HOW MAJOR ROPER MET THAT BOY, AND GOT UPSTAIRS AT BALL STREET. AN
INTERVIEW BETWEEN ASTHMA AND BRONCHITIS. HOW SALLY PINIONED THE PURPLE
VETERAN, AND THERE WAS NO BOY. HOW THE GOVERNOR DONE HOARCKIN', AND GOT
QUALIFIED FOR A SUBJECT OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
Old Jack's powers of self-delusion were great indeed if, when he
started on his short journey, he really believed the fog had mended. At
least, it was so dense that he might never have found his way without
assistance. This he met with in the shape of a boy with a link, whom
Sally at once identified from his description, given when the Major had
succeeded in getting up the stairs and was resting in the sitting-room
near the old sabre on the wall, wiping his eyes after his effort.
Colonel Lund was half-unconscious after a bad attack, and it was best
not to disturb him. Fenwick had not returned, and no one was very easy
about him. But every one affirmed the reverse, and joined in a sort of
Creed to the effect that the fog was clearing. It wasn't and didn't
mean to for some time. But the unanimity of the creed fortified the
congregation, as in other cases. No two believers doubted it at once,
just as no two Alpine climbers, strung together on the moraine of
a glacier, lose their foothold at the same time.
"I know that boy," said Sally. "His nose twists, and gives him a
presumptuous expression, and he has a front tooth out and puts his
tongue through. Also his trousers are tied on with strings."
"Everlastin' young beggar, if ever there was one," says the old
soldier, in a lucid interval when speech is articulate. But he is
allowing colloquialism to run riot over meaning. No everlasting person
can ever have become part of the past if you think of it. He goes on to
say that the boy has had twopence and is to come back for fourpence in
an hour, or threepence if you can see the gas-lamps, because then
a link will be superfluous. Sally recognises the boy more than ever.
"I wonder," she says, "if he's waiting outside. Because the party of
the house might allow him inside. Do you think I could ask, mother?"
"You might _try_, kitten," is the reply, not given sanguinely. And
Sally goes off, benevolent. "Even when your trousers are tied up with
string, a fog's a fog," says she to herself.
"I knoo our friend Lund first of all...." Thus the Major, nodding
towards the bedroom door.... "Why, God bless my soul, ma'am, I knew
Lund first of all, forty-six years ago in Delhi. Forty--six--years!
And all that time, if you believe me, he's been the same obstinate
moole. Never takin' a precaution about anythin', nor listening to
a word of advice!" This is about as far as he can go without a choke.
Rosalind goes into the next room to get a tumbler of water. The nurse,
who is sitting by the fire, nods towards the bed, and Rosalind goes
close to it to hear. "What is it, dear?" She speaks to the invalid
as to a little child.
"Isn't that Old Jack choking? I know his choke. What does he come out
for in weather like this? What does he mean? Send him back.... No,
send him in here." The nurse puts in a headshake as protest. But for
all that, Sally finds, when she returns, that the two veterans are
contending together against their two enemies, bronchitis and asthma,
with the Intelligence Department sadly interrupted, and the enemy in
possession of all the advantageous points.
"He oughtn't to try to talk," says Rosalind. "But he will." She and
Sally and the nurse sit on in the fog-bound front room. The gas-lights
have no heart in them, and each wears a nimbus. Rosalind wishes Gerry
would return, aloud. Sally is buoyant about him; _he's_ all right,
trust _him_! What about the everlasting young beggar?
"I persuaded Mrs. Kindred," says Sally. "And we looked outside for him,
and he'd gone."
"Fancy a woman being named Kindred!"
"When people are so genteel one can believe anything! But what do you
think the boy's name is?... Chancellorship! Isn't that queer? She knows
him--says he's always about in the neighbourhood. He sleeps in the
mews behind Great Toff House."
Her mother isn't listening. She rises for a moment to hear what she may
of how the talk in the next room goes on; and then, coming back, says
again she wishes Gerry was safe indoors, and Sally again says, "Oh,
_he's_ all right!" The confidence these two have in one another makes
them a couple apart--a sort of league.
What Mrs. Fenwick heard a scrap of in the next room would have been,
but for the alarums and excursions of the two enemies aforementioned,
a consecutive conversation as follows:
"You're gettin' round, Colonel?"
"A deal better, Major. I want to speak to _you_."
"Fire away, old Cockywax! You remember Hopkins?--Cartwright
Hopkins--man with a squint--at Mooltan--expression of his, 'Old
Cockywax.'"
"I remember him. Died of typhoid at Burrampore. Now you listen to me,
old chap, and don't talk--you only make yourself cough."
"It's only the dam fog. _I'm_ all right."
"Well, shut up. That child in the next room--it's her I want to talk
about. You're the only man, as far as I know, that knows the story.
She doesn't. She's not to be told."
"Mum's the word, sir. Always say nothin', that's my motto.
Penderfield's daughter at Khopal--at least, he was her father. One dam
father's as good as another, as long as he goes to the devil." This may
be a kind of disclaimer of inheritance as a factor to be reckoned with,
an obscure suggestion that human parentage is without influence on
character. It is not well expressed.
"Listen to me, Roper. You know the story. That's the only man I can't
say God forgive him to. God forgive _me_, but I can't."
"Devil take me if I can!... Yes, it's all right. They're all in the
next room...."
"But the woman was worse. She's living, you know...."
"I know--shinin' light--purifying society--that's her game! I'd purify
_her_, if I had my way."
"Come a bit nearer--my voice goes. I've thought it all out. If the
girl, who supposes herself to be the daughter of her mother's husband,
tries to run you into a corner--you understand?"
"I understand."
"Well, don't you undeceive her. Her mother has never told her
_anything_. She doesn't suppose she had any hand in the divorce. She
thinks his name was Graythorpe, and doesn't know he wasn't her father.
Don't you undeceive her--promise."
But the speaker is so near the end of his tether that the Major has
barely time to say, "Honour bright, Colonel," when the bronchial storm
bursts. It may be that the last new anodyne, which is warranted to have
all the virtues and none of the ill-effects of opium, had also come to
the end of _its_ tether. Mrs. Fenwick came quickly in, saying he had
talked too much; and Sally, following her, got Major Roper away,
leaving the patient to her mother and the nurse. The latter knew what
it would be with all this talking--now the temperature would go up,
and he would have a bad night, and what would Dr. Mildmay say?
Till the storm had subsided and a new dose of the sedative had been
given, Sally and Old Jack stood waiting in sympathetic pain--you
know what it is when you can do nothing. The latter derived some
insignificant comfort from suggestions through his own choking that
all this was due to neglect of his advice. When only moans and heavy
breathing were left, Sally went back into the bedroom. Her mother was
nursing the poor old racked head on her bosom, with the sword-hand of
the days gone by in her own. She said without speaking that he would
sleep presently, and the fewer in the room the better, and Sally left
them so, and went back.
Yes, the Major would take some toddy before he started for home. And
it was all ready, lemons and all, in the black polished wood cellaret,
with eagles' claws for feet. Sally got the ingredients out and began
to make it. But first she gently closed the door between the rooms,
to keep the sound of their voices in.
"You really did see my father, though, Major?" There seemed to be
a good deal of consideration before the answer came, not all to be
accounted for by asthma.
"Yes--certainly--oh yes. I saw Mr. Graythorpe once or twice. Another
spoonful--that's plenty." A pause.
"Now, don't spill it. Take care, it's very hot. That's right." Another
pause. "Major Roper...."
"Yes, my dear. What?"
"_Do_ tell me what he was like."
"Have you never seen his portrait?"
"Mother burnt it while I was small. She told me. Do tell me what you
recollect him like."
"Fine handsome feller--well set up. Fine shot, too! Gad! that was a
neat thing! A bullet through a tiger two hundred yards off just behind
the ear."
"But I thought _his_ name was Harrisson." The Major has got out of his
depth entirely through his own rashness. Why couldn't he leave that
tiger alone? Now he has to get into safe water again.
A good long choke is almost welcome at this moment. While it goes on he
can herald, by a chronic movement of a raised finger, his readiness to
explain all as soon as it stops. He catches at his first articulation,
so that not a moment may be lost. There were _two_ tigers--that's the
explanation. Harrisson shot one, and Graythorpe the other. The
cross-examiner is dissatisfied.
"Which was the one that shot the tiger two hundred yards off, just
behind the ear?"
The old gentleman responds with a spirited decision: "Your father,
my dear, your father. That tiger round at my rooms--show it you if
you like--that skin was given me by a feller named Harrisson, in the
Commissariat--quite another sort of Johnny. He was down with the
Central Indian Horse--quite another place!" He dwells on the
inferiority of this shot, the smallness of the skin, the close
contiguity of its owner. A very inferior affair!
But, being desperately afraid of blundering again, he makes the fact
he admits, that he had confoozed between the two cases, a reason for
a close analysis of the merits of each. This has no interest for
Sally, who, indeed, had only regarded the conversation, so far, as a
stepping-stone she now wanted to leap to the mainland from. After all,
here she is face-to-face with a man who actually knows the story of the
separation, and can talk of it without pain. Why should she not get
something from him, however little? You see, the idea of a something
that could not be told was necessarily foreign to a mind some
somethings could not be told to. But she felt it would be difficult to
account to Major Roper for her own position. The fact that she knew
nothing proved that her mother and Colonel Lund had been anxious she
should know nothing. She could not refer to an outsider over their
heads. Still, she hoped, as Major Roper was deemed on all hands an
arrant old gossip, that he might accidentally say something to enlighten
her. She prolonged the conversation in this hope.
"Was that before I was born?"
"The tiger-shootin'? Well, reely, my dear, I shouldn't like to say.
It's twenty years ago, you see. No, I couldn't say--couldn't say when
it was." He is beginning to pack himself in a long woollen scarf an
overcoat with fur facings will shortly cover in, and is, in fact,
preparing to evacuate a position he finds untenable. "I must be
thinkin' of gettin' home," he says. Sally tries for a word more.
"Was it before he and mother fell out?" It is on the Major's lips to
say, "Before the proceedings?" but he changes the expression.
"Before the split? Well, no; I should say after the split.
Yes--probably after the split." But an unfortunate garrulity prompts
him to say more. "After the split, I should say, and before
the----"--and then he feels he is in a quagmire, and flounders to the
nearest land--"before your father went away to Australia." Then he
discerns his own feebleness, recognising the platitude of this last
remark. For nobody could shoot tigers in an Indian jungle after he had
gone off to Australia. Clearly the sooner he gets away the better.
A timely choking-fit interposes to preserve its victim from further
questioning. The patient in the next room is asleep or torpid, so he
omits farewells. Sally's mother comes out to say good-night, and Sally
goes down the staircase with him and his asthma, feeling that it is
horrible and barbarous to turn him out alone in the dense blackness.
Perhaps, however, the peculiar boy with the strange name will be there.
That would be better than nothing. Sally feels there is something
indomitable about that boy, and that fog nourishes and stimulates it.
But, alas!--there is no boy. And yet it certainly would be fourpence
if he came back. For, though it may be possible to see the street
gas-lamps without getting inside the glass, you can't see them from
the pavement. Nevertheless, the faith that "it" is clearing having been
once founded, lives on itself in the face of evidence, even as other
faiths have done before now. So the creed is briefly recited, and the
Major disappears with the word good-night still on his lips, and his
cough, gasp, or choke dies away in the fog as he vanishes.
Somebody is whistling "Arr-hyd-y-nos" as he comes from the other side
in the darkness--somebody who walks with a swinging step and a resonant
foot-beat, some one who cares nothing for fogs. Fenwick's voice is
defiant of it, exhilarated and exhilarating, as he ceases to be a cloud
and assumes an outline. Sally gives a kiss to frozen hair that crackles.
"What's the kitten after, out in the cold? How's the Major?"
"Which? _Our_ Major? He's a bit better, and the temperature's lower."
Sally believed this; a little thermometer thing was being wielded as
an implement of optimism, and had lent itself to delusions.
"Oh, how scrunchy you are, your hands are all ice! Mamma's been getting
in a stew about _you_, squire." On which Fenwick, with the slightest of
whistles, passes Sally quickly and goes four steps at a time up the
stairs, still illuminated by Sally's gas-waste. For she had left the
lights at full cock all the way up.
"My dearest, you never got my telegram?" This is to Rosalind, who
has come out on the landing to meet him. But the failure of the
telegram--lost in the fog, no doubt--is a small matter. What shelves
it is the patient grief on the tired, handsome face Fenwick finds
tears on as he kisses it. Sally has the optimism all to herself now.
Her mother knows that her old friend and protector will not be here
long--that, of course, has been true some time. But there's the
suffering, present and to come.
"We needn't stop the chick hoping a little still if she likes." She
says it in a whisper. Sally is on the landing below; she hears the
whispering, and half guesses its meaning. Then she suppresses the
last gas-tap, and follows on into the front room, where the three sit
talking in undertones for perhaps an hour.
Yes, that monotonous sound is the breathing of the patient in the next
room, under the new narcotic which has none of the bad effects of
opium. The nurse is there watching him, and wondering whether it will
be a week, or twenty-four hours. She derives an impression from
something that the fog really is clearing at last, and goes to the
window to see. She is right, for at a window opposite are dimly
visible, from the candles on either side of the mirror, two white arms
that are "doing" the hair of a girl whose stays are much too tight.
She is dressing for late dinner or an early party. Then the nurse,
listening, understands that the traffic has been roused from its long
lethargy. "I thought I heard the wheels," she says to herself. Then
Sally also becomes aware of the sound in the traffic, and goes to _her_
window in the front room.
"You see I'm right," she says. "The people are letting their fires out,
and the fog's giving. Now I'm going to take you home, Jeremiah." For
the understanding is that these two shall return to Krakatoa Villa,
leaving Rosalind to watch with the nurse. She will get a chop in half
an hour's time. She can sleep on the sofa in the front room if she
feels inclined. All which is duty carried out or arranged for.
After her supper Rosalind sat on by herself before the fire in the
front room. She did not want to be unsociable with the nurse; but she
wanted to think, alone. A weight was on her mind; the thought that the
dear old friend, who had been her father and refuge, should never know
that she again possessed her recovered husband on terms almost as good
as if that deadly passage in her early life had never blasted the
happiness of both. He would die, and it would have made him so happy to
know it. Was she right in keeping it back now? Had she ever been right?
But if she told him now, the shock of the news might hasten his
collapse. Sudden news need not be bad to cause sudden death. And, maybe
the story would be too strange for him to grasp. Better be silent. But
oh! if he might have shared her happiness!
Drowsiness was upon her before she knew it. Better perhaps sleep a
little now, while he was sleeping. She looked in at him, and spoke to
the nurse. He lay there like a lifeless waxwork--blown through, like
an apparatus out of order, to simulate breath, and doing it badly.
How could he sleep when now and then it jerked him so? He could, and
she left him and lay down, and went suddenly to sleep. After a time
that was a journey through a desert, without landmarks, she was as
suddenly waked.
"What?... I thought you spoke...." And so some one had spoken, but
not to her. She started up, and went to where the nurse was conversing
through the open window with an inarticulate person in the street
below, behind the thick window-curtain she had kept overlapped, to
check the freezing air.
"What is it?"
"It's a boy. I can't make out what he says."
"Let me come!" But Rosalind gets no nearer his meaning. She ends up
with, "I'll come down," and goes. The nurse closes the window and goes
back to the bedroom.
The street door opens easily, the Chubb lock being the only fastening.
The moment Rosalind sees the boy near she recognises him. There is no
doubt about the presumptuous expression, or the cause of it. Also the
ostentatious absence of the front tooth, clearly accounting for
inaudibility at a distance.
"What do you want?" asks Rosalind.
"Nothin' at all for myself. I come gratis, I did. There's a many
wouldn't." He is not too audible, even now; but he would be better
if he did not suck the cross-rail of the area paling.
"Why did you come?"
"To bring you the nooze. The old bloke's a friend of yours, missis.
Or p'r'aps he ain't! I can mizzle, you know, and no harm done."
"Oh no, don't mizzle on any account. Tell me about the old bloke.
Do you mean Major Roper?"
"Supposin' I do, why shouldn't I?" This singular boy seems to have
no way of communicating with his species except through defiances
and refutations. Rosalind accepts his question as an ordinary assent,
and does not make the mistake of entering into argument.
"Is he ill?" The boy nods. "Is he worse?" Another nod. "Has he gone
home to his club?" The boy evidently has a revelation to make, but
would consider it undignified to make it except as a denial of
something to the contrary. He sees his way after a brief reflection.
"He ain't gone. He's been took."
"He's been taken? How has he been taken?"
"On a perambulance. Goin' easy! But he didn't say nothin'. Not harf
a word!"
"Had he fainted?" But this boy has another characteristic--when he
cannot understand he will not admit it. He keeps silence, and goes
on absorbing the railing. Rosalind asks further: "Was he dead?"
"It'd take a lawyer to tell that, missis."
"I can't stand here in the cold, my boy. Come in, and come up and
tell us." So he comes up, and Rosalind speaks to the nurse in the
other room, who comes; and then they turn seriously to getting the
boy's story.
He is all the easier for examination from the fact that he is
impressed, if not awed, by his surroundings. All the bounce is knocked
out of him, now that his foot is no longer on his native heath, the
street. Witness that the subject of his narrative, who would certainly
have been the old bloke where there was a paling to suck, has become
a simple pronoun, and no more!
"I see him afore, missis," he says. "That time wot I lighted him
round for twopence. And he says to come again in three-quarters of
an hour. And I says yes, I says. And he says not to be late. Nor yet
I shouldn't, only the water run so slow off the main, and I was
kep.... Yes, missis--a drorin' of it off in their own pails at the
balkny house by the mooze, where the supply is froze...."
"I see, you got a job to carry up pails of water from that thing that
sticks up in the road?"
"Yes, missis; by means of the turncock. Sim'lar I got wet. But I didn't
go to be late. It warn't much, in the manner of speakin'. I was on his
'eels, clost."
"You caught him?"
"Heard him hoarckin' in the fog, and I says to my mate--boy by the name
of 'Ucklebridge, only chiefly called Slimy, to distinguish him--I
says--I says that was my guv'nor, safe and square, by the token of the
sound of it. And then I catches him up in the fog, follerin' by the
sound. My word, missis, he _was_ bad! Wanted to holler me over the
coals, he did, for behind my time. I could hear him wantin' to do it.
But he couldn't come by the breath."
Poor Old Jack! The two women look at each other, and then say to the
boy: "Go on."
"Holdin' by the palins, he was, and goin' slow. Then he choked it
off like, and got a chanst for a word, and he says: 'Now, you young
see-saw'--that's what he said, missis, 'see-saw'--'just you stir your
stumps and cut along to the clubbus: and tell that dam red-faced fool
Mulberry to look sharp and send one of the young fellers to lend an
arm, and not to come hisself.' And then he got out a little flat bottle
of something short, and went for a nip; but the cough took him, and it
sprouted over his wropper and was wasted."
The women look at each other again. The nurse sees well into the story,
and says quickly under her breath to Rosalind: "He'd been told what to
do if he felt it coming. A drop of brandy might have made the
difference." The boy goes on as soon as he is waited for.
"Mr. Mulberry he comes runnin' hisself, and a couple more on 'em! And
then they all calls me a young varmint by reason of the guv'nor having
got lost. But a gentleman what comes up, he says all go opposite ways,
he says, and you'll hear him in the fog. So I runs up a parsage, and
in the middle of the parsage I tumbles over the guv'nor lyin' acrost
the parsage. Then I hollers, and then they come."
"Oh dear!" says Rosalind; for this boy had that terrible power of vivid
description which flinches at no realism--_seems_ to enjoy the horror
of it; does not really. Probably it was only his intense anxiety to
communicate _all_, struggling with his sense of his lack of language--a
privilege enjoyed by guv'nors. But Rosalind feels the earnestness of
his brief epic. He winds it up:
"But the guv'nor, he'd done hoarckin'. Nor he never spoke. The
gentleman I told you, he says leave him lyin' a minute, he says, and
he runs. Then back he comes with the apoarthecary--him with the red
light--and they rips the guv'nor's sleeves up, spilin' his coat. And
they prokes into his arm with a packin'-needle. Much use it done! And
then they says, it warn't the fog, and I called 'em a liar. 'Cos it's
a clearin' off, they says. It warn't, not much. I see the perambulance
come, and they shoved him in, and I hooked it off, and heard 'em
saying where's that young shaver, they says; he'll be wanted for his
testament. So I hooked it off."
"And where did you go?"
"To a wisit on a friend, I did. Me and Slimy--him I mentioned afore.
And he says, he says, to come on here--on'y later. So then I come on
here."
Rosalind finds herself, in the face of what she feels must mean Old
Jack's sudden death, thinking how sorry she is she can command no pair
of trousers of a reasonable size to replace this boy's drenched ones--a
pair that would need no string. A crude brew of hot toddy, and most of
the cake that had appealed to Major Roper in vain, and never gone back
to the cellaret, were the only consolations possible. They seemed
welcome, but under protest.
"Shan't I carry of 'em outside, missis?"
"On the stairs, then." This assent is really because both women believe
he will be comfortabler there than in the room. "Where are you going to
sleep?" Rosalind asks, as he takes the cake and tumbler away to the
stairs. She puts a gas-jet on half-cock.
"Twopenny doss in Spur Street, off of 'Orseferry Road, Westminster."
This identification is to help Rosalind, as she may not be able to spot
this particular doss-house among all she knows.
"Do you always sleep there?"
"No, missis! Weather permitting, in our mooze--on the 'eap. The
'orse-keeper gives a sack in return for a bit of cleanin', early,
before comin' away."
"What are you?" says Rosalind. She is thinking aloud more than asking
a question. But the boy answers:
"I'm a wife, I am. Never learned no tride, ye see!... Oh yes; I've been
to school--board-school scollard. But they don't learn you no tride.
You parses your standards and chucks 'em." This incredible boy, who
deliberately called himself a waif (that was his meaning), was it
possible that he had passed through a board-school? Well, perhaps he
was the highest type of competitive examinee, who can learn everything
and forget everything.
"But you have a father?"
"I could show him you. But he don't hold with teachin' his sons trides,
by reason of their gettin' some of his wiges. He's in the sanitary
engineering himself, but he don't do no work." Rosalind looks puzzled.
"That's his tride--sanitary engineering, lavatries, plumbin', and
fittin'. Been out of work better than three years. He can jint you off
puppies' tails, though, at a shillin'. But he don't only get a light
job now and again, 'cos the tride ain't wot it was. They've been
shearin' of 'em off of late years. Thank you, missis." The refreshments
have vanished as by magic, and Rosalind gives the boy the rest of the
cake and a coin, and he goes away presumably to the doss-house he
smells so strong of, having been warmed, that a flavour of the heap in
the mews would have been welcome in exchange. So Rosalind thinks as she
opens the window a moment and looks out. She can quite see the houses
opposite. The fog has cleared till the morning.
Perhaps it is the relenting of the atmospheric conditions, or perhaps
it is the oxygen that the patient has been inhaling off and on, that
has slightly revived him. Or perhaps it is the champagne that comes up
through a tap in the cork, and reminds Rosalind's ill-slept brain of
something heard very lately--what on earth exactly was it? Oh, she
knows! Of course, the thing in the street the sanitary engineer's
son drew the pails of water at for the house with the balcony. It is
pleasanter to know; might have fidgeted her if she had not found out.
But she is badly in want of sleep, that's the truth!
"I thought Major Roper was gone, Rosey." He can talk through his heavy
breathing. It must be the purer air.
"So he is, dear. He went two hours ago." She sits by him, taking his
hand as before. The nurse is, by arrangement, to take her spell of
sleep now.
"I suppose it's my head. I thought he was here just now--just this
minute."
"No, dear; you've mixed him up with Gerry, when he came in to say
good-night. Major Roper went away first. It wasn't seven o'clock." But
there is something excited and puzzled in the patient's voice as he
answers--something that makes her feel creepy.
"Are you _sure_? I mean, when he came back into the room with his
coat on."
"You are dreaming, dear! He never came back. He went straight away."
"Dreaming! Not a bit of it. You weren't here." He is so positive that
Rosalind thinks best to humour him.
"I suppose I was speaking to Mrs. Kindred. What did he come back to
say, dear?"
"Oh, nothing! At least, I had told him not to chatter to Sallykin about
the old story, and he came back, I suppose, to say he wouldn't." He
seemed to think the incident, as an incident, closed; but presently
goes on talking about things that arise from it.
"Old Jack's the only one of them all that knew anything about it--that
Sallykin is likely to come across. Pellew knew, of course; but he's not
an old chatterbox like Roper."
Ought not Rosalind to tell the news that has just reached her? She asks
herself the question, and answers it: "Not till he rallies, certainly.
If he does not rally, why then----!" Why then he either will know or
won't want to.
She has far less desire to tell him this than she has to talk of
the identity of her husband. She would almost be glad, as he is to
die--her old friend--that she should have some certainty beforehand
of the exact time of his death, so that she might, only for an hour
a companion in her secrecy. If only he and she might have borne the
burden of it together! She reproached herself, now that it was too
late, with her mistrust of his powers of retaining a secret. See how
keenly alive he was to the need of keeping Sally's parentage in the
dark! And _that_ was what the whole thing turned on. Gerry's continued
ignorance might be desirable, but was a mere flea-bite by comparison.
In her strained, sleepless, overwrought state the wish that "the Major"
should know of her happiness while they could still speak of it
together grew from a passing thought of how nice it might have been,
that could not be, to a dumb dominant longing that it should be. Still,
after all, the only fear was that he should talk to Gerry; and how easy
to keep Gerry out of the room! And suppose he did talk! Would Gerry
believe him? There was risky ground there, though.
She was not sorry when no more speech came through the heavy breathing
of the invalid. He had talked a good deal, and a semi-stupor followed,
relieving her from the strong temptation she had felt to lead him back
to their past memories, and feel for some means of putting him in
possession of the truth. As the tension of her mind grew less, she
became aware this would have been no easy thing to do. Then, as she sat
holding the old hand, and wondering that anything so frail could still
keep in bond a spirit weary of its prison, drowsiness crept over her
once more, all the sooner for the monotonous rhythm of the heavy
breath. Consciousness gave place to a state of mysterious discomfort,
complicated with intersecting strings and a grave sense of
responsibility, and then to oblivion. After a few thousand years,
probably minutes on the clock, a jerk woke her.
"Oh dear! I was asleep."
"You might give me another nip of the champagne, Rosey dear. And then
you must go and lie down. I shall be all right. Is it late?"
"Not very. About twelve. I'll look at my watch." She does so, and it
is past one. Then the invalid, being raised up towards his champagne,
has a sudden attack of coughing, which brings in the nurse as a
reserve. Presently he is reinstated in semi-comfort, half a tone
weaker, but with something to say. And so little voice to say it with!
Rosalind puts her ear close, and repeats what she catches.
"Why did Major Roper come back? He didn't, dear. He went away about
seven, and has not been here since."
"He was in the room just this minute." The voice is barely audible,
the conviction of the speaker absolute. He is wandering. The nurse's
mind decides, in an innermost recess, that it won't be very long now.
* * * * *
Rosalind looked out through a spot she had rubbed clean on the frozen
window-pane, and saw that it was bright starlight. The fog had gone.
That boy--he was asleep at the twopenny doss, and the trousers were
drying. What a good thing that he should be totally insensitive to
atmosphere, as no doubt he was.
The hardest hours for the watcher by a sick-bed are those that cannot
be convinced that they belong to the previous day. One o'clock may be
coaxed or bribed easily enough into winking at a pretence that it is
only a corollary of twelve; two o'clock protests against it audibly,
and every quarter-chime endorses its claim to be to-morrow; three
o'clock makes short work of an imposture only a depraved effrontery
can endeavour to foist upon it. Rosalind was aware of her unfitness
to sit up all night--all this next night--but nursed the pretext that
it had not come, and that it was still to-day, until a sense of the
morning chill, and something in the way the sound of each belated cab
confessed to its own scarcity, convinced her of the uselessness of
further effort. Then she surrendered the point, short of the stroke
of three, and exchanged posts with the nurse, who promised to call her
at once should it seem necessary to do so. Sleep came with a rush, and
dreamless oblivion. Then, immediately, the hand of the nurse on her
shoulder, and her voice, a sudden shock in the absolute stillness:
"I thought it better to wake you, Mrs. Nightingale. I am _so_
sorry...."
"Oh dear! how long have I slept?" Rosalind's mind leaped through a
second of unconsciousness of where she is and what it's all about to
a state of intense wakefulness. "What o'clock is it?"
"It's half-past six. I should have left you to have your sleep out,
only he wanted you.... Yes, he woke up and asked for you, and then
asked again. He's hardly coughed."
"I'll come." Rosalind tried for alacrity, but found she was quite
stiff. The fire was only a remnant of red glow that collapsed feebly
as the nurse touched it with the poker. It was a case for a couple of
little gluey wheels, and a good contribution to the day's fog, already
in course of formation, with every grate in London panting to take
shares. Rosalind did not wait to see the black column of smoke start
for its chimney-pot, but went straight to the patient's bedside.
"Is that Rosey? I can't see very well. Come and sit beside me. I want
you." He was speaking more easily than before, so his hearer thought.
Could it be a change for the better? She put her finger on the pulse,
but it was hard to find. The fever had left him for the time being,
but its work was done. It was wonderful, though, that he should have
so much life in him for speech.
"What is it, Major dear?... Let's get the pillow right.... There,
that's better! Yes, dear; what is it?"
"I've got my marching orders, Rosey. I shall be all right. Shan't be
sorry ... when it's over.... Rosey girl, I want you to do something
for me.... Is my watch there, with the keys?"
"Yes, dear; the two little keys."
"The little one opens my desk ... with the brass corners.... Yes, that
one.... Open the top flap, and look in the little left-hand drawer.
Got it?"
"Yes; you want the letters out? There's only one packet."
"That's the lot. Read what's written on them."
"Only 'Emily, 1837.'"
"Quite right! That was your aunt, you know--your father's sister.
Don't cry, darling. Nothing to cry about! I'm only an old chap. There,
there!" Rosalind sat down again by the bed, keeping the packet of
letters in her hand. Presently the old man, who had closed his eyes as
though dozing, opened them and said: "Have you put them on the fire?"
"No. Was I to?"
"That was what I meant. I thought I said so.... Yes; pop 'em on."
Rosalind went to the fireside and stood hesitating, till the old man
repeated his last words; then threw the love-letters of sixty years
ago in a good hot place in the burning coal. A flare, and they were
white ash trying to escape from a valley of burning rocks; then even
that was free to rise. Maybe the only one who ever read them would be
soon--would be a mere attenuated ash, at least, as far as what lay on
that bed went, so pale and evanescent even now.
"A fool of a boy, Rosey dear," said the old voice, as she took her
place by the bed again. "Just a fool of a boy, to keep them all those
years. And _she_ married to another fellow, and a great-grandmother.
Ah, well!... don't you cry about it, Rosey.... All done now!" She may
have heard him wrong, for his voice went to a whisper. She wondered at
the way the cough was sparing him.
Then she thought he was falling asleep again; but presently he spoke.
"I shall do very well now.... Nothing but a little rest ... that's
all I want now. Only there's something I wanted to say about ...
about...."
"About Sally?" Rosalind guessed quickly, and certainly.
"Ah ... about the baby. _Your_ baby, Rosey.... That man that was her
father ... he's on my mind...."
"Oh me, forget him, dear--forget him! Leave him to God!" Rosalind
repeated a phrase used twenty years ago by herself in answer to the
old soldier's first uncontrollable outburst of anger against the man
who had made her his victim. His voice rose again above a whisper as
he answered:
"I heard you say so, dear child ... then ... that time. You were
right, and I was wrong. But what I've said--many a time, God forgive
me!--that I prayed he was in hell. I would be glad now to think I
had not said it."
"Don't think of it. Oh, my dear, don't think of it! You never meant
it...."
"Ah, but I did, though; and would again, mind you, Rosey! Only--not
now! Better let him go, for Sallykin's sake.... The child's the puzzle
of it...."
Rosalind thought she saw what he was trying to say, and herself tried
to supplement it. "You mean, why isn't Sally like him?"
"Ah, to be sure! Like father like son, they say. His son's a chip of
the old block. But then--he's his mother's son, too. Two such!--and
then see what comes of 'em. Sallykin's your daughter ... Rosey's
daughter. Sallykin...." He seemed to be drowsing off from mere
weakness; but he had something to say, and his mind made for speech
and found it:
"Yes, Rosey; it's the end of the story. Soon off--I shall be! Not
very long now. Wasn't it foggy?"
"Yes, dear; it was. But it's clear now. It's snowing."
"Then you could send for Jack Roper. Old Jack! He can tell me
something I want to know.... I know he can...."
"But it's the middle of the night, dear. We can't send for him now.
Sally shall go for him again when she comes in the morning. What is
it you want to know?"
"What became of poor Algernon Palliser.... I know Old Jack knows....
Something he heard.... I forget things ... my head's not good. Ah,
Rosey darling! if I'd been there in the first of it ... I could have
got speech of him. I might have ... might have...."
As the old man's mind wandered back to the terrible time it dragged
his hearer's with it. Rosalind tried to bear it by thinking of what
Sally was like in those days, crumpled, violent, vociferous,
altogether _intransigeante_. But it was only a moment's salve to a
reeling of the reason she knew must come if this went on. If he slept
it might be averted. She thought he was dropping off, but he roused
himself again to say: "What became of poor Palliser--your husband?"
Then Rosalind, whose head was swimming, let the fact slip from her
that the dying man had never seen or known her husband in the old
days; only he had always spoken of him as one to be pitied, not
blamed, even as she herself thought of him. Incautiously she now said,
"Poor Gerry!" forgetting that Colonel Lund had never known him by that
name, or so slightly that it did not connect itself. Yet his mind was
marvellously clear, too; for he immediately replied: "I did not mean
Fenwick. I meant your first husband. Poor boy! poor fellow! What
became of him?"
"_His_ name was Algernon, too," was all the answer she could think of.
It was a sort of forlorn hope in nettle-grasping. Then she saw it had
little meaning in it for her listener. His voice went on, almost
whispering:
"Many a time I've thought ... if we could have found the poor boy ...
and shown him Sally ... he might have ... might have...."
Rosalind could bear it no longer. Whoever reads this story carelessly
may see little excuse for her that she should lose her head at the
bedside of a dying man. It was really no matter for surprise that she
should do so. Consider the perpetual tension of her life, the broken
insufficient sleep of the last two days, the shock of "Old Jack's"
sudden death a few hours since! Small blame to her, to our thinking,
if she did give way! To some it may even seem, as to us, that the
course she took was best in the end. And, indeed, her self-control
stood by her to the last; it was a retreat in perfect order, not a
flight. Nor did she, perhaps, fully measure how near her old friend
was to his end, or release--a better name, perhaps.
"Major dear, I have something I must tell you." The old eyelids opened,
and his eyes turned to her, though he remained motionless--quite as
one who caught the appeal in the tension of her voice and guessed its
meaning.
"Rosey darling--yes; tell me now." His voice tried to rise above
a whisper; an effort seemed to be in it to say: "Don't keep anything
back on my account."
"So I will, dear. Shut your eyes and lie quiet and listen. I want to
tell you that I know that my first husband is not dead.... Yes, dear;
don't try to speak. You'll see when I tell you.... Algernon Palliser
is not dead, though we thought he must be. He went away from Lahore
after the proceedings, and he did go to Australia, no doubt, as we
heard at the time; but after that he went to America, and was there
till two years ago ... and then he came to England." The old man tried
to speak, but this time his voice failed, and Rosalind thought it best
to go straight on. "He came to England, dear, and met with a bad
accident, and lost his memory...."
"_What!_" The word came so suddenly and clearly that it gave her new
courage to go on. She _must_ tell it all now, and she felt sure he
was hearing and understanding all she said.
"Yes, dear; it's all true. Let me tell it all. He lost his memory
completely, so that he did not know his own name...."
"My God!"
"Did not know his own name, dear--did not know his own name--did
not know the face of the wife he lost twenty years ago--all, all a
blank!... Yes, yes; it was he himself, and I took him and kept him,
and I have him now ... and oh, my dear, my dear, he does not know
it--knows _nothing_! He does not know who I am, nor who he was, nor
that Sally is the baby; but he loves her dearly, as he never could
have loved her if ... if...."
She could say no more. The torrent of tears that was the first actual
relief to the weight upon her heart of two years of secrecy grew and
grew till speech was overwhelmed. But she knew that her story, however
scantily told, had reached her listener's mind, though she could not
have said precisely at what moment he came to know it. The tone of
his exclamation, "My God!" perhaps had made her take his knowledge for
granted. Of one thing, however, she felt certain--that details were
needless, would add nothing to the main fact, which she was quite
convinced her old friend had grasped with a mind still capable of
holding it, although it might be in death. Even so one tells a child
the outcome only of what one tells in full to older ears. Then quick
on the heels of the relief of sharing her burden with another followed
the thought of how soon the sympathy she had gained must be lost,
buried--so runs the code of current speech--in her old friend's grave.
All her heart poured out in tears on the hand that could still close
fitfully upon her own as she knelt by the bed on which he would so
soon lie dying.
Presently his voice came again--a faint whisper she could just catch:
"Tell it me again, Rosey ... what you told me just now ... just
now." And she felt his cold hand close on hers as he spoke. Then she
repeated what she had said before, adding only: "But he may never come
to know his own story, and Sally must not know it." The old whisper
came back, and she caught the words: "Then it is true! My God!"
She remained kneeling motionless beside him. His breath, weak and
intermittent, but seeming more free than when she left him four hours
since, was less audible than the heavy sleep of the overtaxed nurse
in the next room, heard through the unclosed door. The familiar early
noises of the street, the life outside that cares so little for the
death within, the daily bread and daily milk that wake us too soon in
the morning, the cynical interchanges of cheerful early risers about
the comfort of the weather--all grew and gathered towards the coming
day. But the old Colonel heard none of them. What thought he still had
could say to him that this was good and that was good, hard though it
might be to hold it in mind. But one bright golden thread ran clear
through all the tangled skeins--he would leave Rosey happy at last,
for all the bitterness her cup of life had held before.
* * * * *
The nurse had slept profoundly, but she was one of those fortunate
people who can do so at will, and then wake up at an appointed time,
as many great soldiers have been able to do. As the clock struck
eight she sat up in the chair she had been sleeping in and listened a
moment. No sound came from the next room. She rose and pushed the door
open cautiously and looked in. Mrs. Fenwick was still kneeling by the
bed, her face hidden, still holding the old man's hand. The nurse
thought surely the still white face she saw in the intermittent gleams
of a lamp-flame flickering out was the face of a dead man. Need she
rouse or disturb the watcher by his side? Not yet, certainly. She
pulled the door very gently back, not closing it.
A sound came of footsteps on the stairs--footsteps without voices. It
was Fenwick and Sally, who had passed through the street door, open for
a negotiation for removal of the snow--for the last two hours had made
a white world outside. Sally was on a stairflight in the rear. She had
paused for a word with the boy Chancellorship, who was a candidate for
snow-removal. He seemed relieved by the snow. It was a tidy lot better
morning than last night, missis. He had breakfasted--yes--off of
corfy, and paid for it, and buttered 'arf slices and no stintin', for
twopence. Sally had a fellow-feeling for this boy's optimism. But he
had something on his mind, for when Sally asked him if Major Roper had
got home safe last night, his cheerfulness clouded over, and he said
first, "Couldn't say, missis;" and then, "He's been got home, you may
place your dependence on that;" adding, inexplicably to Sally, "He
won't care about this weather; it won't be no odds!" She couldn't wait
to find out his meaning, but told him he might go on clearing away
the snow, and when Mrs. Kindred came he was to say Miss Rosalind
Nightingale told him he might. She said she would be answerable, and
then ran to catch up Fenwick.
The nurse came out to meet them on the landing, and in answer to
Fenwick's half-inquiry or look of inquiry--Sally did not gather
which--said: "Yes--at least, I think so--just now." Sally made up her
mind it was death. But it was not, quite; for as the nurse, preceding
them, pushed the door of the sickroom gently open, the voice of the
man she believed dead came out almost strong and clear in the silence:
"Evil has turned to good. God be praised!"
But they were the last words Colonel Lund spoke. He died so quietly
that the exact moment of dissolution was not distinguishable. Fenwick
and Sally found Rosalind so overstrained with grief and watching that
they asked for no explanation of the words. Indeed, they may not have
ascribed any special meaning to them.