ST. SENNANS-ON-SEA. MISS GWENDOLEN ARKWRIGHT. WOULD ANY OTHER CHILD HAVE
BEEN SALLY? HOW MRS. IGGULDEN'S COUSIN SOLOMON SURRENDERED HIS COUCH
St. Sennans-on-Sea consists of two parts--the new and the old. The old
part is a dear little old place, and the new part is beastly. So Sally
says, and she must know, because this is her third visit.
The old part consists of Mrs. Iggulden's and the houses we have
described on either side of her, and maybe two dozen more wooden or
black-brick dwellings of the same sort; also of the beach and its
interesting lines of breakwater that are so very jolly to jump off or
to lie down and read novels under in the sea smell. Only not too near
the drains, if you know it. If you don't know it, it doesn't matter so
much, because the smell reminds you of the seaside, and seems right
and fitting. You must take care how you jump, though, off these
breakwaters, because where they are not washed inconceivably clean,
and all their edges smoothed away beyond belief by the tides that come
and go for ever, they are slippery with green sea-ribbons that cling
close to them, and green sea-fringes that cling closer still, and
brown sea-ramifications that are studded with pods that pop if you
tread on them, but are not quite so slippery; only you may just as
well be careful, even with them. And we should recommend you, before
you jump, to be sure you are not hooked over a bolt, not merely
because you may get caught, and fall over a secluded reading-public
on the other side, but because the red rust comes off on you and soils
your white petticoat.
If you don't mind jumping off these breakwaters--and it really is
rather a lark--you may tramp along the sea front quite near up to
where the fishing-luggers lie, each with a capstan all to itself,
under the little extra old town the red-tanned fishing-nets live in,
in houses that are like sailless windmill-tops whose plank walls have
almost merged their outlines in innumerable coats of tar, laid by
long generations back of the forefathers of the men in oil-cloth
head-and-shoulder hats who repair their nets for ever in the Channel
wind, unless you want a boat to-day, in which case they will scull you
about, while you absolutely ache sympathetically with their efforts,
of which they themselves remain serenely unaware, till you've been out
long enough. Then they beach you cleverly on the top of a wave, and
their family circle seizes you, boat and all, and runs you up the
shingle before the following wave can catch you and splash you, which
it wants to do.
There is an aroma of the Norman Conquest and of Domesday Book about
the old town. Research will soon find out, if she looks sharp, that
there is nothing Norman in the place except the old arch in the
amorphous church-tower, and a castle at a distance on the flats. But
the flavour of the past is stronger in the scattered memories of
bygone sea-battles not a century ago, and the names of streets that
do not antedate the Georges, than in these mere scraps that are always
open to the reproach of mediævalism, and are separated from us by a
great gulf. And it doesn't much matter to us whether the memories are
of victory or defeat, or the names those of sweeps or heroes. All's
one to us--we glow; perhaps rashly, for, you see, we really know very
little about them. And he who has read no history to speak of, if he
glows about the past on the strength of his imperfect data, may easily
break his molasses-jug.
So, whether our blood is stirred by Nelson and Trafalgar, whereof
we have read, or by the Duke of York and Walcheren, whereof we
haven't--or mighty little--we feel in touch with both these heroes,
for they are modern. Both have columns, anyhow; and we can dwell upon
their triumph or defeat almost as if it wasn't history at all, but
something that really happened, without running any risk of being
accused of archaism or of deciphering musty tomes. And we can enjoy
our expedition all the same to the ruined keep in the level pastures,
where the long-horned black cattle stand and think and flap their
tails still, just as they did in the days when the basement dungeons,
now choked up, held real prisoners with real broken hearts.
But there is modern life, too, at St. Sennans--institutions that keep
abreast of the century. Half the previous century ago, when we went
there first, the Circulating Library consisted, so far as we can
recollect it, of a net containing bright leather balls, a collection
of wooden spades and wheelbarrows, a glass jar with powder-puffs,
another with tooth-brushes, a rocking-horse--rashly stocked in the
first heated impulse of an over-confident founder--a few other
trifles, and, most important of all, a book-case that supplied the
title-rôle to the performance. That book-case contained (we are
confident) _editiones principes_ of Mrs. Ratcliff, Sir Walter Scott,
Bulwer Lytton, Currer Bell ... well, even Fanny Burney, if you come
to that. There certainly was a copy of "Frankenstein," and fifty years
ago our flesh was so compliant as to creep during its perusal. It
wouldn't now.
But even fifty years ago there was never a volume that had not been
defaced out of all knowledge by crooked marks of the most inquisitive
interrogation, and straight marks of the most indignant astonishment,
by the reading-public in the shadows of the breakwaters. It really
read, that public did; and, what's more, it often tore out the
interesting bits to take away. I remember great exasperation when a
sudden veil was drawn over the future of two lovers just as the young
gentleman had flung himself into the arms of the young lady. An
unhallowed fiend had cut off the sequel with scissors and boned it!
That was done, or much of it, when the books were new, and the
railway-station was miles away; when the church wasn't new, but
old, which was better. It has been made new since, and has chairs
in it, and memorial windows by Stick and Co. In those days its
Sunday-folk were fisherfolk mostly, and a few local magnates or
parvates--squirophants, they might be called--and a percentage of
the visitors.
Was St. Sennan glad or sorry, we wonder, when the last two sorts
subscribed and restored him? If we had been he, one of us would have
had to have the temper of a saint to keep cool about it. Anyhow, it's
done now, and can't be undone.
But the bathing-machines are not restored, at any rate. Those
indescribables yonder, half rabbit-hutch, half dry-dock--a long row
for ladies and a short one for gentlemen, three hundred yards
apart--couldn't trust 'em any nearer, bless you!--these superannuated
God-knows-whats, struggling against disintegration from automatic
plunges down a rugged beach, and creaking journeys back you are asked
to hold on through--it's no use going on drying!--these tributes to
public decorum you can find no room in, and probably swear at--no
sacrilegious restorer has laid his hand on these. They evidently
contemplate going on for ever; for though their axes grow more and
more oblique every day, their self-confidence remains unshaken. But
then they think they _are_ St. Sennans, and that the wooden houses are
subordinate accidents, and the church a mere tributary that was a
little premature--got there first, in its hurry to show respect for
_them_. And no great wonder, seeing what a figure they cut, seen from
a boat when you have a row! Or, rather, used to cut; for now the new
town (which is beastly) has come on the cliff above, and looks for
all the world as if _it_ was St. Sennans, and speaks contemptuously
of the real town as the Beach Houses.
The new town can only be described as a tidy nightmare; yet it is
a successful creation of the brains that conceived it--a successful
creation of ground-rents. As a development of land ripe for building,
with more yards of frontage to the main-road than at first sight
geometry seems able to accommodate, it has been taking advantage of
unrivalled opportunities for a quarter of a century, backed by
advances on mortgage. It is the envy of the neighbouring proprietors
east and west along the coast, who have developed their own eligible
sites past all remedy and our endurance, and now have to drain their
purses to meet the obligations to the professional mortgagee, who is
biding his hour in peace, waiting for the fruit to fall into his mouth
and murderously sure of his prey. But at St. Sennans a mysterious
silence reigns behind a local office that yields keys on application,
and answers all inquiries, and asks ridiculous rents. And this
silence, or its keeper, is said to have become enormously rich over
the new town.
The shareholders in the St. Sennans Hotel, Limited, cannot have become
rich. If they had, surely they would provide something better for a
hungry paying supplicant than a scorched greasy chop, inflamed at the
core, and glass bottles containing a little pellucid liquid that parts
with its carbon dioxide before you can effect a compromise with the
cork, which pushes in, but not so as to attain its ideal. So your
Seltzer water doesn't pour fast enough to fizz outside the bottle,
and your heart is sad. Of course, you can have wine, if you come to
that, for look at the wine-list! Only the company's ideas of the value
of wine are not limited, and if you decide not to be sordid, and order
a three-shilling bottle of Médoc, you will find its contents to be
very limited indeed. But why say more than that it is an enormous
hotel at the seaside? You know all about them, and what it feels like
in rainy weather, when the fat gentleman has got to-day's "Times," and
means to read all through the advertisement-column before he gives up
the leaders, and you have to spend your time turning over thick and
shiny snap-shot journals with a surfeit of pictures in them; or the
Real Lady, or the Ladylike Lady, or the Titled Lady, the portraits of
whom--one or other of them--sweep in curves about their folio pages;
and, while they fascinate you, make you feel that you would falter on
the threshold of matrimony if only because they couldn't possibly take
nourishment. Would not the discomfort of meals eaten with a companion
who could swallow nothing justify a divorce _a mensa_?
A six-shilling volume might be written about the New Hotel, with an
execration on every page. Don't let us have anything to do with it,
but keep as much as possible at the Sea Houses under the cliff, which
constitute the only St. Sennans necessary to this story. We shall be
able to do so, because when Mrs. and Mr. Fenwick and their daughter
went for a walk they always went up the cliff-pathway, which had steps
cut in the chalk, past the boat upside down, where new-laid eggs could
be bought from a coastguard's wife. And this path avoided the New Town
altogether, and took them straight to the cliff-track that skirted
growing wheat and blazing poppies till you began to climb the smooth
hill-pasture the foolish wheat had encroached upon in the Protection
days, when it was worth more than South Down mutton. And now every ear
of it would have been repenting in sackcloth and ashes if it had been
qualified by Nature to know how little it would fetch per bushel. But
it wasn't. And when, the day after their arrival, Rosalind and her
husband were on the beach talking of taking a walk up that way when
Sally came out, it could have heard, if it would only have stood
still, the sheep-bells on the slopes above reproaching it, and
taunting it with its usurpation and its fruitless end. Perhaps it was
because it felt ashamed that it stooped before the wind that carried
the reproachful music, and drowned it in a silvery rustle. The barley
succeeded the best. You listen to the next July barley-field you
happen on, and hear what it can do when a breeze comes with no noise
of its own.
Down below on the shingle the sun was hot, and the tide was high, and
the water was clear and green close to the shore, and jelly-fish
abounded. You could look down into the green from the last steep ridge
at high-water mark, and if you looked sharp you might see one abound.
Only you had to be on the alert to jump back if a heave of the green
transparency surged across the little pebbles that could gobble it up
before it was all over your feet--but didn't this time. Oh dear!--how
hot it was! Sally had the best of it. For the allusion to Sally's
"coming out" referred to her coming out of the water, and she was
staying in a long time.
"That child's been twenty-four minutes already," said her mother,
consulting her watch. "Just look at her out there on the horizon. What
on earth _are_ they doing?"
It _was_ a little inexplicable. At that moment Sally and her
friend--it was one Fräulein Braun, who had learned swimming in the
baths on the Rhone at Geneva and in Paris--appeared to be nothing but
two heads, one close behind the other, moving slowly on the water.
Then the heads parted company, and apparently their owners lay on
their backs in the water, and kicked up the British Channel.
"They're saving each other's lives," said Gerry. He got up from a nice
intaglio he had made to lie in, and after shaking off a good bushel of
small pebbles a new-made beach-acquaintance of four had heaped upon
him, resorted to a double opera-glass to see them better. "The kitten
wanted me to get out of my depth for her to tow me in. But I didn't
fancy it. Besides, a sensitive British public would have been
scandalised."
"You never learned to swim, then, Gerry----?" She just stopped herself
in time. The words "after all" were on her lips. Without them her
speech was mere chat; with them it would have been a match to a mine.
She sometimes wished in these days that the mine might explode of
itself, and give her peace.
"I suppose I never did," replied her husband, as a matter of course.
"At least, I couldn't do it when I tried in the water just now. I
should imagine I must have tried B.C., or I shouldn't have known how
to try. It's not a thing one forgets, so they say." He paused a few
seconds, and then added: "Anyhow, it's quite certain I couldn't do
it." There was not a trace of consciousness on his part of anything
in _her_ mind beyond what her words implied. But she felt in peril of
fire, so close to him, with a resurrection of an image in it--a vivid
one--of the lawn-tennis garden of twenty years ago, and the speech of
his friend, the real Fenwick, about his inability to swim.
This sense of peril did not diminish as he continued: "I've found out
a lot of things I _can_ do in the way of athletics, though; I seem to
know how to wrestle, which is very funny. I wonder where I learned.
And you saw how I could ride at Sir Mountmassingham's last month?"
This referred to a country visit, which has not come into our story.
"And that was very funny about the boxing. Such a peaceful old fogey
as your husband! Wasn't it, Rosey darling?"
"Why won't you call the Bart. by his proper name, Gerry? Wasn't what?"
"Funny about the gloves. You know that square fellow? He was a
well-known prizefighter that young Sales Wilson had picked up and
brought down to teach the boys. You remember him? He went to church,
and was very devout...."
"I remember."
"Well, it was in the billiard-room, after dinner. He said quite
suddenly, 'This gentleman now can make use of his daddles. I can see
it in him'--meaning me. 'What makes you think that, Mr. Macmorrough?'
said I. 'We of the fancy, sir,' says he, 'see these things, without
referrin' to no books, by the light of Nature.' And next day we had
a set-to with the gloves, and his verdict was 'Only just short of
professional.' Those boys were delighted. I wonder how and when
I became such a dab at it?"
"I wonder!" Rosalind doesn't seem keen on the subject. "I wish those
crazy girls would begin to think of coming in. If it's going to be
like this every day I shall go home to London, Gerry."
"Perhaps when Vereker comes down on Monday he'll be able to influence.
Medical authority!"
Here the beach-acquaintance, who had kept up a musical undercurrent of
disjointed comment, perceived an opportunity for joining more actively
in the conversation.
"My mummar says--my mummar says--my mummar says...."
"Yes--little pet--what does she say?" Thus Rosalind.
"Yes--Miss Gwendolen Arkwright--what does she say?" Thus Fenwick, on
whom Miss Arkwright is seated.
"My mummar says se wissus us not to paggle Tundy when the tideses goed
out. But my mummar says--my mummar says...."
"Yes, darling."
"My mummar says we must paggle Monday up to here." Miss Arkwright
indicates the exact high-water mark sanctioned, candidly. "Wiv no
sooze, and no stottins!" She then becomes diffuse. "And my bid sister
Totey's doll came out in my bed, and Dane dusted her out wiv a
duster. And I can do thums. And they make free...." At this point Miss
Arkwright's copy runs short, and she seizes the opportunity for a sort
of seated dance of satisfaction at her own eloquence--a kind of
subjective horsemanship.
"I wish I never had to do any sums that made more than three," is the
putative horse's comment. "But there are only two possible, alas! And
the totals are stale, as you might say."
"I'm afraid my little girl's being troublesome." Thus the mamma,
looking round a huge groin of breakwater a few yards off.
"Troublesome, madame?" exclaims Fenwick, using French unexpectedly.
"She's the best company in Sussex." But Miss Arkwright's nurse Jane
domineers into the peaceful circle with a clairvoyance that Miss
Gwendolen is giving trouble, and bears her away rebellious.
"What a shame!" says Gerry _sotto voce_. "But I wonder why I said
'madame'!"
"I remember you said it once before." And she means to add "the
first time you saw me," but dubs it, in thought, a needless lie, and
substitutes, "that day when you were electrocuted." And then imagines
she has flinched, and adds her original text boldly. She isn't sorry
when her husband merely says, "That was queer too!" and remains
looking through his telescope at the swimmers.
"They're coming at last--a couple of young monkeys!" is her comment.
And, sure enough, after a very short spell of stylish sidestrokes
Sally's voice and laugh are within hearing ahead of her companion's
more guttural intonation. Her mother draws a long breath of relief
as the merpussy vanishes under her awning, and is shouted and tapped
at to hold tight, while capstan-power tugs and strains to bring her
dressing-room up a sharp slope out of reach of the sea.
"Well, Jeremiah, and what have _you_ got to say for yourself?" said
the merpussy soon after, just out of her machine, with a huge mass
of briny black hair spread out to dry. The tails had to be split and
sorted and shaken out at intervals to give the air a chance. Sally
was blue and sticky all over, and her finger-tips and nails all one
colour. But her spirits were boisterous.
"What about?"
"What about, indeed? About not coming into the water to be pulled out.
You promised you would, you know you did!"
"I did; but subject to a reasonable interpretation of the compact.
I should have been out of my depth ever so long before you could reach
me. Why didn't you come closer?"
"How could I, with a fat, pink party drying himself next door? _You_
wouldn't have, if it had been you, and him Goody Vereker...."
"Sal-ly! Darling!" Her mother remonstrates.
"We-ell, there's nothing in that! As if we didn't all know what the
Goody would look like...."
Rosalind is really afraid that the strict mamma of her husband's
recent incubus will overhear, and sit at another breakwater next day.
"_Come_ along!" she says, dispersively and emphatically. "We shall
have the shoulder of mutton spoiled."
"No, we shan't! Shall we, Jeremiah? We've talked it over, me and
Jeremiah. Haven't we, Gaffer Fenwick?" She is splitting up the salt
congestions of his mane as she sits by him on the shingle. He confirms
her statement.
"We have. And we have decided that if we are two hours late it may be
done enough. But that in any case the so-called gravy will be grey
hot water."
"Get up and come along, and don't be a mad kitten! I shall go and
leave you two behind. So now you know." And Rosalind goes away up
the shingle.
"What makes mother look so serious sometimes, kitten? She did just now."
"She's jealous of you and me flirting like we do. Don't put your hat
on; let the sun dry you up a bit. Does she really look serious though?
Do you mean it?"
"Yes, I mean it. It comes and goes. But when I ask her she only laughs
at me." A painful thought crosses Sally's mind. Is it possible that
some of her reckless escapades have _froissé_'d her mother? She goes
off into a moment's contemplation, then suddenly jumps up with, "Come
along, Jeremiah," and follows her up the beach.
But the gravity on the face of the latter, by now half-way to the
house, had nothing to do with any of Sally's shocking vulgarities
and outrageous utterances. No, nor even with the green-eyed monster
Jealousy her unscrupulous effrontery had not hesitated to impute. She
allowed it to dominate her expression, as there was no one there to
see, until the girl overtook her. Then she wrenched her face and her
thoughts apart with a smile. "You _are_ a mad little goose," said she.
But the thing that weighted her mind--oppressed or puzzled her, as
might be--what was it?
Had she been obliged to answer the question off-hand she herself might
have been at a loss to word it, though she knew quite well what it
was. It was the old clash between the cause of Sally and its result.
It was the thought that, but for a memory that every year seemed to
call for a stronger forgetfulness, a more effective oblivion, this
little warm star that had shone upon and thawed a frozen life, this
salve for the wound it sprang from, would have remained unborn--a
nonentity! Yes, she might have had another child--true! But would that
child have been Sally?
She was so engrossed with her husband, and he with her, that she felt
she could, as it were, have trusted him with his own identity. But,
then, how about Sally? Though she might with time show him the need
for concealment, how be sure that nothing should come out in the very
confusion of the springing of the mine? She could trust him with
his identity--yes! Not Sally with hers. Her great surpassing terror
was--do you see?--not the effect on _him_ of learning about Sally's
strange _provenance_, but for Sally herself. The terrible knowledge
she could not grasp the facts without would cast a shadow over her
whole life.
So she thought and turned and looked down on the beach. There below
her was this unsolved mystery sitting in the sun beside the man whose
life it had rent asunder from its mother's twenty years ago. And as
Rosalind looked at her she saw her capture and detain his hat. "To
let his mane dry, I suppose," said Rosalind. "I hope he won't get a
sunstroke." She watched them coming up the shingle, and decided that
they were going on like a couple of school-children. They were,
rather.
* * * * *
Perhaps the image in Sally's profane mind of "hers affectionately,
Rebecca Vereker," before or after an elderly bathe, would not have
appeared there if she had not received that morning a letter so
signed, announcing that, subject to a variety of fulfilments--among
which the Will of God had quite a conspicuous place--she and her
son would make their appearance next Monday, as our text has already
hinted. On which day the immature legs of Miss Gwendolen Arkwright
were to be released from a seclusion by which some religious object,
undefined, had been attained the day before.
But the conditions which had to be complied with by the lodgings it
would be possible for this lady to occupy were such as have rarely
been complied with, even in houses built specially to meet their
requirements. Each window had to confront, not a particular quarter,
but a particular ninetieth, of the compass. A full view of the sea
had to be achieved from a sitting-room not exposed to its glare, an
attribute destructive of human eyesight, and fraught with curious
effects on the nerves. But the bedrooms had to look in directions
foreign to human experience--directions from which no wind ever came
at night. A house of which every story rotated on an independent
vertical axis might have answered--nothing else would. Even then space
would have called for modification, and astronomy and meteorology
would have had to be patched up. Then with regard to the different
levels of the floors, concession was implied to "a flat"; but,
stairways granted, the risers were to be at zero, and the treads at
boiling-point--a strained simile! As to cookery, the services of a
_chef_ with great powers of self-subordination seemed to be pointed
at, a _cordon-bleu_ ready to work in harness. Hygienic precautions,
such as might have been insisted on by an Athanasian sanitary
inspector on the premises of an Arian householder, were made a
_sine qua non_. Freedom from vibration from vehicles was so firmly
stipulated for that nothing short of a balloon from Shepherd's Bush
could possibly have met the case. The only relaxation in favour of
the possible was a diseased readiness to accept shakedowns, sandwiches
standing, cuts off the cold mutton, and snacks generally on behalf
of her son.
Mrs. Iggulden, who was empty both sets on Monday, didn't answer in any
one particular to any of these requisitions. But a spirit of overgrown
compromise crept in, making a sufficient number of reasons why no one
of them could be complied with an equivalent of compliance itself.
Only in respect of certain racks and tortures for the doctor was Mrs.
Iggulden induced to lend herself to dangerous innovation. "I can't
have poor Prosy put to sleep in a bed like this," said Sally, punching
in the centre of one, and finding a hideous cross-bar. Either Mrs.
Iggulden's nephew must saw it out, and tighten up the sacking from end
to end, or she must get a Christian bed. Poor Prosy! Whereon Mrs.
Iggulden explained that her nephew had by an act of self-sacrifice
surrendered this bed as a luxury for lodgers in the season, having
himself a strong congenital love of bisection. He hadn't slept nigh
so sound two months past, and the crossbar would soothe his slumbers.
So it was finally settled that the Goody and her son should come
to Iggulden's. The question of which set she should occupy being
left open until she should have inspected the stairs. Thereon Mrs.
Iggulden's nephew, whose name was Solomon, contrived a chair to carry
the good lady up them; which she, though faint, declined to avail
herself of when she arrived, perhaps seeing her way to greater
embarrassment for her species by being supported slowly upstairs
with a gasp at each step, and a moan at intervals. However, she was
got up in the end, and thought she could take a little milk with a
teaspoonful of brandy in it.
But as to giving any conception of the difficulties that arose at this
point in determining the choice between above and below, that must be
left to your imagination. A conclusion _was_ arrived at in time--in
a great deal of it--and the Goody was actually settled on the ground
floor at Mrs. Iggulden's, and contriving to battle against collapse
from exhaustion with an implication that she had no personal interest
in reviving, but would do it for the sake of others.