Somehow Good Part 70

"You bad little boy," she said. "You smacked your sister Elizabeth in t' oy, and your foarther smacked you. I hope he hurt." The bad little boy a.s.sented with a nod, and supplied some further details. Then he asked for a penny before his sister Elizabeth came back. He wanted it to buy almond-rock, but he wouldn't give any of it to Jacob, nor to his sister Elizabeth, nor to Reuben, nor to many others, whom he seemed to exclude from almond-rock with rapture. Asked to whom he would give some, then, he replied: "Not you--eat it moyself!" and laughed heartlessly. Sally, we regret to say, gave this selfish little boy a penny for not being hypocritical. And then his sister Elizabeth reappeared with the key, which was out of scale with her, like St. Peter's.

The inward splendours of this church had been inferred by Sally from a tiptoe view through the window, which commanded its only archaic object of interest--the monument of a woolstapler who, three hundred and odd years ago, had the effrontery to have two wives and sixteen children. He ought to have had one or two more wives, thought Dr.

Conrad. However, the family was an impressive one now, decorated as it was with roses cut out of turnips, and groups of apples and carrots and cereals. And no family could have kneeled down more symmetrically, even in 1580.

But there was plenty to see in that church, too. Indeed, it was for all the world like the advertis.e.m.e.nt sheets of _Architectonic Ecclesiology_ (ask for this paper at your club), and every window was brim full of new stained gla.s.s, and every inch of floor-s.p.a.ce was new encaustic tiles. And, what was more, there was a new mosaic over the chancel-arch--a modest and wobbly little arch in itself, that seemed afflicted with its position, and to want to get away into a quiet corner and meditate. Sally said so, and added so should she, if she were it.

"I wonder if the woolstapler was married here to one or other of the little square women," said she.

"I wonder why the angels up there look so sulky," said Dr. Conrad. And then Sally, who seemed absent-minded, found something else to wonder about--a certain musical whistling noise that filled the little church.

But it was only a big bunch of moonwort on a stained-gla.s.s-window sill, and the wind was blowing through a vacancy that should have been a date, and making aeolian music. The little maid with the key found her voice over this suddenly. Her bruvver had done that, she said with pride. He had oymed a stoo-an when it was putten up, and brokken t' gla.s.s. So that stained gla.s.s was very new indeed, evidently.

"I wonder why they call that stuff 'honesty,' Miss Sally?" said the doctor. Sally, feeling that the interest of either in the church was really perfunctory, said vaguely--did they? And then, recoiling from further wonderment, and, indeed, feeling some terror of becoming idiotic if this sort of thing went on much longer, she exclaimed, with reality in her voice: "Because it's not pretending to take an interest when it doesn't, like us. But I wish you wouldn't, Dr. Conrad; I do hate it so."

"Hate what? Taking an interest or calling it honesty? _I_ didn't call it honesty. _They_ did, whoever they are!"

"No, no--I don't mean that. Never mind. I'll tell you when we're out.

Come along--that is, if you've seen enough of the tidy mosaic and the tidy stained gla.s.s, and the tidy nosegays on the tidy table." The doctor came along--seemed well satisfied to do so. But this was the third time Sally had wished that Dr. Conrad wouldn't, and this time she felt she must explain. She wasn't at all sure that the name of that herb hadn't somehow got into the atmosphere--caught on, as it were, and twitted her. After all, why shouldn't she speak a plain thought to an old friend, as poor Prosy was now? Who could gainsay it?

Moreover--now, surely this was an inspiration--why shouldn't she kill two birds with one stone, and work in her inquiry about the other young lady with this plain thought that was on her tongue to speak?

The sun was a sheer blaze of golden light as they stepped out of the little church into its farewell efforts on behalf of the hill-shadowed land of premature sunsets, and the merp.u.s.s.y looked her best in its effulgence. Sally's good looks had never been such as to convince her she was a beauty; and we suppose she wasn't, critically speaking. But youth and health, and an arrow-straight bearing, and a flawless complexion, in a flood of evening light, make a bold bid for beauty even in the eyes of others than young men already half-imbecile with love. Sally's was, at any rate, enough to dumbfounder the little janitress with the key, who stood at gaze with violet eyes in her sunbrowned face in the shadow, looking as though for certain they would never close again; while, as for Dr. Conrad, he was too far gone to want a finis.h.i.+ng touch, and if he had been, the faintest animation of an extra flush due to embarra.s.sment at what she was meaning to say would have done the business for him. What could he do but wonder and idolize, even while he almost flinched before his idol; and wait to know what it was she wished he wouldn't? What was there in earth or heaven he would not, if Sally wished it?

"Dr. Conrad, I'm sure you must know what I mean. I do so hate being called 'Miss Sally.' Do make it 'Sally,' and have done with it."

The breezy freshness of her spontaneous ease was infectious, and the shy man's answering laugh showed how it had caught his soul. "Is that all?" says he. "That's soon done--Sally! You know, I _do_ call you Sally when I speak to your mother and...."

"Now, _do_ say father. You've no idea how I like it when people call Jeremiah my father, instead of step."

"Well--father, then. I mean, _they_ said call you Sally; so of course I do. But speaking to you--don't you see?..." The doctor hesitates--doesn't actually blush, perhaps. A slight pause in the conversation eases off the context. The little maiden has to lock up the church-door with the big key, and to receive sixpence and a kiss from Sally. The violet eyes follow the lady and gentleman, fixed in wonderment, as they move off towards the hill, and the last glint of the sun vanishes. Then Sally goes on where they left off:

"No, I don't see. Speaking to me, what? Be an explicit little general pract.i.tioner, or we shall quarrel, after all, and go home different ways."

"Well, look here! You know Bailey, the young man that drives me round in London?"

"Yes. How does he come in?"

"Why, just this way; I've known the youth for years, and the other day if it doesn't turn out that he's been married ever so long! And when I taxed him with needless secrecy and mistrust of an old friend, what does the young humbug say? 'The fact is, sir, I hadn't the cheek to tell you.' Well, _I_ was like that. I hadn't the cheek."

"At any rate, you have the grace to call him a young humbug. I'm glad you're repentant, Dr. Conrad."

"Come--I say, now--Sally! That's not fair."

"What's not fair?"

"Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. You called me 'Dr.

Conrad.'"

"We-ell, I don't see anything in _that_. Of course, it's quite a different thing--you and me."

"Very well, then. I shall say Miss Sally. Miss Sally!"

Here was Sally's opportunity, clear enough. She had never had a chance till now of bringing back the mysterious young lady of the jetty-interview into court, and examining her. She felt quite sure of herself and her powers of conducting the case--and she was mistaken.

She knew nothing of the traps and pitfalls that were gaping for her.

Her opening statement went easily though; it was all prepared.

"Don't you see, Dr. Conrad dear, the cases are quite different? When you're married, your wife will call _me_ Sally, of course. But ...

well, if I had a husband, you know, _he_ would call _you_ Dr. Vereker.

Sure to!" Sally felt satisfied with the sound of her voice. But the doctor said never a word, and his face was grave. She would have to go on, una.s.sisted, and she had invented nothing to say, so far. So a wavering crept in--nothing in itself at first, apart from her consciousness of it. "Besides, though, of course _she_ would call _me_ Sally, she mightn't quite--not altogether, you know--I mean, she might think it...." But ambushes revealed themselves in every hedge, ready to break out if she ended this sentence. Dr. Conrad made completion unnecessary.

"Whom do you mean by _she_, Sally?"

"Why, of course! Who could I mean but the girl you told me about that you think wouldn't agree with your mother?"

"I thought so. See what a mess I made of it! No, Sally, there's no such person. Now I shall have to speak the truth, and then I shall have to go away from you, and it will all be spoiled...." But Sally interposes on the tense speech, and sound of growing determination in the doctor's voice:

"Oh no, don't--no, don't! Don't say anything that will change it from _now_. See how happy we are! How could it be better? I'll call you Conrad, or anything you like. Only, _don't_ make it different."

"Very well, I won't. I promise!" The doctor calms down. "But, Sally dearest--I may say Sally dearest, mayn't I?..."

"Well, perhaps. Only you must make that do for the present."

But there is a haunting sense of the Octopus in the conscientious soul of her son, and even though he is allowed to say "Sally dearest," the burden is on him of knowing that he has been swept away in the turmoil of this whirlwind of self, and he is feeling round to say _peccavi_, and make amends by confession. He makes "Sally dearest" do for the moment, but captures as a set-off the hand that slips readily enough into the arm he offers for it, with a caressing other hand, before he speaks again. He renews his promise--but with such a compensation in the hand that remains at rest in his! and then continues:

"Dearest Sally, I dare say you see how it was--about mother. It was very stupid of me, and I did it very badly. I got puzzled, and lost my head."

"I thought it was a real young lady, anyhow."

"I saw you did. And I do think--just now--I should have let you continue believing in the real young lady ... only when you said that...."

"Said what?"

"Said that about your husband, and calling me Conrad. I couldn't stand it. It was just like a knife ... no, I'm in earnest, it _was_.

How could I have borne it--gone on at all--with you married to any one else?" He asks this in a tone of serious conviction, of one who is diagnosing a strange case, conscientiously. Sally declines consultation--won't be too serious over it.

"You would have had to. Men get on capitally when they have to. But very likely I won't marry you. Don't be too sure! I haven't committed myself, you know." Nevertheless, the hand remains pa.s.sive in the doctor's, as he continues his diagnosis:

"I shouldn't deserve you. But, then, who could?"

Sally tacitly refuses to help in answering this question.

"I vote for neither of us marrying anybody else, but going on like now," says she thoughtfully.

Sally, you see, was recovering herself after a momentary alarm, produced by the gust of resolution on Dr. Conrad's part. She had shut her window on the storm in his soul, and felt safe in resuming her ident.i.ty. All through this walk, ever since the hand-incident, she had been hard at work ignoring suggestions of her inner mind that her companion was a loaded gun, and not quite safe to play with. Now she felt she had established a sort of _modus vivendi_ which would not involve her in the horrors of a formal engagement, with the concomitants of dissension and bitterness that she had noticed in friends' families on such occasions. Why shouldn't she and poor Prosy walk about together as much as they liked--yes, even call in at a church and get married if they liked--and have no one else fussing over them? The sort of semi-trothplight she had just hushed into silence would do for a good long time to come, because she understood Prosy down to the ground, and, of course, she knew that his mistrusting her was out of the question.

As for the doctor, his was the sort of temperament one often meets with in very fair men of his type--intensely shy, but with a backing of resolution on occasion shown, bred of a capacity for high-strung pa.s.sion. He had formed his intention fully and clearly of telling Sally the whole truth before they arrived at St. Sennans that evening, and had been hastened to what was virtually an avowal by a premature accident, as we have seen. Now the murder was out, and he was walking home slowly beside the marvel, the mystery, that had taken possession of the inmost recesses of his life--very much in her pocket, if the truth must be told--with an almost intolerable searching fire of joy finding every moment a new untouched recess in his innermost heart.

He could have fallen at her feet and kissed them, could have poured out his very soul in pa.s.sionate protestations, could and would have done anything that would have given a moment's respite to the tension of his love for this all-absorbing other creature that was absolutely here--a reality, and no dream--beside him. But he was going to be good, at her bidding, and remain a sane and reasonable general pract.i.tioner, however much his heart beat and his head swam. Poor Prosy!

No! On consideration, Agur, the son of Jakeh, didn't know all about it. He only knew the Oriental temperament. He was quite up to date, no doubt, but neither he nor Ithiel nor Ucal nor King Solomon could reckon with spiritual volcanoes. Probably nothing in the world could have explained to either of them the meaning of one or two bits of music Schubert wrote on this subject of Love--we don't flinch from our phraseology; we know that all will understand it whom we care should do so. By-the-bye, Dr. Vereker was partly German, and a musician.

Agur can have had no experience of either. The ancestors of Schubert and Beethoven were splendid savages in his day, sleeping on the snow-wreaths in the forests of the north; and somewhere among them there was a germ of a love-pa.s.sion that was one day to ring changes on the peals that were known to Agur, the son of Jakeh.