OF A SWIMMING-BATH, "ET PRÆTEREA EXIGUUM"
This was the best of the swimming-bath season, and Sally rarely passed
a day without a turn at her favourite exercise. If her swimming-bath
had been open on Sunday, she wouldn't have gone to church yesterday,
not even to meet Dr. Vereker and talk about her father to him. As it
was, she very nearly came away from Krakatoa Villa next morning without
waiting to see the letter from Rheims, the post being late. Why _is_
everything late on Monday?
However, she was intercepted by the postman and the foreign postmark--a
dozen words on a card, but she read them several times, and put the
card in her pocket to show to Lætitia Wilson. She was pretty sure to be
there. And so she was, and by ten o'clock had seen the card and
exhausted its contents. And by five-minutes-past Sally was impending
over the sparkling water of Paddington swimming-bath. She was dry so
far, and her blue bathing-dress could stick out. But it was not to be
for long, for her two hands went together after a preliminary stretch
to make a cutwater, and down went Sally with a mighty splash into the
deep--into the moderately deep, suppose we say--at any rate into ten
thousand gallons of properly filtered Thames water, which had been
(no doubt) sterilised and disinfected and examined under powerful
microscopes until it hadn't got a microbe to bless itself with. When
she came up at the other end, to taunt Lætitia Wilson with her
cowardice for not doing likewise, she was a smooth and shiny Sally,
like a deep blue seal above water, but with modifications towards
floating fins below.
"Now tell me about the row last night," said she, after reproaches met
by Lætitia with, "It's no use, dear. I wasn't born a herring like you."
Sally must have heard there had been some family dissension at Ladbroke
Grove Road as she came into the bath with Lætitia, whom she met at the
towel-yielding _guichet_. However, the latter wasn't disposed to
discuss family matters in an open swimming-bath in the hearing of the
custodian, to say nothing of possible concealed dressers in horse-boxes
alongside.
"My dear child, _is_ this the place to talk about things in? _Do_ be
a little discreet sometimes," is her reply to Sally's request.
"There's nobody here but us. Cut away, Tishy!" But Miss Wilson will
_not_ talk about the row, whatever it was, with the chance of
goodness-knows-who coming in any minute. For one thing, she wants to
enjoy the telling, and not to be interrupted. So it is deferred to
a more fitting season and place.
Goodness-knows-who (presumably) came in in the shape of Henriette
Prince, who was, after Sally, the next best swimmer in the Ladies'
Club. After a short race or two, won by Sally in spite of heavy odds
against her, the two girls turned their attention to the art of
rescuing drowning persons. A very amusing game was played, each
alternately committing suicide off the edge of the bath while the other
took a header to her rescue from the elevation which we just now saw
Sally on ready to plunge. The rules were clear. The suicide was to do
her best to drag the rescuer under water and to avoid being dragged
into the shallow end of the bath.
"I know you'll both get drowned if you play those tricks," says Lætitia
nervously.
"No--we _shan't_," vociferates Sally from the brink. "Now, are you
ready, Miss Prince? Very well. Tishy, count ten!"
"Oh, I wish you wouldn't! One--two--three...." And Lætitia, all whose
dignity and force of character go when she is bathing, does as she is
bidden, and, at the "ten," the suicide, with a cry of despair, hurls
herself madly into the water, and the rescuer flies to her succour.
What she has to do is to grasp the struggling quarry by the elbows
from behind and keep out of the reach of her hands. But the tussle that
ensues in the water is a short one, for the rescuer is no match for the
supposed involuntary resistance of the convulsed suicide, who eludes
the coming grasp of her hand with eel-like dexterity, and has her round
the waist and drags her under water in a couple of seconds.
"There now!" says Sally triumphantly, as they stand spluttering and
choking in the shallow water to recover breath. "Didn't I do that
beautifully?"
"Well, but _anybody_ could like that. When real people are drowning
they don't do it like that." Miss Prince is rather rueful about it.
But Sally is exultant.
"Oh, don't they!" she says. "They're worse when it's real
drowning--heaps worse!" Whereon both the other girls affirm in chorus
that then nobody can be saved without the Humane Society's
drags--unless, indeed, you wait till they are insensible.
"Can't they?" says Sally, with supreme contempt. "We were both of us
drowned that time fair. But now you go and drown yourself, and see if
I don't fish you out. Fire away!"
They fire away, and the determined suicide plays her part with spirit.
But she is no match for the submarine tactics of her rescuer, who seems
just as happy under water as on land, and rising under her at the end
of a resolute deep plunge, makes a successful grasp at the head of her
prey, who is ignominiously towed into safety, doing her best to drown
herself to the last.
This little incident is so amusing and exciting that the three young
ladies, who walk home together westward, can talk of nothing but
rescues all the way to Notting Hill. Then Miss Henriette Prince goes on
alone, and as Lætitia and Sally turn off the main road towards the home
of the former, the latter says: "Now tell me about the row."
It wasn't exactly a row, it seemed; but it came to the same thing.
Mamma had made up her mind to be detestable about Julius Bradshaw--that
was the long and short of it. And Sally knew, said Lætitia, how
detestable mamma could be when she tried. If it wasn't for papa, Julius
Bradshaw would simply be said not-at-home to, and have to leave a card
and go. But she was going to go her own way and not be dictated to,
maternal authority or no. Perhaps the speaker felt that Sally was
mentally taking exception to universal revolt, for a flavour of excuse
or justification crept in.
"Well!--I can't help it. I _am_ twenty-four, after all. I shouldn't
say so if there was anything against him. But no man can be blamed for
a cruel conjunction of circumstances, and mamma may say what she likes,
but being in the office really makes all the difference. And look how
he's supporting his mother and sister, who were left badly off. _I_
call it noble."
"But you know, Tishy, you did say the negro couldn't change his
spots, and that I must admit there were such things as social
distinctions--and you talked about sweeps and dustmen, you know you
did. Come, Tishy, did you, or didn't you?"
"If I said anything it was leopard, not negro. And as for sweeps and
dustmen, they were merely parallel cases used as illustrations; and I
don't think I deserve to have them raked up...." Miss Wilson is rather
injured over this grievance, and Sally appeases her. "She shan't have
them raked up, she shan't! But what was this row really about, that's
the point? It was yesterday morning, wasn't it?"
"How often am I to tell you, Sally dear, that there was really no
_row_, property speaking. If you were to say there had been comments
at breakfast yesterday, then recrimination overnight, and a stiffness
at breakfast again this morning, you would be doing more than justice
to it. You'll see now if mamma isn't cold and firm and disinherity and
generally detestable about it."
"But what _was_ it? That's what _I_ want to know."
"My dear--it was--absolutely nothing! Why should it be stranger for
Mr. Bradshaw to drive me home to save two hansoms than for you and
Dr. Vereker and the Voyseys to go all in one growler?"
"Because the Voyseys live just round the corner, quite close. It came
to three shillings because it's outside the radius." The irrelevancy of
this detail gives Lætitia an excuse for waiving the cab-question, on
which her position is untenable. She dilutes it with extraneous matter,
and it is lost sight of.
"It doesn't matter whether it's cabs or what it is. Mamma's just the
same about everything. Even walking up Holland Park Lane after the
concert at Kensington Town Hall. I am sure if ever anything was
reasonable, that was." She pauses for confirmation--is, in fact,
wavering about the correctness of her own position, and weakly seeking
reassurance. She is made happier by a nod of assent from Miss Sally.
"Awfully reasonable!" is the verdict of the latter. Whatever there is
lacking seriousness in the judge's face is too slight to call for
notice--a mere twinkle to be ignored. Very little self-deception is
necessary, and in this department success is invariable.
"I knew you would say so, dear," Tishy continues. "And I'm sure you
would about the other things too ... well, I was thinking about tea in
Kensington Gardens on Sunday. We have both of us a perfect right to
have tea independently, and the only question is about separate tables."
"Suppose I come--to make it square."
"Suppose you do, dear." And the proposal is a relief evidently.
A very slight insight into the little drama that is going on at
Ladbroke Grove Road is all that is wanted for the purposes of this
story. The foregoing dialogue, ending at the point at which the two
young women disappear into the door of No. 287, will be sufficient to
give a fairly clear idea of the plot of the performance, and to point
to its _dénouement_. The exact details may unfold themselves as
the story proceeds. The usual thing is a stand-up fight over the
love-affair, both parties to which have made up their minds--becoming
more and more obdurate as they encounter opposition from without--followed
by reconciliations more or less real. Let us hope for the former in the
present case, and that Miss Wilson and Mr. Bradshaw's lot may not be
crossed by one of those developments of strange inexplicable fury which
so often break out in families over the schemes of two young people to
do precisely what their parents did before them; and most ungovernably,
sometimes, on the part of members who have absolutely no suggestion
to make of any alternative scheme for the happiness of either.