Somehow Good
by William De Morgan · English · Gutenberg #28345 · 1,239,157 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Somehow Good
Author: William De Morgan
Release date: March 16, 2009 [eBook #28345]
Most recently updated: January 4, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOMEHOW GOOD ***
Produced by Audrey Longhurst, C. St. Charleskindt and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by The Internet Archive.)
SOMEHOW GOOD
BY
WILLIAM DE MORGAN
AUTHOR OF "JOSEPH VANCE"
AND "ALICE-FOR-SHORT"
[Publisher's Device: Ou polla, alla polu]
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1908
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 PRÆTEREA 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 a
bank in the City, and, handing his card across the counter, asked if
credit had been wired for him from New York. The clerk to whom he
spoke would inquire.
As he leaned on the counter, waiting for the reply, his appearance was
that of a man just off a sea voyage, wearing a suit of clothes well
knocked about in a short time, but quite untainted by London dirt. His
get-up conveyed no information about his social position or means. His
garments had been made for him; that was all that could be said. That
is something to know. But it leaves the question open whether their
wearer is really only a person in decent circumstances--_one_ decent
circumstance, at any rate--or a Duke.
The trustworthy young gentleman in spectacles who came back from an
authority in the bush to tell him that no credit had been wired so
far, did not seem to find any difficulty in affecting confidence that
the ultimate advent of this wire was an intrinsic certainty, like
the post. Scarcely, perhaps, the respectable confidence he would have
shown 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, one
inclusive of its own collar and cuffs. Our friend's answered this
description; but then, it was blue. However, the confidence would
have wavered under an independent collar and wristbands. Cohesiveness
in 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 young
gentleman, smiling sweetly through his spectacles. "It isn't ten
o'clock yet." But he only says this to show his confidence, don't you
see? Because his remark is in its nature meaningless, as there is
no time of day telegrams have a penchant for. No doubt there is a
time--perhaps even times and half-a-time--when you cannot send them.
But there is no time when they may not arrive. Except the smallest
hours of the morning, which are too small to count.
"I don't think I did," replies the applicant. "I don't think I thought
about 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 late
in the afternoon. It depends on the load on the wires. Could you call
in again--well, a little before our closing time?"
"All right." The speaker took out a little purse or pocket-book, and
looked in it. "I thought so," said he; "that was my last card." But
the clerk had left it in the inner sanctum. He would get it, and
disappeared to do so. When he came back with it, however, he found its
owner had gone, saying never mind, it didn't matter.
"Chap seems in a great hurry!" said he to his neighbour clerk. "What's
he 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 a
rheumatic 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 along
Cornhill, looking in at the shop-windows. He gave the idea of a chap
with a fine June day before him in London, with a plethora of choices
of what to do and where to go. Also of being keenly interested in
everything, like a chap that had not been in London for a long time.
After watching the action of a noiseless new petroleum engine longer
than its monotonous idea of life seemed to warrant, he told a hansom
to take him to the Tower, for which service he paid a careless two
shillings. The driver showed discipline, and concealed his emotions.
_He_ wasn't going to let out that it was a double fare, and impair
a fountain of wealth for other charioteers to come. Not he!
The fare enjoyed himself evidently at the Tower. He saw everything
he could be admitted to--the Beauchamp Tower for sixpence, and the
Jewel-house for sixpence. And he gave uncalled-for gratuities. When
he had thoroughly enjoyed all the dungeons and all the torture-relics,
and all the memories of Harrison Ainsworth's romance, read in youth
and never forgotten, he told another hansom to drive him across the
Tower Bridge, and not go too fast.
As he crossed the Bridge he looked at his watch. It was half-past
twelve. He would have time to get back before half-past one to a
restaurant he had made a mental note of near the Bank, and still to
allow the cabby to drive on a bit through the transpontine and
interesting regions of Rotherhithe and Cherry Garden Pier. It was so
unlike anything he had been seeing lately. None the worse for the
latter, in some respects. So, at least, thought the fare.
For he had the good, or ill, fortune to strike on a rich vein of
so-called life in a London slum. Shrieks of fury, terror, pain
were coming out of an archway that led, said an inscription, into
Livermore's Rents, 1808. Public opinion, outside those Rents, ascribed
them to the fact that Salter had been drinking. He was on to that pore
wife of his again, like last week. Half killed her, he did, then! But
he was a bad man to deal with, and public opinion wouldn't go down
that court if I was you.
"But you're not, you see!" said the fare, who had sought this
information. "You stop here, my lad, till I come back." This to the
cabman, 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, any
Sunday morning"--a figure of speech we cannot explain.
From his elevation above the crowd he can see a good deal of what goes
on, and guess the rest. Of what he hears, no phrase could be written
without blanks few readers could fill in, and for the meaning of which
no equivalent can even be hinted. The actual substance of the
occurrence, that filters through the cries of panic and of some woman
or child, or both, in agony, the brutal bellowings and threats of a
predominant drunken lout, presumably Mr. Salter, the incessant appeals
to God and Christ by terrified women, and the rhetorical use of the
names of both by the men, with the frequent suggestion that some one
else should go for the police--this actual substance may be drily
stated thus: Mr. Salter, a plumber by trade, but at present out of
work, had given way to ennui, and to relieve it had for two days past
been beating and otherwise maltreating his daughter, aged fourteen,
and had threatened the life of her mother for endeavouring to protect
her. At the moment when he comes into this story (as a mere passing
event we shall soon forget without regret) he is engaged in the
fulfilment of a previous promise to his unhappy wife--a promise we
cannot transcribe literally, because of the free employment of a
popular adjective (supposed to be a corruption of "by Our Lady")
before or after any part of speech whatever, as an expletive to drive
home meaning to reluctant minds. It is an expression unwelcome on the
drawing-room table. But, briefly, what Mr. Salter had so sworn to do
was to twist his wife's nose off with his finger and thumb. And he
did not seem unlikely to carry out his threat, as Livermore's tenantry
lacked spirit or will to interpose, and did nothing but shriek in
panic when feminine, and show discretion when masculine; mostly
affecting indifference, and saying they warn't any good, them Salters.
The result seemed likely to turn on whether the victim's back hair
would endure the tension as a fulcrum, or would come rippin' out like
so much grarse.
"Let go of her!" half bellows, half shrieks her legal possessor, in
answer 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, that
lands fairly on the eye-socket with a cracking concussion that can be
heard above the tumult, and is followed by a roar of delight from the
male vermin, who see all the joys before them of battle unshared and
dangerless--the joys bystanders feel in foemen worthy of each other's
steel, and open to be made the subject of wagers.
The fare rejects all offers to hold his coat, but throws his felt hat
to a boy to hold. Self-elected seconds make a kind of show of getting
a clear space. No idea of assisting in the suppression of a dangerous
drunken savage seems to suggest itself--nothing but what is called
"seeing fair." This is, to wit, letting him loose on even terms on the
only man who has had the courage to intervene between him and his
victim. Let us charitably suppose that this is done in the hope that
it means prompt and tremendous punishment before the arrival of the
police. The cabman sees enough from his raised perch to justify his
anticipating this with confidence. He can just distinguish in the
crowd Mr. Salter's first rush for revenge and its consequences. "He's
got it!" is his comment.
Then he hears the voice of his fare ring out clear in a lull--such
a one as often comes in the tense excitement of a fight. "Give him a
minute.... Now stick him up again!" and then is aware that Mr. Salter
has 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. But
he does not play with him long, for a swift _finale_ comes to the
performance, perhaps consequent on a cry that heralds a policeman.
It causes a splendid excitement in that cabman, who gets as high as
he can, to miss none of it. "That's your sort!" he shouts, quite wild
with 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 an
insincere affectation of sympathy for the defeated combatant.
The fare comes quickly along the court and out at the entry, whose
occupants the cabman flicks aside with his whip suggestively. "Let
the 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 three
policemen, 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 little
trap to his Jehu. "I never got my new hat again," he says. "You must
drive back; there won't be any decent hatter here."
"Ask your pardon, sir--the Bridge is histed. Vessel coming
through--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 old
London, some still paved with cobbles, past lofty wharves or
warehouses daring men lean from the floors of at dizzy heights, and
capture bales for, that seem afloat in the atmosphere till one detects
the thread that holds them to their crane above--under unexplained
rialtos and over inexplicable iron incidents in paving that ring
suddenly and waggle underfoot--the cab finds its way across London
Bridge, and back to a region where you can buy anything, from penny
puzzles 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 a
promising hat-shop, seemed to be in doubt of being able to pay for
something very much cheaper than Niagara. He took out his purse, still
sitting in the cab, and found in it only a sovereign, apparently. He
felt in his pockets. Nothing there beyond five shillings and some
coppers. He could manage well enough--so his face and a slight nod
seemed to say--till he went back to the Bank after lunch. And so, no
doubt, he would have done had he been content with a common human
billycock or bowler, like the former one, at four-and-six. But man is
born to give way to temptation in shops. No doubt you have noticed the
curious fact that when you go into a shop you always spend more--more
than you mean to, more than you want to, more than you've got--one or
other 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, they
betrayed a plebeian nature, and lacked charm. Now, those beautiful
white real panamas, at twenty-two shillings, were exactly the thing
for this hot weather, especially the one the fare tried on. His rich
brown hair, that wanted cutting, told well against the warm
straw-white. He looked handsome in it, with those strong cheek-bones
and bronzed throat Mr. Salter would have been so glad to get at. He
paid for it, saying never mind the receipt, and then went out to pay
the cabby, who respectfully hoped he didn't see him any the worse for
that 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 recipient
hand to come down from above, he adds: "A very one-sided affair! Did
you hear what he said about his daughter? That was why I finished him
so 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_ of
it!" And with a sudden whip-lash, and a curt hint to his horse, that
cabman drove off unpaid. The other took out a pencil, and wrote the
number of the cab on his blue wristband, close to a little red
spot--Mr. Salter's blood probably. When he had done this he turned
towards the restaurant he had taken note of. But he seemed embarrassed
about finances--at least, about the three shillings the cabby had
refused; for he kept them in his hand as if he didn't know what to do
with them. He walked on until he came to a hidden haven of silence
some plane-trees and a Church were enjoying unmolested, and noticing
there a box with a slot, and the word "Contributions" on it, dropped
the three shillings in without more ado, and passed on. But he had no
intention of lunching on the small sum he had left.
An inquiry of a City policeman guided him to a pawnbroker's shop. What
would the pawnbroker lend him on that--his watch? Fifteen shillings
would do quite well. That was his reply to an offer to advance that
sum, 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'll
find it here, any time up to twelve months," said the pawnbroker, who
also nodded after him knowingly as he left the shop. "Coming back for
it 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 comment
looked as if he thought him unlike "most of 'em." _He_ never indulged
in reflections on the ruck--be sure of that!
Mr. Smith, if that was his name, didn't seem uneasy. He found his
way to his restaurant and ordered a very good lunch and a bottle of
Perrier-Jouet--not a half-bottle; he certainly was extravagant. He
took his time over both, also a nap; then, waking, felt for his watch
and remembered he had pawned it; looked at the clock and stretched
himself, and called for his bill and paid it. Most likely the wire had
come to the Bank by now; anyhow, there was no harm in walking round to
see. If it wasn't there he would go back to the hotel at Kensington
where he had left his luggage, and come back to-morrow. It was a
bore. Perhaps they would let him have a cheque-book, and save his
having to come again. Much of this is surmise, but a good deal was the
substance of remarks made in fragments of soliloquy. Their maker gave
the waiter sixpence and left the restaurant with three shillings in
his pocket, lighting a cigar as he walked out into the street.
He kept to the narrow ways and little courts, wondering at the odd
corners Time seems to have forgotten about, and Change to have
deserted as unworthy of her notice; every door of every house an
extract from a commercial directory, mixed and made unalphabetical by
the extractor; every square foot of flooring wanted for Negotiation to
stand upon, and Transactions to be carried out over. No room here for
anything else, thought the smoker, as, after a quarter of an hour's
saunter, he threw away the end of his cigar. But his conclusion was
premature. For lo and behold!--there, in a strange little wedge-shaped
corner, of all things in the world, _a barber's shop_; maybe a relic
of the days of Ben Jonson or earlier--how could a mere loafer tell?
Anyhow, his hair wanted cutting sufficiently to give him an excuse to
see the old place inside. He went in and had his hair cut--but under
special reservation; not too much! The hairdresser was compliant; but,
said he, regretfully: "You do your 'ed, sir, less than justice." Its
owner took his residuum of change from his pocket, and carelessly
spent all but a few coppers on professional remuneration and a large
bottle of eau-de-Cologne. Perhaps the reflection that he could cab all
the way back to the hotel had something to do with this easy-going way
of courting an empty pocket.
When he got to the Bank another young gentleman, with no spectacles
this time, said _he_ didn't know if any credit was wired. He was very
preoccupied, pinning up cheques and initialling some important
customer's paying-in book. But _he_ would inquire in a moment, if you
would wait. And did so, with no result; merely expression of abstract
certainty that it was sure to come. There was still an hour--over an
hour--before closing time, said he to a bag with five pounds of silver
in it, unsympathetically. If you could make it convenient to look in
in an hour, probably we should have received it. The person addressed
but 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!--there
was the Twopenny Tube. At that time it was new, and an excitement. Our
friend had exactly fourpence in his pocket. That would take him to
anywhere and back before the Bank closed. And also he could put some
of that eau-de-Cologne on his face and hands. He had on him still a
sense of the foulness of Livermore's Rents and wanted something to
counteract 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 but
one that he had in his pocket. Something fascinated him in the idea of
commanding, in exchange for that twopence, the power of alighting at
any 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 Museum
he would have four. If Tottenham Court Road, six--and so on. For the
time being he was a sort of monarch, in a small way, over Time and
Space. He would go on to the Museum, at any rate.
What little things life hangs on, sometimes! If he had foolishly got
out at either Chancery Lane or British Museum, there either would have
been no reason for writing this story; or, if written, it would have
been quite different. For at the Museum Station a girl got into the
carriage; and, passing him on her way to a central haven of rest, trod
on his foot, with severity. It hurt, so palpably, that the girl begged
his pardon. She was a nice girl, and sorry.
He forgave her because she was a nice girl, with beautiful rows of
teeth and merry eyebrows. He might have forgiven her if she had been
a dowdy. But he liked forgiving those teeth, and those eyebrows.
So when she sat down in the haven, close to his left shoulder, he
wasn't sorry that his remark that _he_ ought to beg _her_ pardon,
because it was all his fault for sticking out, overlapped her coming
to an anchor. If it had been got through quicker, the incident would
have been regarded as closed. As it was, the fag-end of it was
unexhausted, and she didn't quite catch the whole. It was in no way
unnatural that she should turn her head slightly, and say: "I beg
your 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 called
out--but indeed I didn't think it was a foot. I thought it was
something in the electricity."
Two things were evident. One was that it was perfectly impossible to
be stiff and stodgy over it, and not laugh out. The other, the obvious
absurdity of imputing any sort of motive to the serene frankness and
absolute candour of the speaker. Any sort of motive--"of _that_
sort"--said he to himself, without further analysis. He threw himself
into the laugh, without attempting any. It disposed of the discussion
of the subject, but left matters so that stolid silence would have
been priggish. It seemed to him that not to say another word would
almost have amounted to an insinuation against the eyebrows and the
teeth. 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 there
a 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 nourishment
was needed to sustain it. And she--(for it was she, not he:--did you
guess wrong?)--had begun to want to know, don't you see, why the man
with the hair on the back of his browned hand and the big plain gold
ring on his thumb did not care where he stopped. If he had had a
holiday look about him she might have concluded that he was seeing
London, and then what could be more natural than to break loose, as it
were, in the Twopenny Tube? But in spite of his leisurely look, he had
not in the least the seeming of a holiday-maker. His clothes were not
right for the part. What he was could not be guessed without a clue,
and the conversation had collapsed, clearly! It was irritating to be
gravelled for lack of matter--and he was such a perfect stranger! The
girl was a reader of Shakespeare, but she certainly didn't see her
way 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 the
subject, and recoiled into himself, that gave the girl courage to make
an attempt to satisfy her curiosity. When a man harks back, palpably,
on some preoccupation, after exchanging a laugh and an impersonal word
or two with a girl who does not know him, it is the best confirmation
possible of his previous good faith in seeming more fatherlike than
manlike. Rosalind could risk it, surely. "Very likely he has a
daughter my age," said she to herself. Then she saw an opening--the
thumb-ring.
"Do pray excuse me for asking, but do you find it does good? My
mother was recommended to try one."
"This ring? It hasn't done _me_ any good. But then, I have hardly
anything the matter. I don't know about other people. I'm sorry I
bought it, now. It cost four-and-sixpence, I think. I would sooner
have the four-and-sixpence.... Yes, decidedly! I would sooner have
the 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 should
so much like to--to...."
"To buy it for sixpence? Certainly. Why not? Much better than paying
four-and-six for a new one. Your mother _may_ find it do her good. I
don't care about it, and I really have nothing the matter."
He drew the ring off his thumb, and Rosalind took it from him. She
slipped it on her finger, over her glove. Naturally it slipped off--a
man's thumb-ring! She passed it up inside the glove-palm, through the
little slot above the buttons. Then she got out her purse, and looked
in 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 offering
beyond her bargain, which might have implied liberality, or
benevolence, or something equally offensive. But it wasn't that at
all.
"I have no change," said he. "Never mind about the sixpence. Send me
stamps. I'll give you my card." And then he recollected he had no
card, 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 certainly
did not give that impression. Still, "no money at all, except
twopence!" Would it be safe to try to get the half-crown into his
pocket? That was what she wanted to do, but felt she might easily
blunder over it. If she was to achieve it, she must be quick, for the
public within hearing was already feeling in its pocket, in order to
oblige 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 be
one-and-eleven exactly, because of the postage. It ought to be a
penny for stationery, too.... Oh, well! never mind, then...."
She had got the card, and the man, demurring to the stationery
suggestion, 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 name
once--years ago."
The link in the dialogue here was that she had thought the surprise
was due to his crediting her with matrimony and a visiting-card
daughter. She was just thinking could she legitimately inquire into
the 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 any
relation----"
"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 card
slipped from his fingers and fluttered down. In pursuing it he missed
the half-crown, which the young lady released, fancying he was about
to take hold of it, and stooped to search for it where it had rolled
under 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, he
added: "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 horspital
now." This was portentous and enigmatical. The guard continued: "If a
party gets electrocuted, it's no concern of the employees on the line.
It lies between such parties and the Company. I shouldn't myself, if
I was you! But it's between you and the Company. I wash _my_ hands."
"If the wires are properly insulated"--this was from an important
elderly gentleman, of a species invariable under the circumstances--"_if_
the wires are properly insulated, there is not the slightest cause for
apprehension 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 hands
well outside of the circuit." But the elderly gentleman was not ready
to acquiesce in the conditions pointed at.
"I repeat," said he, "that the protection of the public is, or ought
to be, amply secured by the terms of the Company's charter. If any
loophole exists for the escape of the electric current, all I can say
is, the circumstances call for public inquiry. The safety of the
public is the concern of the authorities."
"Then," said the guard pointedly, "if I was the public, I should put
my hands in my pocket, and not go fishing about for ambiguous property
in 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 leaped
out in a blue flame under the seat where the man's hand was exploring
for the half-crown. It was either that, or another like it, at the
man's heel. Or both together. A little boy was intensely delighted,
and wanted more of the same sort. The elderly gentleman turned purple
with indignation, and would at once complain to the authorities. They
would take the matter up, he doubted not. It was a disgrace, etc.,
etc., etc.
Rosalind, or Sally, Nightingale showed no alarm. Her merry eyebrows
were as merry as ever, and her smile was as unconscious a frame to her
pearly teeth as ever, when she turned to the mother of the delighted
little boy and spoke.
"There now! It's exactly like that when I comb my hair in very dry
weather." And the good woman was able to confirm this from her own
experience, narrating (with needless details) the strange phenomena
attendant on the head of a young person in quite a good situation at
Woollamses, and really almost a lady, stating several times what she
had said to the young person, Miss Ada Taylor, and what answer she
had received. She treated the matter entirely with reference to the
bearings of the electric current on questions of social status.
But the man did not move, remaining always with his arm under the
seat. Rosalind, or Sally, thought he had run the half-crown home, but
in 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 from
Shepherd's Bush Station. It looked like a showily dressed wife of a
shabby husband; for the semi-detached other villa next door had been
standing to let for years, and its compo front was in a state of
decomposition from past frosts, and its paint was parched and thin
in the glare of the present June sun, and peeling and dripping
spiritlessly from the closed shutters among the dead flies behind
the cracked panes of glass that had quite forgotten the meaning of
whitening and water, and that wouldn't hack out easy by reason of
the putty having gone 'ard. One knew at a glance that if the turncock
was to come, see, and overcome the reluctance of the allotted
cock-to-be-turned, the water would burst out at every pore of the
service-pipes in that house, except the taps; and would know also
that the adept who came to soften their hearts and handles would have
to go back for his tools, and would be a very long time away.
Krakatoa, on the other hand, was resplendent with stone-colour, and
smelt strongly of it. And its door you could see through the glass of
into the hall, when its shutters were not thumb-screwed up over the
panes, was painted a green that staggered the reason, and smelt even
more strongly than the stone-colour. And all the paint was so thick
that the beadings on the door were dim memories, and all the execution
on the sculptured goblets on pedestals flanking the steps in the front
garden was as good as spoiled. And the paint simmered in the sun, and
here and there it blistered and altogether suggested that Krakatoa,
like St. Nicholas, might have halved its coats with the beggar next
door--given him, suppose, one flat and one round coat. Also, that
either the job had been 'urried, and not giv' proper time to dry, or
that 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 its
bell-handle to the passer-by, even as the patient puts out his tongue
to the doctor. But experts in palimpsests, if they had penetrated the
superscriptions in chalk and pencil of idle authorship, would have
found that it was The Retreat. Probably this would have been revealed
even if the texts had been merely Bowdlerised with Indian-rubber or
a sponge, because there were a good many objectionable passages.
But The Retreat _was_ a retreat, and smelt strong of the Hermits, who
were cats. Krakatoa was not a volcano, except so far as eruptions on
the paint went. But then it had become Krakatoa through a mistake; for
the four coats of paint at the end of the first seven years, as per
agreement, having completely hidden the first name, Saratoga, and the
builders' retention of it having been feeble--possibly even affected
by newspaper posters, for it was not long after the date of the great
eruption--the new name had crept in in the absence of those who could
have corrected it, but had gone to Brighton to get out of the smell of
the paint.
When they returned, Mr. Prichard, the builder, though shocked and
hurt at the discovery that the wrong name had been put up, was
strongly opposed to any correction or alteration, especially as it
would always show if altered back. You couldn't make a job of it; not
to say a proper job. Besides, the names were morally the same, and
it was absurd to allow a variation in the letters to impose on our
imagination. The two names had been applied to very different
turns-out abroad, certainly; but then they did all sorts of things
abroad. If Saratoga, why not Krakatoa? Mr. Prichard was entrenched in
a 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. He
had only to remain inanimate, and what could a (presumably) widow lady
with one small daughter do against him? So at the end of the first
seven years, what had been Saratoga became Krakatoa, and remained so.
And it was in the back garden of the again newly painted villa, seven
years later, that the lady of the house, who was watering the garden
in the cool of the afternoon, asked her excited daughter, who had just
come home in a cab, what on earth could have prompted her to do such
a mad thing, such a perfectly _insane_ thing! We shall see what it was
immediately.
"Oh, Sally, Sally!" exclaimed that young person's still young and very
handsome 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 the
beginning. You _know_ I couldn't leave him to be taken to the
police-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 railway
people?"
"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 just
like this." And then Miss Sally Nightingale repeats, briefly and
rapidly, for the second time, the circumstances of her interview in
the railway-carriage and its tragic ending. Also their sequel on the
railway platform, with the partial recovery of the stunned or
stupefied man, his inability to speak plainly, the unsuccessful search
in his pockets for something to identify him, and the final decision
to put him in a cab and take him to the workhouse infirmary, pending
discovery of his identity. The end of her story has a note of relief
in 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 both
come away, so I came to tell you."
"You stupid chit! why couldn't you tell me at first? There, don't cry
and be a goose!"
But Sally disclaims all intention of crying. Her mother discards the
watering-pot and an apron, and suppresses appearances of gardening;
then goes quickly through the house, passes down the steps between
the scarlet geraniums in the over-painted goblets, through the gate
on which Saratoga ought to be, and Krakatoa is, written, and finds
a four-wheeled cab awaiting developments. One of its occupants alights
and meets her on the pavement. A rapid colloquy ensues in undertones,
ending in the slightly raised voice of the young man, who is clearly
Dr. Vereker.
"Of course, you're perfectly right--perfectly right. But you'll have
to make my peace with Miss Sally for me."
"A chit of a girl like that! Fancy a responsible man like you letting
himself be twisted round the finger of a young monkey. But you men are
all alike."
"Well, you know, really, what Miss Sally said was quite true--that it
was only a step out of the way to call here. And she had got this idea
that it was all her fault."
"Was it?"
"I can only go by what she says." The girl comes into the conversation
through the gate. She may perhaps have stopped for a word or two with
cook and a house-and-parlourmaid, who are deeply interested, in the
rear.
"It _was_ my fault," she said. "If it hadn't been for me, it would
never have happened. Do see how he is now, Dr. Vereker."
It is open to surmise that the first strong impulse of generosity
having died down under the corrective of a mother, our young lady is
gradually seeing her way to interposing Dr. Vereker as a buffer
between herself and the subject of the conversation, for she does not
go to the cab-door to look in at him. The doctor does. The mother
holds 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 his
friends 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 give
any account of himself yet. Of course, I don't know what he'll be able
to do to-morrow morning."
He resumes his place in the cab beside its occupant, who, except
for an entire want of animation, looks much like what he did in the
railway-carriage--the same strong-looking man with well-marked
cheek-bones, very thick brown hair and bushy brows, a skin rather
tanned, and a scar on the bridge of the nose; very strong hands with
a tattoo-mark showing on the wrist and an abnormal crop of hair on the
back, running on to the fingers, but flawed by a scar or two. Add to
this the chief thing you would recollect him by, an Elizabethan beard,
and you will have all the particulars about him that a navy-blue serge
suit, with shirt to match, allows to be seen of him. But you will have
an impression that could you see his skin beyond the sun-mark limit on
his hands and neck, you would find it also tattooed. Yet you would not
at once conclude he was a sailor; rather, your conclusion might go on
other lines, but always assigning to him a rough adventurous outdoor
life.
When the doctor got into the cab and shut the door himself, he took
too much for granted. He assumed the driver, without whom, if your
horse 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 moored
alongside in dock, the kerbstone playing the part of the quay. Boys
will then accumulate, and undervalue your appearance and belongings.
And impossible persons, with no previous or subsequent existence, will
endeavour to see their way to the establishment of a claim on you. And
you will be rather grateful than otherwise that a policeman without
active interests should accrue, and communicate to them the virus of
dispersal, however long its incubation may be. You will then probably
do as Dr. Vereker did, and resent the driver's disappearance. The
boys, mysteriously in his, each other's, and the policeman's
confidence (all to your exclusion), will be able to quicken his
movements, and he will come trooping from the horizon, on or beyond
which is Somebody's Entire.
All this came to pass in due course, and the horse, deprived of his
nosebag, returned to his professional obligations. But it was a shabby
horse in a shabby cab, to which he imparted movement by falling
forwards and saving himself just before he reached the ground. His
reins were visibly made good with stout pack-thread, and he had a
well-founded contempt for his whip, which seemed to come to an end
too soon, and always to hit something wooden before it reached any
sensitive part of his person. But he did get off at last, and showed
that, 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, that
stated that the complication of inefficiencies in front of it was one
of twelve thousand and odd--pray Heaven, more competent ones!--in the
Metropolis, and had nearly turned to go into the house, when the very
much 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? Were
there not plenty of Nightingales in the world? Miss Sally is perceptive
about 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 to
see that our first impression of them, derived perhaps from their
relative ages only, was an entirely false one as far as size went. The
daughter is nearly as tall as her mother, and may end by being as big
a woman when she has completely graduated, taken her degree, in
womanhood. But for all that we, who have looked at both faces, know
that when they turn round we shall see on the shoulders of the one
youth, inexperience, frankness, and expectation of things to come; on
those of the other a head that keeps all the mere physical freshness
of the twenties, if not quite the bloom of the teens, but--expressed
Heaven knows how!--experience, reserve, and retrospect on things that
have been once and are not, and that we have no right to assume to be
any concern of ours. Equally true of all faces of forty, do we
understand you to say? Well, we don't know about that. It was all very
strong in this face.
We can look again, when they turn round. But they don't; for number
twelve thousand and odd has come to a standstill, and its energumenon
has come down off its box, and is "fiddlin' at something on the
'orse's 'ed." So cook says, evidently not impressed with that cab. The
doctor looks out and confers; then gets out and comes back towards the
house. The girl and her mother walk to meet him.
"Never saw such a four-wheeler in my life! The harness is tied up with
string, and the rein's broken. The idiot says if he had a stout bit of
whipcord, he could make it square." No sooner have the words passed
the 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 her
mother. "Now she won't know where to get it."
She calls after her ineffectually. The doctor suggests that he shall
follow with instructions. Yes, suppose he does? There is precisely the
thing wanted in the left-hand drawer of the table in the hall--the
drawer the handle comes off. This seems unpromising, but the doctor
goes, 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 of
himself, once knew a Rosalind Nightingale.
Probably the handle has come off the drawer, for they are a long time
over that string. Curiosity has time to work, and has so much effect
that the lady seems to determine that, after all, she would like to
see the man. Now that the cab is so far from the door, even if she
spoke to him, she would not stand committed to anything. It is all
settled, 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 of
the house, both exclaim. And the surprise they express is that the
mother 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 her
previous attitude.
"Now, isn't that like mamma?" says Sally. If so, why be so astonished
at it?--is a question that suggests itself to her hearer. But
self-confutation is not a disorder for his treatment. Besides, the
doctor likes it, in this case. His own surprise at mamma's conduct is
unqualified by any intimate acquaintance with her character. She may
be inconsistency itself, for anything he knows.
"Is she going to turn the cab round and bring him to the house, after
all?" 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 of
pearls, and nods confirmation. Her dark eyes look merry under the
merry eyebrows, and the lip-pinch makes a dimple on her chin--a dimple
to remember her by. She is a taking young lady, there is no doubt of
it. At least, the doctor has none.
"Yes, Sally, it's all quite right." Thus her mother, arriving a little
ahead of the returning cab. "Now, don't dispute with me, child, but do
just as I tell you. We'll have him in the breakfast-room; there's
fewer steps." She seems to have made up her mind so completely that
neither of the others interposes a word. But she replies, moved by a
brain-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 that
side, doctor.... That's right!"
And then the man, whose name we still do not know, found himself half
supported, half standing alone, on the pavement in front of a little
white eligible residence smelling of new paint. He did not the least
know what had happened. He had only a vague impression that if some
one or something, he couldn't say what, would only give up hindering
him, he would find something he was looking for. But how could he
find it if he didn't know what it was? And that he was quite in the
dark about. The half-crown and the pretty girl who had given it to
him, the train-guard and his cowardice about responsibility, the
public-spirited gentleman, the railway-carriage itself, to say nothing
of 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, each
perhaps to see if one of the others would speak first. In the end the
lady who was a woman nodded to the gentleman to speak, and then the
lady who was a girl confirmed her by what was little more than an
intention to nod, not quite unmixed with a mischievous enjoyment at
the devolution of the duty of speech on the gentleman. It twinkled in
her closed lips. But the gentleman didn't seem overwhelmed with
embarrassment. He spoke as if he was used to things.
"You have had an accident, sir.... On the railway.... In the Twopenny
Tube.... Yes, you'll remember all about it presently.... Yes, I'm a
doctor.... Yes, we want you to come in and sit down and rest till
you're better.... No, it won't be a long job. _You'll_ soon come
round.... 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 right
meanings, as one guesses in the jaws of the telephone, perhaps with
more confidence. But there was but little audible articulation on the
other's part.
He seemed not to want much support--chiefly guidance. He was taken
down the half-dozen steps that flanked a grass slope down to a stone
paving, and through a door under the more numerous steps he had
escaped climbing, and into a breakfast-room flush with the kitchen,
opening on a small garden at the back. There was the marriage of Queen
Victoria and Prince Albert over the chimney-piece, and a tortoiseshell
cat with a collar on the oilskin cover of a square table, who rose as
though half resenting strange visitors; then, after stretching,
decided on some haven less liable to disturbance, and went through the
window to it without effort, emotion, or sound. There was a clock
under a glass cover on the chimney-piece whose works you could see
through, with a fascinating ratchet movement of perfect grace and
punctuality. Also a vertical orange-yellow glass vase, twisted to a
spiral, and full of spills. Also the leaning tower of Pisa, done small
in alabaster. He could see all these things quite plainly, and but
that 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 there
at all. Where ought he to have been, he asked himself? And, to his
horror, he could not make that out either. Never mind. Patience was
the word, clearly. Let him shut his eyes as he sat there, in the
little breakfast-room, with the flies continually droning in the
ceiling, and an especially large bluebottle busy in the window, who
might just as easily have gone out and enjoyed the last hour of a long
evening in a glorious sunshine, but who mysteriously preferred to beat
himself for ever against a closed pane of glass, a self-constituted
prisoner between it and a gauze blind--let him shut his eyes, and try
to think out what it all meant, what it was all about.
All that he was perfectly certain of, at that moment, was that he was
awake, with a contused pain all over, and a very stiff left hand and
foot. And that, knowing he had been insensible, he was striving hard
to remember what something was that had happened just before he became
insensible. He had nearly got it, once or twice. Yes, now he _had_ got
it, surely! No, he hadn't. It was gone again.
A mind that is struggling to remember some particular thing does not
deal with other possibilities of oblivion. We all know the painful
phenomenon of being perfectly aware what it is we are trying to
remember, feeling constantly close to it, but always failing to grasp
it. 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 such
thing, does it ever occur to any of us to ask if we may not be
mistaken in our tacit assumption that we are quite certain to remember
everything else as soon as we try? That, in fact, it may be our
memory-faculty itself that is in fault and that we are only failing to
recall one thing because at the moment it is that one sole thing, and
no 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 the
activity of the bluebottle and the monotony of the ceiling flies, the
murmur of a distant conversation between his late companions, who for
the moment had left him alone, tried in vain to recover his particular
thread of memory, without any uneasiness about the innumerable skeins
that made up the tissue of his record of a lifetime.
When the young doctor returned, he found him still seated where he had
left him, one hand over his eyes, the other on his knee. As he
sat--for the doctor watched him from the door for a moment--he moved
and replaced either hand at intervals, with implied distress in the
movements. They gave the impression of constant attempt constantly
baffled. The doctor, a shrewd-seeming young man with an attentive pale
eye, and very fair hair, seemed to understand.
"Let me recommend you to be quiet and rest. Be quite quiet. You will
be all right when you have slept on it. Mrs. Nightingale--that's the
lady you saw just now; this is her house--will see that you are
properly 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 you
can take--to eat or drink?"
"Nothing--nothing to eat or drink."
"Well, you know best. However, there's tea coming; perhaps you'll go
so far as a cup of tea? You would be the better for it."
* * * * *
Rosalind junior, or Sally, slept in the back bedroom on the
first-floor--that is to say, if we ignore the basement floor and call
the one flush with the street-door step the ground-floor. We believe
we are right in doing so. Rosalind senior, the mother, slept in the
front one. It wasn't too late for tea, they had decided, and thereupon
they 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, on
the 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 her
mother's room, covering her slightly _retroussé_ nose with her
fresh-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, with
her eyes closed. The speaker left her hands over her nostrils as she
spoke, to do full justice to the soap, pausing an instant in her
safety-pin raid for the answer:
"I've been feeling the heat. It's nothing. You go down, and I'll
come."
"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 right
after a cup of tea." And Sally, after an intricate movement with a
safety-pin, an openwork lace cuff that has lost a button, and a white
wrist, goes down three accelerandos of stair-lengths, with landing
pauses, and ends with a dining-room door staccato. But she isn't long
gone, for in two minutes the door reopens, and she comes upstairs as
fast, 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 that
I was so sorry I'd not been able to eau-de-Cologne your forehead, and
he began speaking and couldn't get his words. Then he got this out of
his pocket. I remember one of the men at the station said something
about his having a bottle, but I thought he meant a pocket-flask. He
looks the sort of man that would have a pocket-flask and earrings."
Her mother doesn't seem to find this inexplicable, nor to need
comment. Rather the contrary. Sally dabs her brow with eau-de-Cologne,
beneficially, for she seems better, and says now go; she won't be
above a couple of minutes. Nor is she, in the sense in which her
statement has been accepted, for she comes downstairs within seven by
the clock with the dutiful ratchet movement.
* * * * *
When she came within hearing of those in the room below, she heard
a male voice that was not Dr. Vereker's. Yes, the man (whom we still
cannot speak of by a name) was saying something--slowly, perhaps--but
fairly articulately and intelligibly. She went very deliberately, and
listened in the doorway. She looked very pale, and very interested--a
face of fixed attention, of absorption in something she was irresolute
about, rather than of doubt about what she heard; an expression rather
out of proportion to the concurrent facts, as we know them.
"What is so strange"--this is what the man was saying, in his slow
way--"is that I could find words to tell you, if I could remember what
it is I have to tell. But when I try to bring it back, my head fails.
Tell me again, mademoiselle, about the railway-carriage." Sally
wondered why she was mademoiselle, but recognised a tone of deference
in his use of the word. She did as he asked her, slightly interrupting
her narrative to make sure of getting the tea made right as she did
so.
"I trod on your foot, you know. (One, two, three spoonfuls.) Surely
you 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 had
known it was a foot. You _must_ remember that?" The man half smiled as
he shook a slow-disclaiming head--one that would have remembered so
gladly, if it could. "Then," continues Sally, "I saw your thumb-ring
for rheumatism."
"My thumb-ring!" He presses his fingers over his closed eyes, as
though to give Memory a better chance by shutting off the visible
present, then withdraws them. "No, I remember no ring at all."
"How extraordinary!"
"I remember a violent concussion _somewhere_--I can't say where--and
then finding myself in a cab, trying to speak to a lady whose face
seemed familiar to me, but who she could be I had not the slightest
idea. Then I tried to get out of the cab, and found I could not
move--or hardly."
"Look at mamma again! Here she is, come." For Mrs. Nightingale has
come into the room, looking white. "Yes, mother dear, I have. Quite
full up to the brim. Only it isn't ready to pour yet." This last
concerns the tea.
Mrs. Nightingale moves round behind the tea-maker, and comes full-face
in front of her guest. One might have fancied that the hand that held
the pocket-handkerchief that caused the smell of eau-de-Cologne that
came in with her was tremulous. But then that very eau-de-Cologne was
eloquent about the recent effect of the heat. Of course, she was a
little upset. Nothing strikes either the doctor or Mademoiselle Sally
as abnormal or extraordinary. The latter resumes:
"Surely, sir! Oh, you must, you _must_ remember about the name
Nightingale?"
"This young gentleman said it just now. _Your_ name, madame?"
"Certainly, my name," says the lady addressed. But Sally
distinguishes:
"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 for
half-a-crown. And then I gave you my mother's card to send it to us
here. One-and-elevenpence, because of the postage. Why, surely you can
remember that!" She cannot bring herself to believe him. Dr. Vereker
does, though, and tells him not to try recollecting; he will only put
himself 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 have
a sort of feeling of--of being frightened; for I have been trying to
remember things, and I find I can remember almost nothing. Perhaps
I 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. The
doctor throws in counsel, aside, for precaution.
"You'll only make matters worse, like that. Better leave him quite
alone."
But the man's hearing doesn't seem to have suffered, for he catches
the remark about his name.
"I can't tell," he says. "I am not so sure. Of course, I can't have
forgotten my own name, because that's impossible. I will tell it you
in a minute.... Oh dear!..."
The young doctor seemed to disapprove highly of these efforts, and to
wish to change the conversation. "Let it alone now," said he. "Only
for a little. Would you kindly allow me to see your arm again?"
"Let him drink his tea first." This is from Miss Sally, the
tea-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; never
mind apologizing." But the patient had not contemplated apology. It
was the stiffness made him slow. However, he got his coat off, and
drew the blue shirt off his left arm. He had a fine hand and arm, but
the hand hung inanimate, and the fingers looked scorched. Dr. Vereker
began feeling the arm at intervals all the way up, and asking each
time questions about the degree of sensibility.
"I couldn't say whether it's normal or not up there." So the patient
testified. And Mrs. Nightingale, who was watching the examination
intently, suggested trying the other arm in the same place for
comparison.
"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 have
a look now, anyhow."
"_You're_ a nice doctor!" This is from Miss Sally; a little
confidential fling at the profession. She is no respecter of persons.
Her mother would, no doubt, check her--a pert little monkey!--only she
is absorbed in the examination.
The doctor, as he ran back the right-arm sleeve, uttered an
exclamation. "Why, my dear sir," cried he, "here we have it! What more
can we want?"--and pointed at the arm. And Sally said, as though
relieved: "He's got his name written on him plain enough, anyhow!" Her
mother gave a sigh of relief, or something like it, and said, "Yes."
The patient himself seemed quite as much perplexed as pleased at the
discovery, saying only, in a subdued way: "It _must_ be my name." But
he 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. She
fixed 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 to
this state of anonymous ambiguity. His bewilderment was painful to
witness. "If it were my name," he said, speaking slowly and not very
clearly, "surely it would bring back the first name. I try to recall
the word, and the effort is painful, and doesn't succeed." His hostess
seemed much interested, even to the extent of ignoring the doctor's
injunctions.
"Very curious! If you heard the name now, would you recollect it?"
"I _wish_ you wouldn't try these experiments," says the doctor. "They
won'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 it
quite 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 bottle
of eau-de-Cologne."
"I did not remember it. I do not now. I mean, how it came to be in the
pocket. I can remember nothing else that was there--would have been,
that is. There is nothing else there now, except my cigar-case and
a pocket-book with nothing much in it. I can tell nothing about my
watch. 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 the
memory-point nearly normal.
When the doctor, looking at his watch, referred to his obligation to
keep another engagement, Fenwick rose, saying that he was now
perfectly well able to walk, and he would intrude no longer on his
hostesses' hospitality. This would have been perfectly reasonable, but
for one thing. It had come out that his pockets were empty, and he was
evidently quite without any definite plan as to what he should do
next, or where he should go. He was only anxious to relieve his new
friends of an encumbrance. He was evidently the sort of person on
whom the character sat ill; one who would always be most at ease when
shifting for himself; such a one as would reply to any doubt thrown on
his power of doing so, that he had been in many a worse plight than
this before. Yet you would hardly have classed him on that account as
an adventurer, because that term implies unscrupulousness in the way
one shifts for oneself. His face was a perfectly honourable one. It
was a face whose strength did not interfere with its refinement, and
there was a pleasant candour in the smile that covered it as he
finally made ready to depart with the doctor. He should never, he
said, know how to be grateful enough to madame and her daughter for
their kindness to him. But when pressed on the point of where he
intended to go, and how they should hear what had become of him, he
answered vaguely. He was undecided, but, of course, he would write and
tell them as they so kindly wished to hear of him. Would mademoiselle
give 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 his
memory was coming back, or would come back. It might have seemed
needless inquisitiveness to press him with further questions. They
left the point alone. After all, they had no more right to catechize
him about himself than if he had been knocked down by a cart outside
the door, and brought into the house unconscious--a thing which might
quite well have happened.
Mrs. Nightingale seemed very anxious he should not go away quite
unprovided with money. She asked Dr. Vereker to pass him on a loan
from her before he parted with him. He could post it back when it was
quite 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 of
him. I'm not sure we ought to let him go at all," added she. She
seemed very uneasy about it--almost exaggeratedly so, the doctor
thought. But he was reassuring and confident, and she allowed his
judgment to overrule hers. But he must bring him back without scruple
if he saw reason to do so. He promised, and the two departed together,
the gait and manner of Fenwick giving rise to no immediate
apprehension.
"How rum!" said Sally, when they had gone. "I never thought I should
live 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. Sally
makes 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 like
cheating at Spiritualism. You _must_ say the alphabet quite
steady--A--B--C--D----" Sally sketches out the proper attitude for
the 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 no
reason why his shouldn't be Algernon." Satisfactory and convincing! At
least, the speaker thinks so, and is perfectly satisfied. Her mother
doesn'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 in
front--it is a quiet, retired sort of cul-de-sac road, ending in a
fence 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's
gone down, and Martha can make supper another half-hour late." Agreed.
The mother pauses as they reach the gate. "Who's that talking?" she
asks, 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's
voice----"
"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 a
chattering.... There, I knew it would be that! Why doesn't he bring
him 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, with
decision in her voice. "Come on, child!"
She seems greatly relieved at the matter having settled itself--so
Sally thinks, at least.
"We got as far as this," Dr. Vereker says--rather meaninglessly, if
you 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 about
the question, but much about the answer. It is answered, however, with
the assistance of the previous police-constable, who reappears like
a ghost. And Mr. Fenwick is back again within the little white villa,
much embarrassed at the trouble he is giving, but unable to indicate
any other course. Clearly, it would never do to accept the only one
he can suggest--that he should be left to himself, leaning on the
fire-alarm, till the full use of his limbs should come back to him.
Mrs. Nightingale, who is the person principally involved, seems quite
content with the arrangement. The doctor, in his own mind, is rather
puzzled at her ready acquiescence; but, then, the only suggestion he
could make would be that he should do precisely the same good office
himself to this victim of an electric current of a good deal too
many volts--too many for private consumption--or cab him off to the
police-station or the workhouse. For Mr. Fenwick continues quite
unable to give any account of his past or his belongings, and can only
look 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 so
strangely thrown on the hands of Mrs. Nightingale and her daughter was
a pleasant one. For had the reverse been the case, the resources of
civilisation for disposing of him elsewhere had not been exhausted
when 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 the
principal factor in the solution of the problem--appeared, as we have
seen, to have made up her mind on the subject. And probably her
daughter had been enough influenced by the stranger's manner and
appearance, even in the short period of the interview we have just
described, to get rid of a feeling she had of self-reproach for her
own rashness. We don't understand girls, but we ask this question of
those who do: Is it possible that Miss Sally was impressed by the
splendid arm with the name tattooed on it--an arm in which every
muscle told as in a Greek statue, without infringing on its
roundness--the arm of Theseus or Ilissus? Or was it the tone of his
voice--a musical one enough? Or merely his generally handsome face
and courteous manner?
He remained that night at the house, but next day still remembered
nothing. 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, that
day and the next, slowly regaining the use of his right hand. But his
memory continued a blank; and though he was not unable to converse
about passing events, he could not fix his attention, or only with
a great effort. What was very annoying to Sally was that he was
absolutely unable to account for his remark about her name and her
mother's in the railway-carriage. He could not even remember making
this. He could recall no reason why he should have made it, from any
of the few things that came back to his mind now--hazily, like ghosts.
Was he speaking the truth? Why not? Mrs. Nightingale asked. Why not
forget 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 only
consolatory circumstance was that his use and knowledge of words
remained intact; it was his memory of actual incidents and people
in the past that was in fault. Definite effort to follow slight
clues remaining in his mind ended in failure, or only served to
show that their origin was traceable to literary fiction. But his
language-faculty seemed perfectly in order. It came out that he spoke
French fluently, and a little Spanish, but he was just as ready with
German. It seemed as if he had been recently among French people, if
one could judge from such things as his calling his hostess "Madame"
when he recovered. These facts came to light in the course of next
day, the second of his stay in the house. The favourable impression he
had produced on Miss Sally did not diminish, and it seemed much easier
and more natural to acquiesce in his remaining than to cast about for
a new whereabouts to transfer him to. So his departure was
deferred--for a day, at least, or perhaps until the room he occupied
should be wanted for other purposes. The postponements on the days
that followed were a natural sequence so long as there remained any
doubt of his ability to shift for himself.
But in about a month's time the effects of the nervous shock had
nearly disappeared, and he had almost recovered the use of his
hand--could, in fact, write easily. Besides, as long as he remained,
it would be impossible for an old friend of Mrs. Nightingale's, who
frequently stayed the night, when he came on an evening visit, to
follow a custom which was in the winter almost invariable. In the
summer it was less important; and as soon as this friend, an old
military gentleman spoken of as "the Major," could be got to
understand exactly what had taken place, he readily gave up his
quarters at Krakatoa Villa, and returned to his own, at the top of
a house in Ball Street, Mayfair.
Nevertheless, the inevitable time came for looking Fenwick's future in
the face. It was difficult, as he was unable to contribute a solution
of the question, except by his readiness to go out and find work for
himself, promising not to come back till he found it.
"You'll see I shall come back to dinner," said he. "I shan't make you
late."
Sally asked him what sort of work he should look for.
"I have a sort of inner conviction," he replied, "that I could do
almost anything I turned my hand to. Probably it is only a diseased
confidence bred of what you might call my artificial inexperience.
Every sharp young man's _bona fide_ inexperience lands him in that
delusion."
"But you must have _some_ kind of preference for _something_, however
much 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 I
know I know all about it, for all that. I can feel the knowledge of it
itching in my finger-ends. Yes--I could train horses. Fruit-farming
would 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--I
must have had something to do with it. It's all very odd."
"But the horses--the horses," said Sally, who did not want him to
wander from the point. "How should you go about it? Should you walk
into 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 ask
them if they couldn't find me a raw colt to try my hand on for a
wager. Say I had laid a hundred I would quiet down the most vicious
quadruped 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 pounds
to a brass farthing I knock all the vice out of the worst beast they
can find in an hour. I shouldn't say the wager had been accepted, you
know."
"Well, anyhow, I shan't accept it. You haven't got a hundred pounds
to pay with. To be sure, I haven't got a brass farthing that I know
of. 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 this
twice, becoming very absent and thoughtful.
Sally felt apologetic for reminding him of his position, and
immediately said so. She was evidently a girl quite incapable of any
reserves 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 you
know?--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 what
a lark that will be!" Sally's ingenious optimism made matters very
pleasant. She did not like to press the conversation on these lines,
lest Mr. Fenwick should refer to a loan she knew her mother had made
him; indeed, had it not been for this the poor man would have been
hard put to it for clothes and other necessaries. All such little
matters, which hardly concern the story, had been landed on a
comfortable footing at the date of this conversation.
But Mr. Fenwick did not lend himself to the agreeable anticipation of
Sally's "lark." There was a pained distraction on his handsome face as
he 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 recent
ministrations of a hairdresser. He walked to the window-bay that
looked out on the little garden, shaking and rubbing his head, and
then came back to where he had been sitting--always as one wrestling
with 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 name
in a cheque-book is really a recollection of doing so, or merely
the knowledge that I _must_ have done so, I cannot tell. But it is
disagreeable--thoroughly disagreeable--and _strange_ to the last
degree. I cannot tell you how--how torturing it is, always to be
compelled to stop on the threshold of an uncompleted recollection."
"I have the idea, though, quite!" said Sally. "But of course one never
remembers signing one's name, any particular time. One does it
mechanically. So I don't wonder."
"Yes! But the nasty part of the flash is that I always know that it is
not _my_ name. Last time it came--just now this minute--it was a name
like Harrington or Carrington. Oh dear!" He shook and rubbed his head
again, 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_ name
as I write it."
"Oh, but I see!" Sally is triumphant. "You signed for a firm you
belonged to, of course. People _do_ sign for firms, don't they?" added
she, with misgivings about her own business capacity. But Mr. Fenwick
did not accept this solution, and continued silent and depressed.
The foregoing is one of many similar conversations between Fenwick
and Sally, or her mother, or all three, during the term of his stay
at Krakatoa Villa. They were less encouraged by the older lady, who
counselled Fenwick to accept his oblivion passively, and await the
natural return of his mental powers. They would all come in time, she
said; and young Dr. Vereker, though his studious and responsible face
grew still more studious and responsible as time went on, and the mind
of this case continued a blank, still encouraged passivity, and spoke
confidently--whatever he thought--of an early and complete recovery.
When, in Fenwick's absence, Sally reported to Dr. Vereker and her
mother the scheme for applying to "Tat's" for a wild horse to break
in, the latter opposed and denounced it so strongly, on the ground of
the danger of the experiment, that both Sally and the doctor promised
to support her if Fenwick should broach the idea again. But when he
did so, it was so clear that the disfavour Mrs. Nightingale showed for
such a risky business would be sufficient to deter him from trying it
that neither thought it necessary to say a word in her support; and
the conversation went off into a discussion of how it came about that
Fenwick should remember Tattersall's. But, said he, he did not
remember Tattersall's even now. And yet hearing the name, he had
automatically called it "Tat's." Many other instances showed that his
power of imagery, in relation to the past, was paralysed, while his
language-faculty remained intact, just as many fluent speakers and
writers spell badly. Only it was an extreme case.
A fortunate occurrence that happened at this time gave its quietus to
the unpopular horse-breaking speculation. It happened that, as Mrs.
Nightingale was shopping at a big "universal providing" stores not far
away, one of the clerks had some difficulty in interpreting a French
phrase in a letter just received from abroad. No one near him looked
more likely to help than Mrs. Nightingale, but she could do nothing
when applied to; although, she said, she had been taught French in her
youth. But she felt certain Mr. Fenwick could be of use--at her house.
French idiom was evidently unfamiliar in the neighbourhood, for the
young gentleman from the office jumped at the opportunity. He went
away with Mrs. Nightingale's card, inscribed with a message, and came
back before she had done shopping (not that that means such a very
short time), not only with an interpretation, but with an exhaustive
draft of an answer in French, which she saw to be both skilful and
scholarly. It was so much so that a fortnight later an inquiry came to
know if Mr. Fenwick's services would be available for a firm in the
City, which had applied to be universally provided with a man having
exactly his attainments and no others. In less than a month he was
installed in a responsible position as their foreign correspondent and
in receipt of a very respectable salary. The rapidity of phrasing in
this movement was abnormal--_prestissimo_, in fact, if we indulge our
musical vocabulary. But the instrumentation would have seemed less
surprising to Sally had she known the lengths her mother had gone in
the 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. She
would not have been surprised at herself for backing the interests of
a man nearly electrocuted over her half-crown, but why should her
mother endorse her _protégé_ so enthusiastically?
It is perhaps hardly necessary for us to dwell on the unsuccessful
attempts that were made to recover touch with other actors on the
stage of Fenwick's vanished past. Advertisement--variously worded--in
the second column of the "Times," three times a week for a month,
produced no effect. Miss Sally frequently referred with satisfaction
to the case of John Williams, reported among the Psychical Researches
of the past years, in which a man who vanished in England was found
years after carrying on a goods-store in Chicago under another name,
with a new wife and family, having utterly forgotten the first half of
his life and all his belongings. Her mother seemed only languidly
interested in this illustration, and left the active discussion of the
subject chiefly to Sally, who speculated endlessly on the whole of the
story; without, however, throwing any fresh light on it--unless
indeed, the Chicago man could be considered one. And the question
naturally arose, as long as his case continued to hold out hopes of
a sudden return of memory, and until we were certain his condition was
chronic, why go to expense and court publicity? By the time he was
safely installed in his situation at the wine-merchant's, the idea of
a police-inquiry, application to the magistrates, and so forth, had
become distasteful to all concerned, and to none more so than Fenwick
himself.
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 expressed
the opinion that probably Fenwick's game was a similar game, and that
things of this sort were usually some game. The doctor observed that
he knew without being told that nine such cases out of ten had human
rascality at the bottom of them, but that he had consulted that Yard
in the belief that this might be a tenth case. The Yard said very
proper, and it would do its best, and no doubt did, but nothing was
elucidated.
It is just possible that had Mr. Fenwick communicated _every_ clue he
found, down to the smallest trifle, Dr. Vereker might have been able
to 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 to
say nothing about a certain pawn-ticket that was in the pocket of an
otherwise 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 about
alone to any place distant from the house, more especially when he
did not know what the expedition would lead to. When at last he got
to the pawnbroker's, he found that that gentleman at the counter did
not recognise him, or said he did not. Fenwick, of course, could not
ask the question: "Did I pawn this watch?" It would have seemed
lunacy. But he framed a question that answered as well, to his
thinking.
"Would you very kindly tell me," he asked, dropping his voice,
"whether the person that pawned this watch was at all like me--like
a brother of mine, for instance?" Perhaps he was not a good hand at
pretences, and the pawnbroker outclassed him easily.
"No, sir," replied he, without looking to see; "that I most certainly
can _not_ tell you." Fenwick was not convinced that this was true, but
had to admit to himself that it might be. This man's life was one long
record of an infinity of short loans, and its problem was the
advancing of the smallest conceivable sums on the largest obtainable
security. Why _should_ he recollect one drop in the ocean of needy
applicants? The only answer Fenwick could give to this was based on
his belief that he looked quite unlike the other customers. More
knowledge would have shown him that there was not one of those
customers, scarcely, but had a like belief. It is the common form of
human thought among those who seek to have pawns broked. They are a
class 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, it
became _his_ watch, naturally. But he could remember nothing about it.
And its recovery from the pawnbroker's he could not remember leaving
it at became an absurd dream. Perhaps in Sherlock Holmes's hands it
would have provided a valuable clue. Fenwick said nothing further
about it; put it in a drawer until all inquiries about him had died
into the past.
Another little thing that might have helped was the cabman's number
written on his wristband. But here Fate threw investigation off her
guard. The ciphers were, as it chanced, 3,600; and an unfortunate
shrewdness of Scotland Yard, when Dr. Vereker communicated this clue,
spotted the date in it--the third day of the sixth month of 1900. So
no one dreamed of the cabby, who could at least have shown where the
hat was lost that might have had a name or address inside it, and
where he left its owner in the end. And there was absolutely no clue
to anything elsewhere among his clothes. The Panama hat might have
been bought anywhere; the suit of blue serge was ticketless inside the
collar, and the shirt unmarked--probably bought for the voyage only.
Fenwick had succeeded in forgetting himself just at a moment when he
was absolutely without a reminder. And it seemed there was nothing
for it but to wait for the revival of memory.
This, then, is how it came about that, within three months of his
extraordinary accident, Mr. Fenwick was comfortably settled in an
apartment within a few minutes' walk of Krakatoa Villa; and all the
incidents of his original appearance were getting merged in the
insoluble, and would soon, no doubt, under the influence of a steady
ever-present new routine of life, be completely absorbed in the actual
past.
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 misses
seeing the end of it, how embittered one's existence is, and continues
for some time after! Think what our friend the cabman would have felt
had he missed the _dénouement_! And when one finds oneself again
on its site--if that is the correct expression--how one wishes one
was not ashamed to inquire about its result from the permanent
officials on the spot--the waterman attached to the cab-rank, the
crossing-sweeper at the corner, the neolithographic artist who didn't
really draw that half-mackerel himself, but is there all day long, for
all that; or even the apothecary's shop over the way, on the chance
that the casualties went or were taken there for treatment after the
battle. One never does ask, because one is so proud; but if one did
ask, one would probably find that oblivion had drawn a veil over the
event, and that none of one's catechumens had heard speak of any such
an occurrence, and that it must have been another street. Because, if
it had 'a been there, they would have seen to a certainty. And the
monotonous traffic rolls on, on, on; and the two counter-streams of
creatures, each with a story, divide and subdivide over the spot where
the underneath man's head sounded on the kerbstone, which took no
notice at the time, and now seems to know less than ever about it.
Are we, in thus moralising, merely taking the mean advantage the
author is apt to imagine he has established over his reader when he
ends off a chapter with a snap, and hopes the said reader will not
dare to skip? No, we are not. We really mean something, and shall get
to 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 Chapters
I. and II. had become records of the past six months later, when the
snow was on the ground four inches thick on Christmas morning--two
inches, at least, having been last night's contribution--and made it
all sweet and smooth all over so that there need be no unpleasantness.
As Sally looked out of her mother's bedroom window towards the front
through the Venetian blind, she saw the footprints of cats alone on
the snow in the road, and of the milk alone along the pavement. For
the milk had preferred to come by hand, rather than plough its
tricycle through the unknown depths and drifts of Glenmoira Road, W.,
to which it had found its way over tracks already palliated by the
courage of the early 'bus--not plying for hire at that hour, but only
seeking its equivalent of the _carceres_ of the Roman Coliseum, to
inaugurate the carriage of twelve inside and fourteen out to many
kinds of Divine Service early in the day, and one kind only of
dinner-service late--the one folk eat too much pudding and mince-pie
at, and have to take a dose after. During this early introductory
movement of the 'bus its conductor sits inside like a lord, and
classifies documents. But he has nothing to do with our story. Let us
thank him for facilitating the milk, and dismiss him.
"My gracious goodness me!" said Sally, when she saw the snow. She did
not say it quite from the bottom of her heart, and as her own form of
expression; but in inverted commas, as it were, the primary
responsibility being cook's or Jane's. "You mustn't think of getting
up, 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 the
ring _has_ done it good. Dr. Vereker may laugh as much as he
likes----"
"Well, the proof of the pudding's in the eating. But wait till you
see how thick the snow is. _Come--in!_" This is very staccato. Jane
was 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 hope
that cat won't get him!" And Sally, who is huddled up in a thick
dressing-gown and is shivering, is so excited that she goes on
looking through the blind, and the peep-hole she has had to make to
see clear through the frosted pane, in spite of the deadly cold on the
finger-tip she rubbed it with. Her mother felt interested, too, in the
fate of the robin, but not to the extent of impairing her last two
minutes in bed by admitting the slightest breath of cold air inside a
well-considered fortress. She was really going to get up, though, that
was flat! The fire would blaze directly, although at this moment it
was blowing wood-smoke down Jane's throat, and making her choke.
Directly was five or six minutes, but the fire did blaze up royally in
the end. You see, it wasn't a slow-combustion-grate, and it burned too
much fuel, and flared away the coal, and did all sorts of comfortable,
uneconomical things. So did Jane, who had put in a whole bundle of
wood.
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 take
advantage of the blaze while it lasted. And Mrs. Nightingale and her
daughter, in the thickest available dressing-gowns, and pretending
they were not taking baths only because the bath-room was thrown out
of gear by the frost, took advantage of the said blaze to their
heart'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 her
not to knock. She is the stupidest girl. She _will_ knock!" Her mother
doesn't press the point. There is no bad blood anywhere. Did not Sally
wish 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! But
I 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 next
door."
"I know. Horrible beast!"
"Well, but just think of being out in the cold in this weather, with
nothing to eat! Oo--oo--oogh!" Sally illustrates, with an intentional
shudder. "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. Fenwick
come 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 by
a 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 the
bell--Krakatoa had no knocker--and a short colloquy followed between
Jane and the ringer. Then he departed, with his twinkly click and
noiseless footstep on the snow, slamming the front gate. Jane was able
to include a card he had left in a recrudescence or reinforcement of
hot water. Sally takes the card and looks at it, and her mother says,
"Well, Sally?" with a slight remonstrance against the unfairness of
keeping back information after you have satisfied your own
curiosity--a thing people are odious about, as we all know.
"_He's_ coming all right," says Sally, looking at both sides of the
card, and passing it on when she has quite done with it. Sally, we may
mention, as it occurs to us at this moment,--though _why_ we have no
idea,--means to have a double chin when she is five years older than
her mother is now. At present it--the chin--is merely so much youthful
roundness and softness, very white underneath. Her mother is quite of
a different type. Her daughter's father must have had black hair, for
Sally can make huge shining coils, or close plaits, very wide, out of
her inheritance. Or it will assume the form of a bush, if indulged,
till Sally is almost hidden under it, as the Bosjesman under his
version of Birnam Wood, that he shoots his assegai from. But the
mother'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 people
really mean pale old port when they say so. She has had--still has, we
might say--a remarkably fine figure, and we don't feel the same faith
in Miss Sally's. That young lassie will get described as plump some
day, if she doesn't take care.
But really it is a breach of confidence to get behind the scenes and
describe two ladies in this way, when they are so very much in
_déshabille_--have not even washed! We will look at them again when
they have got their things on. However, they may go on talking now.
The blaze has lost its splendour, and dressing cannot be indefinitely
delayed. But they can and do talk from room to room, confident that
cook and Jane are in the basement out of hearing.
"We shall do nicely, kitten! Six at table. I'm glad Mr. Fenwick can
come. Aren't you?"
"Rather! Fancy having Dr. and Mrs. Vereker and the dear old fossil
and 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 to
receive cavalry every five minutes to prevent his writing you a
prescription."
"Ungrateful little monkey! You know the last he wrote you did you no
end of good."
"Yes, but I didn't ask him for it. He wrote it by force. I hate being
hectored 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 I
mean--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 your
finger--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 a
shilling 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 make
for 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. But
something makes the daughter repeat, as she comes into her mother's
room dry-towelling herself, "You're sure you don't mind, mammy?" to
which the reply is, "No, no! _Why_ should I mind? It's all quite
right," with a forced decision, equivalent to wavering, about it.
Sally looks at her a moment in a pause of dry-towelling, and goes
back to her room not quite convinced. Persons of the same blood,
living constantly together, are sometimes quite embarrassed by their
own brain-waves, and very often misled.
Exigencies of teeth and hair cut the talk short about Mr. Fenwick. But
he gets renewed at breakfast, and, in fact, goes on more or less until
brought up short by the early service at St. Satisfax, when he is
extinguished by a preliminary hymn. But not before his whole story,
so far as is known, has been passed in review. So that an attentive
listener might have gathered from their disjointed chat most of the
particulars of his strange appearance on the scene, and of the
incidents of the next few weeks, and their result in the foundation
of what seemed likely to be a permanent friendship between himself and
Krakatoa Villa, and what certainly was (all things considered) that most
lucrative and lucky post in a good wine-merchant's house in the City.
For Mr. Fenwick had nothing to recommend him but his address and
capacity, brought into notice by an accidental concurrence of
circumstances.
It had been difficult to talk much about him to himself without
seeming to wish to probe into his past life; and as Mrs. Nightingale
impressed on Sally for the twentieth time, just as they arrived at
St. Satisfax, they really knew nothing of it. How could they even know
that this oblivion was altogether genuine? It might easily have been
so at first, but who could say how much of his past had come back to
him during the last six months? An unwelcome past, perhaps, and one
he 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 of
cinder-grit, Sally ascribed this speculation to a disposition on her
mother's part to preach, she having come, as it were, within the scope
and atmosphere of a pending decalogue. Also, she thought the
ostentatious way in which Mr. Fenwick had gone away to skate had
something to do with it.
But she was at all times conscious of a certain access of severity in
her mother as she approached altars--rather beyond the common attitude
of mind one ascribes to the bearer of a prayer-book when one doesn't
mean to go to church oneself. (We are indebted for this piece of
information to an intermittent church-goer; it is on a subject on
which our own impressions have little value.) In the present case
Sally _was_ going to church, so she had to account to herself for a
_nuance_ in her mother's manner--after dwelling on the needlessness
and inadvisability of pressing Mr. Fenwick as to his recollections--by
ascribing it to the consciousness of some secularism elsewhere; and he
was the nearest case of ungodliness to hand.
"I wonder whether he believes anything at all!" said Sally, assuming
the consecutiveness of her remark.
"I don't see why he shouldn't.... Why should he disbelieve more
than...? All I mean is, I don't know." The speaker ended abruptly; but
then that may have been because they were at the church door. Possibly
as a protest against having carried chat almost into the precinct,
Mrs. Nightingale's preliminary burial of her face in her hands lasted
a long time--in fact, Sally almost thought she had gone to sleep, and
told her so afterwards. "Perhaps, though," she added, "it was me came
up from under the bedclothes too soon." Then she thought her levity
displeased her mother, and kissed her. But it wasn't that. She was
thoughtful over something else.
This time, in the church, it may be Sally noticed her mother's
abstraction (or was it, perhaps, devotional tension?) less than she
had done when her attention had been caught once or twice lately by
a similar strained look. For Miss Sally had her eyes on a little
gratifying incident of her own--a trifle that would already have
appeared as an incident in her diary, had she kept one, somewhat
thus:--"Saw that young idiot from Cattley's Stores again in church
to-day, in a new scarlet necktie. I wonder whether it's me, or Miss
Peplow that gollops, or the large Miss Baker." Which would have shown
that she was not always a nun breathless with adoration during
religious exercises. The fact is, Sally would have made a very poor
St. Teresa indeed.
The young idiot was the same young man who had brought the difficult
French idiom to Krakatoa, while Mr. Fenwick was still without an
anchorage of his own. Martha the cook, who admitted him, not feeling
equal to the negotiation, had merely said--would he mind steppin' in
the parlour, and she would send Miss Sally up? and had departed
bearing Mrs. Nightingale's credential-card in a hand as free from
grease as an apron so deeply committed could make it, and brought Miss
Nightingale in from the garden, where she was gardening--possibly
effectually, but what do we know? When you are gardening on a summer
afternoon, you may look very fetching, if you are nineteen, and the
right sex for the adjective. Miss Sally did, being both, and for our
own part we think it was inconsiderate and thoughtless of cook. Sally
was sprung upon that young man like a torpedo on a ship with no guards
out, saying with fascinating geniality through a smile (as one
interests oneself in a civility that means nothing) that Mr. Fenwick
had just gone out, and she didn't know when he would be back. But why
not ask Mrs. Prince at the school, opposite St. Satisfax, where we
went to church; she was French, and would be sure to know what it
meant. _She_ wouldn't mind! "Say I sent you." And the youth, whom the
torpedo had struck amidships, was just departing, conscious of
reluctance, when Mr. Fenwick appeared, having come back for his
umbrella.
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 went
back and gardened honourably, while Mr. Fenwick solved the riddle and
supplied the letter. But for all that, the young man appeared next
Sunday at St. Satisfax's, with an extremely new prayer-book that
looked as if his religious convictions were recent, and never took
his eyes off Sally all through the service--that is, if he did as she
supposed, 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 such
a very short interview; and on the part, too, of a young gentleman who
passed all the working hours of the day among working houris, as it
were soaked and saturated in their fascinations, and not at liberty
to squeeze their hands or ask them for one little lock of hair all
through shop-time. Sally did not realise the force of sameness, nor
the amount of contempt familiarity will breed. Perhaps the houris got
tired and snappish, poor things! and used up their artificial smiles
on the customers. Perhaps it had leaked out that the trying-on hands
contributed only length, personally, to the loveliness of the
trying-on figures. All sorts of things might have happened to
influence this young man towards St. Satisfax; and how did Sally know
how often he had seen the other young lady communicants she had
speculated about? Her mind had certainly thrown in the large Miss
Baker with something of derision. But that Sylvia Peplow was just the
sort of girl men run after, like a big pale gloire-de-Dijon rose all
on one side, with pale golden wavy hair, and great big goggly blue
eyes, looking as if she couldn't help it! Now that we have given you
details, from Sally's inner consciousness, of Miss Peplow's
appearance, we hope you will perceive why she said she "golloped." We
don't, exactly.
However, on this Christmas morning it was made clear whom this young
donkey was hankering after--this is Sally's way of putting it--as Miss
Peplow failed to get her usual place through being late, and had to
sit in a side-aisle, instead of the opposite of her to the idiot--we
are again borrowing from Sally--and now the Idiot would have to glare
round over his shoulder at her or go without! It was soon evident that
he was quite content to go without, and that Sally herself had been
his lode-star. The certainty of this was what prevented her taking so
much notice of her mother as she might otherwise have done.
Had she done so closely, she would hardly have put down her
preoccupation, or tension, or whatever it was, to displeasure at Mr.
Fenwick's going to skate on Christmas morning instead of going to
church. 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 those
occurrences--auxiliaries or encumbrances, as may be--whom one is
liable to meet with in almost any family, who are so forcibly taken
for granted by all its members that the infection of their acceptance
catches on, and no new-comer ever asks that they should be explained.
If they were relatives, they would be easy of explanation; but the
only direct information you ever get about them is that they are not.
This seems to block all avenues of investigation, and presently you
find yourself taking them as a matter of course, like the Lion and
Unicorn, or the image on a stamp.
Fenwick accepted "the Major," as the old fossil was called, so frankly
and completely under that name that he was still uncertain about his
real designation at the current moment of the story. Nobody ever
called him anything but "the Major," and he would as soon have asked
"Major what?" as called in question the title of the King of Hearts
instead of playing him on the Queen, and taking the trick. So far as
he could conjecture, the Major had accepted him in the same way. When
the 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 double
eyeglass off, and, when he couldn't find it, it had to be recovered
before 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 old
Major, for all he was so silent, must have noticed many little things
that Christmas evening to cause him to say what he did next day to
Sally. For, of course, the Major couldn't go back to his lodgings in
Ball Street in weather like this; so he stayed the night in the spare
room, where Mr. Fenwick had been put up tempory, cook said--a room
which was, in fact, usually spoken of as "the Major's room."
Of course, Sally was the sort of girl who would never see anything of
that sort--you'll see what sort directly--though she was as sharp as
a razor in a general way. What made her blind in this case was that,
in certain things, aspects, relations of life, she had ruled mother
out of court as an intrinsically grown-up person--one to whom some
speculations would not apply. So she saw nothing in the fact that when
Mr. 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 on
the landing, chatting confidentially and laughing. Why shouldn't she?
She saw nothing--nothing whatever--in Mr. Fenwick's bringing her
mother a beautiful sealskin jacket as a Christmas present. Why
shouldn't he? The only thing that puzzled Sally was, where on earth
did he get the money to buy it? But then, of course, he was "in the
City," and the City is a sort of Tom Tiddler's ground. Sally found
that enough, on reflection.
She saw nothing, either, in her mother's carrying her present away
upstairs, and saying nothing about it till afterwards. Nor did she
notice any abnormal satisfaction on Mr. Fenwick's countenance as he
came into the drawing-room by himself, such as one might discern in a
hen--if hens had countenances--after a special egg. Nor did she attach
any particular meaning to an expression on the elderly face of the
doctor's mother that any student of Lavater would at once have seen to
mean that _we_ saw what was going on, but were going to be maternally
discreet about it, and only mention it to every one we met in the very
strictest confidence. This lady, who had rather reluctantly joined the
party--for she was a martyr to ailments--was somewhat grudgingly
admitted by Sally to be a comfortable sort of old thing enough, if
only she didn't "goozle" over you so. She had no _locus standi_ for
goozling, whatever it was; for had not Sally as good as told her son
that she didn't want to marry him or anybody else? If you ask us what
would be the connecting link between Sally's attitude towards the
doctor 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 the
fossil Major--at the end of the evening. She had enjoyed herself
immensely, though the simple material for rapture was only foursquare
Halma played by the four acuter intelligences of the six, and draughts
for the goozler and the fossil. But then Sally had a rare faculty for
enjoying herself, and she was perfectly contented with only one
admirer 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 her
maroon-coloured watered silk with velvet facings, because you couldn't
deny that she looked lovely in it. And as for Mr. Fenwick, he looked
just like Hercules and Sir Walter Raleigh, after being out skating all
day long in the cold. And Sally's wisdom had not been in the least
increased by what was, after all, only a scientific experiment on poor
Mr. Fenwick's mental torpor when her mother, the goozler and old Prosy
having departed, got out her music to sing that very old song of hers
to him that he had thought the other day seemed to bring back a sort
of memory of something. Was it not possible that if he heard it often
enough his past might revive slowly? You never could tell!
So when, on Boxing Day morning, Sally's mother, who had got down early
and hurried her breakfast to make a dash for early prayer at St.
Satisfax, looked in at her backward daughter and reproached her, and
said there was the Major coming down, and no one to get him his
chocolate, she spoke to a young lady who was serenely unprepared for
any revelations of a startling nature, or, indeed, any revelations at
all. Nor did getting the Major his chocolate excite any suspicions.
So Sally was truly taken aback when the old gentleman, having drunk
his chocolate, broke a silence which had lasted since a brief and
fossil-like good-morning, with, "Well, missy, and what do _you_ say
to the idea of a stepfather?" But not immediately, for at first she
didn't understand him, and answered placidly: "It depends on who."
"Mr. Fenwick, for instance!"
"Yes, but who for? And stepfather to step-what? Stepdaughter or
stepson?"
"Yourself, little goose! _You_ would be the stepdaughter."
Sally was then so taken aback that she could make nothing of it, but
stood in a cloud of mystification. The major had to help her. "How
would you like your mother to marry Mr. Fenwick?" He was one of those
useful people who never _finesse_, who let you know point-blank where
you are, and to whom you feel so grateful for being unfeeling. While
others there be who keep you dancing about in suspense, while they
break things gently, and all the while are scoring up a little account
against you for considerateness.
Sally's bewilderment, however, recognised one thing distinctly--that
the Major's inquiry was not to get, but to give, information. He
didn't the least want to know what _she_ thought; he was only working
to 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 the
fossil'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 questions
of this sort belonged to a pre-fossilised condition of existence.
"Now, Major dear, why not admit it when you know it's true? You know
quite well they would make a lovely couple. Just fancy them going up
the aisle at St. Satisfax! It would be like mediæval Kings and
Queens." For Sally was still in that happy phase of girlhood in which
a marriage is a wedding, _et præterea 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 quantity
indicated was the smallest little finger-end that could be checked off
with a thumb-nail, the twenty husbands would have come in for a very
poor allowance of matrimony. The Major didn't seem to think the method
of estimation supplied a safe ground for discussion, and allowed it to
lapse.
"I may be quite wrong, you know, my dear," said he. "I dare say I'm
only an old fool. So we won't say anything to mamma, will us, little
woman?"
"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 my
account 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 little
incidents recorded above, which Sally had seen nothing in. He laid
a good deal of stress on the fact that her mother had suppressed the
Christmas present until after Dr. Vereker and his mother had departed.
She wouldn't have minded the doctor, he said, but she would naturally
want to keep the old bird out of the swim. Besides, there was Fenwick
himself--one could see what _he_ thought of it! She could perfectly
well stop him if she chose, and she didn't choose.
"Stop his whatting?" asked Sally perplexingly. But she admitted the
possibility of an answer by not pressing the question home. Then she
went on to say that all these things had happened exactly under her
nose, and she had never seen anything in them. The only concession she
was inclined to make was in respect of the impression her mother
evidently made on Mr. Fenwick. But that was nothing wonderful.
Anything else would have been very surprising. Only it didn't follow
from that that mother wanted to marry Mr. Fenwick, or Mr. Anybody. As
far as he himself went, she liked him awfully--but then he couldn't
recollect who he was, poor fellow! It was most pathetic sometimes to
see him trying. If only he could have remembered that he hadn't been
a pirate, or a forger, or a wicked Marquis! But to know absolutely
nothing at all about himself! Why, the only thing that was known now
about his past life was that he once knew a Rosalind Nightingale--what
he 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 to
be possible to find out something about that Rosalind Nightingale he
knew. Mamma says it's nonsense her being any relation, because she'd
know."
"And suppose we did find out who she was?"
"Well, then, if we could get at her, we might get her to tell us who
he was. And then we could tell him."
Perhaps it is only his fossil-like way of treating the subject, but
certainly the Major shows a very slack interest, Sally thinks, in the
identity 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 you
know--a person!"
"A person isn't a female--when? Eh, missy?" This requires a little
consideration, and gets it. The result, when it comes, seems good in
its 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 leave
cards turned up at the corner? Oh no--not a lady, certainly!"
As she makes these instructive distinctions, Miss Sally is kneeling
on a hassock before a mature fire, which will tumble down and spoil
presently. 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 the
Major's knee just as she asked what Mr. Fenwick was to stop in, is
at liberty to roast, and does so with undisturbed gravity. The Major
is becoming conscious of a smell like Joan of Arc at the beginning
of the entertainment, when her mother comes in on a high moral platform,
and taxes her with singeing, and dissolves the parliament, and rings
to take away breakfast, and forecasts an open window the minute the
Major has gone.
Sally doesn't wait for the open window, but as one recalled to the
active duties of life from liquefaction in a Turkish bath, takes a
cold plunge as far as the front gate without so much as a hat on--to
see if the post is coming, which is absurd--and comes back braced. But
though she only wonders what can have put such an idea as her mother
marrying Mr. Fenwick in the Major's dear silly old head, she keeps on
a steady current of speculation about who that Rosalind Nightingale he
knew could possibly have been; and whether she couldn't be got at even
now. It was such a pity he couldn't have a tip given about him who he
was. 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 really
forget as much as he said he did? How came he not to have forgotten
his languages he was so fluent with? And how about his book-keeping?
And that curious way he had of knowing about places, and then looking
puzzled when asked when he had been there. When they talked about
Klondyke the other day, for instance, and he seemed to know so much
about it.... But, then, see how he grasped his head, and ruffled his
hair, and shut his eyes, and clenched his teeth over his efforts to
recollect whether he had really been there himself, or only read it
all in the "Century" or "Atlantic Monthly"! Surely he was in earnest
then.
Sally's speculations lasted her all the way to No. 260, Ladbroke Grove
Road, where she was going to a music-lesson, or rather music-practice,
with a friend who played the violin; for Sally was learning the
viola--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 are
going to try to describe to you; possibly with the same effect upon
yourself 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 have
never been able to supply a solution. You have given up a conundrum
in despair, and no one has told you the answer.
Here are the particulars of an imaginary case of the sort. You have
made acquaintance--made friends--years ago with some man or woman
without any special introduction, and without feeling any particular
curiosity about his or her antecedents. No inquiry seemed to be
called for; all concomitants were so very usual. You may have felt a
misgiving as to whether the easy-going ways of your old papa, or the
innocent Bohemianisms of his sons and daughters will be welcome to
your new friend, whom you credit with being a little old-fashioned
and strait-laced, if anything. But it never occurs to you to doubt or
investigate; why should you, when no question is raised of any great
intimacy between you and the So-and-sos, which may stand for the name
of his or her family. They ask no certificate from you, of whom they
know just as little. Why should you demand credentials of a passer-by
because he is so obliging as to offer to lend you a Chinese vocabulary
or Whitaker? Why should your wife try to go behind the cheque-book and
the prayer-book of a married couple when all she has had to do with
the lady was, suppose, to borrow a square bottle of her, marked off
in half-inch lengths, to be shaken before taken? Why not accept her
unimpeachable Sunday morning as sufficient warranty for talking to
her 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 sort
of introduction of this sort--you know what we mean!
Well, the So-and-sos have slipped gradually into your life; let this
be granted. We need not imagine, for our purpose, any extreme
approaches of family intimacy, any love affairs or deadly quarrels.
A tranquil intercourse of some twenty years is all we need, every year
of which has added to your conviction of the thorough trustworthiness
and respectability of the So-and-sos, of their readiness to help you
in any little difficulty, and of the high opinion which the rest of
the world has of Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so--the world which knew them
when 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 that
there was a shady story about So-and-so that never was cleared
up--something about money, perhaps; or, worse still, one of those
stories your informant really doesn't like to be responsible for the
particulars of; you must ask Smith yourself. Or your wife comes to you
in fury and indignation that such a scandalous falsehood should have
got about as that Clara So-and-so was never married to So-and-so at
all till ever so long after Fluffy or Toppy or Croppy or Poppy was
born! We take any names at random of this sort, merely to dwell on
your good lady's familiarity with the So-and-so family.
Well, then--there you are! And what can you make of it? There you are
face to face with the fact that a man who was a black sheep twenty or
thirty years ago has been all this time making believe to be a white
sheep so successfully as never was. Or, stranger still, that a woman
who has brought up a family of model daughters--daughters whom it
would 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 your
wife has to go to in trouble--this woman actually--_actually_--if this
tale is true, was guilty in her youth ... there--that will do! Suppose
we say she was no better than she should be. She hadn't even the
decency to be a married woman before she did it, which always makes it
so much easier to talk to strange ladies and girls about it. You can
say all the way down a full dinner-table that Lady Polly Andrews got
into the Divorce Court without doing violence to any propriety at all.
But the story of Mrs. So-and-so's indiscretion while still Miss
Such-and-such must be talked of more guardedly.
And all the while behold the subjects of these stories, in whom, but
for this sudden revelation of a shady past, you can detect no moral
difference from your amiable and respectable self! They puzzle you, as
they puzzle us, with a doubt whether they really are the same people;
whether they have not changed their identity since the days of their
delinquency. If they really are the same, it almost throws a doubt on
how far the permanent unforgiveness of sins is expedient. We of
course refer to Human Expediency only--the construction of a working
hypothesis of Life, that would favour peace on earth and good-will
towards men; that would establish a _modus vivendi_, and enable us to
be jolly with these reprobates--at any rate, as soon as they had
served their time and picked their oakum. We are not intruding on the
province of the Theologian--merely discussing the problem of how we
can make ourselves pleasant to one another all round, until that final
separation of the sheep from the goats, when, however carefully they
may have patched up their own little quarrels, they will have to bid
each other farewell reluctantly, and make up their minds to the
permanent endurance of Heaven and Hell respectively.
We confess that we ourselves think there ought to be a Statute of
Limitations, and that after a certain lapse of time any offence,
however bad, against morality might be held not to have been
committed. If we feel this about culprits who tempted us, at the time
of their enormity, to put in every honest hand a whip to lash the
rascal naked the length of a couple of lamp-posts, how much more when
the offence has been one which our own sense of moral law (a perverted
one, we admit) scarcely recognises as any offence at all. And how much
more yet, when we find it hard to believe that they--actually _they
themselves_, that we know now--can have done the things imputed to
them. If the stories are really true, were they not possessed by evil
spirits? Or have they since come to be possessed by better ones than
their normal stock-in-trade?
What is all this prosy speculation about? Well, it's about our friend
in 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 we
acknowledge ourselves unable to account for her at the date of the
story, knowing what we do of her twenty years previously. It's little
enough, mind, and much of it inferential. Suppose, instead of giving
you our inferences, we content ourselves with passing on to you the
data on which we found them. Maybe you will see your way to some
different life-history for Sally's mother.
The first insight we had into her past was supplied by a friend of
Sally'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 by
Krakatoa Villa, being in truth a Colonel. This one was Major Roper, of
the Hurkaru Club, an old schoolfellow of ours, who was giving us a cup
of coffee and a cigar at the said Club, and talking himself hoarse
about 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 forget
how 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 her
at Madras--ah! before the divorce. I wouldn't tell Horrocks, nor that
dam young fool Silcox, but I don't mind tellin' _you_! Only, look
here, my dear boy, don't you go puttin' it about that _I_ told you
anythin'. You know I make it a rule--a guidin' rule--_never to say
anythin'_. You follow that rule through life, my boy! Take the word
of an old chap that's seen a deal of service, and just you _hold your
tongue_! You make a point--you'll find it pay----" An asthmatic cough
came in here.
"There was a divorce, then?" we said. Terms had to be made with the
cough, but speech came in the end.
"Oh yes, of course--of course! Don't mind repeatin' that--thing was
in the papers at the time. What I was suggestin' holdin' your tongue
about was that story about Penderfield and her.... Well, as I said
just now, I don't mind repeatin' it to you; you ain't Horrocks nor
little 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 deep
in an Oriental newspaper at the far end of the next room. But when the
Major overstrains his voice, it misses fire like a costermonger's,
and only a falsetto note comes on a high register. When this happens
he is wroth.
"It's that dam noise they're all makin'," he says, as soon as he has
become articulate. "That's the man I want, behind the 'Daily
Sunderbund.' 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 give
him instructions. "Just--you--touch the General's arm, and ketch his
attention. Say Major Roper." And he liquidates his obligations to
a great deal of asthmatic cough, while the jumping frog does his
bidding.
The General (who is now Lord Pellew of Cutch, by-the-bye) came with
an amiable smile from behind the journal, and ended a succession
of good-evening nods to newcomers by casting an anchor opposite
the Major. The latter, having by now taken the surest steps towards
bringing the whole room into his confidence, stated the case he sought
confirmation for.
Oh yes, certainly; the General was in Umballa in '80; remembered the
young lady quite well, and the row between Penderfield and his wife
about her. As for Penderfield, everybody remembered _him_! _De mortuis
nil_, etc.--of course, of course. For all that, he was one of the
damnedest scoundrels that ever deserved to be turned out of the
service. Ought to have been cashiered long ago. Good job he's gone to
the 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 Miss
Wrennick: same sort of story, but he wasn't thinking of them at all.
Only the name wasn't either Rayner or Verschoyle. General Pellew stood
thoughtfully feeling about in a memory at fault, and looking at an
unlighted cigar he rolled in his fingers, as though it might help if
caressed. Then he had a flash of illumination. "Rosalind Graythorpe,"
he said.
There we had it, sure enough! The Major see-sawed in the air with
a finger of sudden corroboration. "Rosalind Graythorpe," he repeated
triumphantly, and then again, "Ros-a-lind Graythorpe," dwelling on the
syllables, and driving the name home, as it were, to the apprehension
of all within hearing. It was so necessary to a complete confidence
that every one should know whom he was holding his tongue about. Where
would be the merit of discretion else? But the enjoyment of details
should be _sotto voce_. The General dropped his voice to a good
sample, suggesting a like course to the more demonstrative secrecy
of the Major.
"I remember the whole story quite well," said he. "The girl was
going out by herself to marry a young fellow up the country at
Umballa, I think. They were _fiancés_, and on the way the news
came of the outbreak of cholera. So she got hung up for a while at
Penderfield's--sort of cousin, I believe, him or his wife--till the
district was sanitary again. Bad job for her, as it turned out! Nobody
there to warn her what sort of fellow Penderfield was--and if there
had been she wouldn't have believed 'em. She was a madcap sort of
a girl, and regularly in the hands of about as bad a couple as you'll
meet with in a long spell--India or anywhere! They used to say out
there that the she Penderfield winked at all her husband's affairs as
long as he didn't cut across _her_ little arrangements--did more than
wink, in fact--lent a helping hand; but only as long as she could rely
on his remaining detached, as you might say. The moment she suspected
an _entichement_ on her husband's part she was up in arms. And he
was just the same about her. I remember Lady Sharp saying that
if Penderfield had suspected his wife of caring about any of her
co-respondents he would have divorced her at once. They were a rum
couple, but their attitude to one another was the only good thing
about them." The General lighted his cigar, and seemed to consider
this 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 in
garrison has her choice, good Lard! Why, she's only got to hold her
finger up!" We entirely appreciated the position, and that a siren has
a much easier task in the entanglement of a confiding dragoon than
falls to the lot of Don Giovanni in the reverse case. But we were more
interested in the particular story of Mrs. Nightingale than in the
general ethics of profligacy.
"I suppose," we suggested, "that the young woman threatened to be a
formidable rival, as there was a row?" Each of the officers nodded at
the other, and said that was about it. The Major then started on
a little private curriculum of nods on his own account, backed by a
half-closed eye of superhuman subtlety, and added once or twice that
that _was_ about it. We inferred from this that the row had been
volcanic in character. The Major then added, repeating the air-sawing
action 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 our
look of inquiry. "Miss Graythorpe went away to Umballa to be married.
It was all gossip, mind you, about herself and Penderfield. But gossip
always went one way about any girl he was seen with. I have my own
belief; so has Jack Roper." The Major underwent a perfect convulsion
of nods, winks, and acquiescence. "Well, she went away, and was
married to this young shaver, who was very little over twenty. He
wasn'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 at
the church door; that's all I could say for certain. Tell him the
rest."
"They certainly parted very soon, and people told all sorts of
stories. The stories got fewer and clearer when it came out that the
young woman was in the family way. No one had any right _then_ to
ascribe the child that was on its road to any father except the young
man she had fallen out with. But they did--it was laid at Colonel
Penderfield'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 child
was then spoken of as being four months old. My impression is he did
not succeed in getting a divorce."
"Not he," said the Major, overtopping the General's quiet, restrained
voice with his falsetto. "I recollect _that_, bless you! The Court
commiserated him, but couldn't give him any relief. So he made a bolt
of 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 she
met with old Lund--Carrington Lund, you know, not Beauchamp; he'd
a 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 with
him to England. I was with them on the boat, part of the way. Then
she took the name of Macnaghten, I believe. The young husband's name
I 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 goes
by. Friend of this gentleman. Very charmin' person indeed! Introdooce
you? And a very charmin' little daughter, goin' nineteen." The two
officers interchanged glances over our young friend Sally. "She was
a nice baby on the boat," said the General; and the Major chuckled
wheezily, and hoped she didn't take after her father.
We left him to the tender mercies of gout and asthma, and the
enjoyment of a sherry-cobbler through a straw, looking rather too fat
for his snuff-coloured trousers with a cord outside, and his flowered
silk waistcoat; but very much too fat for the straw, the slenderness
of which was almost painful by contrast.
* * * * *
Perhaps you will see from this why we hinted at the outset of this
chapter why Mrs. Nightingale was a conundrum we had given up in
despair, of which no one had told us the answer. We wanted your
sympathy, you see, and to get it have given you an insight into the
way our information was gleaned. Having given you this sample, we will
now return to simple narrative of what we know of the true story, and
trouble 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 widowed
mother, also called Sally, the name in both cases being (as in that of
her daughter whom we know) Rosalind, not Sarah. This mother married
_en secondes noces_ a former sweetheart; it had been a case of a match
opposed by parents on the ground of the apparent hopelessness of the
young man's prospects. Mr. Paul Nightingale, however, falsified the
doleful predictions about his future by becoming a successful
leader-writer and war correspondent. It was after the close of the
American Civil War, in which he had gained a good deal of distinction,
that he met at Saratoga his old flame, Mrs. Graythorpe, then a widow
with a little daughter five or six years old. Having then no wishes to
consult but their own, and no reason to the contrary appearing, they
were married.
They did not find the States a pleasant domicile in the early days
following the great war, and came to England. The little daughter soon
became like his own child to Mr. Paul Nightingale, and had his wish
been complied with she would have taken his name during his life. But
her 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 stepfather
died. Her mother, now for the second time a widow, must have been
very comfortably off, as she had an income of her own as well as a
life-interest in her late husband's invested savings, which was
unfettered by any conditions as to her marrying again, or otherwise.
She was not long in availing herself of this liberty; for about the
time 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 former
mates, and was qualified to sympathize with her in every way,
including comfortable inheritances.
But the young Sally Graythorpe kicked furiously against this new
arrangement. It was an insult to papa (she referred to Mr.
Nightingale; her real papa was a negligible factor), and she wouldn't
live in the same house with that canting old hypocrite. She would go
away straight to India, and marry Gerry--_he_ would be glad enough to
have her--see how constant the dear good boy had been! Not a week
passed but she got a letter. She asked her mother flatly what could
she want to marry again for at her time of life? And such a withered
old sow-thistle as that! Sub-dean, indeed! She would _sub-dean_ him!
In fact, there were words, and the words almost went the length of
taking the form known as "language" _par excellence_. The fact is,
this Sally and her mother never _did_ get on together well; it wasn't
the least like her subsequent relation with our special Sally--Sally
number 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 luggage
for the baggage-room was beautifully stencilled "Care of Sir Oughtred
Penderfield, The Residency, Khopal." Perfectly safe in his keeping no
doubt it would have been. But, then, that might have been true also of
luggage if consigned to the Devil. If the tale hinted at in our last
chapter _was_ true, its poor little headstrong, inexperienced heroine
would 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 of
reconciling the like of the Mrs. Nightingale we know now with the
amount of dissimulation, if not treachery, she must have practised on
an unsuspicious boy, assuming that she did, as a matter of course,
conceal her relation with Penderfield. One timid conjecture we have
is, that the girl, having to deal with a subject every accepted phrase
relating to which is an equivocation or an hypocrisy, really found it
impossible to make her position understood by a lover who simply
idolized the ground she trod on. Under such circumstances, she may
either have given up the attempt in despair, or jumped too quickly to
the conclusion that she had succeeded in communicating the facts, and
had been met half-way by forgiveness. Put yourself in her position,
and resolve in your mind exactly how you would have gone about it--how
you would have got a story of that sort forced into the mind of a
welcoming lover; wedged into the heart of his unsuspicious rapture.
Or, if you fancied he understood you, and no storm of despairing
indignation came, think how easy it would be to persuade yourself you
had done your duty by the facts, and might let the matter lapse! Why
should not one woman once take advantage of the obscurities of decorum
so many a man has found comforting to his soul during confession of
sin, when pouring his revelations into an ear whose owner's experience
of life has not qualified her to understand them. Think of the
difficulty you yourself have encountered in getting at the absolute
facts in some delicate concurrence of circumstances in this connexion,
because of the fundamental impossibility of getting any one, man or
woman, to speak direct truth!
Let us find out, or construct, all the excuses we can for poor Miss
Graythorpe. Let us imagine the last counsel she had from the only one
of her own sex who would be likely to know anything of the matter--the
nefarious partner (if the Major's surmise was true) in the crime of
her betrayer. "You are making a fuss about nothing. Men are not so
immaculate themselves; your Gerry is no Joseph! If he rides the high
horse with you, just you ask him what _he_ had to say to Potiphar's
wife! Oh, we're not so strait-laced out here--bless us alive!--as we
are in England, or pretend to be." We can fancy the elegant brute
saying it.
All our surmises bring us very little light, though. It is not that
we are at such a loss to forgive poor Sally Graythorpe as a mere human
creature we know nothing about. The difficulty is to reconcile what
she 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 with
Colonel Penderfield, we can say nothing without full particulars. And
even if we had them, and they bore hard upon Miss Graythorpe, our mind
would go back to the Temple in Jerusalem, and a morning nearly two
thousand years ago. The voice that said who was to cast the first
stone is heard no more, or has merged in ritual. But the Scribes and
Pharisees are with us still, and quite ready to do the pelting. We
should be harder on the Colonel, no doubt, with our prejudices; only,
observe! he isn't brought up for judgment. He never is, any more
than the other party was that day in Jerusalem. But, then, the
Scribes and Pharisees were male! And they had the courage of their
convictions--their previous convictions!--and acted on them in their
selection of the culprit.
Without further apology for retailing conjecture as certainty, the
following may be taken as substantially the story of this lady--we do
not know whether to call her a divorced or a deserted wife--and her
little encumbrance.
She found a resource in her trouble in the person of this old friend
of her stepfather Paul Nightingale, Colonel (at that time Major) Lund.
This officer had remained on in harness to the unusual age of
fifty-eight, but it was a civil appointment he held; he had retired
from active service in the ordinary course of things. It was probably
not only because of his old friendship for her stepfather, but because
the poor girl told him her unvarnished tale in full and he believed
it, that he helped and protected her through the critical period
that followed her parting from her husband; found her a domicile and
seclusion, and enlisted on her behalf the sympathies of more than one
officer's wife at our Sally's birth-place--Umritsur, if Major Roper
was right. He corresponded with her mother as intercessor and
mediator, but that good lady was in no mood for mercy: had her
daughter not told her that she was too old to think of marriage? Too
old! And had she not called her venerable sub-dean a withered old
sow-thistle? She could forgive, under guarantees of the sinner's
repentance; for had not her Lord enjoined forgiveness where the bail
tendered was sufficient? Only, so many reservations and qualifications
occurred in her interpretations of the Gospel narrative that
forgiveness, diluted out of all knowledge, left its perpetrator free
to refuse ever to see its victim again. But she would pray for her.
A subdiaconal application would receive attention; that was the
suggestion between the lines.
The kind-hearted old soldier pooh-poohed her first letters. She would
come round in time. Her natural good-feeling would get the better of
her when she had had her religious fling. He didn't put it so--a
strict old Puritan of the old school--but that was Miss Graythorpe's
gloss in her own mind on what he did say. However, her mother never
did come round. She cherished her condemnation of her daughter to the
end, forgiving her again _morê suo_, if anything with increased
asperity, 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 particular
young Sally on the scene, saw her safely through her divorce
proceedings, and then, when he finally retired from his post as deputy
commissioner for the Umritsur district, arranged that she herself,
with her encumbrance and an ayah, should accompany him to England. His
companion travelled as Mrs. Graythorpe, and Sally junior as Mrs.
Graythorpe's baby. She was excessively popular on the voyage; Sally
was not suffering from sea-sickness, or feeling apparently the least
embarrassed by the recent bar-sinister in her family. She courted
Society, seizing it by its whiskers or its curls, and holding on like
grim 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 in
safety, after a resolute effort to drag the captain, who was six feet
three high and weighed twenty stone, ashore by his beard. She was
greatly missed on the remainder of the voyage (to Bremen--the boat was
a German boat) by a family of Vons, who fortunately never guessed at
the flaw in Sally's extraction, or there's no knowing what might not
have happened.
But the arrival was too late for her poor mother to utilise her
services towards a reconciliation with her own offended parent. A
sudden attack of influenza, followed by low diet on high principles,
and uncombated by timely port wine and tonics, had been followed by
heart-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 of
simply dropping her offspring on its grandmother, and leaving it to
drive a coach and six through the latter's Christian forgiveness, was
not to come to pass. She found herself after a year and a half of
Oriental life back in her native land, an orphan with a small--but
it must be admitted a very charming--illegitimate family. It was
hard upon her, for she had been building on the success of this
manoeuvre, in which she had, perhaps, an unreasonable confidence. If
she could only rely on Sally not being inopportunely sick over mamma
just at the critical moment--that was the only misgiving that crossed
her mind. Otherwise, such creases and such a hilarious laugh would be
too much for starch itself. Poor lady! she had thought to herself more
than once, since Sally had begun to mature and consolidate, that if
Gerry had only waited a little--just long enough to see what a little
duck was going to come of it all--and not lost his temper, all
might have been made comfortable, and Sally might have had a little
legitimate half-brother by now. What _had_ become--what would become
of Gerry? That she did not know, might never know.
One little pleasant surprise awaited her. It came to her knowledge
for the first time that she was sole heir to the estate of her late
stepfather, Paul Nightingale. The singular practice that we believe
to exist in many families of keeping back all information about
testamentary dispositions as long as possible from the persons they
concern, especially minors, had been observed in her case; and her
mother, perhaps resenting the idea that her daughter--a young
chit!--should presume to outlive her, had kept her in ignorance of the
contents of her stepfather's will. It did not really matter much. Had
the sum been large, and a certainty, it might have procured for her a
safer position when a temporary guest at the Residency at Khopal, or
even caused her indignant young bridegroom to think twice before he
took steps to rid himself of her. But, after all, it was only some
three hundred and fifty pounds a year, and depended on the life of a
lady of forty-odd, who might live to be a hundred. A girl with no more
than that is nearly as defenceless as she is without it.
A condition was attached to the bequest--not an unwelcome one. She was
to take her stepfather's name, Nightingale. She was really very glad
to do this. There was a _faux air_ of a real married name about Mrs.
Nightingale that was lacking in Mrs. Graythorpe. Besides, all
troublesome questions about who Sally's father was would get lost
sight of in the fact that her mother had changed her name in connexion
with that sacred and glorious thing, an inheritance. A trust-fund
would always be a splendid red-herring to draw across the path of Mrs.
Grundy's sleuth-hounds--a quarry more savoury to their nostrils even
than a reputation. And nothing soothes the sceptical more than being
asked now and again to witness a transfer of stock, especially if it
is money held in trust. It has all the force of a pleasant alterative
pill on the circulation of Respectability--removes obstructions
and promotes appetite--is a certain remedy for sleeplessness, and
so 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 had
no intention whatever of marrying, Colonel Lund consented to become
her trustee; and both felt that something truly respectable had been
done--something that if it didn't establish a birthright and a correct
extraction for Miss Sally, at any rate went a long way towards it.
By the time Mrs. Nightingale had got settled in the little house at
Shepherd's Bush, that she took on a twenty-one years' lease five or
six years after her return to England, and had christened it
Saratoga, after her early recollection of the place where she first
saw her stepfather, whose name she took when she came into the money
he left her--by this time she, with the assistance of Colonel Lund,
had quite assumed the appearance of a rather comfortably off young
widow-lady, who did not make a great parade of her widowhood, but
whose circumstances seemed reasonable enough, and challenged no
inquiry. Inquisitiveness would have seemed needless impertinence--just
as much so as yours would have been in the case of the hypothetical
So-and-sos at the beginning of our last chapter. A vague impression
got in the air that Sally's father had not been altogether
satisfactory--well, wasn't it true? It may have leaked out from
something in "the Major's" manner. But it never produced any effect
on friends, except that they saw in it a reason why Mrs. Nightingale
never mentioned her husband. He had been a black sheep. Silence about
him showed good feeling on her part. _De mortuis_, etc....
Of one thing we feel quite certain--that if, at the time we made this
lady's acquaintance, any chance friend of hers or her daughter's--say,
for instance, Lætitia Wilson, Sally's old school-friend and present
music-colleague--had been told that Mrs. Nightingale, of Krakatoa
Villa, No. 7, Glenmoira Road, Shepherd's Bush, W., had been the
heroine of divorce proceedings under queer circumstances, that her
husband wasn't dead at all, and that that dear little puss Sally was
Goodness-knows-who's child, we feel certain that the information would
have been cross-countered with a blank stare of incredulity. Why, the
mere fact that Mrs. Nightingale had refused so many offers of marriage
was surely sufficient to refute such a nonsensical idea! Who ever
heard 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 street
says or thinks, and the woman in the street thinks and says, are we
not losing sight of a leading phrase of the symphony, sonata,
cantata--whatever you like to call it--of Mrs. Nightingale's life? A
phrase that steals in, just audibly--no more, in the most _strepitoso_
passage of the stormy second movement--a movement, however, in which
the proceedings of the Divorce Court are scarcely more audible,
_pianissimo legato_, a chorus with closed lips, all the stringed
instruments _sordini_. But it grows and grows, and in _allegro con
fuoco_ on the voyage home, and only leaves a bar or two blank, when
the thing it metaphorically represents is asleep and isn't suffering
from the wind. It breaks out again _vivacissimo accelerando_ when Miss
Sally (whom we allude to) wakes up, and doesn't appreciate Nestlé's
milk. But it always grows, and in due course may be said to become
the 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 be
concealed and ignored--that very soon she really had no time to think
about where she broke her molasses-jug, as Uncle Remus says. The new
life that it had become hers to guard took her out of herself, made
her quite another being from the reckless and thoughtless girl of two
years ago.
As time went on she felt more and more the value of the newcomer's
indifference 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 gave
her mind a bias towards the future, and hope grew in her heart
unconsciously, without reminding her that it might have been despair.
A bad alarm, when the creature was six months old, that an enteric
attack might end fatally, had revealed to its mother how completely
it had taken possession of her own life, and what a power for
compensation there was even in its most imperious and tyrannical
habits. As it gradually became articulate--however unreasonable it
continued--her interest in its future extinguished her memories of her
own past, and she found herself devising games for baby before the
little character was old enough to play them, and costumes before she
was big enough to wear them. By the time Saratoga Villa had become
Krakatoa, Miss Sally had had time to benefit by a reasonable
allowance of the many schemes her mother had developed for her
during her infancy. Had all the projects which were mooted for her
further education at this date been successfully carried out, she
would have been an admirable female Crichton, if her reason had
survived the curriculum. Luckily for her, she had a happy faculty
for being plucked at examinations, and her education was consequently
kept within reasonable bounds.
There was, however, one department of culture in which Sally outshot
all competitors. This was swimming. She would give a bath's length at
the Paddington Baths to the next strongest swimmer in the Ladies'
Club, and come in triumphant in a race of ten lengths. It was a grand
sight to see Sally rushing stem on, cleaving the water with her head
almost as if breath were an affectation, and doubling back at the end
while the other starters were scarcely half-way. Or shooting through
the air in her little blue costume straight for the deepest water, and
then making believe to be a fish on the shiny tiles at the bottom.
Her mother always said she was certain that if that little monkey
had managed to wriggle through some hole into the sea, on her voyage
home, she would have swum after the ship and climbed up the rudder
chains. Possibly, but she was only twelve months old! If, however, she
had met with an early death, her mother's lot would have lacked its
redemption. The joint life of the two supplies a possible answer
to the conundrum that has puzzled us. For in a certain sense the
absorption of her own existence in that of another than herself had
made of Rosalind the woman, at the date of our introduction to her,
quite another person from Rosalind the hot-headed and thoughtless girl
that had quarrelled with her natural guardian for doing what she had
a perfect right to do, and had steered alone into unknown seas, a ship
without a rudder or a compass, and very little knowledge of the stars
of heaven for her guide. We can see what she is now much better than
we 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 so
completely _bouleversé_; for, whatever blame we feel bound to express,
or whatever exculpation we contrive to concoct for her, there can be
no doubt what the result was to the young man who has come into the
story, so far, only under the name of Gerry. We simply record his
designation 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 to
gather, merely noting that what it seems to point to recommends itself
to us as probable.
"Nobody knoo, nobody cared," was our friend Major Roper's brief reply
to an inquiry what became of this young man. "Why, good Lard, sir!" he
went on, "if one was to begin fussin' about all the Johnnies that shy
off when there's a row of that sort, one would never get a dam night's
rest! Not but what if I could recollect his name. Now, what _was_ his
confounded name? Thought I'd got it--but no--it wasn't Messiter. Fancy
his Christian name was Jeremiah.... I recollect Messiter I'm thinkin'
of--character that looked as if he had a pain in his stomach--came
into forty thousand pounds. Stop a bit--was it Indermaur? No, it
wasn't Indermaur. No use guessin'--give it up."
Besides, the Major was getting purple with suppressed coughing. When
he had given it up, he surrendered unconditionally to the cough, but
was presently anxious to transmit, through its subsidence, an idea
that he found it impossible to shake across the table between us out
of an inarticulate forefinger end. It assumed form in time. Why not
ask the lady herself? We demurred, and the old soldier explained.
"Not rushin' at her, you know, and sayin', 'Who the dooce was
it married you, ma'am?' I'm not a dam fool. Showin' tact, you
know--puttin' it easy and accidental. 'Who was that young beggar
now?--inspector--surveyor--something of the sort--up at Umballa in
seventy-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, 'I
suppose you mean that dam husband of mine.' Not she! Sensible woman
that, sir--seen the world--knows a thing or two. You'll see she'll
only say, 'That was Foodle or Parker or Stebbins or Jephson,' as may
be, accordin' to the name."
We did not see our way to this enterprise, and said so. We drew a
line; said there were things you could do, and things you couldn't do.
The Major chuckled, and admitted this might be so; his old governor
used to say, "Est modus in rebus, sunt certi denique fines." The last
two words remained behind in the cough, unless, indeed, they were
shaken out off the Major's forefinger into a squeezed lemon that was
awaiting its Seltzer.
"But I can tell you thing, Mr.," said he, forgetting our name, as
soon 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 use
askin' me why, nor what he changed it to. If it _was_ him that was
lost in the Bush in New South Wales, when I was at Sydney, why, of
course that chap's _name_ was the same. I remember that much. Can't
get hold of the name, though." He appeared to consult the pattern on
his silk pocket-handkerchief as an oracle, and to await its answer
with a thoughtful eye. Presently he blew his nose on the oracle, and
returned it to his pocket, adding: "But it's a speculation--little
speculation of my own. Don't _ask me_!" We saw, however, that more
would come, without asking. And it came.
"It made a talk out there at the time. But _that_ didn't bring him to
life. You may talk till you're hoarse, but you won't bring a dead man
to--not when he's twenty miles off in a forest of gum-trees, as like
as tallow-candles.... Oh yes, they had the natives put on the
scent--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 a
fortnight after with them on his heels, an hour or so behind.... He'd
only just left his party a moment, and meant to come back into the
open. I suppose he thought he was sure to cross a cutting, and got
trapped 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 the
same. I came away, and don't know how they settled it."
"But something, Major Roper, must have made you think this man the
same--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 cogitated
and 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 was
no use at all. We left him arranging the oracle over his face, with
a view to a serious nap.
We got a few words shortly after with General Pellew, who seemed a
little surprised at the Major's having referred to him for
information.
"I don't know," said he, "why our friend Roper shouldn't recollect as
much about it as I do. However, I do certainly remember that when this
young gentleman, whatever his name was, left the station, he did go to
Sydney or Melbourne, and I have some hazy recollection of some one
saying that he was lost in the Bush. But why old Jack fancies he was
found again or changed his name to Harrisson I haven't the slightest
idea."
So that all we ourselves succeeded in getting at about Gerry may be
said 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 fit
of 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 in
a later life elsewhere. We have had our own reasons for doubting that
she ever knew that he took the name of Harrisson--if he really did--a
point which seemed to us very uncertain, so far as the Major's
narrative 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 she
got it she would feel the danger of further inquiry--the difficulty of
laying the reasons for her curiosity before her informant. You can't
easily 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." A
German might, but Mrs. Nightingale was not a German.
However, she _may_ have heard something about that Gerry, we
grant you, in all those twenty long years. But if you ask us our
opinion--our private opinion--it is that she scarcely heard of him,
if she heard at all, and certainly never set eyes on him, until one
day her madcap little daughter brought him home, half-killed by
an electric shock, in a cab we were at some pains to describe
accurately a few pages ago. And even then, had it not been for the
individualities of that cab, she might have missed seeing him, and let
him go away to the infirmary or the police-station, and probably never
been near him again.
As it was, the face she saw when a freak of chance led to her following
that cab, and looking in out of mere curiosity at its occupant, was the
face of her old lover--of her husband. Eighteen--twenty--years had
made a man of one who was then little more than a boy. The mark of the
world 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, maybe
wins. But she never doubted his identity for a moment. And the way in
which she grasped the situation--above all, the fact that he had not
recognised her and would not recognise her--quite justified, to our
thinking, Major Roper's opinion of her powers of self-command.
Nevertheless, these were not so absolute that her demeanour escaped
comment from the cabby, the only witness of her first sight of the
"electrocuted" man. He spoke of her afterwards as that squealing party
down that sanguinary little turning off Shepherd's Bush Road he took
that 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 to
a person whose musical imagination is not equal to supplying the other
four. Perhaps you have heard Haydn, Op. 1704, and rejoiced in the
logical consecutiveness of its fugues, the indisputableness of its
well-classified statements, the swift pertinence of the repartees of
the first violin to the second, the apt _résumé_ and orderly
reorganization of their epigrammatic interchanges by the 'cello and
the double-bass, the steady typewritten report and summary of the
whole by the pianoforte, and the regretful exception to so many points
taken by the clarionet. If so, you have no doubt felt, as we have, a
sense of perfect satisfaction at faultless musical structure, without
having to surrender your soul unconditionally to the passionate appeal
of a Beethoven, or to split your musical brains in conjectures about
what Volkanikoffsky is driving at. You will find at the end that you
have passed an hour or so of tranquil enjoyment, and are mighty
content with yourself, the performers, and every one else.
But if you only hear the two parts, played alone, and your mental
image of all the other parts is not strong enough to prevent your
hearing the two performers count the bars while the non-performers
don't do anything at all, you will probably go away and come back
presently, or go mad.
Nobody else was there when Sally and Lætitia Wilson were counting
four, and beginning too soon, and having to go back and begin all over
again, and missing a bar, and knocking down their music-stands when
they had to turn over quick. So nobody went mad. Mamma had gone to an
anti-vaccination meeting, and Athene had gone to stay over Bank
Holiday at Leighton Buzzard, and the boys had gone to skate, and papa
was in his study and didn't matter, and they had the drawing-room to
themselves. 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 introduced
foreign matter. Lætitia was firm and stern (she was twenty-four, if
you 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 a
pleasure to hear him come into the house. Only--one's _mother_, you
know! It's the _oddity_ of it!"
"Yes, dear. _Now_, are you ready?... It only clickets down because you
will _not_ screw in; it's no use turning and leaving the key
sloppy...."
"I know, Tishy dear--teach your granny! There, I think that's right
now. 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 got
to begin on the demisemiquaver at the end of the bar--only not too
staccato, 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 finding
a confidante for the fossil's communication.
An hour and a half of resolute practising makes you not at all sorry
for an oasis in the counting, which you inaugurate (or whatever you do
when 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 very
fanciful." 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 changed
my mind coming up the hill. Of course, I don't know about mamma till
I 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 her
tongue-tip, discreetly, to see how sharp they are, and cogitates. "At
least," she continues, "I _do_ know. He never takes his eyes off mamma
from 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 your
mother--that's the point."
The vulgar child cogitates still more gravely.
"I should say _now_," she says, after thinking it over, "that--only
I never noticed it at the time, you know----"
"That what?"
"That mamma knows Mr. Fenwick is spooney, and looks up at times to see
that he's going on."
Lætitia 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 time
looking as if butter wouldn't melt in your mouth, and as grave as
a 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 being
patronised. "We-e-e-ell!" she says, lengthening out the word, "why
not? 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 Lætitia, whose speech and kiss had certainly
appeared to impute suppressed insight, or penetration, or sly-pussness,
or something of that sort to her young friend. But with an implied
claim to rights of insight, on her own account, from seniority. Sally
is _froissée_ at this, but not beyond jerking the topic into a new
light.
"Of course, it's their being grown up that makes one stare so. If it
wasn't for that...." But this gives away her case, surrenders all
claim to her equality with Lætitia's twenty-four years. The advantage
is caught at meanly.
"That's only because you're a baby, dear. Wait till you're ten years
older, and thirty-eight won't seem so old. I suppose your mother's
about that?"
"Mother? Why, she's nearly thirty-nine!"
"And Mr. Fenwick?"
"Oh, _he's_ forty-one. _Quite!_ Because we talked it all over, and made
out 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 irritating
sagacity about Sally's friend. "What did Dr. Vereker say, Sally dear?"
"Doc-tor Vereker! Dr. Prosy. Prosy's not a referee--it was no concern
of 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 hope
you don't think mother and I and Mr. Fenwick would talk about how old
we 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 be
penetrating. You know you're trying to get at something; and there's
nothing to get at. It was perfectly natural. Only, of course, we
should never dream of talking about how old before people and their
gossipy old mothers."
"Of course not, dear!"
"There, now! You're being imperturbable! I knew you would. But you may
say what you like--there really was nothing in it. Nothing whatever
that time! However, of course mother does like Mr. Fenwick very
much--everybody knows that."
Lætitia says time will show, and Sally says, "Show what?" For the
remark connects with nothing in the conversation. Its maker does not
reply, but retires into the fastnesses of a higher philosophy, unknown
to the teens, but somehow attainable in the early twenties. She comes
down, however, to ask after Dr. Vereker. Sally has as good as held her
tongue 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!" Lætitia
seems 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, people
shouldn'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 came
to that!"
Lætitia, without relaxing the magnetism of her look, is replacing
a defective string. But a stimulating word will keep Sally up to the
mark. 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 may
just as well be penetrating outright, if you're going to go on like
that. All I know is that, worthiness or no, if Dr. Vereker expects
I'm going to put him on a quarrelling footing, he's mistaken, and the
sooner he gives up the idea the better. I suppose he'll be wanting me
to cherish him next."
And then what does that irritating Lætitia Wilson do but say suddenly,
"I'm quite ready for the scherzo, dear, if you are." Just as if Sally
had been talking all this for her own private satisfaction and
amusement! And she knew perfectly well, Lætitia did, that she had been
eliciting, and that she meant to wait a day or two, and begin again
ever so far on, and make believe Sally had said heaps of things. And
Sally had really said nothing--_nothing_!
However, Miss Wilson was certainly a very fine violin figure, and
really striking in long sostenuto notes, with a fine throat and
handsome fingers on her left hand with broad bones, and a handsome
wrist on her bowing-arm where it was wanted. Only now, of course, she
hadn't got her Egyptian bracelet that looked so well, and her hair
wasn't done in a coronet, but only just twisted up anyhow. Besides,
when it's a difficult scherzo and you take it quick, your appearance
of having the concentration of Bonaparte and Julius Cæsar, and the
alacrity of a wild cat, doesn't bring out your good points. Give us
an _andante maestoso_ movement, or a _diminuendo rallentando_ that
reaches the very climax and acme of slowness itself just before the
applause comes! It was rather as a meditation in contrasts, though,
that Sally thought thus to herself; for detached musical jerks of
diabolical rapidity, that have to be snapped at with the punctuality
of 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 in
detached jerks--literary, not musical--and these jerks don't come at
any stated intervals at all. The music was bad enough--so Sally and
Lætitia thought--but the chronicle is more spasmodic still. However,
if you want to know its remaining particulars, you will have to brace
yourself up to tolerating an intermittent style. It is the only one
our means of collecting information admits of.
This little musical interlude, and the accidental chat of our two
young performers, gives us a kind of idea of what was the position
of things at Krakatoa Villa six months after Fenwick made his singular
reappearance in the life of Mrs. Nightingale. We shall rely on your
drawing all our inferences. There is only one belief of ours we need
to lay stress upon; it is that the lady's scheme to do all she could
to recapture and hold this man who had been her husband was no mere
slow suggestion of the course of events in that six months, but a
swift and decisive resolution--one that, if not absolutely made at
once, paused only in the making until she was quite satisfied that
the disappearance of Fenwick's past was an accomplished fact. Once
satisfied of that, he became to her simply the man she had loved
twenty years ago--the man who did not, could not, forgive her
what seemed so atrocious a wrong, but whom she could forgive the
unforgiveness of; and this all the more if she had come to know of the
ruinous effect her betrayal of him had had--must have had--upon his
after-life. He was this man--this very man--to all appearance with
a mysterious veil drawn, perhaps for ever, over the terrible close of
their brief linked life and its hideous cause--over all that she would
have asked and prayed should be forgotten. If only this oblivion could
be maintained!--that was her fear. If it could, what task could be
sweeter to her than to make him such amends as lay in her power for
the wrong she had done him--how faultfully, who shall say? And if, in
late old age, no dawn of memory having gleamed in his ruined mind, she
came to be able to speak to him and tell him his own story--the tale
of 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 haunting
nightmare to her. She could only soothe and alleviate her anxiety
by suggesting efforts at recollection to Fenwick, and observing with
concealed satisfaction how utterly useless they all were. She felt
guilty at heart in being so happy at his ill-success, and had to
practise an excusable hypocrisy, an affectation of disappointment at
his repeated failures. On one particular occasion a shudder of
apprehension passed through her; she thought he had got a clue. If he
did, what was to prevent his following it up? She found it hard to say
to him how sorry she was this clue led to nothing, and to forecast
from it encouragement for the future. But she said to herself after
that, that she was a good actress, and had played her part well. The
part was a hard one.
For what came about was this.
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