;there's the white flame!) Sir Oughtred Penderfield. He's a Bart. , of course. But he's a horror, and they say his father was even worse. Like father, like son! And the Dragon wanted Tishy to accept him. "

At the name Rosalind shivered. The thought that followed it senta knife-cut to her heart. This man that Sally had spoken of sounconsciously was _her brother_--at least, he was brother enough toher by blood to make that thought a blade to penetrate the core of hermother's soul. It was a case for her strength to show itself in--acase for nettle-grasping with a vengeance. She would grasp this nettledirectly; but oh, for one moment--only one moment--just to be a littleless sick with the slice of the chill steel! just to quench the tremorshe knew would come with her voice if she tried now to say, "What wasthe name? Tishy's _prétendu_'s, I mean; not his father's. "

But she could take the whole of a moment, and another, for thatmatter. So she left her words on her tongue's tip to say later, andfelt secure that Sally would not look up and see the dumb white faceshe herself could see in the mirror she sat before. For, of course, she saw Sally's reflection, too, its still thoughtful eyelids halfshrouded in a broken coil of black hair their owner's pearly teethare detaining an end of, to stop it falling in the paraffin she isso intent on, as she watches it cooling on the soap-dish. 

"I've made it such a jolly big blob it'll take ever so long to cool. You can, you know, if you go gently. Only then the middle stops soft, and if you get in a hurry it spoils the clicket. " But it is hardenough now to risk moving the hair over it, and Sally's voice was freeto speak as soon as her little white hand had swept the black coilsback beyond the round white throat. Mrs. Lobjoit's mirror has itsdefects apart from some of the quicksilver having been scratched off;but Rosalind can see the merpussy's image plain enough, and knowsperfectly well that before she looks up she will reap the harvest ofhappiness she has been looking forward to. She will "clicket" off the"blob" with her finger. 

The moment of fruition comes, and a filbert thumbnail spuds thehardened lozenge off the smooth glaze. "There!" says Sally, "didn'tI tell you? Just like ice.... What, mother?" For her mother's questionhad been asked, very slightly varied, in a nettle-grasping sense. Shehas had time to think. 

"_What_ was Tishy's man's name--the other applicant? Christian name, I mean; not his father's. "

"Sir Oughtred Penderfield. Why?"

"I remember there was a small boy in India, twenty-two years ago, named Penderfield. Is Oughtred his only name?" The nettle-graspingthere was in this! Rosalind felt consoled by her own strength. 

"Can't say. He may have a dozen. Never seen him. Don't want to! Buthis hair's as black as mine, Tishy says.... I say, mother, isn't itdeliciously smooth?" But this refers to the paraffin lozenge, notto the hair. 

"Yes, darling. Now I want to get to bed, if you've no objection. "

"Certainly, mother darling; but say I'm right about the Dragon andSir Penderfield. Because I _am_, you know. "

"Of course you are, chick. Only you never told me about him; now, did you?"

"Because I was so honourable. It was a secret. Very well, good-night, then.... Oh, you poor mother! how cold you are, and I've been keepingyou up! Good-night!"

And off went Sally, leaving her mother to reason with herself abouther own unreasonableness. After all, what was there in the fact thatthe little chap she remembered, seven years old, at the Residency atKhopal twenty odd years ago had grown up and inherited his father'sbaronetcy? What was there in this to discompose and upset her, to makeher breath catch and her nerves thrill? A longing came on her thatGerry should not look in to say good-night till she was in a positionto refuse interviewing on the score of impending sleep. She made adash for bed, and got the light out, out-generalling him by perhapsa minute. 

What could she expect? Not that little Tamerlane, as his father calledhim, should die just to be out of her path. It was no fault of histhat he was his father's son, with--how could she doubt after whatSally had just said?--the curse of his father's form of manhood orbeasthood upon him. And yet, might it not have been better that heshould have died, the innocent child she knew him, than live to followhis father's footsteps? Better, best of all that the whole evil broodshould perish and be forgotten.... Stop!

For the thought she had framed caught her breath and held it, caughther by the heart and checked its beating, caught her by the brain andstopped its thinking; and she was glad when her husband's voice foundher, dumb and stunned in the silence, and brought a respite to theunanswerable enigma she was face to face with. 

"Hullo! light out already? Beg your pardon, darling. Good-night!"

"I wasn't asleep. " So he came in and said good-night officially anddeparted. His voice and his presence had staved off a nightmare ideathat was on the watch to seize on her--how if chance had brought Sallyacross this unsuspected relation of hers, and events had forced a fulldeclaration of their kinship? Somnus jumped at the chance given by itsfrustration; the sea air asserted itself, and went into partnershipwith him, and Rosalind's mind was carried captive into dreamland. 

But not before she had heard her husband stop singing to himself aGerman student's song as he closed his door on himself for the night. 

 "War ich zum grossen Herrn geboren, wie Kaiser Maximilian.... "

There could be no further unwelcome memories there, thank Heaven!No mind oppressed by them could possibly sing "Kram-bam-bambuli, krambam-bu-li!"

CHAPTER XL

BATHING WEATHER AGAIN, AND A LETTER FROM TISHY BRADSHAW. THE TRIUMPH OF ORPHEUS. BUT WAS IT EURYDICE OR THE LITTLE BATTERY? THE REV. MR. HERRICK. OF A REVERIE UNDER A BATHING-MACHINE, AND OF GWENDOLEN'S MAMMA'S CONNECTING-LINK. OF DR. CONRAD'S MAMMA'S DONKEY-CHAIR, AND HIS GREAT-AUNT ELIZA. HOW SALLY AND HE STARTED FOR THEIR LAST WALK AT ST. SENNANS

The next day the morning was bright and the sea was clear ofPoseidon's ponies. They had gone somewhere else. Therefore, itbehooved Mrs. Lobjoit to get breakfast quick, because it was absurdto expect anybody to go in directly after, and the water wouldn't begood later than half-past ten. Which Sally, coming downstairs at eight, impressed on Mrs. Lobjoit, who entered her own recognisances that itshould appear as by magic the very minute your mamma came down. Forit is one of the pleasures of anticipation-of-a-joy-to-come to bringabout its antecedents too soon, and so procure a blank period ofunqualified existence to indulge Hope in without alloy. Even so, whentrue prudence wishes to catch a train, she orders her cab an hourbefore, and takes tickets twenty minutes before, and arrives on theplatform eighteen minutes before there is the slightest necessity todo so; and then she stands on the said platform and lives for thetrain that is to be, and inquires of every guard, ticket-taker, andpointsman with respect to every linear yard of the platform edge, whether her train is going to come up there; and they ask each otherquestions, and give prismatic information; and then the train forParadise (let us say) comes reluctantly backwards into the stationwith friends standing on its margin, and prudence seizes her valiseand goes at a hand-gallop to the other end, where the _n_th classis, and is only just in time to get a corner seat. 

So, though there was no fear of the tide going out as fast as thetrain for Paradise, Sally, relying on Mrs. Lobjoit, who had becomea very old friend in eight weeks, felt she had done well to bebeforehand, and, as breakfast would be twenty minutes, sat down towrite a letter to Tishy. She wrote epistle-wise, heedless of styleand stops, and as her mother was also twenty minutes--we are notresponsible for these expressions--she wrote a heap of it. Thenevents thickened, as Fenwick, returning from an early dip, met thepostman outside, and came in bearing an expected letter which Sallypounced upon. 

"All about the row!" said she, attacking an impregnable corner of theenvelope with a fork-point, in a fever of impatience to get at thecontents. "Hang these envelopes! There, that's done it! Whatever theywant to sticky them up so for I can't imagine.... "

"Get your breakfast, kitten, and read it after. "

"I dare say. Catch me! No, I'm the sort that never waits foranything.... No, mummy darling; it shan't get cold. I can gormandizeand read aloud both at once. "

But she doesn't keep her promise, for she dives straight into anexploration ahead, and meanly says, "Just half a minute till I seewhat's coming, " or, "Only to the end of this sentence, " and alsolooks very keen and animated, and throws in short notes of exclamationand _well_'s and _there_'s and _think of that_'s till Fenwick entersa protest. 

"Don't cheat, Sarah!" he says. "Play fair! If you won't read it aloudyourself, let somebody else. "

"There's the first sheet to keep you quiet, Jeremiah!" Who, however, throws it over to Rosalind, who throws it back with a laugh. 

"What a couple of big babies you two are!" she exclaims. "As if Icouldn't possess my soul in peace for five minutes! Do put the letterby till you've had your breakfasts. "

But this course was not approved, and the contents of Lętitia'sepistle came out by fits and jerks and starts, and may be said to havebeen mixed with tea and coffee and eggs and bacon and toast. Perhapswe had better leave these out, and give the letter intact. Here it is:

 "DEAREST SALLY, "I am going to keep my promise, and write you a long letter at once, and tell you all about our reception at home. You will say it wasn't worth writing, especially as you will be back on Monday. However, a promise is a promise!

 "We got to Victoria at seven, and were not so very late considering at G. Terrace; but when we had had something to eat I propounded my idea I told you of, that we should just go straight on, and beard mamma in her own den, and have it out. I knew I shouldn't sleep unless we did. Paggy said, 'Wouldn't it do as well if he called there to-morrow for the Strad--which we had left behind last time as a connecting-link to go and fetch away--and me to meet him as he came from the shop?' But surprise-tactics were better--I knew they would be--and now Paggy admits I was right. 

 "Of course, Thomas stared when he saw who it was, and was going to sneak off without announcing us, and Fossett, who just crossed us in the passage, was perfectly comic. Pag said afterwards she was bubbling over with undemonstrativeness, which was clever for him. I simply said to Thomas that I thought he had better announce us, as we weren't expected, and he asked who he was to announce, miss! Actually, I was rather relieved when Pag said, 'Say Mr. And Mrs. Julius Bradshaw. ' I should have laughed, I know. Thomas looked a model of discretion that wouldn't commit itself either way, and did as he was bid in an apologetic voice; but he turned round on the stairs to say to me, 'I suppose you know, msam, there's two ladies and a gentleman been dining here?' Because he began miss and ended ma'am, and then turned scarlet. Pag said after he thought Thomas wanted to caution us against a bigamist mamma was harbouring. 

 "Papa was very nice, really. His allusion to our little escapade was the only one made, and might have meant nothing at all. 'Well, you're a nice couple of people, upon my word!' and then, seeing that mamma remained a block (which she can), he introduced Paggy to one of the two ladies as 'My son-in-law, Mr. Julius Bradshaw. ' I'm sure mamma gave a wooden snort and was ashamed of it before visitors, because she did another rather more probable one directly after, and pretended it was only that sort. Really, except a peck for me and saying _howd_ and nothing more to Paggy, she kept herself to herself. But it didn't matter, because of what happened. Really, it quite made me jump--I mean the way the lady Pag was introduced to rushed into his arms. I wasn't sure I hadn't better take him away at once. She was a celebrated German pianiste that had accompanied him in Paris. Mamma was at school with her at Frankfort. She had been inconsolable at the disappearance of the great Carissimi, whose playing of the Kreutzer was the only perfectly sympathetic one she had ever met. Was she never to play it with him again? Alas, no! for she was off to Vienna to-morrow, and then to New York, and if the ship went down she would never play the Kreutzer with Signore Carissimi again!

 "I saw papa's eye looking mischievous, and then he pointed to the Strad, where it was lying on the piano--locked up safe; we saw to that--and said there was Paganini's fiddle, why not play the _Cruet-stand_, or whatever you called it, _now_? Mamma found her voice, but lost her judgment, for she tried to block the performance on a fibby ground. Think how late it was, and how it would be keeping Madame von Höfenhoffer! She put her head in the lion's mouth there, for the Frau immediately said she would play all night rather than lose a note of Signore Carissimi. The other two went, and nobody wanted them. I've forgotten the woman's second husband's name--he's dead--but her son's the man I told you about. Of course, he hadn't expected to meet me, and I hope he felt like a fool. I was so glad it wasn't him, but Paggy. They played right through the Kreutzer, and didn't want the music, which couldn't be found, and then did bits again, and it was absolutely glorious. Even mamma (she's fond of music--it's her only good quality--and where should I get mine from if she wasn't?) couldn't stop quite stony, though she did her best, I promise you. As for papa, he was chuckling so over mamma's dilemma--because she wanted to trample on Paggy, and it _was_ a dilemma--that he didn't care how long it went on. And do you know, dear, it _did_ go on--one thing after another, that Frau glued to the clavier like a limpet not detachable without violence--till nearly one in the morning, having begun at ten about! And there was papa and Egerton and Theeny all sniggering at mamma, I know, in secret, and really proud of the connexion, if the truth were known. Mamma tried to get a little revenge by saying to me freezingly when the Höfenhoffer had gone: 'I suppose you are going home with Mr. Bradshaw, Lętitia? Good-night. ' And then she said _goodn_ to Paggy just as she had said _howd_. I thought Paggy behaved so nicely. However, I'll tell you all about that on Monday. 

 "Papa was _very_ nice--came out on the doorstep to say good-night, and, do you know--it really _is_ very odd; it must be the sea air--papa said to Paggy as we were starting: 'How's the head--the nerves, you know--eh, Master Julius?' And actually Paggy said: 'Why, God bless my soul, I had forgotten all about them!' Oh, Sally darling, just think! Suppose they got well, and all because I treated him to a honeymoon! Oh, my gracious, what a long letter!"

"There now! that _is_ a letter and a half. 'With love from us both, 'mine affectionately. And twelve pages! And Tishy's hand's not solarge, neither, as all that. " This is Sally, as epilogue; but hermother puts in a correction:

"It's thirteen pages. There's a bit on a loose page you haven't read. "Sally has seen that, and it was nothing--so she says; but Fenwickpicks it up and reads it aloud:

"P. S. --Just a line to say I've remembered that name. She'sHerrick--married a parson in India soon after her Penderfieldhusband died. She's great on reformatories. "

Sally reread her letter with a glow of interest on her face and apassing approval or echo now and then. She noticed nothing unusualin either her mother or her stepfather; but she did not look up, so absorbed was she. 

Had she done so she might have wondered why her mother had gone sopale suddenly, and why there should be that puzzled absent look onthe handsome face her eyes remained fixed on across the table; but herown mind was far away, deep in her amusement at her friend's letter, full of her image of the disconcerted Dragon and the way Paganiniand Beethoven in alliance had ridden rough-shod over Mrs. Grundy andsocial distinctions. She saw nothing, and finished a cup of coffeeundisturbed, and asked for more. 

Fenwick, caught by some memory or association he could not define orgive its place to, for the moment looked at neither of his companions. Rosalind, only too clear about all the postscript of the letter hadbrought before her own mind, saw reason to dread its effect on his. The linking of the name of Penderfield and that of the clergyman whohad married them at Umballa--a name that, two days since, had hada familiar sound to him when she incautiously uttered it--was usingSuggestion to bait a trap for Memory. She felt she was steeringthrough shoal-waters perilously near the wind; but she made no attemptto break his reverie. She might do as much harm as good. She onlywatched his face, feeling its contrast to that of the absorbed andhappy merpussy, rejoicing in the fortunate outcome of her friend'sanxieties. 

It was a great relief when, with a deep breath and a shake, akin toa horse's when the flies won't take a hint, Fenwick flung off theoppression, whatever it was, and came back into the living world ona stepping-stone of the back-talk. 

"Well done, Paganini! Nothing like it since Orpheus and Eurydice--onlythis time it was Proserpine, not Pluto, that had to be put to sleep.... What's the matter, darling? Anything wrong?"

"Nothing at all. I was looking at you. "

"Well, _I'm_ all right!" And Sally looked up from her letter for amoment to say, "There's nothing the matter with Jeremiah, " and went onreading as before. Sally's attitude about him always implied a kind ofproprietorship, as in a large, fairly well-behaved dog. Rosalind feltglad she had not looked at _her_. 

Presently Fenwick said: "Now, who's coming for a walk with me?" ButSally was off directly to find the Swiss girl she sometimes bathedwith, and Rosalind thought it would be nice in a sheltered place onthe beach. She really wanted to be alone, and knew the shortest wayto this was to sit still, especially in the morning; but Gerry hadbetter get Vereker to go for a walk. Perhaps she would look in athis mother's later. So Fenwick, after a customary caution to Sallynot to drown herself, went away to find Conrad, as he generallycalled him now. 

Rosalind was shirking a problem she dared not face from a cowardlyconviction of its insolubility. What would she do if Gerry should, without some warning, identify her? She had to confess to herself thatshe had no clue at all to the effect it would have, coming suddenly, on him. She could at least imagine aspects, attitudes, tones of voicefor him if it came slowly; but she could not supply any image ofhim, under other circumstances, not more or less founded on herrecollections of twenty years ago. Might she not lose him again, asshe lost him then? She _must_ get nearer to safety than she was now. Was she not relying on the house not catching fire instead ofnegotiating insurance policies or providing fire extinguishers?

She would go and sit under the shelter of one of the many unemployedmachines--for only a few daring spirits would follow Sally's exampleto-day--and try to think it out. Just a few instructions to Mrs. Lobjoit, and a word or two of caution to Gerry not to fall overcliffs, or to get run over at level-crossings or get sunstrokes, or get cold, etc. , and she would fall back on her own society andthink.... 

Yes, that was the question! Might she not lose him again? And if shedid, how live without him?... Oh yes, she would be no worse off thanbefore, in a certain sense. She would have Sally still ... But.... 

Which would be the worse? The loss of the husband whom every daytaught her to love more dearly, or the task of explaining the causeof her loss to Sally? The one she fixed her mind on always seemedintolerable. As for the other contingencies--difficulties of makingall clear to friends, and so forth--let them go; they were not wortha thought. But she _must_ be beforehand, and know how to act, how todo her best to avert both, if the thing she dreaded came to pass.... 

There now! Here she was settled under the lee of a machine--happilythe shadow-side, for the sun was warm--and the white foam of theundertow was guilty of a tremendous glare--the one the people whocan't endure the seaside get neuralgia from--and Sally was going tocome out of the second machine directly in the Turkey-twill knickers, and find her way through the selvage-wave and the dazzle, or getknocked down and have to try back. Surely Rosalind, instead of sayingover and over again that she _must_ be ready to meet the coming evil, possibly close at hand, ought to make a serious effort to become so. She found herself, even at this early hour of the day, tired with thestrain of a misgiving that an earthquake was approaching; and as thosewho have lived through earthquakes become unstrung at every slightesttremor of the earth's crust beneath them, so she felt that thetension begun with that recurrence of two days ago had grown andgrown, and threatened to dominate her mind, to the exclusion of allelse. Every little thing, such as the look on her husband's face halfan hour ago, made her say to herself, as the earthquake-haunted mansays at odd times all through the day and night, "Is this _it_? Hasit come?" and she saw before her no haven of peace. 

What was it now she really most feared? Simply the effect of therevelation on her husband's mind--an effect no human creature couldmake terms with. She was not the least afraid of anything he could sayor do, delirium apart; but see what delirium had made of him--she wassure it was so--in that old evil hour when he had flung her fromhim and gone away in anger to try to get her sentence of banishmentratified. How could she guard against a repetition, in some formor other, of the disastrous errors of that unhappy time?

As we know, she was still in ignorance of all the revivedmemories he had told to Vereker; but she knew there had beensomething--disjointed, perhaps, and not to be relied on, as thedoctor had said, but none the less to be feared on that account. Shehad seen the effect of his sleepless night before he went away withVereker, and knew it to be connected with mental disturbance outsideand beyond mere loss of rest; and she had an uneasy sense thatsomething was being kept from her. She could not but believe Gerry'scheerfulness was partly assumed. Had he been quite at ease about hisrecollections, surely he would have told them to _her_. Then thishad all come on the top of that Kreutzkammer one. The most upsettingthing of all, though, was the change that had come over him suddenlyat breakfast, just after he had read aloud the name Herrick--aname he had seemed not free from memory of when her tongue wasbetrayed into speaking it--and the name Penderfield. If it wasdue to this last, so much the worse! It was the name of all othersthat was best for oblivion. 

How hard it seemed that it must needs force itself to the fore in thisway! Its present intrusion into her life and surroundings was utterlyunconnected with anything in the past. Sally's friendship with Lętitiabegan in a music-class six years ago. The Sales Wilsons were peopleto all appearance as un-Indian as any folk need be. Why must Sally'sfriend, of all others, be the object of its owner's unwelcomeadmiration? To think, too, how near she had been to a precipicewithout knowing it! Suppose she had come face to face with that womanagain! To be sure, her intercourse with Ladbroke Grove Road waslimited to one stiff exchange of calls in "the season. " Still, itmight have happened ... But where was the use of begging and borrowingtroubles?

Was it, or was it not, the fact, she asked herself, that now, afterall these years, she thought of this woman as worse than her husband, the iniquity of the accomplice as more diabolical than that of theprincipal? She found she could not answer this in the negativeoff-hand. The paradox was also before her that that incorrigibleamphibious treasure of hers, whose voice was even now shouting toher more timorous friend from beyond the selvage-wave she had justcontemptuously dived through--that that Sally, inexchangeable foranything she could conceive or imagine, must needs have been somethingquite other than she was, had she come of any other technicalpaternity than the accursed one she had to own to. Was there someterrible law in Nature that slow forgiveness of the greatest wrongthat can be wrought must perforce be granted to its inflictor, throughthe gracious survivor of a brutal indifference that would almost addto his crime, if that were possible? If, so, surely the Universe mustbe the work of an Almighty Fiend, a Demiurgus with a cruel heart, andthis the masterstroke of all his cunning. But what, in Heaven's name, was the use of bruising her brains against the conundrums of the greatunanswered metaphysical sphinx? Better be contented with the easyvernacular solution of the rhymester:

 "Praise God from whom all blessings flow, Evils from circumstances grow. "

Because she felt she was getting no nearer the solution of her ownproblem, and was, if anything, wandering from the point. 

Another way of looking at the matter was beginning to take form: hadhung about her mind and forsaken it more than once. Might it not bebetter, after all, to dash at the position and capture it while herforces were well under control? To pursue the metaphor, thecommissariat might not hold out. Better endure the ills we have--ofcourse, Rosalind knew all that--than fly to others that we know notof. But suppose we have a chance of flying to others we can measurethe length and breadth of, and staving off thereby an uncalculableunknown? She felt she almost knew the worst that could come of takingGerry into her confidence, telling him boldly all about himself, provided she could choose her opportunity and make sure Sally was wellout of the way. The concealment from Sally was the achievement whosefailure involved the greatest risk. Her husband's mind would bear theknowledge of his story well or ill according to the way in which itreached him; but the necessity of keeping her girl in ignorance of itwas a thing absolute. Any idea that Sally's origin could be concealedfrom her, and her stepfather's identity made known, Rosalind dismissedas simply fantastic. 

A lady who had established herself below high-water mark with manymore books than she could read, and plant capable of turning out muchmore work than she could do, at this point fled for safety from a rushof white foam. It went back for more, meaning to wet her through nexttime; but had to bear its disappointment. Mrs. Arkwright--for it wasGwendolen's mamma--being driven from the shadow of the breakwater, cast about her for a new lodgment, and perceived one beside Mrs. Fenwick, whom she thought very well for the seaside, but not to leavecards on. _Might_ she come up there, beside you? Rosalind didn't wanther, but had to pretend she did, to encourage her advent. It leftbehind it a track of skeins and volumes, which had trickled from thefugitive, but were recovered by a domestic, and pronounced dry. Besides, they were only library books, and didn't matter. 

"I haven't seen you since the other day on the pier, Mrs. Fenwick, or I wanted to have asked you more about that charming young couple, the Julian Attwoods. Oh dear! I knew I should get the name wrong.... _Bradshaw!_ Yes, of course. " Her vivid perception of what the namereally is, when apprised of it, almost amounts to a paroxysm. You see, on the pier that day, she made a bad blunder over those Bradshawpeople, and though she had consoled her conscience by admitting toher husband that she had "_mis le pied dans le plat_, " still, shethought, if she was actually going to plump down on Mrs. Fenwick'spiece of beach, she ought to do a little more apology. By-the-bye, why is it that ladies of her sort always resort to snippets of Frenchidiom, whenever they get involved in a quagmire of delicacy--orindelicacy, as may be? Will Gwendolen grow like her mother? However, that doesn't concern us now. 

A little stiffness on Rosalind's part was really due to her wish tobe by herself, but Mrs. Arkwright ascribed it to treasured resentmentagainst her blunders of two days since. Now, she was a person whocould never let anything drop--a tugging person. She proceeded todevelop the subject. 

"Really a most interesting story! I need hardly say that my informantshad given me no particulars. Very old friends of my husband's. Quitepossible they really knew nothing of this young gentleman's musicalgifts. Simply told my husband the tale as I told it to you. Justthat the daughter of an old friend of theirs, Professor SalesWilson--_the_ Professor Sales Wilson--of course, quite a famous namein literature--scholarship--that sort of thing--had run away with ashopman! That was what my husband heard, you know. _I_ merelyrepeated it. "

"Wasn't it, as things go, rather a malicious way of putting it--ontheir part?"

Mrs. Arkwright gave sagacious nods, indicative of comfortable"_we_-know-the-world-we-live-in-and-won't-pretend" relationshipsbetween herself and the speaker. They advertised perfect mutualunderstanding on a pinnacle of married experience. Fancy there beingany need for anything else between _us_! they said. Their editor thensupplied explanatory text: "Of course there may have been a _soupēon_of personal feeling in the case--bias, pique, whatever one likes tocall it. _You_ know, dear Mrs. Fenwick?" But Mrs. Fenwick waited forfurther illumination. "Well, you know ... I suppose it's rather abreach of confidence, only I know I shall be safe with _you_.... "

"Don't tell me any secrets, Mrs. Arkwright. I'm not safe. " But Mrs. Arkwright was not a person to be put off in this way. Not she! Shemeant elucidation, and nothing short of bayonets would stop her. 

"Well, really, perhaps I'm making it of too much importance to talkof breaches of confidence. After all, it only amounts to a gentlemanhaving been disappointed. Of course, his relations would ... Don'tyou see?... "

"Was it some man that was after Tishy?" asked Rosalind, wonderinghow many more rejected suitors were wearing the willow about thehaberdasher's bride. She had heard of one, only last night. She wasnot putting two and two together. 

"I dare say everybody knows it, and it's only my nonsensical caution. But one does get _so_ timorous of saying anything. _You_ know, dearMrs. Fenwick! However, it's better to say it out now--of course, quitebetween ourselves, you know. It was Mrs. Samuel Herrick's son, SirCharles Penderfield. He's the present baronet, you know. Father wasin the army--rather distinguished man, I fancy. Her second husband wasa clergyman.... " Here followed social analysis, some of which Rosalindcould have corrected. The speaker floundered a little among countyfamilies, and then resumed the main theme. "Mrs. Herrick is a sort ofconnexion of my husband's (I don't exactly know what; but then, Inever _do_ know--family is such a bore), and it was _she_ told _him_all about this. I always forget these things when they're told _me_. But I can quite understand that the young man's mother, in speakingof it ... _you_ understand?... "

"Oh, of course, naturally. I think my daughter's coming out. I saw hermachine-door move. " Rosalind began collecting herself for departure. 

"But, of course, you won't repeat any of this--but, of course, I knowI can rely upon you--but, of course, it doesn't really matter.... "A genial superior tone of toleration for mankind's foibles as seen bythe two speakers from an elevation comes in at this point juicily. Itmeets an appreciative response in the prolonged first syllable ofRosalind's "_Cer_tainly. I never should dream, " etc. , whose lengthmakes up for an imperfect finish--a dispersal of context from whicha farewell good-morning emerges clear, hand-in-hand with a falsestatement that the speaker has enjoyed sitting there talking. 

Rosalind had not enjoyed it at all. She was utilising the merpussy'sreturn to land as a means of escape, because, had there been no Mrs. Arkwright, and no folk-chatter, Sally would have come scranching upthe shingle, and flung herself down beside her mother. As it was, Rosalind's "Oh, _I am_ so glad to get away from that woman!" tolda tale. And Sally's truthful soul interpreted the upshot of thattale as prohibitive of merely going away and sitting down elsewhere. She and her mother were in honour bound to have promised to meetsomebody somewhere--say, for instance, Mrs. Vereker and her son anddonkey-chair. Sally said it, for instance, seeing something of thesort would soothe the position; and the two of them met the three, orrather the three and a half, for we had forgotten the boy to whom thecontrol of the donkey was entrusted, and whose interpretation of hismission was to beat the donkey incessantly like a carpet, and to dragit the other way. The last held good of all directions soever. Whichthe donkey, who was small, but by nature immovable, requited bytaking absolutely no notice whatever of his exertions. 

"What's become of my step-parent? I thought he was going to take youfor a walk. " So spoke Sally to Dr. Conrad as she and her mother metthe three others, and the half. The doctor replied:

"He's gone for a walk along the cliff by himself. I would havegone.... " The doctor pauses a moment till the donkey-chair is a fewpaces ahead, accompanied by Mrs. Fenwick. "I would have gone, only, you see, it's just mother's last day or two.... " Sally apprehendsperfectly. But he shouldn't have dropped his voice. He was quitedistant enough to be inaudible by the Octopus as far as overhearingwords went. But any one can hear when a voice is dropped suddenly, and words are no longer audible. Dr. Conrad is a very poorMachiavelli, when all is said and done. 

"I can hear _every word_ my boy is saying to your girl, Mrs. Fenwick. "This is delivered with exemplary sweetness by the Octopus, who thenguesses with diabolical acumen at almost the exact wording of herson's speech. Apparently, no amount of woollen wraps, no doublethickness of green veil to keep the glare out, no smoked glasses withflanges to make it harmless if it gets in, can obscure the Goody'spenetrative powers when invoked for the discomfiture of her kind. "Butdoes not my dear boy know, " she continues gushily, "that I am _al_wayscontent to be _alone_ as long as I can be _sure_ that he is happilyemployed _elsewhere_. I am a _dull old woman_, I know; but, at least, my wish is not to be a burden. That was the wish of my great-auntEliza--your great-great-aunt, Conrad; you never saw her--in her lastillness. I borrow her expression--'not to be a burden. '" The Octopus, having seized her prey in this tentacle, was then at liberty toenlarge upon the unselfish character of her great-aunt, reaping theadvantages of a vicarious egoism from an hypnotic suggestion that thatcharacter was also her own. The great-aunt had, it appeared, lost theuse, broadly speaking, of her anatomy, and could only communicateby signs; but when she died she was none the less missed by herown circle, whose grief for her loss took the form of a tablet. Thespeaker paused a moment for her hearers to contemplate the tablet, and perhaps ask for the inscription, when Sally saw an opening, andtook advantage of it. 

"Dr. Conrad's going to be very selfish this afternoon, Mrs. Vereker, and come with us to Chalke, where that dear little church is thatlooks like a barn. I mean to find the sexton and get the key thistime. "

"My dear, I shall be _per_fectly happy knitting. Do not trouble aboutme for one moment. I shall think how you are enjoying yourselves. When I was a girl there was nothing I enjoyed more than ransackingold churches.... "

And so forth. Rosalind felt almost certain that Sally either said ortelegraphed to the doctor, who was wavering, "You'll come, you know. Now, mind; two-thirty punc. , " and resolved, if he did _not_ come, to go to Iggulden's and extract him from the tentacles of his mamma, and remain entangled herself, if necessary. 

In fact, this was how the arrangement for the afternoon worked out. Dr. Conrad did _not_ turn up, as expected, and Rosalind carried outher intention. She rescued the doctor, and sent him round to join herhusband and Sally, promising to follow shortly and catch them up. Thethree started to walk, but Fenwick, after a little slow walking toallow Rosalind to overtake them, had misgivings that she had gotcaught, and went back to rescue her, telling Sally and the doctor itwas no use to wait--they would follow on, and take their chance. Andthe programme so indicated was acted on. 

CHAPTER XLI

OF LOVE, CONSIDERED AS A THUNDERSTORM, AND OF AGUR, THE SON OF JAKEH (PROV. XXX. ). OF A COUNTRY WALK AND A JUDICIOUSLY RESTORED CHURCH. OF TWO CLASPED HANDS, AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES. NOTHING SO VERY REMARKABLE AFTER ALL!

Love, like a thunderstorm, is very much more intelligible in itsbeginnings--to its chronicler, at least--than it becomes when it is, so to speak, overhead. We all know the clear-cut magnificence of thegreat thundercloud against the sky, its tremendous deliberation, itshills and valleys of curdling mist, fraught with God knows whatpotential of destruction in volts and ohms; the ceaseless mutteringof its wrath as it speaks to its own heart, and its sullen secretsreverberate from cavern to cavern in the very core of its innermostblackness. We know the last prismatic benedictions of the sun it meansto hide from us--the strange gleams of despairing light on the otherclouds--clouds that are not in it, mere outsiders or spectators. Wecan remember them after we have got home in time to avoid a wetting, and can get our moist water-colours out and do a recollection ofthem before they go out of our heads--or think we can. 

But we know, too, that there comes a time of a sudden wind andagitated panic of the trees, and then big, warm preliminary drops, and then the first clap of thunder, clear in its own mind and full ofpurpose. Then the first downpour of rain, that isn't quite so clear, and wavers for a breathing-space, till the tart reminder of the firstswift, decisive lightning-flash recalls it to its duty, and it becomesa steady, intolerable torrent that empties roads and streets ofpassers-by, and makes the gutters rivulets. And then the stormitself--flash upon flash--peal upon peal--up to the blinding anddeafening climax, glare and thunderbolt in a breath. And then it'soverhead, and we are sure something has been struck that time. 

It was all plain sailing, two days since, in the love-storm we wantthe foregoing sketch of a thunderstorm to illustrate, that was brewingin the firmament of Conrad Vereker's soul. At the point correspondingto the first decisive clap of thunder--wherever it was--Chaos set inin that firmament. And Chaos was developing rapidly at the time whenthe doctor, rescued by Sally's intrepidity from the maternal clutch, started on what he believed would be his last walk with his idol atSt. Sennans. Now he knew that, when he got back to London, thoughthere might be, academically speaking, opportunities of seeing Sally, it wasn't going to be the same thing. That was the phrase his mindused, and we know quite well what it meant. 

Of course, when some peevish author or invalid sends out a servantto make you take your organ farther off, a good way down the street, you can begin again exactly where you left off, lower down. But abarrel-organ has no soul, and one has one oneself, usually. Dr. Vereker's soul, on this occasion, was the sport of the love-storm ofour analogy, and was tossed and driven by whirlwinds, beaten down bytorrents, dazzled by lightning and deafened by thunder, out of reachof all sane record by the most eloquent of chroniclers. It was not ina state to accept calmly the idea of transference to Shepherd's Bush. A tranquil mind would have said, "By all means, go home and startafresh. " But no; the music in this case refused to welcome the change. Still, he would forget it--make light of it and ignore it--to enjoythis last little expedition with Sally to the village church acrossthe downs, that had been so sweetly decorated for the harvestfestival. A bird in the hand was worth two in the bush. _Carpe diem!_

So Dr. Conrad seemed to have grown younger than ever when he and Sallygot away from all the world, after Fenwick had fallen back to rescuethe captive, octopus-caught. Whereat Sally's heart rejoiced; for thisyoung man's state of subordination to his skilful and overwhelmingparent was a constant thorn in her side. To say she felt for him isto say nothing. To say that she would have jumped out of her skin withjoy at hearing that he was engaged to that young lady, unknown; andthat that young lady had successfully made terms of capitulation, involving the disbanding of the Goody, and her ultimate dispersal toBedford Park with a companion--to vouch for this actually happeningmight be rash. But Sally told herself--and her mother, for thatmatter--that she should so jump out of her skin; and you may believeher, perhaps. We happen not to; but it may have been true, for allthat. 

Agur, the son of Jakeh (Prov. Xxx. ), evidently thought the souls ofwomen not worth analysis, and the way of a maid with a man not amatter for Ithiel and Ucal to spend time and thought over, as theyseem to have said nothing to King Solomon on the subject. But thenAgur candidly admitted that he was more brutish than any man, andhad not the understanding of a man. So he contented himself withwondering at the way of a man with a maid, and made no remarks aboutthe opposite case. Even with the understanding of a man, would hehave been any nearer seeing into the mystery of a girl's heart? Asfor ourselves, we give it up. We have to be content with watchingwhat Miss Sally will do next, not trying to understand her. 

She certainly _believed_ she believed--we may go that far--when shestarted to walk to Chalke Church with a young man she felt a stronginterest in, and wanted to see happily settled in life--(all herwords, please, not ours)--that she intended, this walk, to get outof Prosy who the young lady was that he had hinted at, and, what wasmore, she knew exactly how she was going to lead up to it. Onlyshe wouldn't rush the matter; it would do just as well, or better, after they had seen the little church, and were walking back in thetwilight. They could be jolly and chatty then. Oh yes, certainly agood deal better. As for any feeling of shyness about it, of relief atpostponing it--what _nonsense_! Hadn't they as good as talked it allover already? But, for our own part, we believe that this readinessto let the subject wait was a concession Sally made towards admittinga personal interest in the result of her inquiry--so minute a one thatmaybe you may wonder why we call it a concession at all. Dr. Conradwas perhaps paltering a little with the truth, too, when he said tohimself that he was quite prepared to fulfil his half-promise toFenwick and reveal his mind to Sally; but not till quite the end ofthis walk, in case he should spoil it, and upset Sally. Or, perhaps, to-morrow morning, on the way to the train. Our own belief is, he wasfrightened, and it was an excuse. 

"We shall go by the beech-forest, " was Sally's last speech to Fenwick, as he turned back on his mission of rescue. And twenty minutes latershe and Dr. Conrad were crossing the smooth sheep-pasture that endedat the boundary of the said forest--a tract of woodland that wasalways treated with derision on account of its acreage. It was small, for a forest, certainly; but, then, it hadn't laid claim to the nameitself. Sally spoke forgivingly of it as they approached it. 

"It's a handy little forest, " said she; "only you can't lie down init without sticking out. If you don't expect to, it doesn't matter. "This was said without a trace of a smile, Sally-fashion. It took itsreasonableness for granted, and allowed the speaker to continuewithout a pause into conversation sane and unexaggerated. 

"What were you and Jeremiah talking about the day before yesterday, when you went that long walk?"

"We talked about a good many things. I've forgotten half. "

"Which was the one you don't want me to know about? Because youhaven't forgotten that, you know. " Vereker thinks of Sally's putativeparents, the Arcadian shepherdess and the thunderbolt. Obviouslya reality! Besides--so ran the doctor's thought--with her lookinglike _that_, what can I do? He felt perfectly helpless, but wouldn'tconfess it. He would make an effort. One thing he was certain of: thatevasion, with those eyes looking at him, would mean instant shipwreck. 

"We had a long talk, dear Miss Sally, about how much Jeremiah"--aslight accent on the name has the force of inverted commas intext--"can really recollect of his own history. " But Sally's replytakes a form of protest, without seeming warranty. 

"I say, Dr. Conrad, I wish you wouldn't.... However, never mind thatnow. I want to know about Jeremiah. Has he remembered a lot more, andnot told?"

"He goes on recovering imperfect versions of things. He told me a goodmany such yesterday--so imperfect that I am convinced as his mindclears he will find that some of them, though founded on reality, arelittle better than dreams. He can't rely on them himself.... But whatis it you wish I wouldn't?"

"Oh, nothing!--I'll tell you after. Never mind that now. What are thethings--I mean, the things he recovers the imperfect versions of? Youneedn't tell me the versions, you know, but you might tell me whatthey were versions of, without any breach of confidence. " Dr. Conradhas not time for more than a word or two towards the obvious protestagainst this way of stating the case, before Sally becomes franklyaware of her own unfairness. "No, I won't worm out and inquisit, "she says--and we are bound to give her exact language. "It isn'tfair on a general practitioner to take him for a walk and get athis professional secrets. " The merry eyebrows and the pearly teeth, slightly in abeyance for a serious moment or two, are all in evidenceagain as the black eyes flash round on the doctor, and, as it were, convey his reprieve to him. He acknowledges it in this sense. 

"I'm glad you don't insist upon my telling, Miss Sally. If you hadinsisted, I should have had to tell. " He paused a second, drawing aninference from an expression of Sally's face, then added: "Well, it'strue.... "

"I wasn't thinking of that. " This refers to her intention to saysomething, which never fructified; but somehow got communicated, magnetically perhaps, to Dr. Conrad. "Never mind what, now. Becauseif your soles are as slippy as mine are, we shall never get up. Catchhold!"

This last refers to the necessity two travellers are under, who, having to ascend a steep escarpment of slippery grass, can only do soby mutual assistance. Sally and the doctor got to the top, and settleddown to normal progress on a practicable gradient, and all theexhilaration of the wide, wind-swept downland. But what had been tothe unconscious merpussy nothing but a mutual accommodation imposed bya common lot--common subjection to the forces of gravitation and theextinction of friction by the reaction of short grass on leather--hadbeen to her companion a phase of stimulus to the storm that wasdevastating the region of his soul; a new and prolonged peal ofthunder swift on the heels of a blinding lightning-flash, and a delugeto follow such as a real storm makes us run to shelter from. On Dr. Conrad's side of the analogy, there was no shelter, and he didn't askfor it. Had he asked for anything, it would have been for the power totell Sally what she had become to him, and a new language he did notnow know in which to tell it. And such a vocabulary!

But Dr. Conrad didn't know how simple the language was that he feltthe want of--least of all, that there was only one word in itsvocabulary. And when the two of them got to the top of their slipperyprecipice, breathless, he was no nearer the disclosure he had made uphis mind to, and as good as promised Fenwick to make, than when theywere treading the beechmast and listening to the wood-doves in thehandy little forest they had left below. But oh, the little thingsin this life that are the big ones all the while, and no one eversuspects them!

A very little thing indeed was to play a big part, unacknowledged tillafter, in the story of this walk. For it chanced that as they reachedthe hill-top the diminution of the incline was so gradual that atno exact point could the lease of Sally's hand to that of the doctorbe determined by either landlord or tenant. We do not mean that herefused to let go, nor that Sally consciously said to herself that itwould be rude to snatch back the gloveless six-and-a-half that she hadentrusted to him, the very minute she didn't want his assistance. Itwas a _nuance_ of action or demeanour far, far finer than that onthe part of either. But it was real all the same. And the facts ofthe case were as clear to Sally's subconsciousness, unadmitted andunconfessed, as though Dr. Conrad had found his voice then and there, and said out boldly: "There is _no_ young lady I am wavering aboutexcept it be you; she's a fiction, and a silly one. There is no onein the world I care for as I do for you. There is nothing in the worldthat I can name or dream of so precious to me as this hand that I nowgive up with reluctance, under the delusion that I have not held itlong enough to make you guess the whole of the story. " All that wassaid, but what an insignificant little thing it was that said it!

As for Miss Sally, it was only her subself that recognised that anyone had said anything at all. Her superself dismissed it as a fancy;and, therefore, being put on its mettle to justify that action, itpointed out to her that, after that, it would be the merest cowardiceto shirk finding out about Dr. Conrad's young lady. She wouldmanage it somehow by the end of this walk. But still an element ofpostponement came in, and had its say. Yet it excited no suspicionsin her mind, or she ignored them. She was quite within her rights, technically, in doing so. 

It was necessary, though, to tide over the momentary reciprocity--theslight exchange of consciousnesses that, if indulged, must have endedin a climax--with a show of stiffness; a little pretence that we werea lady and gentleman taking a walk, otherwise undescribed. When thedoctor relinquished Sally's hand, he felt bound to ignore the factthat hers went on ringing like a bell in the palm of his, and sendingmusical messages up his arm; and to talk about dewponds. They occur onthe tops of downs, and are very scientific. High service and no rateare the terms of their water-supply. Dr. Conrad knew all about them, and was aware that one they passed was also a relic of prehistoricman, who had dug it, and didn't live long enough, poor fellow! to knowit was a dewpond, or prehistoric. Sally was interested. A little birdwith very long legs didn't seem to care, and walked away without unduehurry, but amazingly quickly, for all that. 

"What a little darling!" Sally said. "Did you hear that deliciouslittle noise he made? Isn't he a water-ouzel?" Sally took the firstname that she thought sounded probable. She really was making talk, to contribute her share to the fiction about the lady and gentleman. So was her companion. He reflected for a moment whether he could sayanything about Grallę and Scolopacidę, or such like, but decidedagainst heaping up instructive matter on the top of the recentdewponds. He gave it up, and harked back quite suddenly to congenialpersonalities. 

"What was it you wished I wouldn't, Miss Sally?"

Our Sally had it on her lips to say, "Why, do _that_--call me _Miss_Sally, of course! I can't _tell_ you how I hate it. " But, this time, she was seized with a sudden fit of shyness. She could have said itquite easily before that trivial hand-occurrence, and the momentarystiffness that followed it. Now she backed out in the meanest way, andeven sought to fortify the lady and gentleman pretext. She looked backover the panorama they were leaving behind, and discerned that thatwas Jeremiah and her maternal parent coming through the clover-field. But it wasn't, palpably. Nevertheless, Sally held tight to hergroundless opinion long enough for the previous question to bedroppable, without effrontery. Then her incorrigible candour bubbledup, and she refused to take advantage of her own subterfuge. 

"Never mind, Dr. Conrad; I'll tell you presently. I've a bone to pickwith you. Wait till we've seen the little churchy-wurchy--there itis, over there, with a big weathercock--and then we can quarrel andgo home separate. "

Even Agur, the son of Jakeh, would have seen, at this point, the waythat this particular maid, in addressing this particular man, wasexaggerating a certain spirit of bravado; and if he had beenaccompanying them unseen from St. Sennans, would certainly havedeserved his own self-censure if he had failed to trace this spiritto its source--the hand-incident. We believe it was only affectationin Agur, and that he knew all about the subject, men, maids, andevery other sort; only he didn't think any of the female sorts worthhis Oriental consideration. It was a far cry to the dawn of Browningin those days. 

Down the hill to the flatlands was a steep pathway, where talk pausednaturally. When you travel in single file on a narrow footway witha grass slide to right or left of you, which it does not do to treadon with shoe-soles well polished on two miles of previous grass, youdon't talk--especially if you have come to some point in talk wheresilence is not unwelcome. Sally and the doctor said scarcely a dozenwords on the way down to the little village that owned the name andthe church of Chalke. When they arrived in its seclusion they found, for purposes of information and reference, no human creatures visibleexcept some absolutely brown, white-haired ones whose existence datedback only a very few years--not enough to learn English in. So, whenaddressed, they remained a speechless group, too unaccustomed to manto be able to say where keys of churches were to be had, or anythingelse. But the eldest, a very little girl in a flexible blue bonnet, murmured what Sally, with insight, interpreted into a reference. 

"Yes, dear, that's right. You go and tell moarther t' whoam thata lady and gentleman want to see inside the church, and ask for thekey. " Whereupon the little maid departs down a passage into a smellof wallflowers, and is heard afar rendering her message as a longnarrative--so long that Dr. Conrad says the child cannot haveunderstood right, and they had better prosecute inquiry further. Sally thinks otherwise, and says men are impatient fidgets. 

The resolute dumbness of one of the small natives must have beena _parti-pris_, for it suddenly disappeared during his sister'sabsence, and he gave a narrative of a family dissension, notnecessarily recent. He appears proud of his own share in it, whichSally nevertheless felt she could not appear to sanction by silence. 

"You bad little boy, " she said. "You smacked your sister Elizabeth int' oy, and your foarther smacked you. I hope he hurt. " The bad littleboy assented with a nod, and supplied some further details. Then heasked for a penny before his sister Elizabeth came back. He wanted itto buy almond-rock, but he wouldn't give any of it to Jacob, nor tohis sister Elizabeth, nor to Reuben, nor to many others, whom heseemed to exclude from almond-rock with rapture. Asked to whom hewould give some, then, he replied: "Not you--eat it moyself!" andlaughed heartlessly. Sally, we regret to say, gave this selfishlittle boy a penny for not being hypocritical. And then his sisterElizabeth reappeared with the key, which was out of scale with her, like St. Peter's. 

The inward splendours of this church had been inferred by Sally froma tiptoe view through the window, which commanded its only archaicobject of interest--the monument of a woolstapler who, three hundredand odd years ago, had the effrontery to have two wives and sixteenchildren. He ought to have had one or two more wives, thought Dr. Conrad. However, the family was an impressive one now, decorated asit was with roses cut out of turnips, and groups of apples and carrotsand cereals. And no family could have kneeled down more symmetrically, even in 1580. 

But there was plenty to see in that church, too. Indeed, it wasfor all the world like the advertisement sheets of _ArchitectonicEcclesiology_ (ask for this paper at your club), and every window wasbrim full of new stained glass, and every inch of floor-space was newencaustic tiles. And, what was more, there was a new mosaic over thechancel-arch--a modest and wobbly little arch in itself, that seemedafflicted with its position, and to want to get away into a quietcorner and meditate. Sally said so, and added so should she, if shewere it. 

"I wonder if the woolstapler was married here to one or other of thelittle square women, " said she. 

"I wonder why the angels up there look so sulky, " said Dr. Conrad. Andthen Sally, who seemed absent-minded, found something else to wonderabout--a certain musical whistling noise that filled the little church. But it was only a big bunch of moonwort on a stained-glass-windowsill, and the wind was blowing through a vacancy that should have beena date, and making Ęolian music. The little maid with the key foundher voice over this suddenly. Her bruvver had done that, she saidwith pride. He had oymed a stoo-an when it was putten up, and brokkent' glass. So that stained glass was very new indeed, evidently. 

"I wonder why they call that stuff 'honesty, ' Miss Sally?" said thedoctor. Sally, feeling that the interest of either in the church wasreally perfunctory, said vaguely--did they? And then, recoiling fromfurther wonderment, and, indeed, feeling some terror of becomingidiotic if this sort of thing went on much longer, she exclaimed, withreality in her voice: "Because it's not pretending to take an interestwhen it doesn't, like us. But I wish you wouldn't, Dr. Conrad; I dohate it so. "

"Hate what? Taking an interest or calling it honesty? _I_ didn't callit honesty. _They_ did, whoever they are!"

"No, no--I don't mean that. Never mind. I'll tell you when we're out. Come along--that is, if you've seen enough of the tidy mosaic and thetidy stained glass, and the tidy nosegays on the tidy table. " Thedoctor came along--seemed well satisfied to do so. But this was thethird time Sally had wished that Dr. Conrad wouldn't, and this timeshe felt she must explain. She wasn't at all sure that the name ofthat herb hadn't somehow got into the atmosphere--caught on, as itwere, and twitted her. After all, why shouldn't she speak a plainthought to an old friend, as poor Prosy was now? Who could gainsay it?Moreover--now, surely this was an inspiration--why shouldn't she killtwo birds with one stone, and work in her inquiry about the otheryoung lady with this plain thought that was on her tongue to speak?

The sun was a sheer blaze of golden light as they stepped out of thelittle church into its farewell efforts on behalf of the hill-shadowedland of premature sunsets, and the merpussy looked her best in itseffulgence. Sally's good looks had never been such as to convince hershe was a beauty; and we suppose she wasn't, critically speaking. Butyouth and health, and an arrow-straight bearing, and a flawlesscomplexion, in a flood of evening light, make a bold bid for beautyeven in the eyes of others than young men already half-imbecile withlove. Sally's was, at any rate, enough to dumbfounder the littlejanitress with the key, who stood at gaze with violet eyes in hersunbrowned face in the shadow, looking as though for certain theywould never close again; while, as for Dr. Conrad, he was too far goneto want a finishing touch, and if he had been, the faintest animationof an extra flush due to embarrassment at what she was meaning to saywould have done the business for him. What could he do but wonder andidolize, even while he almost flinched before his idol; and wait toknow what it was she wished he wouldn't? What was there in earth orheaven he would not, if Sally wished it?

"Dr. Conrad, I'm sure you must know what I mean. I do so hate beingcalled 'Miss Sally. ' Do make it 'Sally, ' and have done with it. "

The breezy freshness of her spontaneous ease was infectious, and theshy man's answering laugh showed how it had caught his soul. "Is thatall?" says he. "That's soon done--Sally! You know, I _do_ call youSally when I speak to your mother and.... "

"Now, _do_ say father. You've no idea how I like it when people callJeremiah my father, instead of step. "

"Well--father, then. I mean, _they_ said call you Sally; so ofcourse I do. But speaking to you--don't you see?... " The doctorhesitates--doesn't actually blush, perhaps. A slight pause in theconversation eases off the context. The little maiden has to lock upthe church-door with the big key, and to receive sixpence and a kissfrom Sally. The violet eyes follow the lady and gentleman, fixed inwonderment, as they move off towards the hill, and the last glint ofthe sun vanishes. Then Sally goes on where they left off:

"No, I don't see. Speaking to me, what? Be an explicit little generalpractitioner, or we shall quarrel, after all, and go home differentways. "

"Well, look here! You know Bailey, the young man that drives me roundin London?"

"Yes. How does he come in?"

"Why, just this way; I've known the youth for years, and the otherday if it doesn't turn out that he's been married ever so long! Andwhen I taxed him with needless secrecy and mistrust of an old friend, what does the young humbug say? 'The fact is, sir, I hadn't the cheekto tell you. ' Well, _I_ was like that. I hadn't the cheek. "

"At any rate, you have the grace to call him a young humbug. I'm gladyou're repentant, Dr. Conrad. "

"Come--I say, now--Sally! That's not fair. "

"What's not fair?"

"Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. You called me 'Dr. Conrad. '"

"We-ell, I don't see anything in _that_. Of course, it's quite adifferent thing--you and me. "

"Very well, then. I shall say Miss Sally. Miss Sally!"

Here was Sally's opportunity, clear enough. She had never had achance till now of bringing back the mysterious young lady of thejetty-interview into court, and examining her. She felt quite sure ofherself and her powers of conducting the case--and she was mistaken. She knew nothing of the traps and pitfalls that were gaping for her. Her opening statement went easily though; it was all prepared. 

"Don't you see, Dr. Conrad dear, the cases are quite different? Whenyou're married, your wife will call _me_ Sally, of course. But ... Well, if I had a husband, you know, _he_ would call _you_ Dr. Vereker. Sure to!" Sally felt satisfied with the sound of her voice. But thedoctor said never a word, and his face was grave. She would have togo on, unassisted, and she had invented nothing to say, so far. Soa wavering crept in--nothing in itself at first, apart from herconsciousness of it. "Besides, though, of course _she_ would call _me_Sally, she mightn't quite--not altogether, you know--I mean, she mightthink it.... " But ambushes revealed themselves in every hedge, readyto break out if she ended this sentence. Dr. Conrad made completionunnecessary. 

"Whom do you mean by _she_, Sally?"

"Why, of course! Who could I mean but the girl you told me about thatyou think wouldn't agree with your mother?"

"I thought so. See what a mess I made of it! No, Sally, there's nosuch person. Now I shall have to speak the truth, and then I shallhave to go away from you, and it will all be spoiled.... " But Sallyinterposes on the tense speech, and sound of growing determinationin the doctor's voice:

"Oh no, don't--no, don't! Don't say anything that will change it from_now_. See how happy we are! How could it be better? I'll call youConrad, or anything you like. Only, _don't_ make it different. "

"Very well, I won't. I promise!" The doctor calms down. "But, Sallydearest--I may say Sally dearest, mayn't I?... "

"Well, perhaps. Only you must make that do for the present. "

But there is a haunting sense of the Octopus in the conscientious soulof her son, and even though he is allowed to say "Sally dearest, " theburden is on him of knowing that he has been swept away in the turmoilof this whirlwind of self, and he is feeling round to say _peccavi_, and make amends by confession. He makes "Sally dearest" do for themoment, but captures as a set-off the hand that slips readily enoughinto the arm he offers for it, with a caressing other hand, before hespeaks again. He renews his promise--but with such a compensation inthe hand that remains at rest in his! and then continues:

"Dearest Sally, I dare say you see how it was--about mother. It wasvery stupid of me, and I did it very badly. I got puzzled, and lostmy head. "

"I thought it was a real young lady, anyhow. "

"I saw you did. And I do think--just now--I should have let youcontinue believing in the real young lady ... Only when you saidthat.... "

"Said what?"

"Said that about your husband, and calling me Conrad. I couldn'tstand it. It was just like a knife ... No, I'm in earnest, it _was_. How could I have borne it--gone on at all--with you married to anyone else?" He asks this in a tone of serious conviction, of onewho is diagnosing a strange case, conscientiously. Sally declinesconsultation--won't be too serious over it. 

"You would have had to. Men get on capitally when they have to. Butvery likely I won't marry you. Don't be too sure! I haven't committedmyself, you know. " Nevertheless, the hand remains passive in thedoctor's, as he continues his diagnosis:

"I shouldn't deserve you. But, then, who could?"

Sally tacitly refuses to help in answering this question. 

"I vote for neither of us marrying anybody else, but going on likenow, " says she thoughtfully. 

Sally, you see, was recovering herself after a momentary alarm, produced by the gust of resolution on Dr. Conrad's part. She had shuther window on the storm in his soul, and felt safe in resuming heridentity. All through this walk, ever since the hand-incident, shehad been hard at work ignoring suggestions of her inner mind thather companion was a loaded gun, and not quite safe to play with. Nowshe felt she had established a sort of _modus vivendi_ which wouldnot involve her in the horrors of a formal engagement, with theconcomitants of dissension and bitterness that she had noticed infriends' families on such occasions. Why shouldn't she and poor Prosywalk about together as much as they liked--yes, even call in at achurch and get married if they liked--and have no one else fussingover them? The sort of semi-trothplight she had just hushed intosilence would do for a good long time to come, because she understoodProsy down to the ground, and, of course, she knew that hismistrusting her was out of the question. 

As for the doctor, his was the sort of temperament one often meetswith in very fair men of his type--intensely shy, but with a backingof resolution on occasion shown, bred of a capacity for high-strungpassion. He had formed his intention fully and clearly of tellingSally the whole truth before they arrived at St. Sennans that evening, and had been hastened to what was virtually an avowal by a prematureaccident, as we have seen. Now the murder was out, and he was walkinghome slowly beside the marvel, the mystery, that had taken possessionof the inmost recesses of his life--very much in her pocket, if thetruth must be told--with an almost intolerable searching fire of joyfinding every moment a new untouched recess in his innermost heart. He could have fallen at her feet and kissed them, could have pouredout his very soul in passionate protestations, could and would havedone anything that would have given a moment's respite to the tensionof his love for this all-absorbing other creature that was absolutelyhere--a reality, and no dream--beside him. But he was going to begood, at her bidding, and remain a sane and reasonable generalpractitioner, however much his heart beat and his head swam. PoorProsy!

No! On consideration, Agur, the son of Jakeh, didn't know all aboutit. He only knew the Oriental temperament. He was quite up to date, no doubt, but neither he nor Ithiel nor Ucal nor King Solomon couldreckon with spiritual volcanoes. Probably nothing in the world couldhave explained to either of them the meaning of one or two bits ofmusic Schubert wrote on this subject of Love--we don't flinch from ourphraseology; we know that all will understand it whom we care shoulddo so. By-the-bye, Dr. Vereker was partly German, and a musician. Agur can have had no experience of either. The ancestors of Schubertand Beethoven were splendid savages in his day, sleeping on thesnow-wreaths in the forests of the north; and somewhere among themthere was a germ of a love-passion that was one day to ring changeson the peals that were known to Agur, the son of Jakeh. 

But this is wandering from the point, and all the while Sally and herlover have been climbing that hill again, and are now walking over thelonely down above, towards the sun, and their shadows are long behindthem--at least, their shadow; for they have but one, and we fancy wehave let some of our record slip, for the man's arm is round thegirl's waist. Yes, some further clearer understanding has come intotheir lives, and maybe Sally sees by now that the vote she passed_nem. Con. _ may be rescinded in the end. 

If you had been near them then, invisible, we know you would not havegone close and listened. You would have been too honourable. But youwould only have heard this--take our word for it!

"Do you know what I always call you behind your back? I always callyou Prosy. I don't know why. "

"Because I _am_ prosy--level-headed, slow sort of card--but prosybeyond a doubt. "

"No, you're not. I don't think you know the least what you're like. But I shall call you Prosy, all the same, or whatever I choose!"

"You don't take to Conrad, somehow?"

"It sounds so reproachful. It's like William. "

"Does William sound reproachful?"

"Of course it does! Willy-yum! A most reproachful name. No, Prosydear, I shall call you Prosy, whatever the consequences may be. Peoplemust put their own construction upon it. "

"Mother calls me Conny very often. "

"When she's not taking exception to you ... Oh, no! I know. I was onlyjoking ... There, then! we won't quarrel and go home opposite waysabout that. Besides, I'm the young lady.... "

"Oh, Sally darling, dearest, it does make me feel such a fool. Pleasedon't!"

"Stuff and nonsense, Prosy dear! I shall, if I choose. So there!... No, but seriously--_why_ did you think I shouldn't get on well withyour mother?" Poor Prosy looks very much embarrassed at this point;his countenance pleads for respite. But Sally won't let him off. Andhe is as wax in her hands, and she knows it, and also that every wordthat passes her coral lips seems to the poor stricken man a pearl ofwisdom. And she is girl enough to enjoy her power, is Sally. 

"_Why_ do you think I shan't get on with her?" Note the slightvariation in the question, driving the nail home, leaving no escape. The doctor's manner in reply is that of one who appeals to Truthherself to help him, before a court that acknowledges no otherjurisdiction. 

"Because ... I must say it because it's true, only it seems so ... So disloyal, you might say, to mother.... "

"Well! Because what?"

"Because then it won't be the same as _your_ mother. It can't be. "

"Why not?"

"Oh, Sally--dearest love--how can it?"

"Well! Perhaps _why not_ was fibs. And, of course, mother's an angel, so it's not fair. But, Prosy dear, I'll tell you one thing I _do_think--that affectionate sons make very bad medical attendants fortheir ma's; and I should say the same if they had all the degrees inChristendom. "

"You think a nervous element comes in?... "

 * * * * *

And so the conversation ripples on, a quiet undertone of perfectconfidence, freedom without reserve as to another self, suddenlydiscovered in the working identity of a fellow-creature. It rippleson just thus, all the distance of the walk along the topmost down, inthe evening sunlight, and then comes a pause to negotiate the descentto their handy little forest below. Then a sense that they are comingback into a sane, dry world, and must be a lady and a gentleman again. But there must be a little farewell to the enchanted land they areleaving behind--a recognition of its story, under the beech-trees asthe last gleam goes, and leaves us our inheritance of twilight. 

"Do you remember, darling, how we climbed up there, coming, and hadhold to the top?" His lips find hers, naturally and without disguise. It is the close of the movement, and company-manners will be wanteddirectly. But just a bar or two, and a space, before the musicdies!... 

"I remember, " says Sally. "That began it. Oh, what a long time agothat does seem now! What a rum start it all is--the whole turn-out!"For the merpussy is her incorrigible self, and will be to the last. 

 * * * * *

When Sally reached home, very late, she was not displeased, though shewas a little surprised, to find that Mrs. Lobjoit was keeping dinnerback, and that her mother and Fenwick had not reappeared, having beenaway since they parted. Not displeased, because it gave her time tosettle down--the expression she made use of, to think with; not withany admission, however, that she either felt or looked unusually_exaltée_--but surprised, because it was eight o'clock, and she feltthat even Mrs. Lobjoit's good-nature might have limits. 

But while she was settling down, in a happy, excited dream she halfwondered that she did not wake from, back came the truants; and sheheard from her room above Mrs. Lobjoit's report that Miss Sally wasgone upstairs to get ready, with the faintest hint of reproach in thetone. Then her mother's "Don't stop to read letters, Gerry--that'lldo after, " and Fenwick's "All right!" not followed by immediateobedience. Then, after half a moment's delay, in which she feltsome surprise at herself for not going out to meet them coming upthe stairs, her mother's voice approaching, that asked where thekitten was. 

"Oh, here you are, chick!--how long have you been in? Why, Sallykin!what is it, child?... Oh, Gerry--Gerry--come up here and hear this!"For the merpussy, in spite of many stoical resolutions, had mergeda beginning of verbal communication in a burst of happy tears on hermother's bosom. 

And when Fenwick, coming upstairs three steps at a time, filled thewhole house with "Hullo, Sarah! what's the latest intelligence?" thisyoung lady had only just time to pull herself together into somethinglike dignified self-possession, in order to reply ridiculously--howcould she have been our usual Sally, else?--"We-ell! I don't see thatit's anything so very remarkable, after all. I've been encouragingmy medical adviser's attentions, if you want to know, Jeremiah. "

Was it only a fancy of Sally's, as she ended off a hurried toilet, forMrs. Lobjoit's sake, or did her mother say to Fenwick, "Well!--_that_is something delightful, at any rate"? As though it were in some sensea set-off against something not delightful elsewhere. 

CHAPTER XLII

OF A RECURRENCE FROM _AS YOU LIKE IT_ AND HOW FENWICK DIDN'T. WHY A SAILOR WOULD NOT LEARN TO SWIM. THE BARON AGAIN. OF A CUTTLE-FISH AND HIS SQUIRT. OF THE POWER OF _A PRIORI_ REASONING. OF SALLY'S CONFESSION, AND HOW FENWICK WENT TO A FIRST-CLASS HOTEL

When Fenwick turned back towards home, ostensibly to shortenRosalind's visit to the doctor's mother, he had no intention of doingso early enough to allow of his rejoining his companions, howeverslowly they might walk. Neither did he mean to deprive old Mrs. Vereker of Rosalind until she had had her full allowance of her. In anhour would do--or three-quarters. He discounted twenty-five per cent. , owing to a recollection of the green veil and spectacles. Then he feltunkind, and said to himself, that, after all, the old woman couldn'thelp it. 

Fenwick felt he was making a great concession in giving upthree-quarters of an hour of Rosalind. As soon as he had had exerciseenough for the day, and was in a mood to smoke and saunter about idly, he wanted Rosalind badly, and was little disposed to give her up. Butthe old Goody was going away to-morrow, and he would be liberal. Hewould take a turn along the sea-front--would have time to get down tothe jetty--and then would invade the cave of the Octopus and extractthe prisoner from its tentacles. 

His intention in forsaking Sally and the doctor was half suspected bythe latter, quite clear to himself, and only unperceived by his opaquestepdaughter. As he idled down towards the old fisher-dwellings andthe net-huts, he tried to picture the form the declaration would take, and the way it would be received. That this would be favourable henever doubted for a moment; but he recalled the speech of Benedictto Beatrice, "By my troth I take thee for pity, " and fancied Sally'sresponse might be of the same complexion. His recollection of thesewords produced a mental recurrence, a distressing and imperfect one, connected with the earlier time he could not reach back to, of thewords being used to himself by a girl who ascribed them to Rosalindin _As You Like It_, and a discussion after of their whereabouts inShakespeare. 

The indescribable wrench this gave his mind was so painful that hewas quite relieved to recall Vereker's opinion that it was alwaysthe imperfection of the memory and the effort that gave pain, not thething remembered. And in this case there could be no doubt that itwas a mere dream, for the girl not only took the form of his Roseyhe was going back to directly, but actually claimed her name, sayingdistinctly, "like my namesake, Celia's friend, in Shakespeare. " Couldany clearer proof be given that it was mere brain-froth?

The man with "Bessie" and "Elinor" tattooed on his arm was enjoyinga pipe and mending a net, not to be too idle. The glass might berising--or not. He was independent of Science. A trifle of wind inthe night was his verdict, glass or no! The season was drawing nighto a close now for a bathing-resort, as you might say. Come anotherse'nnight, you wouldn't see a machine down, as like as not. But youcould never say, to a nicety. He'd known every lodging in the old townfull, times and again, to the end of September month, before now. Butthis year was going to fall early, and your young lady would lose herswimming. 

"She's a rare lass, too, for the water, " he concluded, without anyconsciousness of familiarity in the change of phrase. "Not that I knowmuch myself, touching swimming and the like. For I can't swim myself, never a stroke. "

"That's strange, too, for a seaman, " said Fenwick. 

"No, sir! Not so strange as you might think it. You ask up and downamong we, waterside or seafaring, and you'll find a many have neverstudied it, for the purpose. Many that would make swimmers, with a bitof practice, will hold off, for the reason I tell you. Overboard inmid-ocean, and none to help, and not a spar, would you soonest drown, end on, or have to fight for it, like it or no?"

"Drown! The sooner the better. " Fenwick has no doubt about the matter. 

"Why, sure! So I say, master. And I've put no encouragement on youngBenjamin, over yonder, to give study to the learning of it, for thesame reason. And not a stroke can he swim, any more than his father. "

"Well! I can't swim myself, so there's three of us!" said Fenwick. "Mydaughter swims enough for the lot. " It gave him such pleasure to speakthus of Sally boldly, where there need be no exact definition of theirkinship. The net-mender pursued the subject with the kind of gravityon him that always comes on a seaman when drowning is under discussion. 

"She's a rare one, for sure. Never but three, or may be fower, haveI seen in my time to come anigh to her--man nor woman. The best swimmera long way I've known--Peter Burtenshaw by name--I helped bring toafter drowning. He'd swum--at a guess--the best part of six hoursafower we heard the cry of him on our boat. Too late a bit we were, but we found him, just stone-dead like, and brought him round. It waswhat Peter said of that six hours put me off of letting 'em larn yoongBenjamin to swim when he was a yoongster. And when he got to years ofunderstanding I told him my mind, and he never put himself to study it. "

Fenwick would have liked to go on talking with the fisherman, as hismental recurrence about Shakespeare had fidgeted him, and he foundspeech a relief. But some noisy visitors from the new St. Sennanson the cliff above had made an irruption into the little oldfishing-quarter, and the attention of the net-mender was distractedby possibilities of a boat-to-day being foisted on their simplicity;it was hardly rough enough to forbid the idea. Fenwick, therefore, sauntered on towards the jetty, but presently turned to go back, ashalf his time had elapsed. 

As he repassed the net-mender with a short word or two forvalediction, his ear was caught by a loud voice among the party ofvisitors, who were partly sitting on the beach, partly throwingstones in the water. Something familiar about that voice, surely!

"I gannod throw stoanss. I am too vat. I shall sit on the peach andsee effrypotty else throw stoanss. I shall smoke another cigar. Willyou haff another cigar, Mr. Prown? You will not? Ferry well! Nor you, Mrs. Prown? Not for the worlt? Ferry well! Nor you, Mr. Bilkington?Ferry well! I shall haff one myself, and you shall throw stoanss. "And then, as though to remove the slightest doubt about the identityof the speaker, the voice broke into song:

 "Ich hatt' einen Kameraden, Einen bessern findst du nicht--"

but ended on "Mein guter Kamerad, " exclaiming stentorianly, "Opleitchme with a madge, " and lighting his cigar in spite of his companions'indignation at the music stopping. 

Fenwick stood hesitating a moment in doubt what to do. His inclinationwas to go straight down the beach to his old friend, whom--of course, you understand?--he now remembered quite well, and explain the strangecircumstances that had rendered their meeting in Switzerland abortive. But then!--what would the effect be on his present life, in hisrelation to Rosalind and (almost as important) to Sally? DiedrichKreutzkammer had been, for some time in California, a most intimatefriend. Fenwick had made him the confidant of his marriage and hisearly life, all that he had since forgotten, and he had it now in hispower to recover all this from the past. Strange to say, although hecould remember the telling of these things, he could only rememberweak, confused snatches of what he told. It was unaccountable--butthere!--he could not try to unravel that skein now. He must settle, and promptly, whether to speak to the Baron or to run. 

He was not long in coming to a decision, especially as he sawthat hesitation was sure to end in the adoption of the formercourse--probably the wrong one. He just caught the Baron's lastwords--a denunciation of the hotel he was stopping at, loud enoughto reach the new St. Sennans, of which it was the principalconstituent--and then walked briskly off. He arrived at Iggulden'swithin the hour he had first conceded to the Octopus, and gotRosalind out for a walk, as originally proposed. 

There was no apparent reason why the impossibility of overtaking Sallyand the doctor should be interpreted into an excuse for going in theopposite direction; but each accepted it as such, or as a justificationat least. Rosalind had not so distinct a reason as her husband forwishing not to break in upon them, as he had not reported the whole ofhis last talk with Vereker. But though she did not know that Dr. Conradhad as good as promised to make a clean breast of it before returningto London, she thought nothing was more likely than that he should doso, and resolved to leave the stage clear for the leading parts. Shemay even have flattered herself that she was showing tact--keepingan unconscious Gerry out of the way, who might else interfere withthe stars in their courses, in the manner of the tactless. Rosalindsuspected this of Sally, that whatever she might think she thought, and whatever parade she made of an even mind no sentiments whateverprevailed in, there was in her inmost heart another Sally, locked inand unconfessed, that had strong views on the subject. And she wantedthis Sally to be let out for a spell, or for poor Prosy to be allowedinto her cell long enough to speak for himself. Anyhow, this was theirlast chance here, and she wasn't going to spoil it. 

She had gone near to making up her mind--after her sufferings fromGwenny's mamma in the morning--to attempt, at any rate, a communicationof their joint story to her husband. But it _must_ depend oncircumstances and possibilities. She foresaw a long period ofresolutions undermined by doubts, decisions rescinded at the lastmoment, and suddenly-revealed ambushes, and perhaps in the endself-reproach for a mismanaged revelation that might have been so muchmore skilfully done. Never mind--it was all in the day's work! Shehad borne much, and would bear more. 

"How do you know they are all nonsense, Gerry darling?" We catch theirconversation in the middle as they walk along the sands the tide isleaving clear, after accommodating the few morning-bathers with everyopportunity to get out of their depths. "How do you _know_? Surelythe parts that you _do_ seem to remember clearly _must_ be all right, however confused the rest is. "

Fenwick gives his head the old shake, dashes his hair across his browand rubs it, then replies: "The worst of the job is, you see, thatthe bits I remember clearest are the greatest gammon. What do you makeof that?"

Rosalind's hand closes on her nettle. "Instance, Gerry!--give me aninstance, and I shall know what you mean. "

Fenwick is outrageously confident of the safety of his last imperfectrecollection. He can trust to its absurdity if he can trust toanything. 

"Well! For instance, just now--an hour ago--I recollected somethingabout a girl who would have it Rosalind in _As You Like It_ said, 'By my troth I take thee for pity, ' to Orlando. And all the while itwas Benedict said it to Beatrice in _All's Well that Ends Well_. "

The hand on the nettle tightens. "Gerry _dearest_!" she remonstrates. "There's nothing in _that_, as Sallykin says. Of course it _was_Benedict said it to Beatrice. "

"Yes--but the gammon wasn't in that. It was the girl that said it. When I tried to think who it was, she turned into _you_! I mean, shebecame exactly like you. "

"But I'm a woman of forty. " This was a superb piece ofnettle-grasping; and there was not a tremor in the voice that saidit, and the handsome face of the speaker was calm, if a little pale. Fenwick noticed nothing. 

"Like what I should suppose you were as a girl of eighteen or twenty. It's perfectly clear how the thing worked. It was from something elseI seem to recollect her saying, 'Like my namesake, Celia's friend inShakespeare. ' The moment she said that, of course the name Rosalindmade me think you into the business. It was quite natural. "

"Quite natural! And when I was that girl that was what I said. " Shehad braced herself up, in all the resolution of her strong nature, to the telling of her secret, and his; and she thought this was heropportunity. She was mistaken. For as she stood, keeping, as it were, a heartquake in abeyance, till she should see him begin to understand, he replied without the least perceiving her meaning--evidentlyaccounting her speech only a variant on "If I _had_ been that girl, "and so forth--"Of course you did, sweetheart, " said he, with a laughin his voice, "_when_ you were that girl. And I expect that girl saidit when she was herself, whoever she was, and the name Rosalind turnedher into you? Look at this cuttlefish before he squirts. "

For a moment Rosalind Fenwick was almost two people, so distinctly didthe two aspects or conditions of herself strike her mind. The one wasthat of breath drawn freely, of a respite, a reprieve, a heartquakeescaped; for, indeed, she had begun to feel, as she neared the crisis, that the trial might pass her powers of endurance. The other of a newterror--that the tale, perhaps, _could not be told at all_! that, unassisted by a further revival of her husband's memory, it wouldremain permanently incredible by him, with what effect of ahalf-knowledge of the past God only knew. The sense of reprieve gotthe better of the new-born apprehension--bid it stand over for awhile, at least. Sufficient for the day was the evil thereof. 

Meanwhile, Gerry, absolutely unconscious of her emotion, and seemingmuch less disconcerted over this abortive recollection than overprevious ones, stood gazing down into the clear rock-pool thatcontained the cuttlefish. "Do come and look at him, Rosey love, " saidhe. "His manners are detestable, but there can be no doubt about thequality of his black. "

She leaned a bit heavily on the arm she took as they left thecuttlefish to his ill-conditioned solitude. "Tired, dearest?" saidher husband; and she answered, "Just a little!" But his mind was aclean sheet on which his story would have to be written in ink asblack as the cuttlefish's Parthian squirt, and in a full round handwithout abbreviations, unless it should do something to help itself. Let it rest while she rested and thought. 

She thought and thought--happy for all her strain of nerve and mind, on the quiet stretch of sand and outcrop of chalk, slippery with weed, that the ebbing tide would leave safe for them for hours to come. So thinking, and seeing the way in which her husband's reason wasentrenched against the facts of his own life, in a citadel defended byhuman experience at bay, she wavered in her resolution of a few hourssince--or, rather, she saw the impossibility of forcing the position, thinking contentedly that at least if it was so impracticable toher it would be equally so to other agencies, and he might be reliedon to remain in the dark. The _status quo_ would be the happiest, if it could be preserved. So when, after a two hours' walk throughthe evening glow and the moonrise, Rosalind came home to Sally'srevelation, as we have seen, the slight exception her voice tookto universal rejoicing was the barest echo of the tension of herabsolutely unsuccessful attempt to get in the thin end of the wedgeof an incredible revelation. 

Quite incredible! So hopeless is the case of a mere crude, unadulterated fact against an irresistible _a priori_ belief in itsincredibility. 

Sally was reserved about details, but clear about the outcome of herexpedition with Prosy. They perfectly understood each other, and itwasn't anybody else's concern; present company's, of course, excepted. Questioned as to plans for the future--inasmuch as a marriage did notseem inconsequent under the circumstances--Sally became enigmatical. The word "marriage" had not been so much as mentioned. She admittedthe existence of the institution, but proposed--now and for thefuture--to regard it as premature. Wasn't even sure she would tellanybody, except Tishy; and perhaps also Henriette Prince, because shewas sure to ask, and possibly Karen Braun if she did ask. But shedidn't seem at all clear what she was going to say to them, as sheobjected to the expression "engaged. " A thing called "it" withoutan antecedent, got materialised, and did duty for something moreintelligible. Yes!--she would tell Tishy about It, and just thoseone or two others. But if It was going to make any difference, orthere was to be any fuss, she would just break It off, and have donewith It. 

Sentiments of this sort provoked telegraphic interchanges ofsmile-suggestion between her hearers all through the evening mealthat was so unusually late. This lateness received sanction from thefact that Mr. Fenwick would very likely have letters by the morningpost that would oblige him to return to town by the afternoon train. If so, this was his last evening, and clearly nothing mattered. Law and order might be blowed, or hanged. 

It was, under these circumstances, rather a surprise to his hearerswhen he said, after smoking half through his first cigar, that hethought he should walk up to the hotel in the new town, because hefancied there was a man there he knew. As to his name, he thought itwas Pilkington, but wasn't sure. Taunted with reticence, he said itwas nothing but business. As Rosalind could easily conceive that Gerrymight not want to introduce all the Pilkingtons he chanced across tohis family, she didn't press for explanation. "He'll very likely callround to see your young man, chick, when he's done with Pilkington. "To which Sally replied, "Oh, _he'll_ come round here. Told him to!"Which he did, at about ten o'clock. But Fenwick had never called atIggulden's, neither had he come back to his own home. It was aftermidnight before his foot was on the stairs, and Sally had retiredfor the night, telling her mother not to fidget--Jeremiah would beall right. 

CHAPTER XLIII

OF AN OBSERVANT AND THOUGHTFUL, BUT SNIFFY, WAITER; AND HOW HE OPENED A NEW BOTTLE OF COGNAC. HOW THE BARON SAW FENWICK HOME, WITHOUT HIS HAT. AN OLD MEMORY FROM ROSALIND'S PAST AND HIS. AND THEN FACE TO FACE WITH THE WHOLE. SLEEP UPON IT! BUT WHAT BECAME OF HIS HORRIBLE BABY?

At eleven o'clock that night a respectable man with weak eyes anda cold was communing with a commanding Presence that lived in abureau--nothing less!--in the entrance-hall of the big hotel at thenew St. Sennans. It was that of a matron with jet earrings andtube-curls and a tortoise-shell comb, and an educated contempt forher species. It lived in that bureau with a speaking-pipe to speakto every floor, and a telephone for the universe beyond. He that nowventured to address it was a waiter, clearly, for he carried atable-napkin, on nobody's behalf and uselessly, but with a feelingfor emblems which might have made him Rouge Dragon in another sphere. As it was, he was the head waiter in the accursed restaurant ordining-_salon_ at the excruciating new hotel, where he would bring youcold misery from the counter at the other end, or lukewarm depression_ą la carte_ from the beyond--but nothing that would do you any goodinside, from anywhere. 

"Are those parties going, in eighty-nine, do you make out?" ThePresence speaks, but with languid interest. 

"Hapathetic party, and short customer. Takes you up rather free. Name of Pilkington. Not heard 'em say anything!"

"Who did you say was going?"

"The German party. Party of full 'abit. Call at seven in themorning. Fried sole and cutlets _ą la_ mangtynong and sweet omeletat seven-thirty sharp. Too much by way of smoking all day, in mythinking! But they say plums and greengages, took all through meals, is a set-off. "

"I don't pretend to be an authority. Isn't that him, in thesmoking-room?"

"Goin' on in German? Prob'ly. " Both stop and listen. What they hearis the Baron, going on very earnestly indeed in German. What keepsthem listening is that another voice comes in occasionally--a voicewith more than mere earnestness in it; a voice rather of anguishunder control. Then both voices pause, and silence comes suddenly. 

"Who's the other party?"

"In a blue soote, livin' in one of the sea-'ouses down on the beach. Big customer. Prodooces a rousin' impression!"

"Is that his daughter that swims?... That's him--coming away. "

But it isn't. It is the Baron, wrathful, shouting, swearing, neitherin German nor English, but in either or both. Where is that tamnedkellner? Why does he not answer the pell? This is an _abscheuliches_hotel, and every one connected with it is an _Esel_. What he wantsis some cognac and a doctor forthwith. His friend has fainted, andhe has been pressing the tamned puddon, and nobody comes. 

The attitude of the lady with the earrings epitomizes the completeindifference of a hotel-keeper to the private lives of its guestsnowadays. That bell must be seen to, she says. Otherwise she iscallous. The respectable waiter hurries for the cognac, and returnswith a newly-drawn bottle and two glasses to the smoking-room, to findthat the gentleman has recovered and won't have any. He suggests thatour young man could step round for Dr. Maccoll; but the proposedpatient says, "The devil fly away with Dr. Maccoll!" which doesn'tlook like docility. The respectable waiter takes note of hisappearance, and reports of it to his principal on dramatic grounds, not as a matter into which human sympathies enter. 

"Very queer he looks. Doo to reaction, or the coatin's of the stomach. Affectin' the action of the heart.... No, there's nobody else in thesmoking-room. Party with the 'ook instead of a hand's watching of 'emplay penny-pool in the billiard-room. " Surely a tale to bring a tearto the eye of sensibility! But not to one that sees in mankind onlya thing that comes and goes and pays its bill--or doesn't. The lady inthe bureau appears to listen slightly to the voices that come afreshfrom the smoking-room, but their duration is all she is concernedwith. "He's going now, " she says. He is; and he does look queer--veryqueer. His companion does not leave him at the door, but walks outinto the air with him without his hat, speaking to him volublyand earnestly, always in German. His speech suggests affectionateexhortation, and the way he takes his arm is affectionate. The voicesgo out of hearing, and it is so long before the Baron returns, hatless, that he must have gone all the way to the sea-houses downon the beach. 

 * * * * *

Sally retired to her own couch in order to supply an inducement to hermother to go to bed herself, and sit up no longer for Gerry's return, which might be any time, of course. Rosalind conceded the point, andwas left alone under a solemn promise not to be a goose and fidget. But she was very deliberate about it; and though she didn't fidget, she went all the slower that she might think back on a day--anhour--of twenty years ago, and on the incident that Gerry had halfrecalled, quite accurately as far as it went, but strangelyunsupported by surroundings or concomitants. 

It came back to her with both. She could remember even the face of hermother's coachman Forsyth, who had driven her with Miss Stanynaught, her _chaperon_ in this case, to the dance where she was to meet Gerry, as it turned out; and how Forsyth was told not to come for them beforethree in the morning, as he would only have to wait; and how MissStanynaught, her governess of late, who was over forty, pleaded fortwo, and Forsyth _did_ have to wait; and how she heard the music andthe dancing above, for they were late; and how they waded upstairsagainst a descending stream of muslin skirts and marked attentionsgoing lawnwards towards the summer night, and bent on lemonade andices; and then their entry into the dancing-room, and an excitedhostess and daughters introducing partners like mad; and an exciteddaughter greeting a gentleman who had come upstairs behind them, with"Well, Mr. Palliser, you _are_ late. You don't deserve to be allowedto dance at all. " And that was Jessie Nairn, of course, who added, "I've jilted you for Arthur Fenwick. "

How well Rosalind could remember turning round and seeing a splendidyoung chap who said, "What a jolly shame!" and didn't seem to beoppressed by that or anything else; also Jessie's further speech, apologizing for having also appropriated Miss Graythorpe's partner. Sothey would have to console each other. What a saucy girl Jessie was, to be sure! She introduced them with a run, "Mr. Algernon Palliser, Miss Rosalind Graythorpe, Miss Rosalind Graythorpe, Mr. AlgernonPalliser, " and fled. And Rosalind was piqued about Arthur Fenwick'sdesertion. It seemed all so strange now--such a vanished world! Justfancy!--she had been speculating if she should accept Arthur, if hegot to the point of offering himself. 

But a shaft from Cupid's bow must have been shot from a slack string, for Rosalind could remember how quickly she forgot Arthur Fenwick asshe took a good look at Gerry Palliser, his great friend, whom he hadso often raved about to her, and who was to be brought to playlawn-tennis next Monday. And then to the ear of her mind, listeningback to long ago, came a voice so like the one she was to hear soon, when that footstep should come on the stair. 

"I can't waltz like Arthur, Miss Graythorpe. But you'll have to putup with me. " And the smile that spread over his whole face was solike him now. Then came the allusion to _As You Like It_. 

"I'll take you for pity, Mr. Palliser--'by my troth, ' as my namesakeRosalind, Celia's friend, in Shakespeare, says to what's his name ... Orlando.... "

"Come, I say, Miss Graythorpe, that's not fair. It was Benedict saidit to Beatrice. "

"Did he? And did Beatrice say she wouldn't waltz with him?"

"Oh, please! I'm so sorry. No--it wasn't Benedict--it _was_ Rosalind. "

"That's right! Now let me button your glove for you. You'll be forever, with those big fingers. " For both of us, thought Rosalind, weredetermined to begin at once and not lose a minute. That dear old time... Before... !

Then, even clearer still, came back to her the dim summer-dawn in thegarden, with here and there a Chinese lantern not burned out, andthe flagging music of the weary musicians afar, and she and Gerry withthe garden nearly to themselves. She could feel the cool air of themorning again, and hear the crowing of a self-important cock. And theinformal wager which would live the longer--a Chinese lantern at thepoint of death, or the vanishing moon just touching the line oftree-tops against the sky, stirred by the morning wind. And the voiceof Gerry when return to the house and a farewell became inevitable. She shut her eyes, and could hear it and her own answer. 

"I shall go to India in six weeks, and never see you again. "

"Yes, you will; because Arthur Fenwick is to bring you round tolawn-tennis.... "

"That won't make having to go any better. And then when I come back, in ever so many years, I shall find you.... "

"Gone to kingdom come?"

"No--married!... Oh no, do stop out--don't go in yet.... "

"We ought to go in. Now, don't be silly. "

"I can't help it.... Well!--a fellow I know asked a girl to marryhim he'd only known two hours. "

"What very silly friends you must have, Mr. Palliser! Did she marryhim?"

"No! but they're engaged, and he's in Ceylon. But you wouldn't marryme.... "

"How on earth can you tell, in such a short time? What a goose youare!... There!--the music's stopped, and Mrs. Nairn said that mustbe the last waltz. Come along, or we shall catch it. "

They had known each other exactly four hours!

Rosalind remembered it all, word for word. And how Gerry captureda torn glove to keep; and when he came, as appointed, to lawn-tennis, went back at once to Shakespeare, and said he had looked it up, and it _was_ Beatrice and Benedict, and not Rosalind at all. Shecould remember, too, her weary and reproachful _chaperon_, and thewell-deserved scolding she got for the way she had been going onwith that young Palliser. Eight dances!

So long ago! And she could think through it all again. And to him ithad become a memory of shreds and patches. Let it remain so, or becomeagain oblivion--vanish with the rest of his forgotten past! Herthought that it would do so was confidence itself as she sat therewaiting for his footstep on the stair. For had she not spoken ofherself unflinchingly as the girl who said those words fromShakespeare, and had not her asseveration slipped from the mind thatcould not receive it as water slips from oil? She could wait therewithout misgiving--could even hope that, whatever it was due to, thisrecent stirring of the dead bones of memory might mean nothing, anddie away leaving all as it was before. 

 * * * * *

Sally, acknowledging physical fatigue with reluctance, after her longwalk and swim in the morning, went to bed. It presented itself to heras a thing practicable, and salutary in her state of bewilderment, tolie in bed with her eyes closed, and think over the events of the day. It would be really quiet. And then she would be awake when Jeremiahcame in, and would call out for information if there was a sound ofanything to hear about. But her project fell through, for she hadscarcely closed her eyes when she fell into a trap laid for her bysleep--deep sleep, such as we fancy dreamless. And when Fenwick cameback she could not have heard his words to her mother, even had theyrisen above the choking undertone in which he spoke, nor her mother'sreply, more audible in its sudden alarm, but still kept down--for, startled as she was at Gerry's unexpected words, she did not lose herpresence of mind. 

"What is it, Gerry darling? What is it, dear love? Has anythinghappened? I'll come. "

"Yes--come into my room. Come away from our girl. She mustn't hear. "

She knew then at once that his past had come upon him somehow. Sheknew it at once from the tone of his voice, but she could make noguess as to the manner of it. She knew, too, that that heartquake wasupon her--the one she had felt so glad to stave off that day upon thebeach--and that self-command had to be found in an emergency she mightnot have the strength to meet. 

For the shock, coming as it did upon her false confidence--a suddenthunderbolt from a cloudless sky--was an overwhelming one. She knewshe would have a moment's outward calm before her powers gave way, andshe must use it for Sally's security. What Gerry said was true--theirgirl _must not_ hear. 

But oh, how quick thought travels! By the time Rosalind, afterstopping a second outside Sally's door, listening for any movement, had closed that of her husband's room as she followed him in, placingthe light she carried on a chair as she entered, she had found in thewords "our girl" a foretaste of water in the desert that might bebefore her. 

Another moment and she knew she was safe, so far as Gerry himselfwent. As he had himself said, he would be the same Gerry to her andshe the same Rosey to him, whatever wild beast should leap out of thepast to molest them. She knew it was as he caught her to his heart, crushing her almost painfully in the great strength that went beyondhis own control as he shook and trembled like an aspen-leaf under theforce of an emotion she could only, as yet, guess at the nature of. But the guess was not a wrong one, in so far as it said that each wasthere to be the other's shield and guard against ill, past, present, and to come--a refuge-haven to fly to from every tempest fate mighthave in store. She could not speak--could not have found utteranceeven had words come to her. She could only rest passive in his arms, inert and dumb, feeling in the short gasps that caught his breathhow he struggled for speech and failed, then strove again. At lasthis voice came--short, spasmodic sentences breaking or broken by likespans of silence:

"Oh, my darling, my darling, remember!... Remember!... Whatever itis ... It shall not come between us ... It shall not ... It _shall_not.... Oh, my dear!... Give me time, and I shall speak ... If I couldonly say at once ... In one word ... Could only understand ... That isall ... To understand.... " He relaxed his hold upon her; but she heldto him, or she might have fallen, so weak was she, and so unsteady wasthe room and all in it to her sight. The image of him that she sawseemed dim and in a cloud, as he pressed his hands upon his eyes andstood for a moment speechless; then struggled again to find wordsthat for another moment would not come, caught in the gasping of hisbreath. Then he got a longer breath, as for ease, and drawing her facetowards his own--and this time the touch of his hand was tender asa child's--he kissed it repeatedly--kissed her eyes, her cheeks, herlips. And in his kiss was security for her, safe again in the haven ofhis love, come what might. She felt how it brought back to her thebreath she knew would fail her, unless her heart, that had beaten sofuriously a moment since, and then died away, should resume its life. The room became steady, and she saw his face and its pallor plainly, and knew that in a moment she should find her voice. But he spokefirst, again. 

"That is what I want, dear love--to understand. Help me tounderstand, " he said. And then, as though feeling for the first timehow she was clinging to him for support, he passed his arm round hergently, guiding her to sit down. But he himself remained standing byher, as though physically unaffected by the storm of emotion, whateverits cause, that had passed over him. Then Rosalind found her voice. 

"Gerry darling--let us try and get quiet over it. After all, we areboth here. " As she said this she was not very clear about her ownmeaning, but the words satisfied her. "I see you have remembered more, but I cannot tell how much. Now try and tell me--have you remembered_all_?"

"I think so, darling. " He was speaking more quietly now, as one docileto her influence. His manner gave her strength to continue. 

"Since you left Mr. Pilkington--your friend at the hotel--didn't yousay the name Pilkington?"

"No--there was no Pilkington! Oh yes, there was!--a friend ofDiedrich's.... "

"Has it come back, I mean, since you left the house? Who is Diedrich?"

"Stop a bit, dearest love! I shall be able to tell it all directly. "She, too, was glad of a lull, and welcomed his sitting down besideher on the bed-end, drawing her face to his, and keeping it with thehand that was not caressing hers. Presently he spoke again, more atease, but always in the undertone, just above a whisper, that meantthe consciousness of Sally, too, near. Rosalind said, "She won'thear, " and he replied, "No; it's all right, I think, " and continued:

"Diedrich Kreutzkammer--he's Diedrich--don't you remember? Of courseyou do!... I heard him down on the beach to-day singing. I wanted togo to him at once, but I had to think of it first, so I came home. Then I settled to go to him at the hotel. I had not rememberedanything then--anything to speak of--I had not remembered IT. Now itis all back upon me, in a whirl. " He freed the hand that held hersfor a moment, and pressed his fingers hard upon his eyes; then tookher hand again, as before. "I wanted to see the dear old fellow andtalk over old times, at 'Frisco and up at the Gold River--that, ofcourse! But I wanted, too, to make him repeat to me all the storyI had told him of my early marriage--oh, my darling!--_our_ marriage, and I did not know it! I know it now--I know it now. "

Rosalind could feel the thrill that ran through him as his handtightened on hers. She spoke, to turn his mind for a moment. "Howcame Baron Kreutzkammer at St. Sennans?"

"Diedrich? He has a married niece living at Canterbury. Don't youremember? He told you and you told me.... " Rosalind had forgottenthis, but now recalled it. "Well, we talked about the States--all thestory I shall have to tell you, darling, some time; but, oh dear, howconfused I get! _That_ wasn't the first. The first was telling him mystory--the accident, and so on--and it was hard work to convince himit was really me at Sonnenberg. That was rather a difficulty, becauseI had sent him in the name I had in America, and he only saw an oldfriend he thought was dead. All _that_ was a trifle; but, oh, thecomplications!... "

"What was the name you had in America?"

Fenwick answered musingly, "Harrisson, " and then paused before saying, "No, I had better not.... " and leaving the sentence unfinished. Shecaught his meaning, and said no more. After all, it could matter verylittle if she never heard his American experiences, and the nameHarrisson had no association for her. She left him to resume, withoutsuggestion. 

"He might have reminded me of anything that happened in the States, and I should just have come back here and told it you, because, yousee, I should have been sure it was true, and no dream. It was India. I had told him all, don't you see? And I got him to repeat it, andthen it all came back--all at once, the moment I saw it was _you_, mydarling--you yourself! It all became quite easy then. It was _us_--youand me! I know it now--I know it now!"

"But, dearest, what made you see that it was us?"

"Why, of course, because of the name! He told me all I had told himfrom the beginning in German. We always spoke German. He could notremember your first name, but he remembered your mother's--it hadstayed in his mind--because of the German word _Nachtigall_ being sonearly the same. As he said the word my mind got a frightful twist, and I thought I was mad. I did, indeed, my dearest love--raving mad!"

"And then you knew it?"

"And then I knew it. I nearly fainted clean off, and he went forbrandy; but I came round, and the dear old boy saw me to this doorhere. It has all only just happened. " He remained silent again fora little space, holding her hand, and then said suddenly: "It _has_happened, has it not? Is it all true, or am I dreaming?"

"Be patient, darling. It is all true--at least, I think so. It is alltrue if it is like this, because remember, dear, you have told mealmost nothing.... I only know that it has come back to you that I amRosey and that you are Gerry--the old Rosey and Gerry long ago inIndia.... " She broke down over her own words, as her tears, a reliefin themselves, came freely, taxing her further to keep her voice underfor Sally's sake. It was only for a moment; then she seemed to brushthem aside in an effort of self-mastery, and again began, dropping hervoice even lower. "It is all true if it is like this. I came out tomarry you in India ... My darling!... And a terrible thing happenedto me on the way ... The story you know more of now than I could tellyou then ... For how _could_ I tell it ... Think?... "

Her husband started up from her side gasping, beating his head likea madman. She was in terror lest she had done wrong in her speech. "Gerry, Gerry!" she appealed to him in a scarcely raised voice, "thinkof Sally!" She rose and went to him, repeating, "Think of Sally!" thendrew him back to his former place. His breath went and came heavily, and his forehead was drenched with sweat, as in epilepsy; but theparoxysm left him as he sank back beside her, saying only, "My God!that miscreant!" but showing that he had heard her by the force ofthe constraint he put upon his voice. It gave her courage to go on. 

"I could not get it told then. I did not know the phrases--and youwere so happy, my darling--so happy when you met me at the station!Oh, how could I? But I was wrong. I ought not to have let you marryme, not knowing. And then ... It seemed deception, and I could notright it.... " Her voice broke again, as she hid her face on hisshoulder; but she knew her safety in the kiss she felt on her freehand, and the gentleness of his that stroked her hair. Then sheheard his almost whispered words above her head, close to her ear:

"Darling, forgive me--forgive me! It was _I_ that was in fault. I might have known.... "

"Gerry, dear ... No!... "

"Yes, I might. There was a woman there--had been an officer's wife. She came to me and spoke rough truths about it--told me her notion ofthe tale in her own language. 'Put her away from you, ' she said, 'andyou won't get another like her, and won't deserve her!' And she wasright, poor thing! But I was headstrong and obstinate, and would nothear her. Oh, my darling, _how_ we have paid for it!"

"But you have found me again, dear love!" He did not answer, butraised up her face from his shoulder, parting the loose hairtenderly--for it was all free on her shoulders--and gazing straightinto her eyes with an expression of utter bewilderment. "Yes, darling, what is it?" said she, as though he had spoken. 

"I am getting fogged!" he said, "and cannot make it out. Was it pureaccident? Surely something must have happened to bring it about. "

"Bring what about?"

"How came we to find each other again, I mean?"

"Oh, I see! Pure accident, I should say, dear! Why not? It would nothave happened if it had not been possible. Thank God it did!"

"Thank God it did! But think of the strangeness of it all! How cameSally in that train?"

"Why not, darling? Where else could she have been? She was comingback to tea, as usual. "

"And she put me in a cab--bless her!--she and Conrad Vereker--andbrought me home to you. But did you know me at once, darling?"

"At once. "

"But why didn't you tell me?"

"If you had shown the slightest sign of knowing me I should have toldyou, and taken my chance; but you only looked at me and smiled, andnever knew me! Was mine a good plan? At least, it has answered. " Aclasp and a kiss was the reply. She was glad that he should choose theline of conversation, and did not break into the pause that followed. The look of fixed bewilderment on his face was painful, but she didnot dare any suggestion of guidance to his mind. She had succeeded butill before in going back to the cause of their own early severance. Yet that was what she naturally had most at heart, and longed to speakof. Could she have chosen, she would have liked to resume it once forall, in spite of the pain--to look the dreadful past in the face, and then agree to forget it together. She was hungry to tell him thateven when he broke away from her that last time she saw him atUmballa--broke away from her so roughly that his action had all theforce and meaning of a blow--she only saw _his_ image of the wrong shehad done, or seemed to have done him; that she had nothing for himthrough it all but love and forgiveness. At least, she would havetried to make sure that he had been able to connect and compare thetale she had told him since their reunion with his new memory of thefacts of twenty years ago. But she dared say nothing further as yet. For his part, at this moment, he seemed strangely willing to let allthe old story lapse, and to dwell only on the incredible chance thathad brought them again together. All that eventful day our story beganwith had leaped into the foreground of his mind. 

Presently he said, still almost whispering hoarsely, with a constantnote of amazement and something like panic in his voice: "If it hadn'thappened--the accident--I suppose I should have gone back to thehotel. And what should I have done next? I should never have foundyou and Sally.... "

"Were you poor, Gerry darling?"

"Frightfully rich! Gold-fields, mining-place up the Yu-kon. Near theArctic Circle. " He went on in a rapid undertone, as if he were tryingto supply briefly what he knew the woman beside him must be yearningto know, if not quite unlike other women. "I wasn't well offbefore--didn't get on at the Bar at St. Louis--but not poor exactly. Then I made a small pile cattle-ranching in Texas, and somehow wentto live at Quebec. There were a lot of French Canadians I took to. Then after that, 'Frisco and the gold.... "

"Gerry dear!"

"Yes, love, what?"

"Have you any relations living in England?"

"Heaps, but I haven't spoken to one of them for years and years--notsince _then_. One of them's a Bart. With a fungus on his nose inShropshire. He's an uncle. Then there's my sister, if she's notdead--my sister Livy. She's Mrs. Huxtable. I fancy they all think I'mdead in the bush in Australia. I had a narrow squeak there.... "

"Now, Gerry darling, I'll tell you what I want you to do.... "

"Yes, dear, I will. "

"You can't tell me all these things now, and you'll be ill; so liedown on the bed there, and I'll sit by you till you go to sleep. Orlook, you get to bed comfortably, and I'll be back in a few minutesand sit by you. Just till you go off. Now do as I tell you. "

He obeyed like a child. It was wonderful how, in the returning powerof her self-command, she took him, as it were, in hand, and rescuedhim from the tension of his bewilderment. Apart from the fact that thefibre of her nature was exceptionally strong, her experience of thislast hour had removed the most part of the oppression that had weighedher down for more than a twelvemonth--the doubt as to which way adiscovery of his past would tell on her husband's love for her. Shehad no feeling now but anxiety on his behalf, and this really helpedher towards facing the situation calmly. All things do that take usout of ourselves. 

She stood again a moment outside Sally's door to make sure she was notmoving, then went to her own room, not sorry to be alone. She wanteda pause for the whirl in her brain to stop, for the torrent of newevent that had rushed in upon it to find its equilibrium. If Gerry fellasleep before she returned to him so much the better! She did not evenlight her candle, preferring to be in the dark. 

But this did not long defer her return to her husband's room. A veryfew minutes in the darkness and the silence of her own were enough forher, and she was grateful for both. Then she went back, to find himin bed, sitting up and pressing his fingers on his eyes, as one doeswhen suffering from nervous headache. But he disclaimed any suchfeeling in answer to her inquiry. She sat down beside him, holding hishand, just as she had done in the night of the storm, and begged himfor her sake and his own to try to sleep. It would all seem so mucheasier and clearer in the morning. 

Yes, he would sleep, he said. And, indeed, he had resolved to affectsleep, so as to induce her to go away herself and rest. But it was notso easy. Half-grasped facts went and came--recollections that he knewhe should before long be able to marshal in their proper orderand make harmonious. For the time being, though they had not thenightmare character of the recurrences he had suffered from beforehis memory-revival, they stood between him and sleep effectually. Buthe could and would simulate sleep directly, for Rosalind's sake. Hehad looked at his watch and seen that it was near two in the morning. Yes, he would sleep; but he must ask one question, or lose his reasonif she left him alone with it unanswered. 

"Rosey darling!"

"What, dearest?"

"We'll forget the old story, won't we, and only think of _now_? That'sthe right way to take it, isn't it?"

She kissed his face as she answered, just as she might have kisseda child. "Quite right, dear love, " she said; "and now go to sleep. Orif you must talk a little more, talk about Conrad and Sally. "

"Ah yes!" he answered; "that's all happiness. Conrad and Sally! Butthere's a thing.... "

"What thing, dear? What is it?"

"I shall ask it you in the end, so why not now?" She felt in his handa shudder that ran through him, as his hold on her fingers tightened. 

"So why not now?" she repeated after him. "Why hesitate?"

The tremor strengthened in her hand and was heard in his voice plainlyas he answered with an effort: "What became of the baby?"

"What became of the baby!" There was a new terror in Rosalind's voiceas she repeated the words--a fear for his reason. "What baby?"

"_The_ baby--_his_ baby--_his_ horrible baby!"

"Gerry darling! Gerry _dearest_! do think.... " His puzzled eyes, bloodshot in his white face, turned full upon her; but he remainedsilent, waiting to hear more. "You have forgotten, darling, " she saidquietly. 

His free hand that lay on the coverlid clenched, and a spasm caughthis arm, as though it longed for something to strike or strangle. "No, no!" said he; "I am all right. I mean that damned monster's baby. There _was_ a baby?" His voice shook on these last words as though he, too, had a fear for his own reason. His face flushed as he awaitedher reply. 

"Oh, Gerry darling! but you _have_ forgotten. His baby was Sally--mySallykin!"

For it was absolutely true that, although he had as complete aknowledge, in a certain sense, of Sally's origin as the well-coachedstudent has of the subject he is to answer questions in, he hadforgotten it under the stress of his mental trial as readily asthe student forgets what his mind has only acquiesced in for itspurpose, in his joy at recovering his right to ignorance. Sally hadan existence of her own quite independent of her origin. She was hisand Rosalind's--a part of _their_ existence, a necessity. It waseasy and natural for him to dissociate the living, breathing realitythat filled so much of their lives from its mere beginnings. It wasless easy for Rosalind, but not an impossibility altogether, helpedby the forgiveness for the past that grew from the soil of herdaughter's love. 

"You _had_ forgotten, dear, " she repeated; "but you know now. "

"Yes, I had forgotten, because of Sally herself; but she is _my_daughter now.... "

She waited, expecting him to say more; but he did not speak again. Assoon as he was, or seemed to be, asleep, she rose quietly and left him. 

She was so anxious that no trace of the tempest that had passed overher should be left for Sally to see in the morning that she got asquickly as possible to bed; and, with a little effort to tranquilliseher mind, soon sank into a state of absolute oblivion. It was thecounterswing of the pendulum--Nature's protest against a strain beyondher powers to bear, and its remedy. 

CHAPTER XLIV

OF A CONTRACT JOB FOR REPAIRS. HOW FENWICK HAD ANOTHER SLEEPLESS NIGHT AFTER ALL. WHICH IS WHICH, NOW OR TWENTY ODD YEARS AGO? HOW SALLY FOLLOWED JEREMIAH OUT. WHAT A LOT OF TALK ABOUT A LIFE-BELT!

A colourless dawn chased a grey twilight from the sea and white cliffsof St. Sennans, and a sickly effort of the sun to rise visibly, ending above a cloud-bank in a red half-circle that seemed a thingquite unconnected with the struggling light, was baffled by a highercloud-bank still that came discouragingly from the west, and quenchedthe hopes of the few early risers who were about as St. Sennanstower chimed six. The gull that flew high above the green waste ofwhite-flecked waters was whiter still against the inky blue of thecloud-curtain that had disallowed the day, and the paler vapour-driftsthat paused and changed and lost themselves and died; but the air thatcame from the sea was sweet and mild for the time of year, and theverdict of the coastguardsman at the flagstaff, who in pursuance ofhis sinecure had seen the night out, was that the day was pretty sureto be an uncertain sart, with little froshets on the water, like overyander. He seemed to think that a certainty of uncertainty had all thevalue of a forecast, and was as well satisfied with his report as hewas that he had not seen a smuggler through the telescope he closedas he uttered it. 

"Well, I should judge it might be fairly doubtful, " was the replyof the man he was speaking with. It was the man who had "Elinor"and "Bessie" tattooed on his arm. They were not legible now, as acouple of life-belts, or hencoops, as they are sometimes called, hung over the arm and hid them. The boy Benjamin was with hisfather, and carried a third. An explanation of them came in answerto interrogation in the eye of the coastguard. "Just to put a touchof new paint on 'em against the weather. " The speaker made onemovement of his head say that they had come from the pier-end, andanother that he had taken them home to repaint by contract. 

"What do you make out of S. S. P. C. ?" the coastguard asked, scarcelyas one who had no theory himself, more as one archęologist addressinganother, teeming with deference, but ready for controversy. The otheranswered with some paternal pride:

"Ah, there now! Young Benjamin, he made _that_ good, and asked for tomake it red in place of black himself! Didn't ye, ye young sculping?St. Sennans Pier Company, that's all it comes to, followed out. ButI'm no great schoolmaster myself, and that's God's truth. " Bothcontemplated the judicious restoration with satisfaction; and youngBenjamin, who had turned purple under publicity, murmured that it wasblack afower. He didn't seem to mean anything, but to think it dueto himself to say something, meaning or no. The coastguardsman merelysaid, "Makes a tidy job!" and the father and son went on their wayto the pier. 

A quarter of an hour before, this coastguard had looked after thevisitor in a blue serge suit up at Lobjoit's, who had passed himgoing briskly towards the fishing-quarter. He had recognised himconfidently, for he knew Fenwick well, and saw nothing strange in hisearly appearance. Now that he saw him returning, and could take fullnote of him, he almost suspected he had been mistaken, so wild andpallid was the face of this man, who, usually ready with a light wordfor every chance encounter--even with perfect strangers--now passedhim by ungreeted, and to all seeming unconscious of his presence. The coastguard was for a moment in doubt if he should not follow him, inferring something in the nature of delirium from his aspect; butseeing that he made straight for the pier, and knowing that youngBenjamin's father was more familiar with him than himself, he wascontented to record in thought that that was a face with a bad dayahead, and leave it. 

For Gerry, when Rosalind left him, was rash in assuming he could lether do so safely. His well-meant pretext of sleep was not destined togrow into a reality. He had really believed that it would, so soothingwas the touch of her hand in his own. The moment he was alone his mindleapt, willy-nilly, to the analysis of one point or other in the pastthat had just come back to him. He tried to silence thought, and tosleep, knowing that his best hope was in rest; but each new effortonly ended in his slipping back to what he had just dismissed. Andthat terrible last interview with Rosey at Umballa, when he partedfrom her, as he thought, never to see her again, was the Rome to whichall the roads of recollection led. Each involuntary visit there hadits _renchérissement_ on the previous one, and in the end the image ofthat hour became a brain-oppression, and wrote the word "fever" largeon the tablets of his apprehension. 

He knew now it was not to be sleep; he knew it as he sat up in bedfeeling his pulse, and stimulating it with his anxiety that it shouldgo slow. Was there nothing he could take that would make him sleep?Certainly he knew of nothing, anywhere, except it was to be found bywaking Rosalind, probably sound asleep by now. Out of the question!Oh, why, why, with all the warning he had had, had he neglected toprovide himself with a mysterious thing known to him all his life asa soothing-draught? It would have been so useful now, and Conrad wouldhave defined it down to the prosaic requirements of pharmacy. But itwas too late!

So long as her hand was in his, so long as her lips were near his own, what did it matter what he recollected? The living present cancelledthe dead past. But to be there alone in the dark, with the imageof that Rosalind of former years clinging to him, and crying forforgiveness because his mind, warped against her by a false conceptionof the truth, could not forgive; to be defenceless against her lastwords, coming through the long interval to him again just as he heardthem, twenty years ago, bringing back the other noises of the Indiannight--the lowing of the bullocks in the compound, the striking ofthe hour on the Kutcherry gongs, the grinding of the Persian wheelsunceasingly drawing water for the irrigation of the fields--to beexposed to this solitude and ever-growing imagination was to becomethe soil for a self-sown crop of terrors--fear of fever, fear ofmadness, fear at the very least of perturbation such that Sally mightcome, through it, to a knowledge that had to be kept from her at allcosts. 

He lighted his candle with a cautious match, and found what might bea solace--a lucky newspaper of the morning. If only he could read itwithout audible rustling, unheard by the sleepers!

The print was almost too small to be read by the light of a singlecandle; but there were the usual headings, the usual ranks of capitalsthat tell us so quick that there is nothing we shall care about inthe pale undecipherable paragraphs below, and that we have spent ourhalfpenny in vain. There was the usual young lady who had bought, orwas trying on, a large hat, and whose top-story above, in profile, had got so far ahead of her other stories below. There were theconsignments of locust-flights of boots, for this young lady'sfriends, with heels in the instep. And all the advertisements thatsome one _must_ believe, or they would not pay for insertion; but that_we_ ignore, incredulous. Fenwick tried hard, for his own sake, tomake the whole thing mean something, but his dazed brain and feverisheyes refused to respond to his efforts, and he let the paper go, andgave himself up, a prey to his own memories. After all, the daylightwas sure to come in the end to save him. 

He tried hard to reason with himself, to force himself to feel thereality of his own belief that all was well; for he had no doubt ofit, as an abstract truth. It was the power of getting comfort from itthat was wanting. If only his heart could stop thumping and his brainburning, _he_ would have done the rejoicing that Rosalind was there, knowing all he knew, and loving him; that Sally was there, loving himtoo, but knowing nothing, and needing to know nothing; that one ofhis first greetings in the day to come would be from Conrad Vereker, probably too much intoxicated with his own happiness to give muchattention to what he was beginning to acknowledge was some kind ofphysical or nervous fever. If he could only sleep!

But he could not--could hardly close his eyes. He said to himselfagain and again that nothing was the matter; that, if anything, he andRosey were better off than they had been yet; that they had passedthrough a land of peril to a great deliverance. But he did not believehis own assurance, and the throng of memories that his feverishcondition would not let sleep, or that were its cause, came on himmore and more thickly through all those hours of the dreary night. They came, too, with a growing force, each one as it returned havingmore the character of a waking dream, vivid almost to the point ofreality. But all ended alike. He always found himself breaking awayfrom Rosey in the veranda in the bungalow at Umballa, and could hearagain her cry of despair: "Oh, Gerry, Gerry! It is not as you think. Oh, stay, stay! Give me a chance to show you how I love you!" Thetramp of his horse as he rode away from his home and that white figureleft prostrate in the veranda above him, became a real sound that beatpainfully upon his ears; and the voice of the friend he sought--an oldsoldier in camp at Sabatoo, where he rode almost without a halt--as heroused him in the dawn of the next day, came to him again almost asthough spoken in the room beside him: "Left _your_ wife, Palliser!My God, sir! what's to come next?" And then the wicked hardness ofhis own heart, and his stubborn refusal to listen to the angryremonstrance that followed. "I tell you this, young man! the man'sa fool--a damned fool--that runs from the woman who loves him!" And theasseveration that the speaker would say the same if she was anythingshort of the worst character in camp, only in slightly differentwords. His remorse for his own obduracy, and the cruelty of hisbehaviour then; his shame when he thought of his application, monthslater, to the Court at Lahore--for "relief" from Rosey: just imagineit!--these were bad enough to think back on, even from the point ofview of his previous knowledge; but how infinitely worse when hethought what she had been to him, how she had acted towards him twoyears ago!

Even the painful adventure he could now look back to clearly, and witha rather amused interest, as to an event with no laceration in it--hiswandering in an Australian forest, for how many days he could notsay, and his final resurrection at a town a hundred miles from hisstarting-point--even this led him back in the end to the old story. The whole passed through his mind like the scenes of a drama--hisconfidence, having lost the track, that his horse, left to himself, would find it again; his terror when, coming back from a stone's-throwoff, he found the tree deserted he had tied his horse to; his foolishstarting off to catch him, when the only sane course was to wait forhis return. But the second act of the drama took his mind again toRosey in her loneliness; for when he was found by a search-party atthe foot of a telegraph-post he had used his last match to burn down, he was inarticulate, and seemed to give his name as Harrisson. As heslowly recovered sense and speech at the telegraph-station--for theinterruption of the current had been his cry for help to itsoccupants--he heard himself addressed by the name and saw the mistake;but he did not correct it, being, indeed, not sorry for an incognito, sick of his life, as it were, and glad to change his identity. But howif Rosey wrote to him then--think of it!--under his old name? Fancy_her_ when the time came for a possible reply, with who could say whatof hope in it! Fancy her many decisions that it was still too soon foran answer, followed by as many others as time went on that it was nottoo late! If he had received such a letter from her then, might itnot all have been different? May she not have written one? He hadtalked so little with her; nothing forbade the idea. And so his mindtravelled round with monotonous return, always to that old time, andthose old scenes, and all the pain of them. 

It was curious--he noted the oddity himself--that his whole life inAmerica took the drama character, and _he_ became the spectator. Henever caught himself playing his own part over again, with all itsphases of passion or excitement, as in the earlier story. In that, his identification of himself with his past grew and grew, and as hisfever increased through the small hours of the morning, got more andmore the force of a waking dream. And when the dawn came at last, andthe gleam from the languid sun followed it, the man who got up andlooked out towards its great blue bank of cloud was only half sure hewas not another former self, looking out towards another sea, twentyyears ago, to see if he could identify the ship that was to take himfrom Kurachi to Port Jackson. 

What did it all mean? Yes, sure enough he had taken his passage, andto-morrow leagues of sea would lie between him and Rosey. That wouldend it for ever. No reconciliations, no repentance then!... Wasthere not still time? a chance if he chose to catch at it? Punyirresolution! Shake it all off, and have done with it.... He shudderedas he thought through his old part again, and then came back witha jerk to the strange knowledge that he was opening a closed book, a tragedy written twenty years ago; and that there, within a few feetof where he gazed with a jaded sight out to the empty sea, was Roseyherself, alive and breathing; and in an hour or two he was to seeher, feel the touch of her hand and lips, be his happy self again ofthree days only gone by, if he could but face masterfully the strangeknowledge this mysterious revival of a former self had brought uponhim. And there was Sally.... 

But at the name, as it came to his mind, came also the shock ofanother mystery--who and what was Sally?

Let him lie down again and try to think quietly. Was not this partof his delirium? Could he have got the story right? Surely! Was it notof her that Rosey had said, only a few hours since, "_His_ baby wasSally--_my_ Sallykin"? And was he not then able to reply collectedlyand with ease, "She is _my_ daughter now, " and to feel the power ofhis choice that it should be so? But the strength of Rosalind wasbeside him then, and now he was here alone. He beat off--foughtagainst--that hideous fatherhood of Sally's that he could not bear, that image that he felt might drive him mad. Oh, villain, villain!Far, far worse to him was--perforce must be--this miscreant's crimethan that mere murder that shook Hamlet's reason to its foundation. Hedared not think of it lest he should cry out aloud. But, patience!Only two or three hours more, and Rosalind would be there to help himto bear it.... What a coward's thought!--to help him to bear what sheherself had borne in silence for twenty years!

Would he not be better up, now that it was light? Of course! But howbe sure he should not wake them?

Well, the word was caution; he must be very quiet about it, that wasall. He slipped on his clothes without washing--it always makes anoise--ran a comb through the tangled hair his pillow-tossings offour hours had produced, and got away stealthily without accident, or meeting any early riser, speech with whom would have betrayed him. 

He had little trouble with the door-fastenings, that often perplexus in a like case, blocking egress with mysterious mechanisms. Housebreakers were rare in St. Sennans. He had more fear his footstepswould be audible; but it seemed not, and he walked away towards thecliff pathway unnoticed. 

 * * * * *

The merpussy waked to a consciousness of happiness undefined, asense of welcome to the day. What girl would not have done so, underher circumstances? For Sally had no doubt in her mind of her ownsatisfaction at the outcome of yesterday. She might have treated thefeelings and experience of other lovers--regular ones, prone tononsense--with contempt, but she never questioned the advantages ofher own position as compared with theirs. Her feast was better cooked, altogether more substantial and real than the kickshaws and sweetmeatsshe chose to ascribe to the _menus_ of Arcadia. Naturally; becausesee what a much better sort Conrad was! It was going to be quite adifferent kind of thing this time. And as for the old Goody, she wasnot half bad. Nothing was half bad in Sally's eyes that morning, andalmost everything was wholly good. 

She had slept so sound she was sure it was late. But it was onlyhalf-past six, and the early greetings of Mrs. Lobjoit below werenot to the baker, nor even to the milk, but to next door, which wasdealing with the question of its mat and clean step through the agencyof its proprietress, whose voice chimed cheerfully with Mrs. Lobjoit'sover the surprise of the latter finding _her_ street door had beenopened, and that some one had already passed out. For Mrs. Lobjoit hadmade _that_ sure, the night before, that she had "shot to" the bottombolt that _would_ shet, _because_ she had ignored as useless the topbolt that _wouldn't_ shet--the correlation of events so often appealedto by witnesses under examination; which Law, stupidly enough, pridesitself on snubbing them for. Further, Mrs. Lobjoit would have flownto the solution that it was her gentleman gone out, only that it wasquite into the night before they stopped from talking. 

Sally heard this because she had pulled down the top sash of herwindow to breathe the sea air, regardless of the fact she well knew, and described thus--that the sash-weight stuck and clunkled andwouldn't come down. She decided against running the risk of disturbingJeremiah on the strength of Mrs. Lobjoit's impressions; although, ifhe had gone out, she certainly would follow him. But she slipped ona dressing-gown and went half-way downstairs, to see if his hat wasstill on its peg. It was gone. So she went back to her room, anddressed furtively. Because if they _had_ been talking late into thenight, it would be just as well for her mother to have her sleep out. 

But she had hardly finished washing when she became aware of afootstep outside--Jeremiah's certainly. She went to the window, sawhim approach the house, look up at it, but as though he did notrecognise that she was there, and then turn away towards the flagstaffand the old town. It was odd and unlike him, and Sally was alarmed. Besides, how white he looked!

Bear this in mind, that Sally knew absolutely nothing of the cataclysmof revived memory in Jeremiah. Remember that the incident of thegalvanic battery at the pier-end is only four days old. Do not bemisled by the close details we have given of these four days. 

Sally's alarm at the haggard look of her stepfather's face took awayher breath; at least, she did not find her voice soon enough for himto hear her call out--she did not like to shout loud because of hermother--as he turned away. Or it seemed so, for that was the only wayshe could account for his walking away so abruptly. In her hurry toget dressed and follow him, she caught up an undergarment that lay onthe floor, without seeing that her own foot was on the tape that wasto secure it, and a rip and partial disruption was the consequence. Never mind, it would hold up till she came in. Or, if it didn't, wherewas that safety-pin that was on her dressing-table yesterday? Notthere? Again, never mind! She would do, somehow. She hurried on herclothes, and her hat and waterproof, and left the house, going quicklyon what she supposed to be the track of Jeremiah, who was, by now, nolonger visible. 

But she caught sight of him returning, while she was still two orthree minutes' walk short of the flagstaff he was approaching from theother side. He would stop to talk with the coastguard. He always did. Surely he would, this time. But no--he didn't. 

He may have spoken, but he did not stop. So Sally noted as shehesitated an instant, seeing him turn off at an angle and go towardsthe pier. There was a shorter cut to the pier, without going to theflagstaff. Sally turned herself, and took it. She would catch him ashe came back from the pier-end, if he was going to walk along it. 

She saw him as she descended the slope that, part pathway and partsteps, led down towards the sea. He walked straight towards the pier, passing as he went a man and boy, who were carrying what she took, at that distance, for well-made coils of rope; and then, arriving atthe pier-turnstile just as they did, pass them, and, leaving themapparently in conversation with the gatekeeper, walk steadily ontowards the pier-end. 

 * * * * *

"I shouldn't call the paint properly hardened on myself. Nor won't beyet-a-piece, if you ask my opinion. " It was young Benjamin's fathersaid these words to the veteran in charge of the pier-turnstile; who, as an early bird, was counting his tickets, so to speak, before theywere hatched--his actual professional cabinet-séance not having begun. For the pier wasn't open yet, and his permission to Fenwick to passthe open side-gate was an indulgence to an acquaintance. 

His reply to the speaker was that he must bide awhile in patience, then. Paint was good to dry while the grass grew, and there was plentyelse to fret about for them as wanted it. He seemed only to mentionthis from consideration of the wants of others. He either had plentyto fret about, or was happier without anything. He ended with, "Whathave you to say to that, Jake Tracy?" showing that the father ofBenjamin was Jacob, following precedent. 

But Jacob preferred not to be led away into ethics. "I should stand'em by, in the shadow, for the matter of a day or two, " said he. "In yander. " And the life-belts being safely disposed of, he added:"I thought to carry back number fower from the pier-end, and make afinish of the job. But looking to the condition of this paint, maybebetter leave her for service. She'll do as well next week. " But themoralist inclined to make a finish of the job. Who was going overboardafore the end of next week? And supposing they did, the resources ofcivilisation wouldn't be exhausted, for we could throw 'em a cleanone paint or no. 

"Send your lad to fetch her along, Jake. I'll make myself answerable. "And young Benjamin, confirmed by a nod from his father, departed forthe mysteriously feminine hencoop. 

Just as the boy turned to go, Fenwick came up, and, paying noattention to greetings from the two men, passed through the side-gateand walked rather briskly away along the pier. Each of the men lookedat the other, as though asking a question. But neither answered, andthen both said, "Queer, too!" A nascent discussion of whether one orother should not follow him--for the look of his face had gone hometo both, as he was, of course, well known to them--was cut short byJacob Tracy saying, "Here's his daughter coming to see for him. " And, just after, Sally had passed them, leaving them pleasantly stirredby the bright smile and eye-flash that seemed this morning brighterthan ever. The boy shouted something from the pier-end, to which hisfather's shouted reply was that he must bide a minute and he wouldcome to see himself. 

"The yoong beggar's got the use of his eyes, " he said, not hurrying. "I'll go bail he'll find her. She's there all right, I suppose?" Hewas still referring to the hencoop, not to any lady. 

"Ah, _she's_ there, quite safe. You'd best step along and find her. Boys are boys, when all's told. "

But Jacob wanted Benjamin to distinguish himself, and still didn'thurry. The strange appearance of Mrs. Lobjoit's gentleman suppliedmaterials for chat. Presently his son shouted again, and he answered, "Not there, is she? I'll come. " He walked away towards the pier-endjust as Sally, who had fancied Jeremiah would be somewherealongside of the pagoda-building that nearly covered it, cameback from her voyage of exploration, and looked down the steps tothe under-platform, that young Benjamin had just come up shouting. 

What little things life and death turn on sometimes!

CHAPTER XLV

OF CONRAD VEREKER'S REVISION OF PARADISE, AND OF FENWICK'S HIGH FEVER. OF AN ENGLISH OFFICER WHO WAVERED AT BOMBAY, AND OF FENWICK'S SURPRISE-BATH IN THE BRITISH CHANNEL. WHY HE DID NOT SINK. THE ELLEN JANE OF ST. SENNANS. ONLY SALLY IS IN THE WATER STILL. MORE BOATS. FOUND!

Fenwick, haunted by the phantoms of his own past--always, as his fevergrew, assuming more and more the force of realities--but convinced oftheir ephemeral nature, and that the crisis of this fever would passand leave him free, had walked quickly along the sea front towards thecliff pathway. Had Dr. Conrad seen him as he passed below his windowand looked up at it, he would probably have suspected something andfollowed him. And then the events of this story would have travelleda different road. But Vereker, possessed by quite another sort ofdelirium, had risen even earlier--almost with the dawn--and, takingSally's inaccessibility at that unearthly hour for granted, had gonefor a long walk over what was now to him a land of enchantment--thesame ground he and Sally had passed over on the previous evening. Heand his mother would be on their way to London in a few hours, and hewould like to see the landmarks that were to be a precious memory forall time yet once more while he had the chance. Who could say thathe would ever visit St. Sennans again?

If Fenwick, in choosing this direction first, had a half-formedidea of attracting the doctor's attention, the appearance of Mrs. Iggulden's shuttered parlour-window would have discouraged him. Ittold a tale of a household still asleep, and quite truly as far as sheherself was concerned. For Dr. Conrad, as might have been expected, was very late in coming home the night before; and his mother'speculiarity of not being able to sleep if kept up till eleven, combined with the need of a statement of her position, a declarationof policy, and almost a budget, if not quite, on the subject of herson's future housekeeping, having resulted in what threatened tobecome an all-night sitting, the good woman's dozes and repentances, with jerks, on the stairs overnight, had produced their consequencesin the morning. Fenwick passed the house, and walked on as far aswhere the path rose to the cliffs; then turned back, and, pausinga moment, as we have seen, under Sally's window, failed in his dreamystate to see her as she looked over the cross-bar at him, and thenwent on towards the old town. It may be she was not very visible; thedouble glasses of an open sash-window are almost equal to opacity. Buteven with that, the extreme aberration of Fenwick's mind at the momentis the only way to account for his not seeing her. 

In fact, his mental perturbation came and went by gusts, as his memorycaught at or relinquished agitating points of reminiscence, alwaysdwelling on that parting from Rosalind at Umballa. His brain andnervous system were in a state that involved a climax and reaction;and, unhappily, this climax, during which his identification of hispresent self with his memory of its past was intensified to the pointof absolute hallucination, came at an inopportune moment. If he couldonly have kept the phantoms of his imagination at bay until he metSally! But, really, speculation on so strange a frame of mind isuseless; we can only accept the facts as they stand. 

He had no recollection afterwards of what followed when he passed thehouse and failed to see Sally or hear her call out to him. For thetime being he was back again in his life of twenty years ago. Thosewho find this hard to believe may see no way of accounting for whatcame about but by ascribing to Fenwick an intention of suicide. Forour part we believe him to have been absolutely incapable of such anact from a selfish impulse; and, moreover, it is absurd to impute tohim such a motive, at this time, however strongly he might have beenimpelled towards it by discovering the injustice and cruelty of hisown unforgiveness towards his young wife at some previous time--as, for instance, in America--when she herself was beyond his reach, anda recantation of his error impossible. Unless we accept his conductas the result of a momentary dementia, produced by overstrain, itmust remain inexplicable. 

It appeared to him, so far as he was afterwards able to define orrecord it, that he was no longer walking on the familiar track betweenthe few lodging-houses that made up the old St. Sennans, and the stillolder fishing-quarter near the jetty, but that he was again on his wayfrom Lahore to Kurachi, from which he was to embark for a new landwhere his broken heart might do its best to heal; for if ever a manwas utterly broken-hearted it was he when he came away from Lahore, after his futile attempt to procure a divorce. He no longer saw thecold northern sea under its great blue cloud-curtain that had shroudedthe coming day; nor the line of fishing-smacks, beached high and dry, and their owners' dwellings near at hand, a little town of tar andtimber in behind the stowage-huts of nets and tackle, nor the whiteescarpment of the cliffs beyond, that the sea had worked so manycenturies to plunder from the rounded pastures of the sheep above. Heno longer heard the music of the waves on the shingle, nor the cry ofthe sea-bird that swept over them, nor the tinkle of the sheep-bellthe wind knows how to carry so far in the stillness of the morning, nor the voices of the fisher-children playing in the boats that oneday may bear them to their death. His mind was far away in the Indianheat, parching and suffocated on the long railway journey from Lahoreto Kurachi, scarcely better when he had reached his first boat thatwas to take him to Bombay, to embark again a day or two later forAustralia. How little he had forgotten of the short but tedious delayin that chaotic emporium of all things European and Asiatic, thatmany-coloured meeting-ground of a thousand nationalities! How little, that the whole should come back to him now, and fill his brain withits reality, till the living present grew dim and vanished; revivingnow and again, as fiction, read in early years, revives with asuggested doubt--is it true or false?

He sat again on the Esplanade at Bombay, as the sun vanished in aflood of rosy gold, and released the world from his heat. He feltagain the relief of the evening wind; heard again the chat of a groupof English officers who sipped sherry-cobblers at a table a few pacesoff. "I always change my mind, " said one of them, "backwards andforwards till the last minute; then I make it the last one. " He quiteunderstood this man's speech, and thought how like himself! For fromthe time he left Lahore he, too, had gone backwards and forwards, nowresolving to return, come what might, now telling himself firmlythere was no remedy but in distance apart, and all there might be ofoblivion. Was there not yet time? He could still go back, even now. But no; the old obduracy was on him. Rosey had deceived him!

Then he seemed to have come again to _his_ last minute. Once he wasfairly on the ship that was even now coaling for her voyage, once thescrew was on the move and the shore-lights vanishing, the die would becast. The stars that he and Rosey had seen in that cool English gardenthat night he met her first would vanish, too, and a world would bebetween them. Still, the hour had not come; it was not too late yet. But still the inveterate thought came back--she _had_ deceived him. 

So his delirium ended as its prototype of over twenty years ago hadended. He hardened his heart, thrust aside all thought of forgivenessand repentance, and went resolutely down to the quay, as he thought, to embark on the little boat for the ship, and so practically putall thought of hesitation and return out of his mind. This moment wasprobably what would have been the crisis of his fever, and it was anevil hour for him in which the builder of the pier at St. Sennans madeit so like the platform of that experience of long ago. But the boatthat he saw before him as he stepped unhesitatingly over its edgewas only the image of a distempered brain, and in an instant hewas struggling with the cold, dark water. A sudden shock of chill, an intolerable choking agony of breath involuntarily held, aninstantaneous dissipation of his dream, the natural result of theshock, and Fenwick knew himself for what he was, and fought the cruelwater in his despair. Even so a drowning man fights who in oldfailures to learn swimming has just mastered its barest rudiments. A vivid pageant rushed across his mind of all the consequences of whatseemed to him now his inevitable death, clearest of all a sad visionof Sally and Rosalind returning to their home alone--the black dressesand the silence. He found voice for one long cry for help, withouta hope that it could be heard or that help could be at hand. 

But he was neither unseen nor unheard, as you will know if we havenot failed in showing the succession of events. Sally never hesitatedan instant as she caught sight of the delirious man's involuntaryplunge into the green waves that had no terrors for _her_. She threwoff as she ran, fast, fast down the wooden stairway, the only clothesshe could get rid of--her hat and light summer cloak--and wentstraight, with a well-calculated dive, to follow him and catch himas he rose. If only she did not miss him! Let her once pinion hisarms from behind, and she would get him ashore even if no help came. Why, there was no sea to speak of!

 * * * * *

The man Jacob Tracy, the father of Benjamin, saw something to quickenhis speed as he walked along the pier to help in the discovery of thelife-belt. Why did the swimming young lady from Lobjoit's want to berid of her wrap-up at that rate as she turned so sharp round to rundown the ladder? He increased a brisk walk to a run as the lad, whohad followed the young lady down the steps, came running up again;for there was hysterical terror in his voice--he was a mere boy--as heshouted something that became, as distance lessened, "In t' wa-ater!in t' wa-ater! in t' wa-ater! in t' wa-ater!" And he was wavingsomething in his hand--a lady's hat surely; for with an instinct ofswift presence of mind--a quality that is the breath of life to allthat go down to the sea in ships, mariners or fisher-folk--he had seenthat the headgear Sally threw away would tell its tale quicker thanany words he could rely on finding. 

"Roon smart, yoong Benjamin--roon for the bo'ats and call out 'oars'!Roon, boy--you've no time to lose!" And as the father dashes down thesteps he spoke of as "the ladder" the son runs for all he is worth tocarry the alarm to the shore. He shouts, "Oars, oars, oars!" as he wastold. But it is not needed, for his thought of bringing up the hat hasdone his work already for him. The coastguard, though the pier itselfhid the two immersions from him, is quick of apprehension and readywith his glass, and has seen the boy's return from below; and at thesame time heard, not his words, but the terror in them, and by somemysterious agency has sent a flying word along the beach that hasbrought a population out to help. 

A bad time of the tide to get a boat off sharp, and a long shelvingrun of sandy shingle before we reach the sea; for all the boats areon the upper strand of the beach, above the last high-water mark, andthe flow of the tide is scarcely an hour old. There is a short squatcobble, flat-bottomed and of intolerable weight, down near the waters, and its owner makes for it. Another man drives him out seawards, against the constant lift of breaking waves, large enough to betroublesome, small enough to be numerous. They give no chance to thesecond man to leap into the boat, so deep has he to go, pushing onuntil the pads are out and the boat controlled; but he has barely timeto feel the underdraw of the recoiling wave when the straight scourof a keel comes down along the sand and pebbles--the Ellen Jane, St. Sennans--half-pushed, half-borne by a crew three minutes haveextemporised. You two in the bows, and you two astarn, and thespontaneous natural leader--the man the emergency makes--at thetiller-ropes, and Ellen Jane is off, well drenched at the outset. Anoar swings round high in the air, not to knock one of you two astarninto the water, and then, "Give way!" and then the short, quick rhythmof the stroke, and four men at their utmost stress, each knowing lifeand death may hang upon the greatness of his effort. 

The cobble is soon outshot, but its owner will not give in. He bearsaway from the course of the boat that has passed him, to seek theircommon object where the tide-drift may have swept it, beyond somelight craft at their moorings which would have hidden it for a while. He has the right of it this time, for as he passes, straining at hissculls, under the stern of a pleasure-yacht at anchor, his eye iscaught by a black spot rising on a wave, and he makes for it. Not toofast at the last, though, but cautiously, so as to grasp the man withthe life-belt and hold him firm till help shall come to get him onboard. He might easily have overshot him; but he has him now, and thefour-oar sights him as she swings round between the last-moored boatand the pier; and comes apace, the quicker for the tide. 

"What is it ye say, master? What do ye make it out the gentleman says, Peter?" For Fenwick, hauled on board the cobble with the help of a manfrom the other boat, who returns to his oar, is alive and conscious, but not much more. A brandy-flask comes from somewhere in thesteerage, where a mop and a tin pot and a boathook live, and itseffect is good. The half-drowned man becomes articulate enough tojustify the report. "It's his daughter he's asking for--overboard, too!" and then the man who spoke first says: "You be easy in yourmind, master; we'll find her. Bear away a bit, and lie to, Tom. " Tomis the man in the cobble, and he does as he is bidden. He ships hissculls and drifts, watching round on all sides for what may be justafloat near the surface. The four-oar remains, and the eyes of hercrew are straining hard to catch a sight of anything that is not merelift and ripple of a wave. 

Then more boats one after another, and more, and the gathering crowdthat lines the shore sees them scatter and lie to, some way apart, towatch the greater space of water. All drift, because they know thatwhat they seek is drifting, too, and that if they move they lose theironly chance; for the thing they have to find is so small, so small, and that great waste of pitiless sea is so large. It is their onlychance. 

The crowd, always growing, moves along the beach as the flotilla ofdrifting boats move slowly with the tide. They can hear the shoutingfrom boat to boat, but catch but little of the words. They followon, with little speech among themselves, and hope dying slowly outof their hearts. Gradually towards the jetty, where the girl they areseeking sat, only a few days since, beside the man whose heart thememory of yesterday is still rejoicing; the only trouble of whoseunconscious soul is the thought that he and she must soon be parted, however short the term of their separation may be. He will know moresoon. 

Suddenly the shouting increases in the boats, and excited voices breakthe silence on the shore. It won't do to hope too much, but surely allthe boats are thickening to one spot.... No, it's nothing!... Yes, it_is_--it _is_ something--one knows what--sighted abaft the Ellen Jane, whose steersman catches it with a boathook as the oars we on the beachsaw suddenly drop back water--slowly, cautiously--and only wait forhim to drag the light weight athwart the gunwale to row for the dearlife towards the town. The scattered crowd turns and comes back, trampling the shingle, to meet the boat as she lands, and follow whatshe brings to the nearest haven. 

CHAPTER XLVI

AN ERRAND IN VAIN, AND HOW DR. CONRAD CAME TO KNOW. CONCERNING LLOYD'S COFFEEHOUSE, AND THE BATTLE OF CAMPERDOWN. MARSHALL HALL'S SYSTEM AND SILVESTER'S. SOCIAL DISADVANTAGES. A CHAT WITH A CENTENARIAN, AND HOW ROSALIND CAME TO KNOW. THOMAS LOCOCK OF ROCHESTER. ONE O'CLOCK!

"Is that you, Dr. Conrad?" It was Rosalind who spoke, through thehalf-open window of her bedroom, to the happy, expectant face ofthe doctor in the little front garden below. "I'm only just up, andthey're both gone out. I shall be down in a few minutes. " For she hadlooked into her husband's room, and then into Sally's, and concludedthey must have gone out together. So much the better! If Sally waswith him, no harm could come to him. 

"I don't see them anywhere about, " said the doctor. Sally had not beengone ten minutes, and at this moment had just caught sight of Fenwickmaking for the pier. The short cut down took her out of sight of thehouse. Rosalind considered a minute. 

"Very likely they've gone to the hotel--the 'beastly hotel, ' youknow. " There is the sound of a laugh, and the caress in her voice, asshe thinks of Sally, whom she is quoting. "Gerry found a friend therelast night--a German gentleman--who was to go at seven-fifty. Verylikely he's walked up to say good-bye to him. Suppose you go to meetthem! How's Mrs. Vereker this morning?"

"Do you know, I haven't seen her yet! We talked rather late, so Ileft without waking her. I've been for a walk. "

"Well, go and meet Gerry. I feel pretty sure he's gone there. " Andthereon Dr. Conrad departed, and so, departing towards the new town, lost sight for the time being of the pier and the coast. He went bythe steps and Albion Villas, and as he caught a glimpse therefromof the pier-end in the distance, had an impression of a man runningalong it and shouting; but he drew no inferences, although it struckhim there was panic, with the energy of sudden action, in this man'svoice. 

He arrived at the hotel, of course without meeting either Sally orFenwick. He had accepted them as probably there, on perhaps too slightevidence. But they might be in the hotel. Had the German gentlemangone?--he asked. The stony woman he addressed replied from herprecinct, with no apparent consciousness that she was addressing afellow-creature, that No. 148, if you meant him, had paid and gone bylast 'bus. She spoke as to space, but as one too indifferent on allpoints to care much who overheard her. 

Vereker thanked her, and turned to go. As he departed he caught afragment of conversation between her and the waiter who had producedthe brandy the evening before. He was in undress uniform--a holland orwhite-jean jacket, and a red woollen comforter. He had lost his voice, or most of it, and croaked; and his cold had got worse in the night. He was shedding tears copiously, and wiping them on a cruet-stand hecarried in one hand. The other was engaged by an empty coal-scuttlewith a pair of slippers in it, inexplicably. 

"There's a start down there. Party over the pier-end! Dr. Maccollhe's been 'phoned for. "

"Party from this hotel?"

"Couldn't say. Porcibly. No partic'lars to identify, so far. "

"They're not bringing him here?"

"Couldn't say, miss; but I should say they wasn't myself. "

"If you know you can say. Who told you, and what did _he_ say? Makeyourself understood. "

"Dr. Maccoll he's been 'phoned for. You can inquire and see if Iain't right. Beyond that I take no responsibility. "

The Lady of the Bureau came out; moved, no doubt, by an image ofa drowned man whose resources would not meet the credits she mightbe compelled to give him. She came out to the front through theswing-door, looked up and down the road, and seemed to go back happier. Dr. Conrad's curiosity was roused, and he started at once for thebeach, but absolutely without a trace of personal misgiving. No doubtthe tendency we all have to impute public mishaps to a special classof people outside our own circle had something to do with this. As hepassed down an alley behind some cottages--a short way to the pier--hewas aware of a boy telling a tale in a terrified voice to a man and anelderly woman. It was the man with the striped shirt, and the boy wasyoung Benjamin. He had passed on a few paces when the man called tohim, and came running after him, followed by the woman and boy. 

"I ask your pardon, sir--I ask your pardon.... " What he has to saywill not allow him to speak, and his words will not come. He turns forhelp to his companion. "_You_ tell him, Martha woman, " he says, andgives in. 

"My master thinks, sir, you may find something on the beach.... "

"Something on the beach!... " Fear is coming into Dr. Conrad's faceand voice. 

"Find something has happened on the beach. But they've got himout.... "

"Got him out! Got whom out? Speak up, for Heaven's sake!"

"It might be the gentleman you know, sir, and.... " But the speaker'shusband, having left the telling to his wife, unfairly strikes inhere, to have the satisfaction of lightening the communication. "But_he's_ out safe, sir. You may rely on the yoong lad. " He has madeit harder for his wife to tell the rest, and she hesitates. But Dr. Conrad has stayed for no more. He is going at a run down the slopedpassage that leads to the sea. The boy follows him, and by somedexterous use of private thoroughfares, known to him, but not to thedoctor, arrives first, and is soon visible ahead, running towards thescattered groups that line the beach. The man and woman follow moreslowly. 

Few of those who read this, we hope, have ever had to face a shock soappalling as the one that Conrad Vereker sustained when he came toknow what it was that was being carried up the beach from the boatthat had just been driven stern on to the shingle, as he emerged toa full view of the sea and the running crowd, thickening as its laststragglers arrived to meet it. But most of us who are not young haveunhappily had some experience of the sort, and many will recognise(if we can describe it) the feeling that was his in excess when achance bystander--not unconcerned, for no one was that--used in hishearing a phrase that drove the story home to him, and forced him tounderstand. "It's the swimming girl from Lobjoit's, and she'sdrooned. " It was as well, for he had to know. What did it matter howhe became the blank thing standing there, able to say to itself, "ThenSally is dead, " and to attach their meaning to the words, but not tocomprehend why he went on living? One way of learning the thing thatcloses over our lives and veils the sun for all time is as good asanother; but how came he to be so colourlessly calm about it?

If we could know how each man feels who hears in the felon's dock thesentence of penal servitude for life, it may be we should find thatVereker's sense of being for the moment a cold, unexplained unit in aninfinite unfeeling void, was no unusual experience. But this unit knewmechanically what had happened perfectly well, and its duty was clearbefore it. Just half a second for this sickness to go off, and hewould act. 

It was a longer pause than it seemed to him, as all things appeared tohappen quickly in it, somewhat as in a photographic life-picture whenthe films are run too quick. At least, that remained his memory ofit. And during that time he stood and wondered why he could not feel. He thought of her mother and of Fenwick, and said to himself theywere to be pitied more than he; for they were human, and _could_ feelit--could really know what jewel they had lost--had hearts to grieveand eyes to weep with. He had nothing--was a stupid blank! Oh, he hadbeen mistaken about himself and his love: he was a stone. 

A few moments later than his first sight of that silent crowd--momentsin which the world had changed and the sun had become a curse;in which he had for some reason--not grief, for he could notgrieve--resolved on death, except in an event he dared not hopefor--he found himself speaking to the men who had borne up the beachthe thing whose germ of life, if it survived, was _his_ only chanceof life hereafter. 

"I am a doctor; let me come. " The place they had brought it to was atimber structure that was held as common property by the fisher-world, and known as Lloyd's Coffeehouse. It was not a coffeehouse, buta kind of spontaneous club-room, where the old men sat and smokedchurchwarden pipes, and told each other tales of storm and wreck, andhow the news of old sea-battles came to St. Sennans in their boyhood;of wives made widows for their country's good, and men all sound oflimb when the first gun said "Death!" across the water, crippled forall time when the last said "Victory!" and there was silence and thesmell of blood. Over the mantel was an old print of the battle ofCamperdown, with three-deckers in the smoke, flanked by portraits ofRodney and Nelson. There was a long table down the centre that hadbeen there since the days of Rodney, and on this was laid what an hourago was Sally; what each man present fears to uncover the face of, butless on his own account than for the sake of the only man who seemsfearless, and lays hands on the cover to remove it; for all knew, orguessed, what this dead woman might be--might have been--to this man. 

"I am a doctor; let me come. "

"Are ye sure ye know, young master? Are ye sure, boy?" The speaker, a very old man, interposes a trembling hand to save Vereker from whathe may not anticipate, perhaps has it in mind to beseech him to giveplace to the local doctor, just arriving. But the answer is merely, "Iknow. " And the hand that uncovers the dead face never wavers, and thenthat white thing we see is all there is of Sally--that coil and tangleof black hair, all mixed with weed and sea-foam, is the rich mass thatwas drying in the sun that day she sat with Fenwick on the beach;those eyes that strain behind the half-closed eyelids were the merryeyes that looked up from the water at the boat she dived from two dayssince; those lips are the lips the man who stands beside her kissedbut yesterday for the first time. The memory of that kiss is on himnow as he wipes the sea-slime from them and takes the first promptsteps for their salvation. 

The old Scotch doctor, who came in a moment later, wondered at theresolute decision and energy Vereker was showing. He had been toldcredibly of the circumstances of the case, and gave way on technicalpoints connected with resuscitation, surrendering views he wouldotherwise have contended for about Marshall Hall's and Silvester'srespective systems. Perhaps one reason for this was that auscultationof the heart convinced him that the case was hopeless, and he mayhave reflected that if any other method than Dr. Vereker's was usedthat gentleman was sure to believe the patient might have been saved. Better leave him to himself. 

 * * * * *

Rosalind returned to her dressing, after Dr. Conrad walked away fromthe house, with a feeling--not a logical one--that now she need nothurry. Why having spoken with him and forwarded him on to look forSally and Gerry should make any difference was not at all clear, and she did not account to herself for it. She accepted it as anoccurrence that put her somehow in touch with the events of theday--made her a part of what was going on elsewhere. She had feltlapsed, for the moment, when, waking suddenly to advanced daylight, she had gone first to her husband's room and then to Sally's, andfound both empty. The few words spoken from her window with herrecently determined son-in-law had switched on her current again, metaphorically speaking. 

So she took matters easily, and was at rest about her husband, inspite of the episode of the previous evening--rather, we should havesaid, of the small hours of that morning. The fact is, it was herfirst sleep she had waked from, an unusually long and sound oneafter severe tension, and in the ordinary course of events she wouldprobably have gone to sleep again. Instead, she had got up at once, and gone to her husband's room to relieve her mind about him. A momentary anxiety at finding it empty disappeared when she foundSally's empty also; but by that time she was effectually waked, andrang for Mrs. Lobjoit and the hot water. 

If Mrs. Lobjoit, when she appeared with it, had been able to giveparticulars of Sally's departure, and to say that she and Mr. Fenwickhad gone out separately, Rosalind would have felt less at ease abouthim; but nothing transpired to show that they had not gone outtogether. Mrs. Lobjoit's data were all based on the fact that shefound the street door open when she went to do down her step, and shehad finished this job and gone back into the kitchen by the time Sallyfollowed Fenwick out. Of course, she never came upstairs to see whatrooms were empty; why should she? And as no reason for inquirypresented itself, the question was never raised by Rosalind. Sallywas naturally an earlier bird than herself, and quite as often asnot she would join Gerry in his walk before breakfast. 

How thankful she felt, now that the revelation was over, that Sallywas within reach to help in calming down the mind that had been soterribly shaken by it; for all her thoughts were of Gerry; on herown behalf she felt nothing but contentment. Think what her dailyexistence had been! What had she to lose by a complete removal ofthe darkness that had shrouded her husband's early life with her--orrather, what had she not to gain? Now that it had been assured to herthat nothing in the past could make a new rift between them, the onlyweight upon her mind was the possible necessity for revealing to Sallyin the end the story of her parentage. What mother, to whom a likestory of her own early days was neither more nor less than a glimpseinto Hell, could have felt otherwise about communicating it to herchild? She felt, too, the old feeling of the difficulty there would bein making Sally understand. The girl had not chanced across devildomenough to make her an easy recipient of such a tale. 

Oh, the pleasure with which she recalled his last words of the nightbefore: "She is _my_ daughter now!" It was the final ratification ofthe protest of her life against the "rights" that Law and Usage grantto technical paternity; rights that can only be abrogated or ignoredby a child's actual parent--its mother--at the cost of insult andcontumely from a world that worships its own folly and ignores its owngods. Sally was hers--her own--hard as the terms of her possession hadbeen, and she had assigned a moiety of her rights in her to the manshe loved. What was the fatherhood of blood alone to set againstthe one her motherhood had a right to concede, and had conceded, inresponse to the spontaneous growth of a father's love? What claim haddevilish cruelty and treachery to any share in their result--a resultthat, after all, was the only compensation possible to their victim?

We do not make this endeavour to describe Rosalind's frame of mindwith a view to either endorsing or disclaiming her opinions. We merelyrecord them as those of a woman whose life-story was an uncommon one;but not without a certain sympathy for the new definition of paternitytheir philosophy involves, backed by a feeling that its truth isto some extent acknowledged in the existing marriage-law of severalcountries. As a set-off against this, no woman can have a childentirely her own except by incurring what are called "socialdisadvantages. " The hare that breaks covert incurs socialdisadvantages. A happy turn of events had shielded Rosalind fromthe hounds, or they had found better sport elsewhere. And her childwas her own. 

But even as the thought was registered in her mind, that child laylifeless; and her husband, stunned and dumb in his despair, dared noteven long that she, too, should know, to share his burden. 

"Those people are taking their time, " said she. Not that she waspressingly anxious for them to come home. It was early still, and themore Gerry lived in the present the better. Sally and her lover werefar and away the best foreground for the panorama of his mind justnow, and she herself would be quite happy in the middle distance. There would be time and enough hereafter, when the storm had subsided, for a revelation of all those vanished chapters of his life in Canadaand elsewhere. 

It was restful to her, after the tension and trial of the night, tofeel that he was happy with Sally and poor Prosy. What did it reallymatter how long they dawdled? She could hear in anticipation theirvoices and the laughter that would tell her of their coming. In a verylittle while it would be a reality, and, after all, the pleasure of agood symposium over Sally's betrothal was still to come. She and Gerryand the two principals had not spoken of it together yet. That wouldbe a real happiness. How seldom it was that an engagement to marrygave such complete satisfaction to bystanders! And, after all, _they_are the ones to be consulted; not the insignificant bride andbridegroom elect. Perhaps, though, she was premature in this case. Was there not the Octopus? But then she remembered with pleasurethat Conrad had represented his mother as phenomenally genial in herattitude towards the new arrangement; as having, in fact, a claim tobe considered not only a bestower of benign consent, but an accomplicebefore the fact. Still, Rosalind felt her own reserves on the subject, although she had always taken the part of the Octopus on principlewhen she thought Sally had become too disrespectful towards her. Anyhow, no use to beg and borrow troubles! Let her dwell on thehappiness only that was before them all. She pictured a variety ofhomes for Sally in the time to come, peopling them with beautifulgrandchildren--only, mind you, this was to be many, many years ahead!She could not cast herself for the part of grandmother while shetwined that glorious hair into its place with hands that for softnessand whiteness would have borne comparison with Sally's own. 

In the old days, before the news of evil travelled fast, the widowedwife would live for days, weeks, months, unclouded by the knowledgeof her loneliness, rejoicing in the coming hour that was to bring herwanderer back; and even as her heart laughed to think how now, atlast, the time was drawing near for his return, his heart had ceasedto beat, and, it may be, his bones were already bleaching where theassassin's knife had left him in the desert; or were swaying to andfro in perpetual monotonous response to the ground-swell, in somestrange green reflected light of a sea-cavern no man's eye had everseen; or buried nameless in a common tomb with other victims of battleor of plague; or, worst of all, penned in some dungeon, mad to thinkof home, waking from dreams of _her_ to the terror of the intolerablenight, its choking heat or deadly chill. And all those weeks or monthsthe dearth of news would seem just the chance of a lost letter, nomore--a thing that may happen any day to any of us. And she would liveon in content and hope, jesting even in anticipation of his return. 

Even so Rosalind, happy and undisturbed, dwelt on the days that wereto come for the merpussy and poor Prosy, as she still had chosen tocall him, for her husband and herself; and all the while _there_, so near her, was the end of it all, written in letters of death. 

They were taking their time, certainly, those people; so she wouldput her hat on and go to meet them. Mrs. Lobjoit wasn't to hurrybreakfast, but wait till they came. All right!

It looked as if it would rain later, so it was just as well to get outa little now. Rosalind was glad of the sweet air off the sea, for thenight still hung about her. The tension of it was on her still, forall that she counted herself so much the better, so much the safer, for that interview with Gerry. But oh, what a thing to think thatnow he knew _her_ as she had known him from the beginning! How muchthey would have to tell each other, when once they were well in calmwater!... Why were those girls running, and why did that young man onthe beach below shout to some one who followed him, "It's over at thepier"?

"Is anything the matter?" She asked the question of a very old man, whom she knew well by sight, who was hurrying his best in the samedirection. But his best was but little, as speed, though it did creditto his age; for old Simon was said to be in his hundredth year. Rosalind walked easily beside him as he answered:

"I oondersta'and, missis, there's been a fall from the pier-head.... Oh yes, they've getten un out; ye may easy your mind o' that. " But, for all that, Rosalind wasn't sorry her party were up at the hotel. She had believed them there long enough to have forgotten that shehad no reason for the belief to speak of. 

"You've no idea who it is?"

"Some do say a lady and a gentleman. " Rosalind felt still gladder ofher confidence that Sally and Gerry were out of the way. "'Ary one of'em would be bound to drown but for the boats smart and handy--barringbelike a swimmer like your young lady! She's a rare one, to tell of!"

"I believe she is. She swam round the Cat Buoy in a worse sea thanthis two days ago. "

"And she would, too!" Then the old boy's voice changed as he went on, garrulous: "But there be seas, missis, no man can swim in. My fowerboys, they were fine swimmers--all fower!"

"But were they?... " Rosalind did not like to say drowned; but oldSimon took it as spoken. 

"All fower of 'em--fine lads all--put off to the wreck--wreck o' th'brig Thyrsis, on th' Goodwins--and ne'er a one come back. And I hadthe telling of it to their mother. And the youngest, he never wasfound; and the others was stone dead ashore, nigh on to the Foreland. There was none to help. Fifty-three year ago come this Michaelmas. "

"Is their mother still living?" Rosalind asked, interested. Old Simonhad got to that stage in which the pain of the past is less thanthe pleasure of talking it over. "Died, she did, " said he, almost asthough he were unconcerned, "thirty-five year ago--five year afowerever I married my old missis yander. " Rosalind felt less sympathy. Ifshe were to lose Sally or Gerry, would she ever be able to talk likethis, even if she lived to be ninety-nine? Possibly yes--only shecould not know it now. She felt too curious about what had happenedat the pier to think of going back, and walked on with old Simon, not answering him much. He seemed quite content to talk. 

She did not trouble herself on the point of her party returningand not finding her. Ten chances to one they would hear about theaccident, and guess where she had gone. Most likely they would followher. Besides, she meant to go back as soon as ever she knew what hadhappened. 

Certainly there were a great many people down there round aboutLloyd's Coffeehouse! Had a life been lost? How she hoped not! Whata sad end it would be to such a happy holiday as theirs had been! Shesaid something to this effect to the old man beside her. His replywas: "Ye may doubt of it, in my judgment, missis. The rowboats werenot long enough agone for that. Mayhap he'll take a bit of nursinground, though. " But he quickened his pace, and Rosalind was sorry thata sort of courtesy towards him stood in her way. She would have likedto go much quicker. 

She could not quite understand the scared look of a girl to whom shesaid, "Is it a bad accident? Do you know who it is?" nor why this girlmuttered something under her breath, then got away, nor why so manyeyes, all tearful, should be fixed on _her_. She asked again of thewoman nearest her, "Do you know who it is?" but the woman gasped, andbecame hysterical, making her afraid she had accosted some anxiousrelative or near friend, who could not bear to speak of it. And stillall the eyes were fixed upon her. A shudder ran through her. Couldthat be pity she saw in them--pity for _her_?

"For God's sake, tell me at once! Tell me what this is.... "

Still silence! She could hear through it sobs here and there in thecrowd, and then two women pointed to where an elderly man who lookedlike a doctor came from a doorway close by. She heard the hystericalwoman break down outright, and her removal by friends, and then thestrong Scotch accent of the doctor-like man making a too transparenteffort towards an encouraging tone. 

"There's nae reason to anteecipate a fatal tairmination, so far. I wouldna undertake myself to say the seestolic motion of the heartwas.... " But he hesitated, with a puzzled look, as Rosalind caught hisarm and hung to it, crying out: "Why do you tell _me_ this? For God'ssake, speak plain! I am stronger than you think. "

His answer came slowly, in an abated voice, but clearly: "Because theytauld me ye were the girl's mither. "

In the short time that had passed since Rosalind's mind first admittedan apprehension of evil the worst possibility it had conceived wasthat Vereker or her husband was in danger. No misgiving about Sallyhad entered it, except so far as a swift thought followed the fearof mishap to one of them. "How shall Sally be told of this? When andwhere will she know?"

Two of the women caught her as she fell, and carried her at the Scotchdoctor's bidding into a house adjoining, where Fenwick had beencarried in a half-insensible collapse that had followed his landingfrom the cobble-boat in which he was sculled ashore. 

 * * * * *

"Tell me what has happened. Where is Dr. Vereker?" Rosalind asks thequestion of any of the fisher-folk round her as soon as returningconsciousness brings speech. They look at each other, and the womanthe cottage seems to belong to says interrogatively, "The youngdoctor-gentleman?" and then answers the last question. He is lookingto the young lady in at the Coffeehouse. But no one says what hashappened. Rosalind looks beseechingly round. 

"Will you not tell me now? Oh, tell me--tell me the whole!"

"It's such a little we know ourselves, ma'am. But my husband will behere directly. It was he brought the gentleman ashore.... "

"Where is the gentleman?" Rosalind has caught up the speaker witha decisive rally. Her natural strength is returning, prompted bysomething akin to desperation. 

"We have him in here, ma'am. But he's bad, too! Here's my husband. Have ye the brandy, Tom?"

Rosalind struggles to her feet from the little settee they had laidher on. Her head is swimming, and she is sick, but she says: "Letme come!" She has gathered this much--that whatever has happened toSally, Vereker is there beside her, and the other doctor she knowsof. She can do nothing, and Gerry is close at hand. They let hercome, and the woman and her husband follow. The one or two othersgo quietly out; there were too many for the tiny house. 

That is Gerry, she can see, on the trestle-bedstead near the windowwith the flowerpots in it. He seems only half conscious, and his handsand face are cold. She cannot be sure that he has recognised her. Then she knows she is being spoken to. It is the fisherman's wifewho speaks. 

"We could find no way to get the gentleman's wet garments from him, but we might make a shift to try again. He's a bit hard to move. Nottoo much at once, Tom. " Her husband is pouring brandy from his flaskinto a mug. 

"Has he had any brandy?"

"Barely to speak of. Tell the lady, Tom!"

"No more than the leaving of a flask nigh empty out in my boat. It didhim good, too. He got the speech to tell of the young lady, else--Godhelp us!--we might have rowed him in, and lost the bit of water shewas under. But we had the luck to find her. " It was the owner of thecobble who spoke. 

"Gerry, drink some of this at once. It's me--Rosey--your wife!" She isafraid his head may fail, for anything may happen now; but the brandythe fisherman's wife has handed to her revives him. No one speaks forawhile, and Rosalind, in the dazed state that so perversely notes anddwells on some small thing of no importance, and cannot grasp thegreat issue of some crisis we are living through, is keenly aware ofthe solemn ticking of a high grandfather clock, and of the name of themaker on its face--"Thomas Locock, Rochester. " She sees it throughthe door into the front room, and wonders what the certificate ortestimonial in a frame beside it is; and whether the Bible on the tablebelow it, beside the fat blue jug with a ship and inscriptions on it, has illustrations and the Stem of Jesse rendered pictorially. Or is it"Pilgrim's Progress, " and no Bible at all? Who or what is she, that cansit and think of this and that, knowing that a world--her world and herhusband's--is at stake, and that a terrible game is being played tosave it, there within twenty yards of them? If she could only havegiven active help! But that she knows is impossible. She knows enoughto be satisfied that all that can be done is being done; that evenwarmth and stimulants are useless, perhaps even injurious, tillartificial respiration has done its work. She can recall Sally's voicetelling her of these things. Yes, she is best here beside her husband. 

What is it that he says in a gasping whisper? Can any one tell himwhat it is has happened? She cannot--perhaps could not if sheknew--and she does not yet know herself. She repeats her questionto the fisherman and his wife. They look at each other and say youngBen Tracy was on the pier. Call him in. It is something to know thatwhat has happened was on the pier. While young Ben is hunted up theopportunity is taken to make the change of wet clothes forextemporised dry ones. The half-drowned, all-chilled, and bewilderedman is reviving, and can help, though rigidly and with difficulty. Then Ben is brought in, appalled and breathless. 

The red-eyed and tear-stained boy is in bad trim for giving evidence, but under exhortation to speak up and tell the lady he articulates hisstory through his sobs. He is young, and can cry. He goes back to thebeginning. 

His father told him to run and hunt round for the life-belt, and hewent to left instead of to right, and missed of seeing it. And hewas at the top o' the ladder, shooat'un aloud to his father, and thegentleman--he nodded towards Fenwick--was walking down below. Then theyoung lady came to the top stair of the ladder. The narrator threw allhis powers of description into the simultaneousness of Sally's arrivalat this point and the gentleman walking straight over the pier-edge. "And then the young lady she threw away her hat, and come runnin'down, runnin' down, and threw away her cloak, she _did_, and stra'atshe went for t' wa'ater!" Young Benjamin's story and his control overhis sobs come to an end at the same time, and his father, justarrived, takes up the tale. 

"I saw there was mishap in it, " he says, "by the manner of my younglad with the lady's hat, and I went direct for the life-belt, forI'm no swimmer myself. Tom, man, tell the lady I'm no swimmer.... "Tom nodded assent, "... Or I might have tried my luck. It was a badbusiness that the life-belt was well away at the far end, and I had nochance to handle it in time. It was the run of the tide took them outbeyond the length of the line, and I was bound to make the best throwI could, and signal to shore for a boat. " He was going to tell how theonly little boat at the pier-end had got water-logged in the night, when Rosalind interrupted him. 

"Did you see them both in the water?"

"Plain. The young lady swimming behind and keeping the gentleman'shead above the water. I could hear her laughing like, and talking. Then I sent the belt out, nigh half-way, and she saw it and swamfor it. Then I followed my young lad for to get out a shore-boat. "

It was the thought of the merpussy laughing like and talking in thecruel sea that was to engulf her that brought a heart-broken chokingmoan from her mother. Then, all being told, the fisher-folk glancedat each other, and by common consent went noiselessly from the roomand lingered whispering outside. They closed the outer door, leavingthe cottage entirely to Rosalind and her husband, and then they twowere alone in the darkened world; and Conrad Vereker, whom they couldnot help, was striving--striving against despair--to bring back lifeto Sally. 

 * * * * *

A terrible strain--an almost killing strain--had been put uponFenwick's powers of endurance. Probably the sudden shock of hisimmersion, the abrupt suppression of an actual fever almost at thecost of sanity, had quite as much to do with this as what he was atfirst able to grasp of the extent of the disaster. But actual chilland exposure had contributed their share to the state of semi-collapsein which Rosalind found him. Had the rower of the cobble turnedin-shore at once, some of this might have been saved; but that wouldhave been one pair of eyes the fewer, and every boat was wanted. Nowthat his powerful constitution had the chance to reassert itself, hisrevival went quickly. He was awakening to a world with a black griefin it; but Rosey was there, and had to be lived for, and think of hisdebt to her! Think of the great wrong he did her in that old time thathe had only regained the knowledge of yesterday! Her hand in his gavehim strength to speak, and though his voice was weak it would reachthe head that rested on his bosom. 

"I can tell you now, darling, what I remember. I went off feverishin the night after you left me, and I suppose my brain gave way, ina sense. I went out early to shake it off, and a sort of delusioncompletely got the better of me. I fancied I was back at Bombay, goingon the boat for Australia, and I just stepped off the pier-edge. Ourdarling must have been there. Oh, Sally, Sally!... " He had to pauseand wait. 

"Hope is not all dead--not yet, not yet!" Rosalind's voice seemedto plead against despair. 

"I know, Rosey dearest--not yet. I heard her voice ... Oh, hervoice!... Call to me to be still, and she would save me. And thenI felt her dear hand ... First my arm, then my head, on each side. "Again his voice was choking, but he recovered. "Then, somehow, thelife-belt was round me--I can't tell how, but she made me hold it soas to be safe. She was talking and laughing, but I could not hearmuch. I know, however, that she said quite suddenly, 'I had betterswim back to the pier. Hold on tight, Jeremiah!'... " He faltered againbefore ending. "I don't know why she went, but she said, 'I must go, 'and swam away. "

That was all Fenwick could tell. The explanation came later. It wasthat unhappy petticoat-tape! A swimmer's leg-stroke may be encumberedin a calm sea, or when the only question is of keeping afloat forawhile. But in moderately rough water, and in a struggle againsta running tide--which makes a certain speed imperative--the conditionsare altered. Sally may have judged wrongly in trying to return to thepier, but remember--she could not in the first moments know that themishap had been seen, and help was near at hand. Least of all couldshe estimate the difficulty of swimming in a loosened encumberedskirt. In our judgment, she would have done better to remain near thelife-belt, even if she, too, had ultimately had to depend on it. Theadditional risk for Fenwick would have been small. 

After he had ended what he had to tell he remained quite still, andscarcely spoke during the hour that followed. Twice or three timesduring that hour Rosalind rose to go out and ask if there was anychange. But, turning to him with her hand on the door, and asking"Shall I go?" she was always met with "What good will it do? Conradwill tell us at once, " and returned to her place beside him. Afterall, what she heard might be the end of Hope. Better stave off Despairto the last. 

She watched the deliberate hands of the clock going cruelly on, unfaltering, ready to register in cold blood the moment that shouldsay that Sally, as they knew her, was no more. Thomas Locock, ofRochester, had taken care of that. Where would those hands be on thatclock-face when all attempt at resuscitation had to stop? And why liveafter it?

She fancied she could hear, at intervals, Dr. Conrad's voice givinginstructions; and the voice of the Scotsman, less doubtfully, whichalways sounded like that of a medical man, for some reason notdefined. As the clock-hand pointed to ten, she heard both quitenear--outside Lloyd's Coffeehouse, evidently. Then she knew why shehad so readily relinquished her purpose of getting at Dr. Conradfor news. It was the dread of seeing anything of the necessarymanipulation of the body. Could she have helped, it would have beendifferent. No, if she must look upon her darling dead, let it belater. But now there was that poor fellow-sufferer within reach, and she could see him without fear. She went out quickly. 

"Can you come away?"

"Quite safely for a minute. The others have done it before. "

"Is there a chance?"

"There is a chance. " Dr. Conrad's hand as she grasps it is so coldthat it makes her wonder at the warmth of her own. She is strangelyalive to little things. "Yes--there _is_ a chance, " he repeats, moreemphatically, as one who has been contradicted. But the old Scotchdoctor had only said cautiously, "It would be airly times to begeevin' up hopes, " in answer to a half-suggestion of reference to himin the words just spoken. Rosalind keeps the cold hand that has takenhers, and the crushing weight of her own misery almost gives place toher utter pity for the ash-white face before her, and the tale thereis in it of a soul in torture. 

"What is the longest time ... The longest time... ?" she cannot frameher question, but both doctors take its meaning at once, repeatingtogether or between them, "The longest insensibility after immersion?Many hours. "

"But how many?" Six, certainly, is Dr. Conrad's testimony. But theScotchman's conscience plagues him; he must needs be truthful. "Varalikely you're right, " he says. "I couldna have borne testimonypairsonally to more than two. But vara sairtainly you're more likelyto be right than I. " His conscience has a chilling effect. 

Fenwick, a haggard spectacle, has staggered to the door of thecottage. He wants to get the attention of some one in the crowd thatstands about in silence, never intrusively near. It is the father ofyoung Benjamin, who comes being summoned. 

"That man you told me about.... " Fenwick begins. 

"Peter Burtenshaw?"

"Ah! How long was he insensible?"

"Eight hours--rather better! We got him aboard just before eight bellsof the second dog-watch, and it was eight bells of the middle watchafore he spoke. Safe and sure! Wasn't I on the morning-watch myself, and beside him four hours of the night before, and turned in at eightbells? He'll tell you the same tale himself. Peter Burtenshaw--he'sa stevedore now, at the new docks at Southampton. " Much of this wasquite unintelligible--ship's time is always a problem--but it wasreassuring, and Rosalind felt grateful to the speaker, whether what hesaid was true or not. In that curious frame of mind that observed thesmallest things, she was just aware of the difficulty in the way ofa reference to Peter Burtenshaw at the new docks at Southampton. Thenshe felt a qualm of added sickness at heart as she all but thought, "How that will amuse Sally when I come to tell it to her!"

The old Scotchman had to keep an appointment--connected with birth, not death. "I've geen my pledge to the wench's husband, " he said, andwent his way. Rosalind saw him stopped as he walked through the groupsthat were lingering silently for a chance of good news; and guessedthat he had none to give, by the way his questioners fell backdisappointed. She was conscious that the world was beginning to reeland swim about her; was half asking herself what could it allmean--the waiting crowds of fisher-folk speaking in undertones amongthemselves; the pitying eyes fixed on her and withdrawn as they mether own; the fixed pallor and tense speech of the man who held herhand, then left her to return again to an awful task that had, surely, something to do with her Sally, there in that cramped tarred-woodstructure close down upon the beach. What did his words mean: "I mustgo back; it is best for you to keep away"? Oh, yes; now she knew, andit was all true. She saw how right he was, but she read in his eyesthe reason why he was so strong to face the terror that she knew was_there_--in _there_! It was that he knew so well that death would beopen to him if defeat was to be the end of the battle he was fighting. But there should be no panic. Not an inch of ground should beuncontested. 

Back again in the little cottage with Gerry, but some one had helpedher back. Surely, though, his voice had become his own again as hesaid: "We are no use, Rosey darling. We are best here. Conrad knowswhat he's about. " And there was a rally of real hope, or a bold bidfor it, when his old self spoke in his words: "Why does that solemnold fool of a Scotch doctor want to put such a bad face on the matter?Patience, sweetheart, patience!"

For them there was nothing else. They could hinder, but they could nothelp, outside there. Nothing for it now but to count the minutes asthey passed, to feel the cruelty of that inexorable clock in thestillness; for the minutes passed too quickly. How could it be else, when each one of them might have heralded a hope and did not; wheneach bequeathed its little legacy of despair? But was there needthat each new clock-tick as it came should say, as the last had said:"Another second has gone of the little hour that is left; another inchof the space that parts us from the sentence that knows no respite orreprieve"? Was it not enough that the end must come, without the throbof that monotonous reminder: "Nearer still!--nearer still!"

Neither spoke but a bare word or two, till the eleventh stroke of theclock, at the hour, left it resonant and angry, and St. Sennans toweranswered from without. Then Rosalind said, "Shall I go out and see, now?" and Fenwick replied, "Do, darling, if you wish to. But he wouldtell us at once, if there were anything. " She answered, "Yes, perhapsit's no use, " and fell back into silence. 

She was conscious that the crowd outside had increased, in spite of afine rain that had followed the overclouding of the morning. She couldhear the voices of other than the fisher-folk--some she recognised asthose of beach acquaintance. That was Mrs. Arkwright, the mother ofGwenny. And that was Gwenny herself, crying bitterly. Rosalind knewquite well, though she could hear no words, that Gwenny was being toldthat she could not go to Miss Nightingale now. She half thought shewould like to have Gwenny in, to cry on her and make her perhaps feelless like a granite-block in pain. But, then, was not Sally a baby ofthree once? She could remember the pleasure the dear old Major had atseeing baby in her bath, and how he squeezed a sponge over her head, and she screwed her eyes up. He had died in good time, and escapedthis inheritance of sorrow. How could she have told him of it?

What was she that had outlived him to bear all this? Much, so much, of her was two dry, burning eyes, each in a ring of pain, that hadforgotten tears and what they meant. How was it that now, when thatArkwright woman's voice brought back her talk upon the beach, notfour-and-twenty hours since, and her unwelcome stirring of the deadembers of a burned-out past--how was it that that past, at its worst, seemed easier to bear than this intolerable _now_? How had it comeabout that a memory of twenty years ago, a memory of how she hadprayed that her unborn baby might die, rather than live to remind herof that black stain upon the daylight, its father, had become in theend worse to her, in her heart of hearts, than the thing that causedit? And then she fell to wondering when it was that her child firsttook hold upon her life; first crept into it, then slowly filled itup. She went back on little incidents of that early time, askingherself, was it then, or then, I first saw that she was Sally? Shecould recall, without adding another pang to her dull, insensatesuffering, the moment when the baby, as the Major and General Pellewsat playing chess upon the deck, captured the white king, and senthim flying into the Mediterranean; and though she could not smile now, could know how she would have smiled another time. Was that white kingafloat upon the water still? A score of little memories of a like sortchased one another as her mind ran on, all through the childhood andgirlhood of their subject. And now--it was all to end.... 

And throughout those years this silent man beside her, this manshe meant to live for still, for all it should be in a darkenedworld--this man was ... Where? To think of it--in all those years, no Sally for him! See what she had become to him in so short atime--such a little hour of life! Think of the waste of it--ofwhat she might have been! And it was she, the little unconsciousthing herself, that sprang from what had parted them. If shehad to face all the horrors of her life anew for it, would sheflinch from one of them, only to hear that the heart that hadstopped its beating would beat again, that the voice that wasstill would sound in her ears once more?

Another hour! The clock gave out its warning that it meant to strike, in deadly earnest with its long premonitory roll. Then all thosetwelve strokes so quick upon the heels of those that sounded but now, as it seemed. Another hour from the tale of those still left butreasonable hope; another hour nearer to despair. The reverberationsdied away, and left the cold insensate tick to measure out the nextone, while St. Sennans tower gave its answer as before. 

"Shall I go now, Gerry, to see?"

"I say not, darling; but go, if you like. " He could not bear to hearit, if it was to be the death-sentence. So Rosalind still sat on tothe ticking of the clock. 

Her brain and powers of thought were getting numbed. Trivial thingscame out of the bygone times, and drew her into dreams--back intothe past again--to give a moment's spurious peace; then forsook hertreacherously to an awakening, each time deadlier than the last. Eachtime to ask anew, what could it all mean? Sally dead or dying--Sallydead or dying! Each time she repeated the awful words to herself, totry to get a hold she was not sure she had upon their meaning. Eachtime she slipped again into a new dream and lost it. 

Back again now, in the old days of her girlhood! Back in that littlefront garden of her mother's house, twenty odd years ago, and Gerry'shand in hers--the hand she held to now; and Gerry's face that now, beside her, looked so still and white and heart-broken, all aglow withlife and thoughtless youth and hope. Again she felt upon her lips hisfarewell kiss, not to be renewed until ... But at the thought sheshuddered away, horror-stricken, from the nightmare that any memorymust be of what then crossed her life, and robbed them both ofhappiness. And then her powers of reason simply reeled and swam, andher brain throbbed as she caught the thought forming in it: "Betterhappiness so lost, and all the misery over again, than this blow thathas come upon us now! Sally dead or dying--Sally dead or dying!" Forwhat was _she_, the thing we could not bear to lose, but the livingrecord, the very outcome, of the poisoned soil in that field of herlife her memory shrank from treading?

What was that old Scotchman--he seemed to have come back--what washe saying outside there? Yes, listen! Fenwick starts up, all hislife roused into his face. If only that clock would end that longunnecessary roll of warning, and strike! But before the long-deferredsingle stroke comes to say another hour has passed, he is up and atthe door, with Rosalind clinging to him terrified. 

"What's the news, doctor? Tell it out, man!--never fear. " Rosalinddares not ask; her heart gives a great bound, and stops, and her teethchatter and close tight. She could not speak if she tried. 

"I wouldna like to be over-confeedent, Mr. Fenwick, and ye'llunderstand I'm only geevin' ye my own eempression.... "

"Yes, quite right--go on.... "

"Vara parteecularly because our young friend Dr. Vereker is unwullingto commeet himself ... But I should say a pairceptible.... "

He is interrupted. For with a loud shout Dr. Conrad himself, dishevelled and ashy-white of face, comes running from the dooropposite. The word he has shouted so loudly he repeats twice; thenturns as though to go back. But he does not reach the door, for hestaggers suddenly, like a man struck by a bullet, and falls heavily, insensible. 

There is a movement and a shouting among the scattered groups thathave been waiting, three hours past, as those nearest at hand run tohelp and raise him; and the sound of voices and exultation passesfrom group to group. For what he shouted was the one word "Breath!"And Rosalind knew its meaning as her head swam and she heard no more. 

CHAPTER XLVII

WAS IT THE LITTLE GALVANIC BATTERY? THE LAST CHAPTER RETOLD BY THE PRESS. A PROPER RAILING. BUT THEY _WEREN'T_ DROWNED. WHAT'S THE FUSS? MASTER CHANCELLORSHIP APPEARS AND VANISHES. ELECTUARY OF ST. SENNA. AT GEORGIANA TERRACE. A LETTER FROM SALLY. ANOTHER FROM CONRAD. EVERYTHING VANISHES!

Professor Sales Wilson, Mrs. Julius Bradshaw's papa, was enjoyinghimself thoroughly. He was the sole occupant of 260, Ladbroke GroveRoad, servants apart. All his blood-connected household had departedtwo days after the musical evening described in Chapter XL. , andthere was nothing that pleased him better than to have London tohimself--that is to say, to himself and five millions of perfectstrangers. He had it now, and could wallow unmolested in Sabellianresearches, and tear the flimsy theories of Bopsius--whose name wehaven't got quite right--to tatters. Indeed, we are not really surethe researches _were_ Sabellian. But no matter!

Just at the moment at which we find him, the Professor was not engagedin any researches at all, unless running one's eye down the columnsof a leading journal, to make sure there is nothing in them, is aresearch. That is what he was doing in his library. And he was alsotalking to himself--a person from whom he had no reserves orconcealments. What he had to say ran in this wise:

"H'm!--h'm!--'The Cyclopean Cyclopędia. ' Forty volumes in calf. Netprice thirty-five pounds. A digest of human knowledge, past, present, and probable. With a brief appendix enumerating the things of whichwe are still ignorant, and of our future ignorance of which we arescientifically certain ... H'm! h'm!... Not dear at the price. Butstop a bit! 'Until twelve o'clock on Saturday next copies of theabove, with revolving bookcase, can be secured for the low price ofseven pounds ten. '... " This did not seem to increase the speaker'sconfidence and he continued, as he wrestled with a rearrangement ofthe sheet: "Shiny paper, and every volume weighs a ton. Very full ofmatter--everything in it except the thing you want to know. By-the-bye... What a singular thing it is, when you come to think of it, thatso many people will sell you a thing worth a pound for sixpence, whowon't give you a shilling outright on any terms! It must have to dowith their unwillingness to encourage mendicancy. A noble self-denial, prompted by charity organizations! Hullo!--what's this? 'Heroic rescuefrom drowning at St. Sennans-on-Sea. ' H'm--h'm--h'm!--can't read allthat. But _that's_ where the married couple went--St. Sennans-on-Sea. The bride announced her intention yesterday of looking in at fiveto-day for tea. So I suppose I shall be disturbed shortly. "

The soliloquist thought it necessary to repeat his last words twiceto convince himself and the atmosphere that his position was one ofgrievance. Having done this, and feeling he ought to substantiate hissuggestion that he was just on the point of putting salt on the tailof an unidentified Samnite, or a finishing touch on the demolition ofBopsius, he folded his newspaper, which we suspect he had not beenreading candidly from, and resumed his writing. 

Did you ever have a quarter of an hour of absolutely unalloyedhappiness? Probably not, if you have never known the joys of profoundantiquarian erudition, with an unelucidated past behind you, andinexpensive publication before. The Professor's fifteen minutes thatfollowed were not only without alloy, but had this additionalzest--that that girl would come bothering in directly, and he wouldget his grievance, and work it. And at no serious expense, for he wasreally very partial to his daughter, and meant, _au fond de soi_, toenjoy her visit. Nevertheless, discipline had to be maintained, ifonly for purposes of self-deception, and the Professor really believedin his own "Humph! I supposed it would be that, " when Lętitia's knockcame at the street door. 

"Such a shame to disturb you, papa dear! But you'll have to give metea--you said you would. "

"It isn't five o'clock yet. Well--never mind. Sit down and don'tfidget. I shall have done presently.... No! make yourself useful nowyou _are_ here. Get me 'Passeri Picturę Etruscorum, ' volume three, out of shelf C near the window ... That's right. Very good find fora young married woman. Now sit down and read the paper--there'ssomething will interest you. You may ring for tea, only don't talk. "

The Professor then became demonstratively absorbed in the Sabellians, or Bopsius, or both, and Lętitia acted as instructed, but withoutcoming on the newspaper-paragraph. She couldn't ask for a clue afterso broad a hint, so she had to be contented with supposing her fatherreferred to the return of Sir Charles Penderfield, Bart. , as a HomeRule Unionist and Protectionist Free Trader. Only if it was that, itwas the first she had ever known of her father being aware of theBart. 's admiration for herself. So she made the tea, and waitedtill the pen-scratching stopped, and the Sabellians or Bopsius wereblotted, glanced through, and ratified. 

"There, that'll do for that, I suppose. " His tone surrendered thegrievance as an act of liberality, but maintained the principle. "Well, have we found it?"

"Found what?"

"The heroic rescue--at your place--Saint Somebody--Saint Senanus.... "

"No! Do show me that. " Lętitia forms a mental image of a lifeboatgoing out to a wreck. How excited Sally must have been!

"Here, give it me and I'll find it.... Yes--that's right--a big lumpand a little lump. I'm to take less sugar because of gout. Very good!Oh ... Yes ... Here we are. 'Heroic Rescue at St. Sennans' ... Justunder 'Startling Elopement at Clapham Rise'.... Got it?"

Lętitia supplied the cup of tea, poured one for herself, and tookthe paper from her father without the slightest suspicion of what wascoming. "It will have to wait a minute till I've had some tea, " shesaid. "I'm as thirsty as I can be. I've been to see my mother-in-lawand Constance"--this was Julius's sister--"off to Southend. And justfancy, papa; Pag and I played from nine till a quarter-to-one lastnight, and he never felt it, nor had any headache nor anything. " Thetopic is so interesting that the unread paragraph has to wait. 

The Professor cannot think of any form of perversion better than"Very discreditable to him. I hope you blew him well up?"

"Now, papa, don't be nonsensical! Do you know, I'm really beginningto believe Pag's right, and it _was_ the little galvanic battery. Shouldn't you say so, though, seriously?"

"Why, yes. If there wasn't a big galvanic battery, it must have beenthe little one. It stands to reason. But _what_ does my musicalson-in-law think was the little galvanic battery?"

"Oh dear, papa, how ridiculous you are! Why, of course, his nervesgoing away--as they really _have_ done, you know; and I can't seeany good pretending they haven't. Yesterday was the fourth eveninghe hasn't felt them.... "

"Stop a bit! There is a lack of scientific precision in the structureof your sentences. A young married woman ought really to be moreaccurate. Now let's look it over, and do a little considering. I gather, in the first place, that my son-in-law's nerves going awaywas, or were, a little galvanic battery.... "

"Dear papa, don't paradox and catch me out. Just this once, bereasonable! Think what a glorious thing it would be for us if hisnerves _had_ gone for good. Another cup? Was the last one right?"

"My position is peculiar. (Yes, the tea was all right. ) I findmyself requested to be reasonable, and to embark on a careerof reasonableness by considering the substantial advantages tomy daughter and her husband of the disappearance of his nervoussystem.... "

"Oh, I wish you wouldn't! _Do_ be serious.... " The Professor lookedat her reflectively as he drank the cup of tea, and it seemed to dawnon him slowly that his daughter _was_ serious. The fact is, Tishy wasvery serious indeed, and was longing for sympathy over a matter forgreat elation. She and Julius had been purposely playing continuouslyfor long hours to test the apparent suspension or cessation of hisnervous affection, and had not so far seen a sign of a return; butthey were dreadfully afraid of counting their chickens in advance. 

"I noticed the other evening"--the Professor has surrendered, andbecome serious--"that Julius wasn't any the worse, and he had playeda long time. What should you do?" Tishy looked inquiringly. "Well, I mean what steps could be taken if it were... ?"

"If we could trust to it? Oh, no difficulty at all! Any number ofengagements directly. "

"It would please your mother. " Tishy cannot help a passing thoughton the oddity of her parents' relations to one another. Even thoughhe spoke of the Dragon as a connexion of his daughter he was butlittle concerned with, the first thought that crossed his mind wasa sort of satisfaction under protest that she would have somethingto be pleased about. Tishy wondered whether she and Julius wouldend up like that. Of course they wouldn't! What pity people'sparents were so unreasonable!

"Yes; mamma wouldn't be at all sorry. Fiddlers are not Baronets, butanything is better than haberdashing. _I'm_ not ashamed of it, youknow. " She had subjected herself gratuitously to her own suspicionthat she might be, and resented it. 

Her father looked at her with an amused face; looked down at thesesocial fads of poor humanity from the height of his Olympus. If heknew anything about the Unionist Home Ruler's aspirations for Lętitia, he said nothing. Then he asked a natural question--what _was_ thelittle galvanic battery? Tishy gave her account of it, but before shehad done the Professor was thinking about Sabines or Lucanians. Thefact is that Tishy was never at her best with her father. She wasalways so anxious to please him that she tumbled over her own anxiety, and in this present case didn't tell her story as well as she mighthave done. He began considering how he could get back to the shredsof Bopsius, if any were left, and looked at his watch. 

"Well, that was very funny--very funny!" said he absently. "Now, don't forget the heroic rescue before you go. "

Tishy perceived the delicate hint, and picked up the paper with "Ideclare I was forgetting all about it!" But she had scarcely cast hereyes on it when she gave a cry. "Oh, papa, papa; it's _Sally_! Ohdear!" And then: "Oh dear, oh dear! I can hardly see to make it out. But I'm sure she's all right! They say so. " And kept on trying toread. Her father did what was, under the circumstances, the bestthing to do--took the paper from her, and as she sank back with abeating heart and flushed face on the chair she had just risen fromread the paragraph to her as follows:

"HEROIC RESCUE FROM DROWNING AT ST. SENNANS-ON-SEA. --Early thismorning, as Mr. Algernon Fenwick, of Shepherd's Bush, at present ona visit at the old town, was walking on the pier-end, at the pointwhere there is no rail or rope for the security of the public, hisfoot slipped, and he was precipitated into the sea, a height of atleast ten feet. Not being a swimmer, his life was for some minutesin the greatest danger; but fortunately for him his stepdaughter, MissRosalind Nightingale, whose daring and brilliant feats in swimminghave been for some weeks past the admiration and envy of all thevisitors to the bathing quarter of this most attractive of south-coastwatering-places, was close at hand, and without a moment's hesitationplunged in to his rescue. Encumbered as she was by clothing, she wasnevertheless able to keep Mr. Fenwick above water, and ultimately toreach a life-buoy that was thrown from the pier. Unfortunately, havingestablished Mr. Fenwick in a position of safety, she thought her bestcourse would be to return to the pier. She was unable in the end toreach it, and her strength giving way, she was picked up, after animmersion of more than twenty minutes, by the boats that put offfrom the shore. It will readily be imagined that a scene of greatexcitement ensued, and that a period of most painful anxiety followed, for it was not till nearly four hours afterwards that, thanks to theskill and assiduity of Dr. Fergus Maccoll, of 22A, Albion Crescent, assisted by Dr. Vereker, of London, the young lady showed signs oflife. We are happy to say that the latest bulletins appear to point toa speedy and complete recovery, with no worse consequences than a badfright. We understand that the expediency of placing a proper railingat all dangerous points on the pier is being made the subject of anumerously signed petition to the Town Council. "

"That seems all right, " said the Professor. And he said nothingfurther, but remained rubbing his shaved surface in a sort ofcompromising way--a way that invited or permitted exception to betaken to his remark. 

"All right? Yes, but--oh, papa, do think what might have happened!They might both have been drowned. "

"But they weren't!"

"Of course they weren't! But they _might_ have been. "

"Well, it would have proved that people are best away from the seaside. Not that any further proof is necessary. Now, good-bye, my dear; I mustget back to my work. "

 * * * * *

That afternoon Julius Bradshaw went on a business mission to Cornhill, and was detained in the city till past five o'clock. It was then toolate to return to the office, as six was the closing hour; so hedecided on the Twopenny Tube to Lancaster Gate, the nearest point tohome. There was a great shouting of evening papers round the openinginto the bowels of the earth at the corner of the Bank, and Julius'sattention was caught by an unearthly boy with a strange accent. 

"'Mail and Echo, ' third edition, all the latest news for a 'apeny. Fullest partic'lars in my copies. Alderman froze to death on theHalps. Shocking neglect of twins. 'Oxton man biles his third wifealive. Cricket this day--Surrey going strong. More about heroic rescuefrom drowning at St. Senna's. Full and ack'rate partic'lars in mycopies only. Catch hold!... " Julius caught hold, and thought the boyamusing. Conversation followed, during cash settlements. 

"Who's been heroically rescued?"

"Friend of mine--young lady--fished her governor out--got drowndedover it herself, and was brought to. 'Mail' a 'apeny; torkin' a pennyextra! Another 'apeny. " Julius acquiesced, but felt entitled to moretalking. 

"Where was it?"

"St. Senna's, where they make the lectury--black stuff.... Yes, it_was_ a friend o' mine, mister, so I tell you, and no lies! MissRosalind Nightingale. I see her in the fog round Piccadilly way.... No, no lies at all! Told me her name of her own accord, and wentindoors. " Julius would have tried to get to the bottom of this if hehad not been so taken aback by it, even at the cost of more pence forconversation; but by the time he had found that his informant hadcertainly read the paragraph, or at least mastered Sally's name right, the boy had vanished. Of course, he was the boy with the gap in histeeth that she had seen in the fog when Colonel Lund was dying. Wecan only hope that his shrewdness and prudence in worldly mattershave since brought him the success they deserve, as his disappearancewas final. 

Even the Twopenny Tube was too slow for Julius Bradshaw, so mad washe with impatience to get to Georgiana Terrace. When he got there, and went upstairs two steps at a time, and "I say, Tishy dearest, lookat _this_!" on his lips, he was met half-way by his young wife, alsoextending a newspaper, and "Paggy, just _fancy_ what's happened! Lookat _this_!"

They were so wild with excitement that they refused food--at least, when it took the form of second helpings--and when the banquet wasover Lętitia could do nothing but walk continually about the room withgleaming eyes and a flushed face waiting furiously for the post; forshe was sure it would bring her a letter from Sally or her mother. And she was right, for the rush to the street door that followed thepostman's knock resulted firstly in denunciations of an intransitiveletter-box nobody but a fool would ever have tried to stuff all thoseinto, and secondly in a pounce by Lętitia on Sally's own handwriting. 

"You may just as well read it upstairs comfortably, Tish, " saysJulius, meanly affecting stoicism now that it is perfectly clear--forthe arrival of the letter practically shows it--that nobody isincapacitated by the accident. "Come along up!"

"All right!" says his wife. "Why, mine's written in pencil! Who'syours from?"

"I haven't opened it yet. Come along. Don't be a goose!" This was alittle cheap stoicism, worth deferring satisfaction of curiosity threeminutes for. 

"Whose handwriting is it?" She goes on devouring, intensely absorbed, though she speaks. 

"It looks like the doctor's. "

"Of course! You'll see directly.... All right, I'm coming!"

Take your last look at the Julius Bradshaws, as they settle down withanimated faces to serious perusal of their letters. They may just aswell drink their coffee, though, and Julius will presently light hiscigar for anything we know to the contrary; but we shall not see it, for when we have transcribed the two letters they are reading weshall lay down our pen, and then, if you want to know any more aboutthe people in this story, you must inquire of the originals, all ofwhom are still living except Dr. Vereker's mother, who died last year, we believe. Here are the letters:

 "MY DEAREST TISHY, "I have a piece of news to tell that will be a great surprise to you. I am engaged to Conrad Vereker. Perhaps, though, I oughtn't to say as much as that, because it hasn't gone any farther at present than me promising not to marry any one else, and as far as I can see I might have promised any man that. 

 "Now, don't write and say you expected it all along, because I shan't believe you. 

 "Of course, tell anybody you like--only I hope they'll all say that's no concern of theirs. I should be so much obliged to them. Besides, so very little has transpired to go by that I can't see exactly what they could either congratulate or twit about. Being engaged is so very shadowy. Do you remember our dancing-mistress at school, who had been engaged seven years to a dancing-master, and then they broke it off by mutual consent, and she married a Creole? And they'd saved up enough for a school of their own all the time! However, as long as it's distinctly understood there's to be no marrying at present, I don't think the arrangement a bad one. Of course, you'll understand I mean other girls, and the sort of men they get engaged to. With Prosy it's different; one knows where one is. Only I shouldn't consider it honourable to jilt Prosy, even for the sake of remaining single. You see what I mean. 

 "The reason of pencil (don't be alarmed!) is that I am writing this in bed, having been too long in the water. It's to please Prosy, because my System has had a shake. I _am_ feeling very queer still, and can't control my thumb to write. I must tell you about it, or you'll get the story somewhere else and be frightened. 

 "It was all Jeremiah's fault, and I really can't think what he was doing. He admits that he was seedy, and had had a bad night. Anyhow, it was like this: I followed him down to the pier very early before breakfast, and you remember where the man was fishing and caught nothing that day? Well, what does Jeremiah do but just walk plump over the edge. I had all but got to him, by good luck, and of course I went straight for him and caught him before he sank. I induced him not to kick and flounder, and got him inside a life-belt they threw from the pier, and then I settled to leave him alone and swim to the steps, because you've no idea how I felt my clothes, and it would have been all right, only a horrible heavy petticoat got loose and demoralised me. I don't know how it happened, but I got all wrong somehow, and a breaker caught me. _Don't get drowned_, Tishy; or, if you do, _don't be revived again_! I don't know which is worst, but I think reviving. I can't write about it. I'll tell you when I come back. 

 "They won't tell me how long I was coming to, but it must have been much longer than I thought, when one comes to think of it. Only I can't tell, because when poor dear Prosy had got me to[A]--down at Lloyd's Coffeehouse, where old Simon sits all day--and I had been wrapped up in what I heard a Scotchman call 'weel-warmed blawnkets, ' and brought home in a closed fly from Padlock's livery stables, I went off sound asleep with my fingers and toes tingling, and never knew the time nor anything. (Continuation bit. ) This is being written, to tell you the truth, in the small hours of the morning, in secrecy with a guttering candle. It seems to have been really quite a terrible alarm to poor darling mother and Jeremiah, and much about the same to my medical adviser, who resuscitated me on Marshall Hall's system, followed by Silvester's, and finally opened a vein. And there was I alive all the time, and not grateful to Prosy at all, I can tell you, for bringing me to. I have requested not to be brought to next time. The oddity of it all was indescribable. And there, now I come to think of it, I've never so much as seen the Octopus since Prosy and I got engaged. I shall have to go round as soon as I'm up. (Later continuation bit--after breakfast. ) Do you know, it makes me quite miserable to think what an anxiety I've been to all of them! Mother and J. Can't take their eyes off me, and look quite wasted and resigned. And poor dear Prosy! How ever shall I make it up to him? Do you know, as soon as it was known I was to, [B] the dear fellow actually tumbled down insensible! I had no idea of the turn-out there's been until just now, when mother and Jeremiah confessed up. Just fancy it! Now I must shut up to catch the post. 

 "Your ever affect. Friend, "SALLY. "

 [Footnote A: Part of a verb to _get to_, or _bring to_. Not very intelligible!]

 [Footnote B: See note, p. 563. ][Transcriber's Note: This footnote refers to Footnote A]

 "MY DEAR BRADSHAW, "I am so very much afraid you and your wife may be alarmed by hearing of the events of this morning--possibly by a press-paragraph, for these things get about--that I think it best to send you a line to say that, though we have all had a terrible time of anxiety, no further disastrous consequences need be anticipated. Briefly, the affair may be stated thus:

 "Fenwick and Miss Nightingale were on the pier early this morning, and from some unexplained false step F. Fell from the lower stage into the water. Miss N. Immediately plunged in to his rescue, and brought him in safety to a life-buoy that was thrown from the pier. It seemed that she then started to swim back, being satisfied of his safety till other help came, but got entangled with her clothes and went under. She was brought ashore insensible, and remained so nearly four hours. For a long time I was almost without hope, but we persevered against every discouragement, with complete final success. I am a good deal more afraid now of the effect of the shock on Mrs. Fenwick and her husband than for anything that may happen to Miss N. , whose buoyancy of constitution is most remarkable. You will guess that I had rather a rough time (the news came rather suddenly to me), and all the more (but I know you will be glad to hear this) that Miss N. And your humble servant had only just entered on an engagement to be married at some date hereafter not specified. I am ashamed to say I showed weakness (but not till I was sure the lungs were acting naturally), and had to be revived with stimulants! I am all right now, and, do you know, I really believe my mother will be all the better for it; for when she heard what had happened, she actually got up and _ran_--yes, ran--to Lloyd's Coffeehouse (you remember it?), where I was just coming round, and had the satisfaction of telling her the news. I cannot help suspecting that her case may have been wrongly diagnosed, and that the splanchnic ganglion and solar plexus are really the seat of the evil. If so, the treatment has been entirely at fault. 

 "I shall most likely be back to-morrow, so keep your congrats. For me, old chap. No time for a letter. Love from us all to yourself and Mrs. J. B. 

 "Yours ever, "CONRAD VEREKER. 

 "P. S. --I reopen this (which I wrote late last night) to say that Miss N. , so far from having acquired a horror of the water (as is usual in such cases), talks of 'swimming over the ground' if the weather clears. I fear she is incorrigible. "

THE END

 * * * * *

 BY WILLIAM DE MORGAN

 JOSEPH VANCE

 A novel of life near London in the 50's. $1. 75. 

 "The best thing in fiction since Mr. Meredith and Mr. Hardy; must take its place, by virtue of its tenderness and pathos, its wit and humor, its love of human kind, and its virile characterization, as the first great English novel that has appeared in the twentieth century. "--LEWIS MELVILLE in _New York Times Saturday Review_. 

 "If the reader likes both 'David Copperfield' and 'Peter Ibbetson' he can find the two books in this one. "--_The Independent. _

 ALICE-FOR-SHORT

 The story of a London waif, a friendly artist, his friends and family, with some decidedly dramatic happenings. $1. 75. 

 "Really worth reading and praising.... If any writer of the present era is read a half century hence, a quarter century, or even a decade, that writer is William De Morgan. "--_Boston Transcript. _

 "It is the Victorian age itself that speaks in these rich, interesting, overcrowded books.... Everywhere are wit, learning and scholarship.... Will be remembered as Dickens's novels are remembered. "--_Springfield Republican. _

 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

 PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

 * * * * *

=WILLIAM DE MORGAN'S SOMEHOW GOOD=

 After years of separation from his wife, the hero, during a complete suspension of memory and loss of identity, accidentally finds shelter in her home. This situation seems very simple, but the developments are far from simple, and form a story of complicated motives and experiences which holds the reader closely. 

 An almost grown-up daughter, ignorant of the situation, heightens the tension of the plot, and furnishes her share of two charming stories of young love. 

 "Somehow Good" is, in the unanimous opinion of the publishers' readers, an advance upon anything of Mr. De Morgan's yet publisht. $1. 75. 

=WILLIAM DE MORGAN'S ALICE-FOR-SHORT=

 The story of a London waif, a friendly artist, his friends and family, with some decidedly dramatic happenings. Sixth printing. $1. 75. 

 "'Joseph Vance' was far and away the best novel of the year, and of many years.... Mr. De Morgan's second novel ... Proves to be no less remarkable, and equally productive of almost unalloyed delight.... The reader ... Is hereby warned that if he skims 'Alice-for-Short' it will be to his own serious loss.... A remarkable example of the art of fiction at its noblest. "--_Dial. _

 "Really worth reading and praising ... Will be hailed as a masterpiece. If any writer of the present era is read a half century hence, a quarter century, or even a decade, that writer is William De Morgan. "--_Boston Transcript. _

=WILLIAM DE MORGAN'S JOSEPH VANCE=

 A novel of life near London in the 50's. Sixth printing. $1. 75. 

 "The book of the last decade; the best thing in fiction since Mr. Meredith and Mr. Hardy; must take its place, by virtue of its tenderness and pathos, its wit and humor, its love of human kind, and its virile characterization, as the first great English novel that has appeared in the twentieth century. "--LEWIS MELVILLE in _New York Times Saturday Review_. 

 "A perfect piece of writing. "--_New York Tribune. _

 * * * * *

=MAY SINCLAIR'S THE HELPMATE=

 A story of married life. Third printing. $1. 50. 

 "An advance upon 'The Divine Fire. '"--_London Times. _

 "The one novel on the divorce question. "--_Boston Transcript. _

 "A noteworthy book.... There are things said in these pages, and said very plainly, which need to be said, which are rarely enough said--almost never so well said. The book contains unforgettable scenes, persons, phrases, and such a picture of the hardness of a good woman as exists nowhere else in our literature. "--_New York Times Saturday Review. _

 "Masterly ... Artistic to the core. "--_Boston Advertiser. _

 "No criticism of trifles can leave in doubt the great distinction of her craftsmanship. Very certainly she must have made her reputation by this book, if it had not been already won. "--_Punch_ (London). 

=MAY SINCLAIR'S THE DIVINE FIRE=

 A story of a London poet. 13th printing. $1. 50. 

 "In all our new fiction I have found nothing worthy to compare with 'The Divine Fire. '"--MARY MOSS in _The Atlantic Monthly. _

 "A full-length study of the poetic temperament, framed in a varied and curiously interesting environment, and drawn with a firmness of hand that excites one's admiration.... Moreover, a real distinction of style, besides being of absorbing interest from cover to cover. "--_Dial. _

 "I find her book the most remarkable that I have read for many years. "--OWEN SEAMAN in _Punch_ (London). 

=MAY SINCLAIR'S THE TYSONS= 4th printing. $1. 50

 "Maintains a clinging grip upon the mind and senses, compelling one to acknowledge the author's genius. "--_Chicago Record-Herald. _

=MAY SINCLAIR'S SUPERSEDED= 2nd printing. $1. 25

 "Makes one wonder if in future years the quiet little English woman may not be recognized as a new Jane Austen. "--_New York Sun. _

=MAY SINCLAIR'S AUDREY CRAVEN= 2nd printing. $1. 50

 "It ranks high in originality, interest and power.... Audrey is a distinct creation. "--_Times Review. _

 * * * * *

* * * If the reader will send his name and address the publisher willsend, from time to time, information regarding their new books. 

 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

"THE RETURN OF THE ESSAY"

=OVER AGAINST GREEN PEAK=

 By MISS ZEPHINE HUMPHREY

 The homely experiences of a bright young woman and her Aunt Susan, not to mention the "hired girl, " in New England country life. $1. 25 net; by mail, $1. 33. 

 "The obvious friendliness of the little book was immediately disarming. It is leisurely, restful, delightful. Throughout runs a vein of gentle humor, of spontaneity, of unaffected enthusiasm, of a spirit keenly alive to beauty and eager to share its delights. "--_Chicago Record-Herald. _

=COMMENTS OF BAGSHOT=

 By J. A. SPENDER, editor of "The Westminster Gazette. " $1. 25 net; by mail, $1. 33. 

 Delightful comments upon a great range of subjects, including "Friendship, " "Bores, " "The Eleventh-Hour Man, " "Shyness, " "Wealth, " "Poverty, " "The Needy and the Greedy, " "Women's Morality, " etc. 

 _The Spectator_ (London)--"While affording the easiest of reading, nevertheless touches deep issues deeply and fine issues finely. Not only thinks himself, but makes you think ... Wise and witty.... Whether dealing with death and immortality, or riches and Socialism, he always contrives to be pungent and interesting and yet urbane, for there is no attempt either at flashy cynicism or cheap epigram.... We advise our readers to read carefully the admirable passage about Socialism and Bagshot's defence of Aristotle's 'magnificent man. '"

=WORDS TO THE WISE--AND OTHERS=

 By MISS ELLEN BURNS SHERMAN. $1. 50 net; by mail, $1. 60. 

 The Root and Foliage of Style--When Steel Strikes Punk--Our Kin and Others--At the End of the Rainbow--Modern Letter Writing, with various actual examples--Our Comédie Humaine--The Slain That Are Not Numbered. 

 _Boston Transcript_--"A freshness and piquancy wholly delightful.... Opens fresh doors into delightful thoughts and fancies. "

 _San Francisco Chronicle_--"Some of these essays are among the best in the English language. "

 _Chicago Record-Herald_--"Considered in connection with countless other excellent works of the crowded literary season it resembles 'an oasis green in deserts dry. '"

=TAPER LIGHTS=

 By MISS ELLEN BURNS SHERMAN. $1. 25 net; by mail, $1. 34. 

 _Springfield Republican_--"The first satisfactory stopping-place is the last page.... A second and even a third reading is pretty likely to end at the same place. "

FIVE DELIGHTFUL ANTHOLOGIES

=POEMS FOR TRAVELERS=

 Compiled by MARY R. J. DUBOIS. 16mo. 

 Covers France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, and Greece in some three hundred poems (nearly one-third of them by Americans) from about one hundred and thirty poets. All but some forty of these poems were originally written in English. 

 * * * * *

The three following books are uniform, with full gilt flexible coversand pictured cover linings. 16mo. Each, cloth, $1. 50; leather, $2. 50. 

=THE POETIC OLD WORLD=

 Compiled by MISS L. H. HUMPHREY. 

 Covers Europe, including Spain, Belgium and the British Isles, in some two hundred poems from about ninety poets. Some thirty, not originally written in English, are given in both the original and the best available translation. 

=THE OPEN ROAD=

 A little book for wayfarers. Compiled by E. V. LUCAS. 

 Some 125 poems from over 60 authors, including Fitzgerald, Shelley, Shakespeare, Kenneth Grahame, Stevenson, Whitman, Browning, Keats, Wordsworth, Matthew Arnold, Tennyson, William Morris, Maurice Hewlett, Isaak Walton, William Barnes, Herrick, Dobson, Lamb, Milton, Whittier, etc. , etc. 

 "A very charming book from cover to cover. "--_Dial. _

=THE FRIENDLY TOWN=

 A little book for the urbane, compiled by E. V. LUCAS. 

 Over 200 selections in verse and prose from 100 authors, including: James R. Lowell, Burroughs, Herrick, Thackeray, Scott, Vaughn, Milton, Cowley, Browning, Stevenson, Henley, Longfellow, Keats, Swift, Meredith, Lamb, Lang, Dobson, Fitzgerald, Pepys, Addison, Kemble, Boswell, Holmes, Walpole, and Lovelace. 

 "Would have delighted Charles Lamb. "--_The Nation. _

 * * * * *

=A BOOK OF VERSES FOR CHILDREN=

 Over 200 poems representing some 80 authors. Compiled by E. V. LUCAS. With decorations by F. D. BEDFORD. _Revised edition_. $2. 00. Library edition, $1. 00 net. 

 "We know of no other anthology for children so complete and well arranged. "--_Critic. _

 PUBLISHERSHENRY HOLT AND COMPANY NEW YORK

Transcriber's Note

This ebook retains the spelling variations of the original text. 

Advertisements from the front of the original text have been moved tothe back of this ebook. Ellipses have been standardized. 

The following typographical corrections have been made to this text:

 Table of Contents: Changed CONRADE to CONRAD (CONRAD VEREKER'S)

 Page 98: Changed heathrug to hearthrug (side of the hearthrug)

 Page 110: Changed things to thing (this sort of thing)

 Page 119: Changed Sallikin to Sallykin (My Sallykin has been)

 Page 132: Removed duplicate word 'to' (one word to save us)

 Page 169: Changed Rosy to Rosey (Rosey had found a guardian)

 Page 188: Changed use to us (both of us drowned)

 Page 242: Changed Simly to Simply (Simply this: to show you)

 Page 270: Added missing single-quote (to come hisself. ')

 Page 281: Added missing word 'on' (Sally was on a stairflight)

 Page 304: Removed duplicate word 'together' (talk together earnestly)

 Page 342: Changed you to your (promise your mother)

 Page 382: Added missing period (recollection of B. C. )

 Page 383: Changed tan-laden to tar-laden (blowing the tar-laden)

 Page 399: Changed explantory to explanatory (self-explanatory colloquy)

 Page 413: Added missing close-quotes ("Not?--not at all?")

 Page 426: Changed Rosanlind to Rosalind (breathing-space for Rosalind)

 Page 433: Changed bendictions to benedictions (bed, with benedictions)

 Page 437: Added missing close-quotes ("But it's awful!")

 Page 449: Changed same to some (Had some flavour)

 Page 459: Changed suprise to surprise (surprise-tactics)

 Page 471: Changed lighting-flash to lightning-flash (decisive lightning-flash)

 Page 476: Changed he to be (be determined by either landlord)

 Page 491: Changed elasped to elapsed (his time had elapsed)

 Page 494: Removed extraneous close-quotes (trust to anything. )

 Page 500: Changed skirits to skirts (muslin skirts)

 Page 505: Changed Kruetzkammer to Kreutzkammer (Kreutzkammer--he's Diedrich)

 Page 520: Changed new to knew (she well knew)

 Page 559: Changed recue to rescue (plunged in to his rescue)