WHAT FENWICK AND SALLY'S MOTHER HAD BEEN SAYING IN THE BACK DRAWING-ROOM.
OP. 999. BACK IN THAT OLD GARDEN AGAIN, AND HOW GERRY COULD NOT SWIM.
THE OLD TARTINI SONATA
As soon as ever Mr. Bradshaw touched his violin, and before ever he
began to play his Hungarian Dance on all four strings at once, Mrs.
Nightingale and Mr. Fenwick went away into the back drawing-room, not
to be too near the music. Because there was a fire in both rooms.
In the interval of time that had passed since Christmas Sally had
contrived to "dismiss from her mind" Colonel Lund's previsions about
her mother and Mr. Fenwick. Or they had given warning, and gone of
their own accord. For by now she had again fallen into the frame of
mind which classified her mother and Fenwick as semi-elderly people,
and, so to speak, out of it all. So her mind assented readily to
distance from the music as a sufficient reason for a secession to the
back room. Non-combatants are just as well off the field of battle.
But a closer observer than Sally at this moment would have noticed
that chat in an undertone had already set in in the back drawing-room
even before the Hungarians had stopped dancing. Also that the applause
that came therefrom, when they did stop, had a certain perfunctory
air, as of plaudits something else makes room for, and comes back
again after. Not that she would have "seen anything in it" if she had,
because, whatever her mother said or did was, in Sally's eyes, right
and normal. Abnormal and bad things were conceived and executed
outside the family. Nor, in spite of the _sotto voce_, was there
anything Sally could not have participated in, whatever exception she
might have taken to something of a patronising tone, inexcusable
towards our own generation even in the most semi-elderly people on
record.
Her mother, at Sally's latest observation point, had taken the large
armchair quite on the other side of the rug, to be as far off the
music as possible. Mr. Fenwick, in reply to a flying remark of her
own, she being at the moment a music-book seeker, wouldn't bring the
other large armchair in front of the fire and be comfortable, thank
you. He liked this just as well. Sally had then commented on Mr.
Fenwick's unnatural love of uncomfortable chairs "when he wasn't
walking about the room." She fancied, as she passed on, that she heard
her mother address him as "Fenwick," without the "Mr." So she did.
"You are a restless man, Fenwick! I wonder were you so before the
accident? Oh dear! there I am on that topic again!" But he only
laughed.
"It doesn't hurt _me_," he said. "That reminds me that I wanted to
remind _you_ of something you said you would tell me. You know--that
evening the kitten went to the music-party--something you would tell
me some time."
"I know; I'll tell you when they've got to their music, if there isn't
too much row. Don't let's talk while this new young man's playing; it
seems unkind. It won't matter when they're all at it together." But in
spite of good resolutions silence was not properly observed, and the
perfunctory pause came awkwardly on the top of a lapse. Fenwick then
said, as one who avails himself of an opportunity:
"No need to wait for the music; they can't hear a word we say in there.
We can't hear a word _they_ say."
"Because they're making such a racket." Mrs. Nightingale paused with
a listening eye, trying to disprove their inaudibility. The examination
confirmed Fenwick. "I like it," she continued--"a lot of young voices.
It's much better when you don't make out what they say. When you can't
hear a word, you fancy some sense in it." And then went on listening,
and Fenwick waited, too. He couldn't well fidget her to keep her
promise; she would do it of herself in time. It might be she preferred
talking under cover of the music. She certainly remained silent till
it came; then she spoke.
"What was it made me say that to you about something I would tell you?
Oh, I know. You said, perhaps if you knew your past, you would not
court catechism about it. And I said that, knowing mine, _I_ should
not either. Wasn't that it?" She fixed her eyes on him as though to
hold him to the truth. Perhaps she wanted his verbal recognition of
the possibility that she, too, like others, might have left things in
the past she would like to forget on their merits--cast-off garments
on the road of life. It may have been painful to her to feel his faith
in herself an obstacle to what she wished at least to hint to him,
even if she could not tell him outright. She did not want too much
divine worship at her shrine--a ready recognition of her position of
mortal frailty would be so much more sympathetic, really. A feeling
perhaps traceably akin to what many of us have felt, that if our
father the devil--"auld Nickie Ben"--would only tak' a thought and
mend, as he aiblins might, he would be the very king of father
confessors. If details had to be gone into, we should be sure of _his_
sympathy.
"Yes, that was it. And I suppose I looked incredulous." Thus Fenwick.
"You looked incredulous. I would sooner you should believe me. Would
you hand me down that fire-screen off the chimney-piece? Thank you."
She was hardening herself to the task she had before her. He gave her
the screen, and as he resumed his seat drew it nearer to her. Mozart's
Op. 999 had just started, and it was a little doubtful if voices could
be heard unless, in Sally's phrase, they were close to.
"I shall believe you. Does what you were going to tell me relate
to----"
"Go on."
"To your husband?"
"Yes." The task had become easier suddenly. She breathed more freely
about what was to come. "I wish you to know that he may be still
living. I have heard nothing to the contrary. But I ought to speak
of him as the man who was my husband. He is no longer that." Fenwick
interposed on her hesitation.
"You have divorced him?" But she shook her head--shook a long
negative. And Fenwick looked up quickly, and uttered a little sharp
"Ah!" as though something had struck him. The slow head-shake said as
plain as words could have said it, "I wish I could say yes." So
expressive was it that Fenwick did not even speculate on the third
alternative--a separation without a divorce. He saw at once he could
make it easier for her if he spoke out plain, treating the bygone as
a thing that _could_ be spoken of plainly.
"He divorced you?" She was very white, but kept her eyes steadily
fixed on him over the fire-screen, and her voice remained perfectly
firm and collected. The music went on intricately all the while. She
spoke next.
"To all intents and purposes. There was a technical obstacle to a
legal divorce, but he tried for one. We parted sorely against my will,
for I loved him, and now it is over nineteen years since I saw him
last, or heard of him or from him. But he was absolutely blameless.
Unless, indeed, it is to be counted blame to him that he could not
bear what no other man could have borne. I cannot possibly give you
all details. But I wish you to hear this that I have to tell you from
myself. It is painful to me to tell, but it would be far worse that
you should hear it from any one else. I feel sure it is safe to tell
you; that you will not talk of it to others--least of all to that
little chick of mine."
"You may trust me--indeed, you may--without reserve. I see you wish
to tell me no more, so I will not ask it."
"And blame me as little as possible?"
"I cannot blame you."
"Before you say that, listen to as much as I can tell you of the
story. I was a young girl when I went out alone to be married to him
in India. We had parted in England eight months before, and he had
remained unchanged--his letters all told the same tale. I quarrelled
with my mother--as I now see most unreasonably--merely because she
wished to marry again. Perhaps she was a little to blame not to be
more patient with a headstrong, ill-regulated girl. I was both. It
ended in my writing out to him in India that I should come out and
marry him at once. My mother made no opposition." She remained silent
for a little, and her eyes fell. Then she spoke with more effort,
rather as one who answers her own thoughts. "No, I need say nothing of
the time between. It was no excuse for the wrong I did _him_. I can
tell you what that was...." It did not seem easy, though, when it came
to actual words. Fenwick spoke into the pause.
"Why tell me now? Tell me another time."
"I prefer now. It was this way: I kept something back from him till
after we were married--something I should have told him before. Had I
done so, I believe to this moment we should never have parted. But my
concealment threw doubt on all else I said.... I am telling more than
I meant to tell." She hesitated again, and then went on. "That was my
wrong to him--the concealment. But, of course, it was not the ground
of the divorce proceedings." Fenwick stopped her again.
"Why tell me any more? You are being led on--are leading yourself
on--to say more than you wish."
"Well, I will leave it there. Only, Fenwick, understand this: my
husband was young and generous and noble-hearted. Had I trusted him,
I believe all might have gone well, even though he...." She hesitated
again, and then cancelled something unsaid. "The concealment was my
fault--the mistrust. That was all. Nothing else was my _fault_." As
she says the words in praise of her husband she finds it a pleasure
to let her eyes rest on the grave, handsome, puzzled face that, after
all, really is _his_. She catches herself wondering--so oddly do the
undercurrents of mind course about--where he got that sharp white scar
across his nose. It was not there in the old days.
She looks at him until he, too, looks up, and their eyes meet. "Well,
then," she says, "I will tell you no more. Blame me as little as
possible." And to this repetition of her previous words he says again,
"I cannot blame you," very emphatically.
But Mrs. Nightingale felt perplexed at his evident sincerity; would
rather he should have indulged in truisms, we were not all of us
perfect, and so forth. When she spoke again, some bars of the music
later, she took for granted that his mind, like hers, was still
dwelling on his last words. She felt half sorry she had, so to speak,
switched off the current of the conversation.
"If you will think over what I have told you, Fenwick, you will see
that you cannot help doing so."
"How can that be?"
"Surely! My husband sought to divorce me, and was himself absolutely
blameless. How can you do otherwise than blame me?"
"Partly--only partly--because I see you are keeping back
something--something that would exonerate you. I cannot believe you
were to blame."
"Listen, Fenwick! As I said, I cannot tell you the whole; and the
Major, who is the only man alive who knows all the story, will, I
know, refuse to tell you anything, even if you ask him, and that I
wish you not to do."
"I should not dream of asking him."
"Well, he would refuse. I know it. But I want you to know all I can
tell you. I do not want any groundless excuses made for me. I will not
accept any absolution from any one on a false pretence. You see what
I mean."
"I see perfectly. I am not sure, though, that you see my meaning. But
never mind that. Is there anything further you would really like me
to know?"
She waited a little, and then answered, keeping her eyes always fixed
on Fenwick: "Yes, there is."
But at this moment the first movement of Op. 999 came to a perfect
and well thought out conclusion, bearing in mind everything that had
been said on six pages of ideas faultlessly interchanged by four
instruments, and making due allowance for all exceptions each had
courteously taken to the other. But Op. 999 was going on to the
second movement directly, and only tolerated a pause for a few
string-tightenings and trial-squeaks, to get in tune, and the removal
of a deceased fly from a piano-candle. The remark from the back-room
that we could hear beautifully in here seemed to fall flat, the
second violin merely replying "All right!" passionlessly. The
instruments then asked each other if they were ready, and answered
yes. Then some one counted four suggestively, for a start, and life
went on again.
Mrs. Nightingale and Fenwick sat well on into the music before either
spoke. He, resolved not to seem to seek or urge any information at
all; all was to come spontaneously from her. She, feeling the
difficulty of telling what she had to tell, and always oppressed with
the recollection of what it had cost her to make her revelation to
this selfsame man nineteen years ago. She wished he would give the
conversation some lift, as he had done before, when he asked if what
she had to tell referred to her husband. But, although he would gladly
have repeated his assistance, he could see his way to nothing, this
time, that seemed altogether free from risk. How if he were to
blunder into ascribing to her something more culpable than her actual
share in the past? She half guessed this; then, seeing that speech
must come from herself in the end, took heart and faced the position
resolutely. She always did.
"You know this, Fenwick, do you not, that when there is a divorce, the
husband takes the children from their mother--always, when she is in
the wrong; too often, when she is blameless. I have told you I was the
one to blame, and I tell you now that though my husband's application
for a divorce failed, from a technical point of law, all things came
about just as though he had succeeded. Don't analyse it now; take it
all for granted--you understand?"
"I understand. Suppose it so! And then?"
"And then this. That little monkey of mine--that little unconscious
fiddling thing in there"--and as Mrs. Nightingale speaks, the sound of
a caress mixes with the laugh in her voice; but the pain comes back as
she goes on--"My Sallykin has been mine, all her life! My poor husband
never saw her in her childhood." As she says the word _husband_
she has again a vivid _éclat_ of the consciousness that it is
he--himself--sitting there beside her. And the odd thought that mixes
itself into this, strange to say, is--"The pity of it! To think how
little he has had of Sally in all these years!"
He, for his part, can for the moment make nothing of this part of
the story. He can give his head the lion-mane shake she knows him by
so well, but it brings him no light. He is reduced to mere slow
repetition of her data; his hand before his eyes to keep his brain,
that has to think, clear of distractions from without.
"Your husband never saw her. She has been yours all her life. Had she
been your husband's child, he would have exercised his so-called
rights--his _legal_ rights--and taken her away. Are those the
facts--so far?"
"Yes--go on. No--stop; I will tell you. At the beginning of this year
I should have been married exactly twenty years. Sally is
nineteen--you remember her birthday?"
"Nineteen in August. Now, let me think!" Just at this moment the second
movement of Op. 999 came to an end, and gave an added plausibility to
the blank he needed to ponder in. The viola in the next room looked
round across her chair-back, and said, "I say, mother"--to a repetition
of which Mrs. Nightingale replied what did her daughter say? What
she said was that her mother and Mr. Fenwick were exactly like the
canaries. They talked as hard as they could all through the music, and
when it stopped they shut up. Wasn't that true? To which her mother
answered affirmatively, adding, "You'll have to put a cloth over us,
chick, and squash us out."
Fenwick was absorbed in thought, and did not notice this interlude. He
did not speak until the music began again. Then he said abruptly:
"I see the story now. Sally's father was not...."
"Was not my husband." There is not a trace of cowardice or hesitation
in her filling out the sentence. There is pain, but that again dies
away in her voice as she goes on to speak of her daughter. "I do not
connect him with her now. She is--a thing of itself--a thing of herself!
She is--she is Sally. Well, you see what she is."
"I see she is a very dear little person." Then he seems to want to say
something and to pause on the edge of it; then, in answer to a "yes"
of encouragement from her, continues, "I was going to say that she
must be very like him--like her father."
"Very like?" she asks--"or very unlike? Which did you mean?"
"I mean very like as to looks. Because she is so unlike you."
"She is like enough to him, as far as looks go. It's her only fault,
poor chick, and _she_ can't help it. Besides, I mind it less now that
I have more than half forgiven him, for her sake." The tone of her
voice mixes a sob and a laugh, although she utters neither, and is
quite collected. "But she is quite unlike him in character. Sally is
not an angel--oh dear, no!" The laugh predominates. "But----"
"But what?"
"She is not a devil." And as she said this the pain was all back again
in the dropped half-whisper in which she said it. And in that moment
Fenwick made his guess of the whole story, which maybe went nearer
than we shall do with the information we have to go upon. In this
narrative, as we tell it now, that story is _known_ only to its chief
actor, and to her old friend who is now dining at the Hurkaru Club.
* * * * *
The third movement of Op. 999 was not a very long one, and, coming
to an end at this point, seemed to supply a reason for silence that
was not unwelcome in the back drawing-room. The end of a trying
conversation had been attained. Both speakers could now affect
attention to what was going on in the front. This had taken the form
of a discussion between Mr. Julius Bradshaw and Miss Lætitia Wilson,
who was anxious to transfer her position of first violin to that young
gentleman. We regret to have to report that Miss Sally's agreement
with her friend about the desirability had been _sotto voce_'d in
these terms: "Yes, Tishy dear! Do make the shop-boy play the last
movement." And Miss Wilson had then suggested it, saying there was
a bit she knew she couldn't play. "And you expect _me_ to!" said the
owner of the Strad, "when I haven't so much as looked at it for three
years past." To which Miss Sally appended a marginal note, "Stuff
and nonsense! Don't be affected, Mr. Bradshaw." However, after
compliments, and more protestations from its owner, the Strad was
brought into hotchpot, and Lætitia abdicated.
"Won't you come and sit in here, to be away from the music?" said the
back-drawing-room. But Lætitia wanted to see Mr. Bradshaw's fingering
of that passage. We are more interested in the back drawing-room.
Like many other athletic men--and we have seen how strongly this
character was maintained in Fenwick--he hated armchairs. Even in the
uncomfortable ones--by which we mean the ones _we_ dislike--his
restless strength would not remain quiet for any length of time. At
intervals he would get up and walk about the room, exasperating the
sedate, and then making good-humoured concession to their weakness.
Mrs. Nightingale could remember all this in Gerry the boy, twenty
years ago.
If it had not been for that music, probably he would have walked about
the room over that stiff problem in dates he had just grappled with.
As it was, he remained in his chair to solve it--that is, if he did
solve it. Possibly, the moment he saw something important turned on
the date of Sally's birth, he jumped across the solution to the
conclusion it was to lead to. Given the conclusion, the calculation
had no interest for him.
But the story his mind constructed to fit that conclusion stunned him.
It knitted his brows and clenched his teeth for him. It made the hand
that had been hanging loose over the uncomfortable chair-back close
savagely on something--a throat, perhaps, that his imagination
supplied? How like he looked, thought his companion, to himself on one
occasion twenty years ago! But his anger now was on her behalf alone;
it was not so in that dreadful time she hoped he might never recollect.
If only his memory of all the past might remain as now, a book with
a locked clasp and a lost key!
She watched him as he sat there, and saw a calmer mood come back upon
him. Each wanted a _raison d'être_ for a silent pause, and neither was
sorry for the desire each might ascribe to the other of hearing the
last movement of the music undisturbed. Op. 999 was prospering,
there was no doubt of it! Lætitia Wilson was a very fair example of
a creditable career at the R.A.M. But she was not quite equal to this
unfortunate victim of a too nervous system, who could play like an
angel for half an hour, mind you--not more. This was his half-hour;
and it was quite reasonable for Fenwick to take for granted that his
hostess would like to pay attention to it, or _vice-versa_. So both
sat silent.
But as she sat listening to Op. 999, and watching wonderingly the
strange victim of oblivion, of whom she knew--scarcely acknowledging
it always, though--that she had once for a short time called him
husband, her mind went back to an old time when he and she were young:
before the tragic memory that she sometimes thought might have been
lived down had come into her life and his. And a scene rose up before
her out of that old time--a scene of young men, almost boys, and girls
who but the other day were in the nursery, playing lawn-tennis in a
happy garden, with never a thought for anything in this wide world but
themselves, and each other, and the scoring, and how jolly it would be
in the house-boat at Henley to-morrow. And then this garden-scene
a little later in the moonrise, and herself and one of the players,
who was Gerry--this very man--left by the other two to themselves,
on a garden-seat his arm hung over, just as it did now over that
chair-back. How exactly he sat then as he sat now, his other hand in
charge of the foot he had crossed on his knee, just as now, to keep
it from a slip along his lawn-tennis flannels! How well she could
remember the tennis-shoe, with its ribbed rubber sole, in place of
that highly-polished calf thing! And she could remember every word
they said, there in the warm moonlight.
"What a silly boy you are!"
"I don't care. I shall always say exactly the same. I can't help it."
"All silly boys say that sort of thing. Then they change their minds."
"I never said it to any girl in my life but you, Rosey. I never thought
it. I shall never say it again to any one but you."
"Don't be nonsensical!"
"I'm _not_! It's _true_."
"Wait till you've been six months in India, Gerry."
And then the recollection of what followed made it seem infinitely
strange to her that Fenwick should remain, as he had remained,
immovable. If the hand she could remember so well, for all it had
grown so scarred and service-worn and hairy, were to take hers as it
did then, as they sat together on the garden-seat, would it shake now
as formerly? If his great strong arm her memory still felt round her
were to come again now, would she feel in it the tremor of the passion
he was shaken by then; and in caresses such as she half reproved him
for, but had no heart to resist, the reality of a love then young and
strong and full of promise for the days to come? And now--what? The
perished trunk of an uprooted tree: the shadow of a half-forgotten
dream.
As he sat silent, only now and then by some slight sign, some new
knitting of the brow or closing of the hand, showing the tension of the
feeling produced by the version his mind had made of the story half
told to him--as he sat thus, under a kind of feint of listening to
the music, the world grew stranger and stranger to his companion. She
had fancied herself strong enough to tell the story, but had hardly
reckoned with his possible likeness to himself. She had thought that
she could keep the twenty years that had passed clearly in her mind;
could deal with the position from a good, sensible, matter-of-fact
standpoint.
The past was past, and happily forgotten by him. The present had still
its possibilities, if only the past might remain forgotten. Surely she
could rely on herself to find the nerve to go through what was, after
all, a mere act of duty. Knowing, or rather feeling, that Fenwick would
ask her to marry him as soon as he dared--it was merely a question of
time--her duty was plainly to forewarn him--to make sure that he was
alive to the antecedents of the woman he was offering himself to. She
knew _his_ antecedents; as many as she wished to know. If the twenty
years of oblivion concealed irregularity, immorality--well, was she not
to blame for it? Was ever a better boy than Gerry, as she knew him, to
the day they parted? It was her fault or misfortune that had cast
him all adrift. As to that troublesome question of a possible wife
elsewhere, in the land of his oblivion, she had quite made up her mind
about that. Every effort had been made to find such a one, and failed.
If she reappeared, it would be her own duty to surrender Fenwick--if he
wished to go back. If he did not, and his other wife wished to be free,
surely in the _chicane_ of the law-courts there must be some shuffle
that could be for once made useful to a good end.
Mrs. Nightingale had reasoned it all out in cold blood, and she was,
as we have told you, a strong woman. But had she really taken her own
measure? Could she sit there much longer; with him beside her, and his
words of twenty years ago sounding in her ears; almost the feeling of
the kisses she had so dutifully pointed out the lawlessness, and
allowed the repetition of, in that old forgotten time--forgotten by
him, never by her! Was it possible to bear, without crying out, the
bewilderment of a mixed existence such as that his presence and
identity forced upon her, wrenching her this way and that, interweaving
the woof of _then_ with the weft of _now_, even as in that labyrinth of
musical themes and phrases in the other room they crossed and recrossed
one another at the bidding of each instrument as its turn came to tell
its tale? Her brain reeled and her heart ached under the intolerable
stress. Could she still hold on, or would she be, after all, driven
to make some excuse, and run for the solitude of her own room to live
down the tension as best she might alone?
The music itself came to her assistance. Its triumphant strength, in
an indescribable outburst of hope or joy or mastery of Fate, as it drew
near to its final close, spoke to her of the great ocean that lies
beyond the crabbed limits of our stinted lives, the boundless sea our
rivulets of life steal down to, to be lost in; and while it lasted made
it possible for her to be still. She took her eyes from Fenwick, and
waited. When she raised them again, in the silence Op. 999 came to an
end in, she saw that he had moved. His face had gone into his hands;
and as she looked up, his old action of rubbing them into his loose
hair, and shaking it, had come back, and his strong identity with his
boyhood, dependent on the chance of a moment, had disappeared. He got
up suddenly, and after a turn across the room he was in, walked into
the other one, and contributed his share to the babble of felicitation
or comment that followed what was clearly thought an achievement in
musical rendering.
"Oh dear, oh dear!" said Lætitia Wilson. "Was ever a poor girl so sat
upon? I feel quite flat!" This was not meant to be taken too much _au
pied de la lettre_. It was merely a method of praise of Mr. Bradshaw.
"But what a jolly shame you had to give it up!" This was Sally in
undisguised admiration. But in Mr. Julius Bradshaw's eyes, Sally's
identity had undergone a change. Her breezy frankness had made hay of
a _grande passion_, and was blowing the hay all over the field. He had
come close to, and had a good look; but he will hardly go away in a
huff, although he feels a little silly over his public worship of these
past weeks. Just at this moment of the story, however, he is very
apologetic towards Miss Wilson; on whom, if she reports correctly, he
has sat. He tries no pretences with a view to her reinstatement, even
on a par with himself. He knows, and every one knows, they would be
seen through immediately. It is no use assuring her she is a capital
player, of her years. Much better let it alone!
"Are you any the worse, Mr. Bradshaw?" says Dr. Vereker. Obviously, as
a medical authority, it is his duty to "voice" this inquiry. So he
voices it.
"N--no; but that's about as much as I can do, with safety. It won't do
to spoil my night's rest, and be late at the shop." It was easy to talk
about the shop with perfect unreserve after such a performance as that.
"Oh dear! we are so sorry for you!" Thus the two girls. And concurrence
comes in various forms from Vereker, Fenwick, and the pianist, whom we
haven't mentioned before. He was a cousin of Miss Wilson's, and was one
of those unfortunate young men who have no individuality whatever. But
pianists have to be human unless you can afford a pianola. You may
speak of them as Mr. What's-his-name, or Miss Thingummy, but you must
give them tea or coffee or cake or sandwiches, or whatever is brought
in on a tray. This young man's name, we believe, was Elsley--Nobody
Elsley, Miss Sally in her frivolity had thought fit to christen him.
You know how in your own life people come in and go out, and you never
know anything about them. Even so this young man in this story.
"I was very sorry for myself, I assure you"--it is Bradshaw who
speaks--"when I had to make up my mind to give it up. But it couldn't
be helped!" He speaks without reserve, but as of an unbearable subject;
in fact, Sally said afterwards to Tishy, "it seemed as if he was going
to cry." He doesn't cry, though, but goes on: "At one time I really
thought I should have gone and jumped into the river."
"Why didn't you?" asks Sally. "I should have."
"Yes, silly Sally!" says Lætitia; "and then you would have swum like
a fish. And the police would have pulled you out. And you would have
looked ridiculous!"
But Sally is off on a visit to her mother in the next room.
"Tired, mammy darling?"
She kisses her, and her mother answers: "Yes, love, a little," and
kisses her back.
"Doesn't he play _beautifully_, mother?" says Sally.
But her mother says "Yes" absently. Her attention is taken off by
something else. What is wrong with Mr. Fenwick? Sally doesn't think
anything is. It's only his way.
"I'm sure there's something wrong," says Mrs. Nightingale, and gets
up to go into the front-room rather wearily. "I shall go to bed soon,
poppet," she says, "and leave you to do the honours. Is anything wrong,
doctor?" She speaks under her voice to Vereker, looking very slightly
round at Fenwick, who, after the movement that alarmed her--a rather
unusually marked head-shake and pressure of his hands on his eyes--is
standing looking down at the fire, on the rug with his back to her, as
she speaks to Vereker.
"I fancy he's had what he calls a recurrence," says the doctor. "Nothing
to hurt. These half-recollections will go on until the memory comes
back in earnest. It may some time."
"Are you talking about me, doctor?" His attention may have been caught
by a reflection in a glass before him. "Yes, it was a very queer
recurrence. Something about lawn-tennis. Only it had to do with what
Miss Wilson said about the police fishing Sally out of the water." He
looks round for Miss Wilson, but she is at the other end of the room
on a sofa talking to Bradshaw about the Strad, as recorded once before.
Sally testifies:
"Tishy said it wouldn't work--trying to drown yourself if you could
swim. No more it would."
"But why should that make me think of lawn-tennis? It did." He looks
seriously distressed by it--can make nothing out.
"Kitten," says Sally's mother to her suddenly, "I think I shall go away
to bed. I'm feeling very tired."
She says good-night comprehensively, and departs. But she is so clearly
the worse for something that her daughter follows her to see that the
something is not serious. Outside she reassures Sally, who returns. Oh
no, she is only tired; really nothing else.
But what drove her out of the room was a feeling that she must be alone
and silent. Could her position be borne at all? Yes, with patience and
self-control. But that "why should it make me think of lawn-tennis?"
was trying. Not only the pain of still more revived association, but
the fear that his memory might travel still further into the past. It
was living on the edge of the volcano.
Her own memory had followed on, too, taking up the thread of that old
interview in the garden of twenty years ago. She had felt again the
clasp of his arm, the touch of his hand; had heard his voice of
passionate protest--protest against the idea that he could ever forget.
And she had then pretended to make a half-joke of his earnestness. What
would he do now, really, if she were to tell him she preferred his
great friend Arthur Fenwick to him? That was nonsense, he said. She
knew she didn't. Besides, Arthur wanted Jessie Nairn. Why, didn't they
waltz all the waltzes at the party last week?... Well, so did we, for
that matter, all-but.... And just look how they had run away together!
Wasn't that them coming back? Yes, it was; and artificial calm ensued,
and more self-contained manners. But then, before the other two young
lovers could rejoin them, she had time for a word more.
"No, dear Gerry, seriously. If I were to write out _no_ to you in
India--a great big final NO--then what do you think you would do?"
"I know what I _think_ I should do. I should throw myself into the
Hooghly or the Ganges."
"You silly boy! You would swim about, whether you liked or no. And then
Jemadars, or Shastras, or Sudras, or something would come and pull you
out. And then how ridiculous you would look!"
"No, Rosey, because I can't swim. Isn't it funny?"
Then she recollected _his_ friend's voice striking in with: "What's
that? Gerry Palliser swim! Of course he can't. He can wrestle, or run,
or ride, or jump; and he's the best man I know with the gloves on. But
swim he _can't_! That's flat!" Also how Gerry had then told eagerly how
he was nearly drowned once, and Arthur fished him up from the bottom of
Abingdon Lock. The latter went on:
"It was after that we tattooed each other, his name on my arm, my
name on his, so as not to quarrel. You know, I suppose, that men who
tattoo each other's arms can't quarrel if they try?" Arthur showed
"A. Palliser," tattooed blue on his arm. Both young men were very grave
and earnest about the safeguard. And then she remembered a question she
asked, and how both replied with perfect gravity: "Of course, sure to!"
The question had been:--Was it invariable that all men quarrelled if
one saved the other from drowning?
She sits upstairs alone by the fire in her bedroom, and dreams again
through all the past, except the nightmare of her life--_that_ she
always shudders away from. Sally will come up presently, and then she
will feel ease again. Now, it is a struggle against fever.
She can hear plainly enough--for the house is but a London suburban
villa--the strains from the drawing-room of what is possibly the most
hackneyed violin music in the world--the Tartini (so-called) Devil
Sonata--every phrase, every run, every chord an enthralling mystery
still, an utterance none can explain, an inexhaustible thing no age can
wither, and no custom stale. It is so soothing to her that it matters
little if it makes them late. But that young man will destroy his
nerves to a certainty outright.
Then comes the chaos of dispersal--the broken fragments of the
intelligible a watchful ear may pick out. Dr. Vereker won't have a cab;
he will leave the 'cello till next time, and walk. Mr. Bradshaw wants
to get to Bayswater. Of course, that's all in our way--we being Miss
Wilson and the cousin, the nonentity. We can give Mr. Bradshaw a lift
as far as he goes, and then he can take the growler on. Then more
good-nights are wished than the nature of things will admit of before
to-morrow, Fenwick and Vereker light something to smoke, with a
preposterous solicitude to use only one tandsticker between them, and
walk away umbrella-less. From which we see that "it" is holding up.
Then comes silence, and a consciousness of a policeman musing, and
suspecting doors have been left stood open.
And it was then Sally went upstairs and indited her friend for sitting
on that sofa after calling him a shop-boy. And she didn't forget it,
either, for after she and her mother were in bed, and presumably
better, she called out to her.
"I say, mammy!"
"What, dear?"
"Isn't that St. John's Church?"
"Isn't which St. John's Church?"
"Where Tishy goes?"
"Yes, Ladbroke Grove Road. Why?"
"Because now Mr. Bradshaw will go there--public worship!"
"Will he, dear? Suppose we go to sleep." But she really meant "you,"
not "we"; for it was a long time before she went to sleep herself. She
had plenty to think of, and wanted to be quiet, conscious of Sally in
the neighbourhood.
* * * * *
We hope our reader was not misled, as we ourselves were, when Mrs.
Nightingale first saw the name on Fenwick's arm, into supposing that
she accepted it as his real name. She knew better. But then, how was
she to tell him his name was Palliser? Think it over.