OF A WEDDING PARTY AND AN OLD MAN'S RETROSPECT. A HOPE OF RETRIBUTIVE
JUSTICE HEREAFTER. CHARLEY'S AUNT, AND PYRAMUS AND THISBE. HOW SALLY
TRIED TO PUMP THE COLONEL AND GOT HALF A BUCKETFUL
And thus it came about that Rosalind Palliser (_née_ Graythorpe) stood
for the second time at the altar of matrimony with the same bridegroom
under another name. The absence of bridesmaids pronounced and accented
the fact that the bride was a widow, though, as there were very few of
the congregation of St. Satisfax who did not know her as such, the
announcement was hardly necessary. Discussion of who her late husband
was, or was not, had long since given way to a belief that he was a bad
lot, and that the less that was said about him the better. If any one
who was present at the wedding was still constructing theories about
his identity--whether he had divorced his wife, was divorced himself,
or was dead--certainly none of those theories connected themselves with
the present bridegroom. As for Sally, her only feeling, over and above
her ordinary curiosity about her father, was a sort of paradoxical
indignation that his intrusion into her mother's life should have
prevented her daughter figuring as a bridesmaid. It would have been so
jolly! But Sally was perfectly well aware that widows, strong-nerved
from experience, stand in no need of official help in getting their
"things" on, and acquiesced perforce in her position of a mere
unqualified daughter.
The Major--that is to say, Colonel Lund--stayed on after the wedding,
under a sort of imputation of guardianship necessary for Sally--an
imputation accepted by her in order that the old boy should not feel
lonesome, far more than for any advantage to herself. She wasn't sure
it did him any good though, after all, for the wedding-party (if it
could be called one, it was so small), having decided that its
afternoon had been completely broken into, gave itself up to
dissipation, and went to see "Charley's Aunt." The old gentleman did
not feel equal to this, but said if Sally told him all about it
afterwards it would be just as good, and insisted on her going. He said
he would be all right, and she kissed him and left him reading "Harry
Lorrequer," or pretending to.
The wedding-party seemed to have grown, thought the Major, in contact
with the theatrical world when, on its return, it filled the summer
night with sound, and made the one-eyed piebald cat who lived at The
Retreat foreclose an interview with a peevish friend acrimoniously.
Perhaps it was only because the laughter and the jests, the good-nights
mixed with echoes of "Charley's Aunt," and reminders of appointments
for the morrow, broke in so suddenly on a long seclusion that the Major
seemed to hear so many voices beyond his expectation.
The time had not hung heavy on his hands though--at least, no heavier
than time always hangs on hands that wore gloves with no fingers near
upon eighty years ago. The specific gravity of the hours varies less
and less with loneliness and companionship as we draw nearer to the
last one of all--the heaviest or lightest, which will it be? The old
boy had been canvassing this point with another old boy, a real Major,
our friend Roper, at the Hurkaru Club not long before, and, after he
had read a few pages of "Harry Lorrequer" he put his spectacles in to
keep the place, and fell back into a maze of recurrence and reflection.
Was he honest, or was it affectation, when he said to that pursy and
purple old warrior that if the doctor were to tell him he had but an
hour to live he should feel greatly relieved and happy? Was his heart
only pretending to laugh at the panic his old friend was stricken with
at the mere mention of the word "death"--he who had in his time faced
death a hundred times without a qualm? But then that was military
death, and was his _business_. Death the civilian, with paragraphs in
the newspapers to say "the worst" was feared, and the fever being kept
down, and the system being kept up, and smells of carbolic acid and
hourly bulletins--that was the thing he shrank from. Why, the Major
could remember old Jack Roper at Delhi, in the Mutiny, going out in
the darkness to capture those Sepoy guns--what was that place
called--Ludlow Castle?--and now!...
"Oh dammy, Colonel! Why, good Lard! who's dyin' or goin' to die? Time
enough to talk about dyin' when the cap fits. You take my advice, and
try a couple of Cockle's anti-bilious. My word for it, it's liver!..."
And then old Jack followed this with an earthquake-attack of coughing
that looked very much as if the cap was going to fit. But came out of
it incorrigible, and as soon as he could speak endorsed his advice
with an admonitory forefinger: "You do as I tell you, and try 'em."
But the fossil, who was ten years his senior, answered his own question
to himself in the affirmative as he sat there listening to the distant
murmur of wheels on the Uxbridge Road and the music of the cats
without. Yes, he was quite honest about it. He had no complaint to
make of life, for the last twenty years at any rate. His dear little
_protégée_--that was how he thought of Sally's mother--had taken
good care of that. But he had some harsh indictments against earlier
years--or rather _had_ had. For he had dismissed the culprits with
a caution, and put the records on a back-shelf.
He could take them down now and look at them without flinching. After
all, he was so near the end! What did it matter?
There they all were, the neglected chronicles, each in its corner of
his mind. Of his school-days, a record with all the blots and errors
worked into the text and made to do duty for ornaments. Not a blemish
unforgiven. It is even so with us, with you; we all forgive our
schools. Of his first uniform and his first love, two records with
a soil on each. For a chemical brother spilt sulphuric acid over the
first, and the second married a custom-house officer. Of his first
great cloud--for, if he did not quite forget his first love, he soon
got a second and even a third--a cloud that came out of a letter that
reached him in camp at Rawal Pindi, and told him that his father,
a solicitor of unblemished character till then, had been indicted for
fraudulent practices, and would have to stand his trial for
misdemeanour. Of a later letter, even worse, that told of his acquittal
on the score of insanity, and of how, when he went back two years
after on his first leave, he went to see his father in an asylum; who
did not know him and called him "my lord," and asked him to "bring his
case before the house." Then of a marriage, like a dream now, with
a wife who left him and a child that died; and then of many colourless
years of mere official routine, which might have gone on till he fell
down in harness, but for the chance that threw in his way the daughter
of an old friend in sore trouble and alone. Not until her loneliness
and want of a protector on her voyage home suggested it did the harness
come off the old horse. And then, as we have seen, followed the
happiest fourth part of his life, as he accounted it, throughout which
he had never felt so willing to die as he had done before. Rosalind
Graythorpe grew into it as a kind of adopted daughter, and brought with
her the morsel of new humanity that had become Sally--that would be
back in an hour from "Charley's Aunt."
And now Rosey had found a guardian, and was provided for. It would be
no way amiss now for the Major to take advantage of death. There is
so much to be said for it when the world has left one aching!
His confidence that his _protégée_ had really found a haven was no
small compliment to Fenwick. For the latter, with his strange unknown
past, had nothing but his personality to rely on; and the verdict of
the Major, after knowing him twelve months, was as decisive on this
point as if he had known him twelve years. "He may be a bit
hot-tempered and impulsive," said he to Sally. "But I really couldn't
say, if I were asked, _why_ I think so. It's a mere idea. Otherwise,
it's simply impossible to help liking him." To which Sally replied,
borrowing an expression from Ann the housemaid, that Fenwick was a cup
of tea. It was metaphorical and descriptive of invigoration.
But the Major's feeling that he was now at liberty to try Death after
Life, to make for port after stormy seas, had scarcely a trace in it
of dethronement or exclusion from privileges once possessed. It was not
his smallest tribute to Fenwick that he should admit the idea to his
mind at all--that he might have gained a son rather than lost a
daughter. At least, he need not reject that view of the case, but it
would not do to build on it. _Unberufen!_ The Major tapped three times
on the little table where the lamp stood and "Harry Lorrequer" lay
neglected. He pulled out his watch, and decided that they would not be
very long now. He would not go to bed till he had seen the kitten--he
usually spoke of her so to her mother. He had to disturb the kitten's
cat, who was asleep on him, to get at the watch; who, being selfish,
made a grievance of it, and went away piqued after stretching. Well,
he was sorry of course, but it would have had to come, some time. And
he hadn't moved for ever so long!
"I wonder," half said, half thought he to himself, "I wonder who or
what he really is?... If only we could have known!... Was I right not
to urge delay?... Only Rosey was so confident.... _Could_ a woman of
her age feel so sure and be misled?"
It was _her_ certainty that had dragged his judgment along a path it
might otherwise have shrunk from. He could not know her reasons, but
he felt their force in her presence. Now she was gone, he doubted. Had
he been a fool after all?
"Well--well; it can't be altered now. And she would have done it just
the same whatever I said.... I suppose she was like that when she was
a girl.... I wish I had even seen that husband of hers.... So odd they
should both be Algernon! Does he know, I wonder, that the other was
Algernon?" For the Major had religiously adhered to his promise not to
say anything to Fenwick about the old story. He knew she had told it,
or would tell it in her own time.
Then his thoughts turned to revival of how and where he found her
first, and, as it all came back to him, you could have guessed, had you
seen his face, that they had lighted on the man who was the evil cause
of all, and the woman who had abetted him. The old hand on the table
that had little more strength in it than when it wore a hedger's glove
near eighty years ago, closed with the grip of all the force it had,
and the lamp-globe rang as the tremor of his arm shook the table.
"Oh, I pray God there is a hell," came audibly from as kind a heart as
ever beat. "_How_ I pray God there is a hell!" Then the stress of his
anger seemed to have exhausted him, for he lay back in his armchair
with his eyes closed. In a few moments he drew a long breath, and as
he wiped the drops from his brow, said aloud to himself: "I wish the
kitten would come." He seemed happier only from speaking of her. And
then sat on and waited--waited as for a rescue--for Sally to come and
fill up the house with her voice and her indispensable self.
Something of an inconsistency in the attitude of his mind may have
struck across the current of his reflections--something connected with
what this indispensable thing actually was and whence--for his thoughts
relented as the image of her came back to him. Where would those eyes
be, conspirators with the lids above them and the merry fluctuations of
the brows; where would those lips be, from which the laughter never
quite vanished, even as the ripple of the ocean's edge tries how small
it can get but never dies outright; where the great coils of black hair
that would not go inside any ordinary oilskin swimming-cap; where the
incorrigible impertinence and flippancy be we never liked to miss a
word of; where, in short, would Sally be if she had never emerged from
that black shadow in the past?
Easy enough to say that, had she not done so, something else quite as
good might have been. Very likely. How can we limit the possible to the
conditional-præter-pluperfect tense? But then, you see, it wouldn't
have been Sally! That's the point.
Sally's mother had followed such thoughts to the length of almost
forgiving the author of her troubles. But she could not forgive him
considered also as the author of her husband's. The Major could not
find any forgiveness at all, though the thought of Sally just sufficed
to modify the severity of his condemnation. Leniency dawned.
"Yes--yes; I was wrong to say that. But I couldn't help it." So said
the old man to himself, but quite as though he spoke to some one else.
He paused a little, then said again: "Yes; I was wrong. But oh, what
a damned scoundrel! And _what_ a woman!" Then, as though he feared a
return of his old line of thought, "I wish Sally would come." And
a dreadful half-thought came to him, "Suppose there were a fire at
the theatre, and I had to wire ... why--that would be worst of all!"
So, almost without a pause between, he had prayed for a hell to punish
a crime, and for the safety of the treasured thing that was its
surviving record--a creature that but for that crime would never have
drawn breath.
His reading-lamp had burned out its young enthusiasm, and was making up
its mind to go out, only not in any hurry. It would expire with dignity
and leave a rich inheritance of stench. Meanwhile, its decadence was
marked enough to frank the Major in neglecting "Harry Lorrequer" for
the rest of the time, and also served to persuade him that he had
really been reading. Abstention from a book under compulsion has
something of the character of perusal. Gibbon could not have collected
his materials on those lines, certainly. But the Major felt his
conscience clearer from believing that he meant to go on where he had
been obliged to stop. He cancelled "Harry Lorrequer," put him back in
the bookcase to make an incident, then began actively waiting for the
return of the playgoers. Reference to his watch at short intervals
intensified their duration, added gall to their tediousness. But so
convinced was he that they "would be here directly" that it was at
least half-an-hour before he reconsidered this insane policy and
resumed his chair with a view to keeping awake in it. He was convinced
he was succeeding, had not noticed he was dozing, when he was suddenly
wrenched out of the jaws of sleep by the merry voices of the
home-comers and the loss of the piebald cat's temper as aforesaid.
"Oh, Major dear, you haven't gone to bed! You will be so tired! Why
didn't you go?"
"I've been very happy, chick. I've been reading 'Harry Lorrequer.'
I like Charles Lever, because I read him when I was a boy. What's
o'clock?" He pulled out his watch with a pretence, easy of detection,
that he had not just done so ten minutes before. It was a lie about
"Harry Lorrequer," you see, so a little extra didn't matter.
"It's awfully late!" Sally testified. "Very nearly as late as it's
possible to be. But now we're in for it, we may as well make it
a nocturnal dissipation. Ann!--don't go to bed; at least, not before
you've brought some more fresh water. This will take years to hot up.
Oh, Major, Major, why _didn't_ you make yourself some toddy? I never
go out for five minutes but you don't make yourself any toddy!"
"I don't want it, dear child. I've been drinking all day--however, of
course, it was a wedding...."
"But you must have some now, anyhow. Stop a minute, there's some one
coming up the doorsteps and Ann's fastened up.... No, it's not the
policeman. _I_ know who it is. Stop a minute." And then presently the
Major hears Sally's half of an interview, apparently through a keyhole.
"I shan't open the door ... two bolts and a key and a chain--the idea!
What is it?... My pocky-anky?... Keep it, it won't bite you ... send it
to the wash!... No, really, do keep it if you don't mind--keep it till
Brahms on Thursday. Remember! Good-night." But it isn't quite
good-night, for Sally arrests departure. "Stop! What a couple of idiots
we are!... What for?--why--because you might have stuffed it in the
letter-box all along." And the incident closes on the line indicated.
"It was only my medical adviser," Sally says, returning with
explanations. "Found my wipe in the cab."
"Dr. Vereker?"
"Yes. Dr. Him. Exactly! We bawled at each other through the keyhole like
Pyramus and Trilby----" She becomes so absorbed in the details of the
toddy that she has to stand a mere emendation over until it is ready.
Then she completes: "I mean Thisbe. I wonder where they've got to?"
"Pyramus and Thisbe?"
"No, mother and her young man.... No, I won't sit on you. I'll sit
here; down alongside--so! Then I shan't shake the toddy overboard."
Her white soft hand is so comforting as it lies on the Major's on the
chair-arm that he is fain to enjoy it a little, however reproachful
the clock-face may be looking. You can pretend your toddy is too hot,
almost any length of time, as long as no one else touches the tumbler;
also you can drink as slow as you like. No need to hurry. Weddings
don't come every day.
"Was it very funny, chick?"
"Oh, wasn't it! But didn't mamma look _lovely_?... I've seen it twice
before, you know." This last is by way of apology for giving the
conversation a wrench. But the Major didn't want to talk over the
wedding--seemed to prefer "Charley's Aunt."
"He dresses up like his aunt, doesn't he?"
"Oh yes--it's glorious fun! But _do_ say you thought mamma looked
lovely."
"Of course she did. She always does. But had the others seen 'Charley's
Aunt' before?"
"Tishy and her Bradshaw? Oh yes--at least, I suppose so."
"And Dr. Vereker?"
"Oh, of course _he_ had--twice at least. The times we saw it, mother
and I. He went too.... We-e-e-ell, there's nothing in that!" (We can
only hope again our spelling conveys the way the word _well_ was
prolonged.)
"Nothing at all. Why should there be? What a nice fellow Vereker is!"
"My medical adviser? Oh, _he's_ all right. Never mind him; talk about
mother."
"They must be very nearly at Rheims by now." This is mere obedience
to orders on the Major's part. He feels no real interest in what he
is saying.
"How rum it must be!" says Sally, with grave consideration. And the
Major's "What?" evolves that "it" means marrying a second husband.
"Going through it all over again when you've done it once before,"
continues this young philosopher. The Major thinks of asking why it
should be rummer the second time than the first, but decides not to,
and sips his toddy, and pats the hand that is under his. In a hazy,
fossil-like way he perceives that to a young girl's mind the "rumness"
of a second husband is exactly proportionate to the readiness of its
acceptance of the first. Unity is just as intrinsic a quality of
a first husband as the colour of his eyes or hair. Moreover, he is
expected to outlive you. Above all, he is perfectly natural and a
matter of course. We discern in all this a sneaking tribute to an
idea of a hereafter; but the Major didn't go so far as that.
"She looked very jolly over it," said he, retreating on generalities.
"So did he."
"Gaffer Fenwick? I should think so indeed! Well he might!" Then, after
a moment's consideration: "He looked like my idea of Sir Richard
Grenville. It's only an idea. I forget what he did. Elizabethan
johnny."
"What do you call him? Gaffer Fenwick? You're a nice, respectable young
monkey! Well, he's not half a bad-looking fellow; well set up." But
none of this, though good in itself, is what Sally sat down to talk
about. A sudden change in her manner, a new earnestness, makes the
Major stop an incipient yawn he is utilising as an exordium to a hint
that we ought to go to bed, and become quite wakeful to say: "I will
tell you all I can, my child." For Sally has thrust aside talk of the
day's events, making no more of the wedding ceremony than of "Charley's
Aunt," with: "_Why_ did my father and mother part? You _will_ tell me
now, won't you, Major dear?"
Lying was necessary--inevitable. But he would minimise it. There was
always the resource of the legal fiction; all babes born in matrimony
are legally the children of their mother's husband, _quand-même_. He
must make that his sheet-anchor.
"You know, Sallykin, your father and mother fell out before you were
born. And the first time I saw your mother--why, bless my soul, my
dear! you were quite a growing girl--yes, able to get a staff-officer's
thumb in your mouth, and bite it. Indeed, you did! It was General
Pellew; they say he's going to be made a peer." The Major thinks he
sees his way out of the fire by sinking catechism in reminiscences. "I
can recollect it all as if it were yesterday. I said to him, 'Who's the
poor pretty little mother, General?' Because he knew your mother, and
I didn't. 'Don't you know?' said he. 'She's Mrs. Graythorpe.' I asked
about her husband, but Pellew had known nothing except that there was
a row, and they had parted." The Major's only fiction here was that he
substituted the name Graythorpe for Palliser. "Next time I saw her we
picked up some acquaintance, and she asked if I was a Lincolnshire
Lund, because her father always used to talk of how he went to Lund's
father's, near Crowland, when he was a boy. 'Stop a bit,' said I; 'what
was your father's name?' 'Paul Nightingale,' says she." Observe that
nothing was untrue in this, because Rosey always spoke and thought of
Paul Nightingale as her father.
"That was my grandfather?" Sally was intent on accumulating
facts--would save up analysis till after. The Major took advantage of
a slight choke over his whiskey to mix a brief nod into it; it was a
lie--but, then, he himself couldn't have said which was nod and which
was choke; so it hardly counted. He continued, availing himself at
times of the remains of the choke to help him to slur over difficult
passages.
"He was the young brother of a sort of sweetheart of mine--a silly
boyish business--a sort of calf-love. She married and died. But he was
her great pet, a favourite younger brother. One keeps a recollection
of this sort of thing."--The Major makes a parade of his powers of
oblivion, and his failure to carry it out sits well upon him.--"Of
course, my romantic memories"--the Major smiles derision of Love's
young dream--"had something to do with my interest in your mother, but
I hope I should have done the same if there had been no such thing.
Well, the mere fact of your father's behaviour to your mother...." He
stopped short, with misgivings that his policy of talking himself out
of his difficulties was not such a very safe one, after all. Here he
was, getting into a fresh mess, gratuitously!
"Mamma won't talk about that," says Sally, "so I suppose I'm not to ask
_you_." The Major must make a stand upon this, or the enemy will swarm
over his entrenchments. Merely looking at his watch and saying it's
time for us to be in bed will only bring a moment's respite. There is
nothing for it but decision.
"Sally dear, your mother does not tell you because she wishes the whole
thing buried and forgotten. Her wishes must be my wishes...."
He would like to stop here--to cut it short at that, at once and for
good. But the pathetic anxiety of the face from which all memories of
"Charley's Aunt" have utterly vanished is too much for his fortitude;
and, at the risk of more semi-fibs, he extenuates the sentence.
"One day your mother may tell you all about it. She is the proper
person to tell it--not me. Neither do I think I know it all to tell."
"You know if there was or wasn't a divorce?" The Major feels very sorry
he didn't let it alone.
"I'll tell you that, you inquisitive chick, if you'll promise on honour
not to ask any more questions."
"I promise."
"Honour bright?"
"Honest Injun!"
"That's right. Now I'll tell you. There was no divorce, but there was
a suit for a divorce, instituted by him. He failed to make out a case."
Note that the expression "your father" was carefully excluded. "She was
absolutely blameless--to my thinking, at least. Now that's plenty for
a little girl to know. And it's high time we were both in bed and
asleep."
He kisses the grave, sad young face that is yearning to hear more, but
is too honourable to break its compact. "They'll be at Rheims by now,"
says he, to lighten off the conversation.