HOW FENWICK KNEW ALL ABOUT THE MASS. AND HOW BARON KREUTZKAMMER
RECOGNISED MR. HARRISSON. LONDON AGAIN!
"Why do they call it the _messe des paresseux_?" The question must have
been asked just as Sally looked at her watch because she saw the clock
had stopped. But the nave of the Cathedral of Rheims was very unlike
that of St. Satisfax as the bride and bridegroom lingered in out of the
sunshine, and the former took the unwarrantable liberty, for a heretic,
of crossing herself from the Holy Water at the foot of the column near
the door. But she made up for it by the amount of _sous_ she gave to
the old blind woman, who must have been knitting there since the days
of Napoleon at least, if she began in her teens.
"You haven't done it right, dearest. I knew you wouldn't. Look here."
And Fenwick crosses himself _secundum artem_, dipping his finger first
to make it valid.
"But how came you to know?" His wife does not say this; she only thinks
it. And how came he to know about the _messe des paresseux_? She
repeats her question aloud.
"Because the lazy people don't come to Mass till ten," he replies. They
are talking under their breath, as English folk do in foreign churches,
heedless of the loud gabble and resonant results of too much snuff
on the part of ecclesiastics off duty. Their own salvation has
been cultivated under a list slipper, cocoanut matting, secretive
pew-opener policy; and if they are new to it all, they are shocked to
see the snuff taken over the heads and wooden _sabots_ of the devout
country-folk, whose ancestors knelt on the same hard stone centuries
ago, and prayed for great harvests that never came, and to avert lean
years that very often did. The Anglican cannot understand the real
aboriginal Papist. Sally's mother was puzzled when she saw an old,
old kneeling figure, toothless and parchment-skinned, on whose rosary
a pinch of snuff _ut supra_ descended, shake it off the bead in
evidence, and get on to the next _Ave_, even as one who has business
before her--so many pounds of oakum to pick, so many bushels of peas
to shell. It was a reality to her; and there was the Blessed Virgin
herself, a visible certainty, who would see to the recognition of it
at headquarters.
Fenwick passed up the aisle, dreamily happy in the smell of the
incense, beside his bride of yesterday's making--she intensely happy
too, but in another way, for was not her bridegroom of yesterday her
husband of twenty years ago--cruelly wrenched away, but her husband for
all that. Still, there was always that little rift within the lute that
made the music--pray Heaven not to widen! Always that thought!--that he
might recollect. How could he remember the _messe des paresseux_, and
keep his mind a blank about how he came to know of it? It was the first
discomfort that had crossed her married mind--put it away!
It was easy to put it all away and forget it in the hush and gloom
of the great church, filled with the strange intonation from
Heaven-knows-where--some side-chapel unseen--of a Psalm it would have
puzzled David to be told was his, and a scented vapour Solomon would
have known at once; for neither myrrh nor frankincense have changed one
whit since his day. It was easy enough so long as both sat listening to
_Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax_. Carried _nem. con._ by all
sorts and conditions of Creeds. But when the little bobs and tokens and
skirt-adjustments of the fat priest and his handsome abettor (a young
fellow some girl might have been the wife of, with advantage to both)
came to a pause, and the congregation were to be taken into confidence,
how came Gerry to know beforehand what the fat one was going to say,
with that stupendous voice of his?
"_Hoc est corpus meum, et hic est calix sanguinis mei._ We all kneel,
I think." Thus the bridegroom under his breath. And his companion heard,
almost with a shudder, the selfsame words from the priest, as the
kneeling of the congregation subsided.
"Oh, Gerry--darling fellow! How _can_ you know that, and not know...."
"How I came by it? It's very funny, but I _can't_, and that's the
truth. I don't feel as if I ever _could_ know, what's more. But it all
seems a matter of course."
"Perhaps you're a Catholic all the while, without knowing it?"
"Perhaps I am. But I should like to know, because of going to the other
place with you. I shouldn't care about purgatory without you, Rosey
dearest. No--not even with a reversionary interest in heaven."
And then the plot thickened at the altar, and the odour of myrrh and
frankincense, and little bells rang to a climax, and the handsome young
priest, let us hope, felt he had got value for the loss of that
hypothetical girl.
* * * * *
That little incident in the great church at Rheims was the first
anxiety of Rosalind Fenwick's married life--the first resumption of the
conditions she had been so often unnerved by during the period of their
betrothal. She was destined to be crossed by many such. But she was, as
we have said, a strong woman, and had made up her mind to take these
anxieties as part of the day's work--a charge upon her happiness that
had to be paid. It was a great consolation to her that she could speak
to her husband about the tension caused by her misgivings without
assigning any special reasons for anxiety that would not be his as much
as hers. She had to show uneasiness in order to get the relief his
sympathy gave her; but there were unknown possibilities in the Bush
enough to warrant it without going outside what was known to both. No
need at all that he should know of her separate unseen burden, for that!
But some of the jolts on the road, as we might call them, were to be
sore trials to Rosalind. One came in the fourth week of their honeymoon,
and quite spoiled for her the last three days of her holiday. However,
Fenwick himself laughed about it--that was one comfort.
It was at Sonnenberg. You know the Great Hotel, or Pension, near the
Seelisberg, that looks down on Lucerne Lake, straight over to where
Tell shot the arrow? If you do not, it does not matter. Mr. and Mrs.
Fenwick had never been there before, and have never been there since.
And what happened might just as easily have happened anywhere else.
But it was there, as a matter of fact; and if you know the place, you
will be able to imagine the two of them leaning on the parapet of the
terrace that overlooks the lake, watching the steamer from Lucerne
creeping slowly to the landing-place at the head of a white comet it
has churned the indescribable blue of the lake to, and discussing
whether it is nearest to Oriental sapphire or to green jasper at its
bluest.
Rosalind had got used to continual wonderment as to when and where
Fenwick had come to know so well this thing and that thing he spoke of
so familiarly; so she passed by the strange positiveness of his speech
about the shades of jasper, the scarcity of really blue examples, and
his verdict that the bluest possible one would be just the colour of
that water below them. She was not going to ask him how he came to be
so mighty wise about chalcedony and chrysoprase and sardonyx, about
which she herself either never knew or had forgotten. She took it all
as a matter of course, and asked if the Baron's cigar was a good one.
"Magnificent!" Fenwick replied, puffing at it. "How shall we return
his civility?"
"Give _him_ a cigar next time you get a chance."
Fenwick laughs, in derision of his own cigars.
"God bless me, my dearest love! Why, one of the Baron's is worth my
whole box. We must discover something better than that." Both ponder
over possible reciprocities in silence, but discover nothing, and seem
to give up the quest by mutual consent. Then he says: "I wonder why
he cosseted up to us last night in the garden so!" And she repeats:
"I wonder why!"
"I don't believe he even knows our name," she continues; and then he
repeats: "_I_ don't believe he knows our name. I'm sure he doesn't."
"And it was so dark, he couldn't have seen much of us. But his cigar's
quite beautiful. Blow the smoke in my face, Gerry!" She shuts her eyes
to receive it. How handsome Sally would think mamma was looking if she
could see her now in the light of the sunset! Her husband thinks much
to that effect, as he turns to blow the smoke on order into the face
that is so close to his, as they lean arm-in-arm on the parapet the sun
has left his warmth on, and means to take his eyes off in half an
hour. They really look quite a young couple, and the frivolity of their
conduct adds to the effect. Nobody would believe in her grown-up
daughter, to see that young Mrs. Algernon Fenwick.
"I am ferry root, Mrs. Harrisson. If I introot, you shall say I
introot." It is the Baron, manifestly. His form--or rather his bulk,
for he cannot be said to have a form; he is amorphous--is baronial in
the highest degree. His stupendous chest seems to be a huge cavern for
the secretion of gutturals, which are discharged as heavy artillery
at a hint from some unseen percussion-cap within.
Mrs. Fenwick starts, a little taken aback at the Baron's thunderclap;
for he had approached unawares, and her closed eyes helped on the
effect. When they opened, they looked round, as for a third person. But
the Baron was alone.
"Where is Mrs. Harrisson?" She asks the question with the most absolute
unconsciousness that she was herself the person addressed. The Baron,
still believing, presumably, that Fenwick is _Mr._ Harrisson, is not
a person to be trusted with the position created. He develops an
offensive waggery, shakes the forefinger that has detected an escapade,
and makes of his lips the round _O_ of shocked propriety, at heart in
sympathy with the transgressor. His little grey eyes glare through his
gold-rimmed spectacles, and his huge chest shakes with a substratum of
laughter, only just loud enough to put in the text.
"O-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho! No, do not be afraight. She is not here. We
unterzdant. It is all unterzdoot. We shall be ferry tizgreet...." And
then the Baron pats space with his fingers only, not moving his hand,
as a general indication of secrecy to the universe.
Probably the slight flush that mantles the face he speaks to is less
due to any offence at his fat, good-humoured German raillery than to
some vague apprehension of the real nature of the position about to
develop. But Fenwick imputes it to the former. If Rosey was inclined to
treat the thing as a harmless joke, he would follow suit; but she looks
hurt, and her husband, sensitive about every word that is said to her,
blazes out:
"What on earth do you mean? What the devil do you mean? How dare you
speak to my wife like that?" He makes a half-step towards the burly
mass of flesh, still shaking with laughter. But his wife stops him.
"Do be patient, Gerry darling! Don't flare up like that. I'll have a
divorce. I'll tell Sally...." a threat which seems to have a softening
effect. "Can't you see, dear, that there is some misunderstanding?"
Fenwick looks from her to the Baron, puzzled. The latter drops his
jocular rallying.
"I saw last night you did not know me, Mr. Harrisson. That is
straintch! Have you forgotten Diedrich Kreutzkammer?" He says his name
with a sort of quiet confidence of immediate recognition. But Fenwick
only looks blankly at him.
"He does not know me!" cries the German, with an astonished voice.
"'Frisco--the Klondyke--Chicago--the bridge at Brooklyn--why, it is not
two years ago...." He pauses between the names of the places, enforcing
each as a reminder with an active forefinger.
Fenwick seems suddenly to breathe the fresh air of a solution of the
problem. He breaks into a sunny smile, to his wife's great relief.
"Indeed, Baron Kreutzkammer, _my_ name is not Harrisson. _My_ name is
Fenwick, and this lady is my wife--Mrs. Fenwick. I have never been in
any of the places you mention." For the moment he forgot his own state
of oblivion: a thing he was getting more and more in the habit of
doing. The Baron looked intently at him, and looked again. He slapped
his forehead, not lightly at all, but as if good hard slaps would
really correct his misapprehensions and put him right with the world.
"I am all _wronck_" he said, borrowing extra force from an indurated
_g_. "But it is ferry bustling--I am bustled!" By this he meant
puzzled. Fenwick felt apologetic.
"I don't know how to thank you for the cigar Mr. Harrisson ought to
have had," said he. He felt really ashamed of having smoked it under
false pretences.
"You shall throw it away, and I giff you one for yourself. That is
eacey! But I am bustled."
He continued puzzled. Mrs. Fenwick felt that he was only keeping
further comment and inquiry in check because it would have been
a doubt thrown on her husband's word to make any. Her uneasiness
would have been visible if her power of concealing it had not been
fortified by her belief that his happiness as well as hers depended
(for the present, at any rate) on his ignorance of his own past.
Perhaps she was wrong; with that we have nothing to do; we are telling
of things as they happened. Only we wish to record our conviction that
Rosalind Fenwick was acting for her husband's sake as well as her
own--not from a vulgar instinct of self-preservation.
The Baron made conversation, and polished his little powerful
spectacle-lenses. He blew his nose like a salute of one gun in the
course of his polishing. When _we_ blow _our_ nose, we hush our
pocket-handkerchief back into its home, and ignore it a little. The
Baron didn't. He continued polishing on an unalloyed corner through
the whole of a very perceptible amount of chat about the tricks memory
plays us, and the probable depth of the blue water below. Rosalind's
uneasiness continued. It grew worse, when the Baron, suddenly
replacing his spectacles and fixing his eyes firmly on her husband,
said sternly, "Yes, it is a bustle!" but was relieved when equally
suddenly, he shouted in a stentorian voice, "We shall meed lader,"
and took his leave.
"He's a jolly fellow, the Baron, anyhow!" said Fenwick. "I wonder
whether they heard him at Altdorf?"
"Every word, I should think. But how I should like to see the Mr.
Harrisson he took you for!"
This was really part of a policy of nettle-grasping, which continued.
She always felt happier after defying a difficulty than after
flinching. After all, if Gerry's happiness and her own were not motive
enough, consider Sally's. If she should really come to know her
mother's story, Sally might die of it.
Fenwick went on to the ending of the cigar, dreamily wondering,
evidently "bustled" like the Baron. As he blew the last smoke away,
and threw the smoking end down the slope, he repeated her words spoken
a minute before, "_I_ should like to see the Mr. Harrisson he took
me for."
"It would be funny to see oneself as ithers see one. Some power might
gie you the giftie, Gerry. If only we could meet that Mr. Harrisson!"
"Do you remember how we saw our profiles in a glass, and you said,
'I'm sure those are somebody else'? Illogical female!"
"Why was I illogical? I knew they were going to turn out us in the
end. But I was sure I shouldn't be convinced at once." And the talk
wandered away into a sort of paradoxical metaphysics.
But when, later in the evening, this lady was described by confidential
chat at the far end of the salon as that handsome young Mrs. Algernon
Fenwick who was only just married, and whose husband was playing chess
in the smoking-room, and what a pity it was they were not going to
stop over Monday, she thus described, accurately enough, was rather
rejoicing that that handsome Mr. Fenwick, who looked like a Holbein
portrait, was being kept quiet for half an hour, because she wanted to
get a chance for a little chat with that dreadful noisy Prussian Von,
who made all the glasses ring at table when he shouted so. Rosalind had
her own share of feminine curiosity, don't you see? and she was not by
any means satisfied about Mr. Harrisson. She did not acknowledge the
nature of her suspicions to herself, but she would very much like to
know, for all that! She got her opportunity.
"I shouldn't the least mind myself if smoking _were_ allowed in the
salon, Baron. You saw to-day that I really liked the smoke?"
"Ja! when I make that chogue. It was a root chogue. But I am
forgiffen?"
"It was Gerry who had to be forgiven, breaking out like that. I hope
he has promised not to do so any more?"
"He has bromiss to be goot. I have bromiss to be goot. We shall be
_sages enfants_, as the French say. But I will tell you, Madame
Fenwick, about my vrent Harrisson your Cherry is so ligue...."
"Let's go out on the terrace, then you can light a cigar and be
comfortable.... Yes, I'll have my wrap ... no, that's wrong-side-out
... that's right now.... Well, perhaps it will be a little cool for
sitting down. We can walk about."
"Now I can tell you about my vrent in America that your hussband is so
ligue. He could speague French--ferry well indeed." Rosalind looked up.
"It was when I heard your hussband speaguing French to that grosse
Grafin Pobzodonoff that I think to myself that was Alchernon Harrisson
that I knew in California."
"Suppose we sit down. I don't think it's too cold.... Yes, this place
will do nicely. It's sheltered from the wind." If she does look a
little pale--and she feels she does--it will be quite invisible in this
dark corner, for the night is dark under a canopy of blazing stars.
"What were you saying about French?"
"Alchernon Harrisson--that was his name--he could speague it well. He
spogue id ligue a nadiff. Better than I speague English. I speague
English so well because I have a knees at Ganderbury." This meant a
niece at Canterbury. Baron Kreutzkammer speaks English so well that it
is almost a shame to lay stress on his pronunciation of consonants.
The spelling is difficult too, so we will give the substance of what
he told Rosalind without his articulation. By this time she, for her
part, was feeling thoroughly uneasy. It seemed to her--but it may
be she exaggerated--that nothing stood between her husband and
the establishment of his identity with this Harrisson except the
difference of name. And how could she know that he had not changed his
name? Had she not changed hers?
The Baron's account of Harrisson was that he made his acquaintance
about three years since at San Francisco, where he had come to choose
gold-mining plant to work a property he had purchased at Klondyke.
Rosalind found it a little difficult to understand the account of how
the acquaintance began, from want of knowledge of mining machinery. But
the gist of it was that the Baron, at that time a partner in a firm
that constructed stamping-mills, was explaining the mechanism of one to
Harrisson, who was standing close to a small vertical pugmill, or mixer
of some sort, just at the moment the driving-engine had stopped and the
fly-wheel had nearly slowed down. He went carelessly too near the still
revolving machinery, and his coat-flap was caught and wound into the
helix of the pugmill. "It would have crowned me badly," said the Baron.
But he remained unground, for Harrisson, who was standing close to the
moribund fly-wheel, suddenly flung himself on it, and with incredible
strength actually cut short the rotation before the Baron could
be entangled in a remorseless residuum of crushing power, which, for
all it looked so gentle, would have made short work of a horse's
thigh-bone. The Baron's coat was spoiled, though he was intact. But
Harrisson's right arm had done more than a human arm's fair share of
work, and had to rest and be nursed. They had become intimate friends,
and the Baron had gone constantly to inquire after the swelled arm. It
took time to become quite strong again, he said. It was a fine strong
arm, and burned all over with gunpowder, "what you call daddooed in
English."
"Did it get quite well?"
"Ferry nearly. There was a little blaze in the choint here"--the Baron
touched his thumb--"where the bane remained--a roomadic bane. He
burgessed a gopper ring for it. It did him no goot." Luckily Rosalind
had discarded the magic ring long since, or it might have come into
court awkwardly.
If she still entertained any doubts about the identity of her husband
and Harrisson, the Baron's next words removed them. They came in answer
to an expression of wonder of hers that he should so readily accept her
husband's word for his identity in the face of the evidence of his own
senses. "I really think," she had said, "that if I were in your place
I should think he was telling fibs." This was nettle-grasping.
"Ach, ach! No--no--no!" shouted the Baron, so loud that she was afraid
it would reach the chess-players in the smoking-room, "I arrife at it
by logic, by reasson. Giff me your attention." He held up one finger
firmly, as an act of hypnotism, to procure it. "Either I am ride or
I am wronck. I cannot be neither."
"You might be mistaken."
The Baron's finger waved this remark aside impatiently. "I will fairy
the syllogism," he shouted. "Either your husband _is_ Mr. Harrisson,
or he is _not_. He cannot be neither." This was granted. "Ferry well,
then. If he is Mr. Harrisson, Mr. Harrisson has doled fips. But I know
Mr. Harrisson would not dell fips. Imbossible!"
"And if he is not?" The Baron points out that in this case his
statement is true by hypothesis, to say nothing of the intrinsic
probability of truthfulness on the part of any one so like Mr.
Harrisson. He is careful to dwell on the fact that this consideration
of the matter is purely analysis of a metaphysical crux, indulged in
for scientific illumination. He then goes on to apologize for having
been so very positive. But no doubt one or two minor circumstances had
so affected his imagination that he saw a very strong likeness where
only a very slight one existed. "I shall look again. I shall be wicer
next time." But what were the minor circumstances, Rosalind asked.
"There was the French--the lankwitch--that was one. But there was
another--his _noce_! I will tell you. When my frent Harrisson gribe
holt of that wheel, his head go down etchwice." The Baron tried to hint
at this with his own head, but his neck, which was like a prize-bull's,
would not lend itself to the illustration. "That wheel was ferry
smooth--with a sharp gorner. _His noce touch that corner._" The Baron
said no more in words, but pantomimic action and a whistle showed
plainly how the wheel-rim had glided on the bridge of Mr. Harrisson's
nose. "It took off the gewdiggle, and made a sgar. Your hussband's
noce has that ferry sgar. That affected my imatchination. It is easy
to unterzdant."
But the subject was frightening Rosalind. She would have liked to hear
much more about Mr. Harrisson; might ever have ended by taking the fat
Baron, whom she thoroughly liked, into her confidence. The difficulty,
however, was about decision in immediate action, which would be
irrevocable. Silence was safer--or, sleep on it at least. For now, she
must change the conversation.
"How sweet the singing sounds under the starlight!" But the Baron will
not tolerate any such loose inaccuracy.
"It would sount the same in the taydime. The fibrations are the same."
But he more than makes up for his harsh prosaism by singing, in unison
with the singers unseen:
"Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten
Dass ich so traurig bin...."
No one could ever have imagined that such heavenly sounds could come
from anything so fat and noisy. Mrs. Fenwick shuts her eyes to listen.
When she opens them again, jerked back from a temporary dream-paradise
by the Baron remarking with the voice of Stentor or Boanerges that it
is a "ferry broody lied," her husband is standing there. He has been
listening to the music. The Baron adds that his friend Mr. Harrisson
was "ferry vond of that lied."
But when the two of them have said a cordial good-night to the unwieldy
nightingale, who goes away to bed, as he has to leave early in the
morning, Fenwick is very silent, and once and again brushes his hair
about, and shakes his head in his old way. His wife sees what it is.
The music has gone as near touching the torpid memory as the wild
autumn night and the cloud-race round the moon had done in the little
front garden at home a year ago.
"A recurrence, Gerry?" she asks.
"Something of the sort, Rosey love," he says. "Something quite mad this
time. There was a steam-engine in it, of all things in the world!" But
it has been painful, evidently--a discomfort at least--as these things
always are.
Rosalind's apprehension of untimely revelations dictated a feeling
of satisfaction that the Baron was going away next day; her regret
at losing the choice of further investigation admitted one of
dissatisfaction that he had gone. The net result was unsettlement and
discomfort, which lasted through the remainder of Sonnenberg, and did
not lift altogether until the normallest of normal life came back in
a typical London four-wheeler, which dutifully obeyed the injunction
to "go slowly," not only through the arch that injunction brooded over,
but even to the end of the furlong outside the radius which commanded
an extra sixpence and got more. But what did that matter when Sally was
found watching at the gate for its advent, and received her stepfather
with an undisguised hug as soon as she found it in her heart to
relinquish her mother?