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.