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
The segment of a circle of Society that did duty for a sphere, in the
case of Mrs. Nightingale and Sally, was collectively surprised when it
heard of the intended marriage of the former, having settled in its own
mind that the latter was the magnet to Mr. Fenwick's lodestone. But
each several individual that composed it had, it seemed, foreseen
exactly what was going to happen, and had predicted it in language that
could only have been wilfully mistaken by persons interested in proving
that the speaker was not a prophet. Exceptional insight had been
epidemic. The only wonder was (to the individual speaker) that Mrs.
Nightingale had remained single so long, and the only other wonder was
that none of the other cases had seen it. They had evidently only taken
seership mildly.
Dr. Vereker had a good opportunity of studying omniscience of a
malignant type in the very well marked case of his own mother. You may
remember Sally's denunciation of her as an old hen that came wobbling
down on you. When her son (in the simplicity of his heart) announced
to her as a great and curious piece of news that Mr. Fenwick was
going to marry Mrs. Nightingale, she did not even look up from her
knitting to reply: "What did I say to you, Conny?" For his name was
Conrad, as Sally had reported. His discretion was not on the alert on
this occasion, for he incautiously asked, "When?"
The good lady laid down her knitting on her knees, and folded her
hands, interlacing her fingers, which were fat, as far as they would
go, and leaning back with closed eyes--eyes intended to remain closed
during anticipated patience.
"Fancy asking me that!" said she.
"Well, but--hang it!--_when?_"
"Do not use profane language, Conrad, in your mother's presence. Can
you really ask me, 'When?' Try and recollect!"
Conrad appeared to consider; but as he had to contend with the problem
of finding out when a thing had been said, the only clue to the nature
of which was the date of its utterance, it was no great wonder that his
cogitations ended in a shake of the head subdivided into its
elements--shakes taken a brace at a time--and an expression of face as
of one who whistles _sotto voce_. His questioner must have been looking
between her eyelids, which wasn't playing fair; for she indicted him on
the spot, and pushed him, as it were, into the dock.
"_That_, I suppose, means that I speak untruth. Very well, my dear!"
Resignation set in.
"Come, mother, I say, now! Be a reasonable maternal parent. When did
I say anybody spoke untruth?"
"My dear, you _said_ nothing. But if your father could have heard what
you did _not_ say, you know perfectly well, my dear Conrad, what he
would have _thought_. Was he likely to sit by and hear me insulted?
Did he ever do so?"
The doctor was writing letters at a desk-table that he used for
miscellaneous correspondence as much as possible, in order that this
very same mother of his should be left alone as little as possible. He
ended a responsible letter, and directed it, and made it a thing of the
past with a stamp on it in a little basket on the hall-table outside.
Then he came back to his mother, and bestowed on her the kiss, or peck,
of peace. It always made him uncomfortable when he had to go away to
the hospital under the shadow of dissension at home.
"Well, mother dear, what was it you really did say about the Fenwick
engagement?"
"It would be more proper, my dear, to speak of it as the Nightingale
engagement. You will say it is a matter of form, but...."
"All right. The Nightingale engagement...."
"My dear! So abrupt! To your mother!"
"Well, dear mammy, what was it, really now?" This cajolery took effect,
and the Widow Vereker's soul softened. She resumed her knitting.
"If you don't remember what it was, dear, it doesn't matter." The
doctor saw that nothing short of complete concession would procure
a tranquil sea.
"Of course, I remember perfectly well," he said mendaciously. He knew
that, left alone, his mother would supply a summary of what he
remembered. She did so, with a bound.
"I said, my dear (and I am glad you recollect it, Conrad)--I said from
the very first, when Mr. Fenwick was living at Krakatoa--(it was all
_quite_ right, my dear. Do you think I don't know? A grown-up daughter
and two servants!)--I said that any one with eyes in their head could
see. And has it turned out exactly as I expected, or has it not?"
"Exactly."
"Very well, dear. I'm glad you say so. Now, don't contradict me
another time."
The close observer of the actual (whom we lay claim to be) has
occasionally to report the apparently impossible. We do not suppose
we shall be believed when we say that Mrs. Vereker added: "Besides,
there was the Major."
* * * * *
Professor Sales Wilson, Lætitia's father, was _the_ Professor Sales
Wilson. Only, if you had seen that eminent scholar when he got outside
his library by accident and wanted to get back, you wouldn't have
thought he was _the_ anybody, and would probably have likened him to
a disestablished hermit-crab--in respect, that is, of such a one's desire
to disappear into his shell, and that respect only. For no hermit-crab
would ever cause an acquaintance to wonder why he should shave at all
if he could do it no better than that; nor what he was talking to
himself about so frequently; nor whether he polished his spectacles so
long at a time to give the deep groove they were making across his nose
a chance of filling up; nor whether he would be less bald if he rubbed
his head less; nor what he had really got inside that overpowering
phrenology of brow, and behind that aspect of chronic concentration.
But about the retiring habits of both there could be no doubt.
He lived in his library, attired by nature in a dressing-gown and
skull-cap. But from its secret recesses he issued manifestoes which
shook classical Europe. He corrected versions, excerpted passages,
disallowed authenticities, ascribed works to their true authors, and
exposed the pretensions of sciolists with a vigour which ought to have
finally dispersed that unhallowed class. Only it didn't, because they
are a class incapable of shame, and will go on madly, even when they
have been proved to be _mere_, beyond the shadow of a doubt. Perhaps
they had secret information about the domestic circumstances of their
destroyer, and didn't care. If Yamen had had private means of knowing
that Vishnu was on uncomfortable terms with his wife, a corrected
version of the whole Hindu mythology might have been necessary.
However, so far as can be conjectured, the image the world formed of
the Professor was a sort of aggregate of Dr. Johnson, Bentley, Grotius,
Mezzofanti, and a slight touch of, say Conington, to bring him well
up to date. But so much of the first that whenever the _raconteur_
repeated one of the Professor's moderately bon-mots, he always put
"sir" in--as, for instance, "A punster, sir, is a man who demoralises
two meanings in one word;" or, "Should you call that fast life, sir?
_I_ should call it slow death." The _raconteur_ was rather given to
making use of him, and assigning to him _mots_ which were not at all
_bons_, because they only had the "sir" in them, and were otherwise
meaningless. He was distressed, not without reason, when he heard that
he had said to Max Müller, or some one of that calibre, "There is no
such thing, sir, as the English language!" But he very seldom heard
anything about himself, or any one else; as he passed his life, as
aforesaid, in his library, buried in the Phoenician Dictionary he
hoped he might live to bring out. He had begun the fourth letter;
but _we_ don't know the Phoenician alphabet. Perhaps it has only four
letters in it.
He came out of the library for meals, of course. But he took very
little notice of anything that passed at the family board, and read
nearly the whole time, occasionally saying something forcible to
himself. Indeed, he never conversed with his family unless deprived
of his book. This occurred on the occasion when Sally carried the
momentous news of her mother's intended marriage to Ladbroke Grove
Road, the second day after they had talked till two in the morning.
Matrimony was canvassed and discussed in all its aspects, and the
particular case riddled and sifted, and elucidated from every point of
the compass, without the Professor being the least aware that anything
unusual was afoot, until Grotefend got in the mayonnaise sauce.
"Take your master's book away, Jenkins," said the lady of the house.
And Jenkins, the tender-hearted parlourmaid, allowed master to keep
hold just to the end of the sentence. "Take it away, as I told you,
and wipe that sauce off!"
Sally did so want to box that woman's ears--at least, she said so
after. She was a great horny, overbearing woman, was Mrs. Sales Wilson,
and Sally was frightened lest Lætitia should grow like her. Only,
Tishy's teeth never _could_ get as big as that! Nor wiggle.
The Professor, being deprived of his volume, seemed to awake
compulsorily, and come out into a cold, unlearned world. But he
smiled amiably, and rubbed his hands round themselves rhythmically.
"Well, then!" said he. "Say it all again."
"Say what, papa?"
"All the chatter, of course."
"What for, papa?"
"For me to hear. Off we go! _Who's_ going to be married?"
"You see, he was listening all the time. _I_ shouldn't tell him, if
I were you. Your father is really unendurable. And he gets worse."
Thus the lady of the house.
"What does your mother say?" There is a shade of asperity in the
Professor's voice.
"Says you were listening all the time, papa. So you were!" This is
from Lætitia's younger sister, Theeny. Her name was Athene. Her brother
Egerton called her "Gallows Athene"--an offensive perversion of the
name of the lady she was called after. Her mother had carefully taught
all her children contempt for their father from earliest childhood. But
toleration of his weaknesses--etymology, and so on--had taken root in
spite of her motherly care, and the Professor was on very good terms
with his offspring. He negatived Theeny amiably.
"No, my dear, I was like Mrs. Cluppins. The voices were loud, and
forced themselves upon my ear. But as you all spoke at once, I have
no idea what anybody said. My question was conjectural--purely
conjectural. _Is_ anybody going to marry anybody? _I_ don't know."
"What is your father talking about over there? _Is_ he going to help
that tongue or not? Ask him." For a peculiarity in this family was that
the two heads of it always spoke to one another through an agent. So
clearly was this understood that direct speech between them, on its
rare occasions, was always ascribed by distant hearers to an outbreak
of hostilities. If either speaker had addressed the other by name, the
advent of the Sergeant-at-Arms would have been the next thing looked
for. On this occasion Lætitia's literal transmission of "_Are_ you
going to help the tongue or not, papa?" recalled his wandering mind
to his responsibilities. Sally's liver-wing--she was the visitor--was
pleading at his elbow for its complement of tongue.
But soon a four-inch space intervened between the lonely tongue-tip
on the dish and what had once been, in military language, its base
of operations. Everybody that took tongue had got tongue.
"Well, then, how about who's married whom?" Thus the Professor,
resuming his hand-rubbing, and neglecting the leg of a fowl.
"Make your father eat his lunch, Lætitia. We _cannot_ be late again
this afternoon." Whereon every one ate too fast; and Sally felt very
glad the Professor had given her such a big slice of tongue, as she
knew she wouldn't have the courage to have a second supply, if offered,
much less ask for it.
"Do you hear, papa? I'm to make you eat your lunch," says Lætitia;
and her mother murmurs "That's right; make him," as though he were an
anaconda in the snake-house, and her daughter a keeper who could go
inside the cage. Lætitia then adds briefly that Mrs. Nightingale is
going to marry Fenwick.
"Ha! Mercy on us!" says the Professor quite vaguely, and, even more so,
adds: "Chicken--chicken--chicken--chicken--chicken!" Though what he
says next is more intelligible, it is unfortunate and ill-chosen: "And
who _is_ Mrs. Nightingale?"
The sphinx is mobility itself compared with Mrs. Wilson's intense
preservation of her _status quo_. The import of which is that the
Professor's blunders are things of everyday occurrence--every minute,
rather. She merely says to Europe, "You see," and leaves that continent
to deal with the position. Sally, who always gets impatient with the
Wilson family, except the Professor himself and Lætitia--though _she_
is trying sometimes--now ignores Europe, and gets the offender into
order on her own account.
"Why, Professor dear, don't you know Mrs. Nightingale's my mother?
I'm Sally Nightingale, you know!"
"I'm not at all sure that I did, my dear. I think I thought you were
Sally Something-else. My mind is very absent sometimes. You must
forgive me. Sally Nightingale! To be sure!"
"Never mind, Professor dear!" But the Professor still looks vexed at
his blunder. So Sally says in confirmation, "I've forgiven you. Shake
hands!" And doesn't make matters much better, for her action seems
unaccountable to the absent-minded one, who says, "Why?" first, and
then, "Oh, ah, yes--I see. Shake hands, certainly!" On which the
Sphinx, at the far end of the table, wondered whether the ancient
Phoenicians were rude, under her breath.
"I'm so absent, Sally Nightingale, that I didn't even know your father
wasn't living." Lætitia looks uncomfortable, and when Sally merely
says, "I never saw my father," thinks to herself what a very discreet
girl Sally is. Naturally she supposes Sally to be a wise enough child
to know something about her own father. But the Wilson family were not
completely in the dark about an unsatisfactory "something queer" in
Sally's extraction; so that she credits that unconscious young person
with having steered herself skilfully out of shoal-waters; but she
is not sure whether to class her achievement as intrepidity or cheek.
She is wanted in the intelligence department before she can decide
this point.
"Perhaps, if you try, Lætitia, you'll be able to make out whether your
father is or is not going to eat his lunch."
But as this appeal of necessity causes the Professor to run the risk
of choking himself before Lætitia has time to formulate an inquiry, she
can fairly allow the matter to lapse, as far as she is concerned. The
dragon, her mother--for that was how Sally spoke of the horny one--kept
an eye firmly fixed on the unhappy honorary member of most learned
societies, and gave the word of command, "Take away!" with such
promptitude that Jenkins nearly carried off the plate from under his
knife and fork as he placed them on it.
A citation from the Odyssey was received in stony silence by the
Dragon, who, however, remarked to her younger daughter that it was no
use talking about Phineus and the Harpies, because they had to be at
St. Pancras at 3.10, or lose the train. And perhaps, if the servants
were to be called Harpies, your father would engage the next one
himself. They were trouble enough now, without that.
Owing to all which, the reference to Sally's father got lost sight of;
and she wasn't sorry, because Theeny, at any rate, wasn't wanted to
know anything about him, whatever Lætitia and her mother knew or
suspected.
But, as a matter of fact, Sally's declaration that she "never saw" him
was neither discretion, nor intrepidity, nor cheek. It was simple
Nature. She had always regarded her father as having been accessory
to herself before the fact; also as having been, for some mysterious
reason, unpopular--perhaps a _mauvais sujet_. But he was Ancient
History now--had joined the Phoenicians. Why should _she_ want to know?
Her attitude of uninquiring acquiescence had been cultivated by her
mother, and it is wonderful what a dominant influence from early
babyhood can do. Sally seldom spoke of this mysterious father of hers
in any other terms than those she had just used. She had never had an
opportunity of making his acquaintance--that was all. In some way,
undefined, he had not behaved well to her mother; and naturally she
sided with the latter. Once, and once only, her mother had said to her,
"Sally darling, I don't wish to talk about your father, but to forget
him. I have forgiven him, because of you. Because--how could I have
done without you, kitten?" And thereafter, as Sally's curiosity was
a feeble force when set against the possibility that its gratification
might cause pain to her mother, she suppressed it easily.
But now and again little things would be said in her presence that
would set her a-thinking--little things such as what the Professor
has just said. She may easily have been abnormally sensitive on the
point--made more prone to reflection than usual--by last night's
momentous announcement. Anyhow, she resolved to talk to Tishy about
her parentage as soon as they should get back to the drawing-room,
where they were practising. All the two hours they ought to have played
in the morning Tishy would talk about nothing but Julius Bradshaw.
And look how ridiculous it all was! Because she _did_ call him
"shop-boy"--you know she did--only six weeks ago. Sally didn't see why
_her_ affairs shouldn't have a turn now; and although she was quite
aware that her friend wanted her to begin again where they had left off
before lunch, she held out no helping hand, but gave the preference to
her own thoughts.
"I suppose my father drank," said Sally to Tishy.
"If you don't know, dear, how should I?" said Tishy to Sally. And that
did seem plausible, and made Sally the more reflective.
The holly-leaves were gone now that had been conducive to thought at
Christmas in this same room when we heard the two girls count four
so often, but Sally could pull an azalea flower to pieces over her
cogitations, and did so, instead of tuning up forthwith. Lætitia was
preoccupied--couldn't take an interest in other people's fathers, nor
her own for that matter. She tuned up, though, and told Sally to look
alive. But while Sally looks alive she backs into a conversation of
the forenoon, and out of the pending discussion of Sally's paternity.
Their two preoccupations pull in opposite directions.
"You _will_ remember not to say anything, won't you, Sally dear? Do
promise."
"Say anything? Oh no; _I_ shan't say anything. I never do say things.
What about?"
"You know as well as I do, dear--about Julius Bradshaw."
"Of course I shan't, Tishy. Except mother; she doesn't count. I say,
Tishy!"
"Well, dear. Do look alive. I'm all ready."
"All right. Don't be in a hurry. I want to know whether you really
think my father drank."
"Why should I, dear? I never heard anything about him--at least, I
never heard anything myself. Mamma heard something. Only I wasn't to
repeat it. Besides, it was nothing whatever to do with drink." The
moment Lætitia said this, she knew that she had lost her hold on
her only resource against cross-examination. When the difficulty of
concealing anything is thrown into the same scale with the pleasure of
telling it, the featherweights of duty and previous resolutions kick
the beam. Then you are sorry when it's too late. Lætitia was, and
could see her way to nothing but obeying the direction on her music,
which was _attacca_. To her satisfaction, Sally came in promptly in
the right place, and a first movement in B sharp went steadily through
without a back-lash. There seemed a chance that Sally hadn't caught
the last remark, but, alas! it vanished.
"What was it, then, if it wasn't drink?" said she, exactly as if there
had been no music at all. Lætitia once said of Sally that she was
a horribly direct little Turk. She was very often--in this instance
certainly.
"I suppose it was the usual thing." Twenty-four, of course, knew more
than nineteen, and could speak to the point of what was and wasn't
usual in matters of this kind. But if Lætitia hoped that vagueness
would shake hands with delicacy and that details could be lubricated
away, she was reckoning without her Turk.
"What _is_ the usual thing?"
"Hadn't we better go on to the fugue? I don't care for the next
movement, and it's easy----"
"Not till you say what you mean by 'the usual thing.'"
"Well, dear, I suppose you know what half the divorce-cases are about?"
"_Tishy!_"
"What, dear?"
"There was _no_ divorce!"
"How do you know, dear?"
"I _should_ have known of it."
"How do you know that?"
"You might go on for ever that way. Now, Tishy dear, do be kind and
tell me what you heard and who said it. _I_ should tell _you_. You
_know_ I should." This appeal produces concession.
"It was old Major Roper told mamma--with blue pockets under his eyes
and red all over, creeks and wheezes when he speaks--do you know him?"
"No, I don't, and I don't want to. At least, I've just seen him at
a distance. I could see he was purple. _Our_ Major--Colonel Lund, you
know--says he's a horrible old gossip, and you can't rely on a word he
says. But what _did_ he say?"
"Well, of course, I oughtn't to tell you this, because I promised not.
What he _said_ was that your mother went out to be married to your
father in India, and the year after he got a divorce because he was
jealous of some man your mother had met on the way out."
"How old was I?"
"Gracious me, child! how should _I_ know. He only said you were a baby
in arms. Of course, you must have been, if you think of it." Lætitia
here feels that possible calculations may be embarrassing, and tries to
avert them. "Do let's get on to the third movement. We shall spend all
the afternoon talking."
"Very well, Tishy, fire away! Oh, no; it's me." And the third movement
is got under way, till we reach a _pizzicato_ passage which Sally
begins playing with the bow by mistake.
"That's _pits_!" says the first violin, and we have to begin again at
the top of the page, and the Professor in his library wonders why on
earth those girls can't play straight on. The Ancient Phoenicians are
fidgeted by the jerks in the music.
But it comes to an end in time, and then Sally begins again:
"I _know_ that story's all nonsense now, Tishy."
"Why?"
"Because mother told me once that my father never saw me, so come now!
Because the new-bornest baby that ever was couldn't be too small for
its father to see." Sally pauses reflectively, then adds: "Unless he
was blind. And mother would have said if he'd been blind."
"He couldn't have been blind, because----"
"Now, Tishy, you see! You're keeping back lots of things that old
wheezy squeaker said. And you _ought_ to tell me--you know you ought.
Why couldn't he?"
"You're in such a hurry, dear. I was going to tell you. Major Roper
said he never saw him but once, and it was out shooting tigers, and he
was the best shot for a civilian he'd ever seen. There was a tiger was
just going to lay hold of a man and carry him off when your father
shot him from two hundred yards off----"
"The man or the tiger? I'm on the tiger's side. I always am."
"The tiger, stupid! You wouldn't want your own father to aim at a tiger
and hit a man?"
Sally reflects. "I don't think I should. But, I say, Tishy, do you mean
to say that Major Roper meant to say that he was out shooting with my
father and didn't know what his name was?"
"Oh, no. He said his name, of course. It was Palliser ... that was
right, wasn't it?"
"Oh dear, no; it was Graythorpe. Palliser indeed!"
"It was true about the tiger though, because Major Roper says he's got
the skin himself now."
"Only it wasn't my father that shot it. That's quite clear." Sally was
feeling greatly relieved, and showed it in the way she added: "Now,
doesn't that just show what a parcel of nonsense the whole story is?"
Sally had never told her friend about her mother's name before she
took that of Nightingale. Very slight hints had sufficed to make her
reticent about Graythorpe. Colonel Lund had once said to her: "Of
course, your mother was Mrs. Graythorpe when she came to England; that
was before she changed her name to Nightingale, you know?" She
knew that her mother's money had come to her from a "grandfather
Nightingale," whose name had somehow accompanied it, and had been (very
properly, as it seemed to her) bestowed on herself as well as her
mother. They were part and parcel of each other obviously. In fact, she
had never more than just known of the existence of the name Graythorpe
in her family at all, and it had been imputed by her to this unpopular
father of hers, and put aside, as it were, on a shelf with him. Even if
her mother had not suggested a desire that the name should lapse, she
herself would have accepted its extinction on her own account.
But now this name came out of the past as a consolation. Palliser
indeed! How could mamma have been Mrs. Graythorpe if her husband's name
had been Palliser? Sally was not wise enough in worldly matters to know
that divorced ladies commonly fall back on their maiden names. And she
had been kept, or left, so much in the dark that she had taken for
granted that her mother's had been Nightingale--that, in fact, she had
retaken her maiden name at her father's wish, possibly as a censure
on the misbehaviour of a husband who drank or gambled or was otherwise
reprobate. Her young mind had been manipulated all one way--had been
in contact only with its manipulators. Had she had a sister or brother,
they would have canvassed the subject, speculated, run conclusions to
earth, and demanded enlightenment. She had none but her mother to go
to, unless it were Colonel Lund; and the painful but inevitable task of
both was to keep her in the dark about her parentage at all hazards.
"If ever," said the former to the latter, "my darling girl has a child
of her own, I may be able to tell her her mother's story." Till then,
it would be impossible.
Sally had had a narrow escape of knowing more about this story when
the veteran Sub-Dean qualified himself for an obituary in the "Times,"
which she chanced upon and read before her mother had time to detect
and suppress it. Luckily, a reasonable economy of type had restricted
the names and designations of all the wives he had driven tandem, and
no more was said of his third than that she was Rosalind, the widow
of Paul Nightingale. So, as soon as Sally's mother had read the text
herself, she was able to say to the Major, quite undisturbedly, that
the old Sub-Dean had gone at last, leaving thirteen children. The name
Graythorpe had not crept in.
But we left Sally with a question unanswered. Didn't that show what
nonsense old Major Roper's story was? Lætitia was rather glad to
assent, and get the story quashed, or at least prorogued _sine die_.
"It did seem rather nonsense, Sally dear. Major Roper was a stupid old
man, and evidently took more than was good for him." Intoxicants are
often of great service in conversation.
In this case they contributed to the reinstatement of Mr. Bradshaw.
Dear me, it did seem so funny to Sally! Only the other day this young
man had been known to her on no other lines than as an established
fool, who came to stare at _her_ out of the corners of his dark eyes
all through the morning service at St. Satisfax. And now it was St.
John's, Ladbroke Grove Road, and, what was more, he was being tolerated
as a semi-visitor at the Wilsons'--a visitor with explanations in an
undertone. This was the burden of Lætitia, as soon as she had contrived
to get Sally's troublesome parent shelved.
"Why mamma needs always to be in such a furious fuss to drag in his
violin, I do _not_ know. As if he needed to be accounted for! Of
course, if you ask a Hottentot to evenings, you have to explain him.
But the office-staff at Cattley's (which is really one of the largest
firms in the country) are none of them Hottentots, but the contrary....
Now I know, dear, you're going to say what's the contrary of a
Hottentot, and all the while you know perfectly well what I mean."
"Cut away, Tishy! What next?"
"Well--next, don't you think it very dignified of Mr. Bradshaw to be
_able_ to be condescended to and explained in corners under people's
breaths and not to show it?"
"He's got to lump it, if he doesn't like it." Sally, you see, has
given up her admirer readily enough, but, as she herself afterwards
said, it's quite another pair of shoes when you're called on to give
three cheers for what's really no merit at all! What does the young
man expect?
"Now, that's unkind, Sally dear. You wouldn't like _me_ to. Anyhow,
that's what mamma _does_. Takes ladies of a certain position or with
expectations into corners, and says she hates the expression gentleman
and lady, but _they_ know what she means...."
"_I_ know. And they goozle comfortably at her, like Goody Vereker."
"Doesn't it make one's flesh creep to have a mother like that? I do get
to hate the very sight of shot silk and binoculars on a leg when she
goes on so. But I suppose we never shall get on together--mamma and I."
"What does the Professor think about him?"
"Oh--papa? Of course, papa's _perfectly hopeless_! It's the only true
thing mamma ever says--that he's _perfectly hopeless_. What do you
suppose he did that Sunday afternoon when Julius Bradshaw came and had
tea and brought the Strad--the first time, I mean?... Why, he actually
fancied he had come from the shop with a parcel, and never found out he
couldn't have when he had tea in the drawing-room, and only suspected
something when he played Rode's 'Air with Variations for Violin and
Piano.' Just fancy! He wanted to know why he shouldn't have tea when
every one else did, and offered him cake! And Sunday afternoon and
a Stradivarius! _Do_ say you think my parents trying, Sally dear!"
Sally assented to everything in an absent way; but that didn't matter
as long as she did it. Lætitia only wanted to talk. She seemed, thought
Sally, improved by the existing combination of events. She had had to
climb down off the high stilts about Bradshaw, and had only worked in
one or two slight _Grundulations_ (a word of Dr. Vereker's) into her
talk this morning. Tishy wasn't a bad fellow at all (Sally's
expression), only, if she hadn't been taught to strut, she wouldn't
have been any the worse. It was all that overpowering mother of hers!
Before she parted with her friend that afternoon Sally had a sudden
access of Turkish directness:
"Tishy dear, _are_ you going to accept Julius Bradshaw if he asks you,
or _not_?"
"Well, dear, you know we must look at it from the point of view of what
he would have been if it hadn't been for that unfortunate nervous
system of his. The poor fellow couldn't help it."
"But are you, or not? That's what _I_ want an answer to."
"Sally dear! Really--you're just like so much dynamite. What would you
do yourself if you were me? I ask you."
"I should do exactly whatever you settle to do if I were you. It stands
to reason. But what's it going to be? That's the point."
"He hasn't proposed yet."
"That has nothing whatever to do with it. What you've got to do is
to make--up--your--mind." These last four words are very _staccato_
indeed. Tishy recovers a dignity she has rather been allowing to lapse.
"By the time you're my age, Sally dear, you'll see there are ways
and ways of looking at things. Everything can't be wrapped up in a
nutshell. We're not Ancient Phoenicians nowadays, whatever papa may
say. But you're a dear, impulsive little puss."
The protest was feeble in form and substance, and quite unworthy of
Miss Sales Wilson, the daughter of _the_ Professor Sales Wilson. No
wonder Sally briefly responded, "Stuff and nonsense!" and presently
went home.
Of course, the outer circle of Mrs. Nightingale's society (for in this
matter we are all like Regents Park) had their say about her proposed
marriage. But they don't come into our story; and besides, they had too
few data for their opinions to be of any value. What a difference it
would have made if old Major Roper had met Fenwick and recalled the
face of the dead shot who, it seemed, had somehow ceded his tiger-skin
to him. But no such thing happened, nor did anything else come about
either to revive the story of the divorce or to throw a light on the
identity of Palliser and Fenwick. Eight weeks after the latter (or the
former?) had for the second time disclosed his passion to the same
woman, the couple were married at the church of St. Satisfax, and,
having started for the Continent the same afternoon, found themselves,
quite unreasonably happy, wandering about in France with hardly a
thought beyond the day at most, so long as a letter came from Sally at
the _postes-restantes_ when expected. And he had remembered nothing!