Somehow Good Part 67

So, though things kept coming to his recollection, he could hold his peace, and did so. There was nothing to come--not likely to be--that could unsay that revelation that he had been a married man, and did not know of his wife's death; not even that he and she had been divorced, which would have been nearly as bad. He knew the worst of it, at any rate, and Rosalind need never know it if he kept it all to himself, best and worst.

So that day pa.s.sed, and there was nothing to note about it, unless we mention that Sally was actually kept out of the Channel by Neptune's little white ponies aforesaid, which spoiled the swimming water--though, of course, it wasn't rough--backed by the fact that these little sudden showers wetted you through, right through your waterproof, before you knew where you were. Dr. Conrad came in as usual in the evening, reporting that his mother was "rather better."

It was a discouraging habit she had, when she was not known to have been any worse than usual. This good lady always caught Commiseration napping, if ever that quality took forty winks. The doctor was very silent this evening, imbibing Sally without comment. However, St.

Sennans was drawing to a close for all others. That was enough to account for it, Sally thought. It was the last day but one, and poor Prosy couldn't be expected to accept her own view--that the awful jolliness of being back at Krakatoa Villa would even compensate--more than compensate--for the pangs of parting with the Saint. Sally's optimism was made of a stuff that would wash, or was all wool.

According to her own account, she had spent the whole day wondering whether the battle between Tishy and her mother had come off. She said so last thing of all to _her_ mother as she decanted the melted paraffin of a bedroom candle whose wick, up to its neck therein, was unable to find a scope for its genius, and yielded only a spectral blue spark that went out directly if you carried it. Tilted over, it would lick in the end--this was Sally's testimony; and if you dropped the grease on the back of the soap-dish and thickened it up to a good blob, it would come off click when it was cold, and not make any mess at all.

"Yes, I've been wondering all day long," said she. "How I should enjoy being there to see! How freezing and dignified the Dragon will be!

Mrs. Sales Wilson! Or perhaps she'll flare. (I wish this wick would; and it's such disgraceful waste of good candle!)"

"I do think, kitten, you're unkind to the poor lady. Just think how she must have dreamed about the splendid match her handsome daughter was going to make! And, you know, it _is_ rather a come down...."

"Yes, of course it's a come down. But I don't pity the Dragon one bit.

She should have thought more of Tishy's happiness, and less of her grandeur. (It's just beginning; the flame will go white directly.)"

"She'd got some one else in view then?" Rosalind was quickly perceptive about it.

"Oh yes; don't you know? Sir Penderfield. (That'll do now, nicely; there's the white flame!) Sir Oughtred Penderfield. He's a Bart., of course. But he's a horror, and they say his father was even worse.

Like father, like son! And the Dragon wanted Tishy to accept him."

At the name Rosalind s.h.i.+vered. The thought that followed it sent a knife-cut to her heart. This man that Sally had spoken of so unconsciously was _her brother_--at least, he was brother enough to her by blood to make that thought a blade to penetrate the core of her mother's soul. It was a case for her strength to show itself in--a case for nettle-grasping with a vengeance. She would grasp this nettle directly; but oh, for one moment--only one moment--just to be a little less sick with the slice of the chill steel! just to quench the tremor she knew would come with her voice if she tried now to say, "What was the name? Tishy's _pretendu_'s, I mean; not his father's."

But she could take the whole of a moment, and another, for that matter. So she left her words on her tongue's tip to say later, and felt secure that Sally would not look up and see the dumb white face she herself could see in the mirror she sat before. For, of course, she saw Sally's reflection, too, its still thoughtful eyelids half shrouded in a broken coil of black hair their owner's pearly teeth are detaining an end of, to stop it falling in the paraffin she is so intent on, as she watches it cooling on the soap-dish.

"I've made it such a jolly big blob it'll take ever so long to cool.

You can, you know, if you go gently. Only then the middle stops soft, and if you get in a hurry it spoils the clicket." But it is hard enough now to risk moving the hair over it, and Sally's voice was free to speak as soon as her little white hand had swept the black coils back beyond the round white throat. Mrs. Lobjoit's mirror has its defects apart from some of the quicksilver having been scratched off; but Rosalind can see the merp.u.s.s.y's image plain enough, and knows perfectly well that before she looks up she will reap the harvest of happiness she has been looking forward to. She will "clicket" off the "blob" with her finger.

The moment of fruition comes, and a filbert thumbnail spuds the hardened lozenge off the smooth glaze. "There!" says Sally, "didn't I tell you? Just like ice.... What, mother?" For her mother's question had been asked, very slightly varied, in a nettle-grasping sense. She has had time to think.

"_What_ was Tishy's man's name--the other applicant? Christian name, I mean; not his father's."

"Sir Oughtred Penderfield. Why?"

"I remember there was a small boy in India, twenty-two years ago, named Penderfield. Is Oughtred his only name?" The nettle-grasping there was in this! Rosalind felt consoled by her own strength.

"Can't say. He may have a dozen. Never seen him. Don't want to! But his hair's as black as mine, Tishy says.... I say, mother, isn't it deliciously smooth?" But this refers to the paraffin lozenge, not to the hair.

"Yes, darling. Now I want to get to bed, if you've no objection."

"Certainly, mother darling; but say I'm right about the Dragon and Sir Penderfield. Because I _am_, you know."

"Of course you are, chick. Only you never told me about him; now, did you?"

"Because I was so honourable. It was a secret. Very well, good-night, then.... Oh, you poor mother! how cold you are, and I've been keeping you up! Good-night!"

And off went Sally, leaving her mother to reason with herself about her own unreasonableness. After all, what was there in the fact that the little chap she remembered, seven years old, at the Residency at Khopal twenty odd years ago had grown up and inherited his father's baronetcy? What was there in this to discompose and upset her, to make her breath catch and her nerves thrill? A longing came on her that Gerry should not look in to say good-night till she was in a position to refuse interviewing on the score of impending sleep. She made a dash for bed, and got the light out, out-generalling him by perhaps a minute.

What could she expect? Not that little Tamerlane, as his father called him, should die just to be out of her path. It was no fault of his that he was his father's son, with--how could she doubt after what Sally had just said?--the curse of his father's form of manhood or beasthood upon him. And yet, might it not have been better that he should have died, the innocent child she knew him, than live to follow his father's footsteps? Better, best of all that the whole evil brood should perish and be forgotten.... Stop!

For the thought she had framed caught her breath and held it, caught her by the heart and checked its beating, caught her by the brain and stopped its thinking; and she was glad when her husband's voice found her, dumb and stunned in the silence, and brought a respite to the unanswerable enigma she was face to face with.

"Hullo! light out already? Beg your pardon, darling. Good-night!"

"I wasn't asleep." So he came in and said good-night officially and departed. His voice and his presence had staved off a nightmare idea that was on the watch to seize on her--how if chance had brought Sally across this unsuspected relation of hers, and events had forced a full declaration of their kins.h.i.+p? Somnus jumped at the chance given by its frustration; the sea air a.s.serted itself, and went into partners.h.i.+p with him, and Rosalind's mind was carried captive into dreamland.

But not before she had heard her husband stop singing to himself a German student's song as he closed his door on himself for the night.

"War ich zum grossen Herrn geboren, wie Kaiser Maximilian...."

There could be no further unwelcome memories there, thank Heaven!

No mind oppressed by them could possibly sing "Kram-bam-bambuli, krambam-bu-li!"

CHAPTER XL

BATHING WEATHER AGAIN, AND A LETTER FROM TISHY BRADSHAW. THE TRIUMPH OF ORPHEUS. BUT WAS IT EURYDICE OR THE LITTLE BATTERY? THE REV. MR.

HERRICK. OF A REVERIE UNDER A BATHING-MACHINE, AND OF GWENDOLEN'S MAMMA'S CONNECTING-LINK. OF DR. CONRAD'S MAMMA'S DONKEY-CHAIR, AND HIS GREAT-AUNT ELIZA. HOW SALLY AND HE STARTED FOR THEIR LAST WALK AT ST. SENNANS

The next day the morning was bright and the sea was clear of Poseidon's ponies. They had gone somewhere else. Therefore, it behooved Mrs. Lobjoit to get breakfast quick, because it was absurd to expect anybody to go in directly after, and the water wouldn't be good later than half-past ten. Which Sally, coming downstairs at eight, impressed on Mrs. Lobjoit, who entered her own recognisances that it should appear as by magic the very minute your mamma came down. For it is one of the pleasures of antic.i.p.ation-of-a-joy-to-come to bring about its antecedents too soon, and so procure a blank period of unqualified existence to indulge Hope in without alloy. Even so, when true prudence wishes to catch a train, she orders her cab an hour before, and takes tickets twenty minutes before, and arrives on the platform eighteen minutes before there is the slightest necessity to do so; and then she stands on the said platform and lives for the train that is to be, and inquires of every guard, ticket-taker, and pointsman with respect to every linear yard of the platform edge, whether her train is going to come up there; and they ask each other questions, and give prismatic information; and then the train for Paradise (let us say) comes reluctantly backwards into the station with friends standing on its margin, and prudence seizes her valise and goes at a hand-gallop to the other end, where the _n_th cla.s.s is, and is only just in time to get a corner seat.

So, though there was no fear of the tide going out as fast as the train for Paradise, Sally, relying on Mrs. Lobjoit, who had become a very old friend in eight weeks, felt she had done well to be beforehand, and, as breakfast would be twenty minutes, sat down to write a letter to Tishy. She wrote epistle-wise, heedless of style and stops, and as her mother was also twenty minutes--we are not responsible for these expressions--she wrote a heap of it. Then events thickened, as Fenwick, returning from an early dip, met the postman outside, and came in bearing an expected letter which Sally pounced upon.

"All about the row!" said she, attacking an impregnable corner of the envelope with a fork-point, in a fever of impatience to get at the contents. "Hang these envelopes! There, that's done it! Whatever they want to sticky them up so for I can't imagine...."

"Get your breakfast, kitten, and read it after."

"I dare say. Catch me! No, I'm the sort that never waits for anything.... No, mummy darling; it shan't get cold. I can gormandize and read aloud both at once."

But she doesn't keep her promise, for she dives straight into an exploration ahead, and meanly says, "Just half a minute till I see what's coming," or, "Only to the end of this sentence," and also looks very keen and animated, and throws in short notes of exclamation and _well_'s and _there_'s and _think of that_'s till Fenwick enters a protest.

"Don't cheat, Sarah!" he says. "Play fair! If you won't read it aloud yourself, let somebody else."

"There's the first sheet to keep you quiet, Jeremiah!" Who, however, throws it over to Rosalind, who throws it back with a laugh.

"What a couple of big babies you two are!" she exclaims. "As if I couldn't possess my soul in peace for five minutes! Do put the letter by till you've had your breakfasts."

But this course was not approved, and the contents of Laet.i.tia's epistle came out by fits and jerks and starts, and may be said to have been mixed with tea and coffee and eggs and bacon and toast. Perhaps we had better leave these out, and give the letter intact. Here it is:

"DEAREST SALLY,

"I am going to keep my promise, and write you a long letter at once, and tell you all about our reception at home. You will say it wasn't worth writing, especially as you will be back on Monday. However, a promise is a promise!

"We got to Victoria at seven, and were not so very late considering at G. Terrace; but when we had had something to eat I propounded my idea I told you of, that we should just go straight on, and beard mamma in her own den, and have it out.

I knew I shouldn't sleep unless we did. Paggy said, 'Wouldn't it do as well if he called there to-morrow for the Strad--which we had left behind last time as a connecting-link to go and fetch away--and me to meet him as he came from the shop?' But surprise-tactics were better--I knew they would be--and now Paggy admits I was right.