HOW SALLY PUT THE FINISHING TOUCH ON THE DOCTOR, WHO COULDN'T SLEEP.
OF THE GRAND DUKE OF HESSE-JUNKERSTADT. AND OF AN INTERVIEW OVERHEARD
Fenwick was not a witness of this advent, as the Monday on which it
happened had seen his return to town. He had had his preliminary week,
and his desk was crying aloud for him. He departed, renewing a solemn
promise to write every day as the train came into the little station
at Egbert's Road, for St. Sennans and Growborough. It is only a single
line, even now, to St. Sennans from here, but as soon as it was done
it was good-bye to all peace and quiet for St. Sennan.
Rosalind and her daughter came back in the omnibus--not the one for
the hotel, but the one usually spoken of as Padlock's--the one that
lived at the Admiral Collingwood, the nearest approach to an inn in
the old town. The word "omnibus" applied to it was not meant literally
by Padlock, but only as a declaration of his indifference as to which
four of the planet's teeming millions rode in it. This time there was
no one else except a nice old farmer's wife, who spoke _to_ each of
the ladies as "my dear," and _of_ each of them as "your sister."
Rosalind was looking wonderfully young and handsome, certainly. They
secured all the old lady's new-laid eggs, because there would be
Mrs. Vereker in the evening. We like adhering to these ellipses of
daily life.
Next morning Sally took Dr. Vereker for a walk round to show him the
place. Try to fancy the condition of a young man of about thirty, who
had scarcely taken his hand from the plough of general practice for
four years--for his holidays had been mighty insignificant--suddenly
inaugurating three weeks of paradise in _the_ society man most
covets--of delicious seclusion remote from patients, a happy valley
where stethoscopes might be forgotten, and carbolic acid was unknown,
where diagnosis ceased from troubling, and prognosis was at rest. He
got so intoxicated with Sally that he quite forgot to care if the
cases he had left to Mr. Neckitt (who had been secured as a substitute
after all) survived or got terminated fatally. Bother them and their
moist _râles_ and cardiac symptoms, and effusions of blood on the brain!
Dr. Conrad was a young man of an honest and credulous nature, with a
turn for music naturally, and an artificial bias towards medicine
infused into him by his father, who had died while he was yet a boy.
His honesty had shown itself in the loyalty with which he carried out
his father's wishes, and his credulity in the readiness with which he
accepted his mother's self-interested versions of his duty towards
herself. She had given him to understand from his earliest years that
she was an unselfish person, and entitled to be ministered unto, and
that it was the business of every one else to see that she did not
become the victim of her own self-sacrifice. At the date of this
writing her son was passing through a stage of perplexity about his
duty to her in its relation to his possible duty to a wife undefined.
That he might not be embarrassed by too many puzzles at once, he
waived the question of who this wife was to be, and ignored the fact
that would have been palpable to any true reading of his mind, that if
it had not been for Miss Sally Nightingale this perplexity might never
have existed. He satisfied his conscience on the point by a pretext
that Sally was a thing on a pinnacle out of his reach--not for the
likes of him! He made believe that he was at a loss to find a foothold
on his greasy pole, but was seeking one in complete ignorance of what
would be found at the top of it.
This shallow piece of self-deception was ripe for disillusionment when
Sally took its victim out for a walk round to show him the place.
It had the feeblest hold on existence during the remainder of the day,
throughout which our medical friend went on dram-drinking, knowing
the dangers of his nectar-draughts, but as helpless against them as
any other dram-drinker. It broke down completely and finally between
moonrise and midnight--a period that began with Sally calling under
Iggulden's window, "Come out, Dr. Conrad, and see the phosphorescence
in the water; it's going to be quite bright presently," and ended
with, "Good gracious, how late it is! Shan't we catch it?" an
exclamation both contributed to. For it was certainly past eleven
o'clock.
But in that little space it had broken down, that delusion; and the
doctor knew perfectly well, before ten o'clock, certainly, that all
the abstract possible wives of his perplexity meant Sally, and Sally
only. And, further, that Sally was at every point of the compass--that
she was in the phosphorescence of the sea, and the still golden colour
of the rising moon. That space was full of her, and that each little
wave-splash at their feet said "Sally," and then gave place to another
that said "Sally" again. Poor Prosy!
But what did they _say_, the two of them? Little enough--mere merry
chat. But on his part so rigid a self-constraint underlying it that
we are not sure some of the little waves didn't say--not Sally at all,
but--Miss Nightingale! And a persistent sense of a thought that was
only waiting to be thought as soon as he should be alone--that was
going to run somewhat thus: "How could it come about? That this girl,
whom I idolize till my idolatry is almost pain; this girl who has been
my universe this year past, though I would not confess it; this wonder
whom I judge no man worthy of, myself least of all--that she should be
cancelled, made naught of, hushed down, to be the mate of a poor G.P.;
to visit his patients and leave cards, make up his little accounts,
perhaps! Certainly to live with his mother...." But he knew under the
skin that he would be even with that disloyal thought, and would stop
it off at this point in time to believe he hadn't thought it.
Still, for all that this disturbing serpent would creep into his Eden,
for all that he would have given worlds to dare a little more--that
moment in the moonlight, with a glow-flecked water at his feet and
hers, and the musical shingle below, and a sense of Christy Minstrels
singing about Billy Pattison somewhere in the warm night-air above,
and the flash of the great revolving light along the coast answering
the French lights across the great, dark silent sea--that moment was
the record moment of his life till then. It would never do to say so
to Sally, that was all! But it was true for all that. For his life
had been a dull one, and the only comfort he could get out of the
story of it so far was that at least there was no black page in it he
would like to cut out. Sally might read them all, and welcome. Their
relation to _her_ had become the point to consider. You see, at heart
he was a slow-coach, a milksop, nothing of the man of the world about
him. Well, her race had had a dose of the other sort in the last
generation. Had the breed wearied of it? Was that Sally's unconscious
reason for liking him?
"How very young Prosy has got all of a sudden!" was Sally's postscript
to this interview, as she walked back to their own lodgings with her
mother, who had been relieving guard with the selfless one while the
doctor went out to see the phosphorescence.
"He's like a boy out for a holiday," her mother answered. "I had no
idea Dr. Conrad could manage such a colour as that; I thought he was
pallid and studious."
"Poor dear. _We_ should be pallid and studious if it was cases all
day long, and his ma at intervals."
"Do you know, kitten darling, I can't help thinking perhaps we do
that poor woman an injustice...."
"--Can't you?" Thus Sally in a parenthetic voice--
"... and that she really isn't such a very great humbug after all!"
"Why not?"
"Because she would be such a _very_ great humbug, don't you see,
chick?"
"Why shouldn't she? Somebody must, or there'd be no such thing."
"Why should there be any such thing?"
"Because of the word. Somebody must, or there'd be no one to hook it
to.... Have they stopped, I wonder, or are they going to begin again?"
This referred to the Ethiopian banjos afar. "I do declare they're
going to sing Pesky Jane, and it's nearly twelve o'clock!"
"Never mind _them_! How came _you_ to know all the vulgar
nigger-songs?... I was going to say. It's very difficult to believe
it's quite all humbug when one hears her talk about her son and his
welfare, and his prospects and...."
"I know what she talked about. When her dear son marries, she's going
to devote herself to him and her dear daughter that will be. Wasn't
that it?"
"Yes; but then she couldn't say more than that all she had would be
theirs, and she would take her to her bosom, etcetera. Could she?"
"She'll have to pull a long way!" The vulgar child's mind has flown
straight to the Goody's outline in profile. She is quite incorrigible.
"But wasn't that what old Mr. Turveydrop said, or very nearly? Of
course, one has to consider the parties and make allowance."
"Sallykin, what a madcap you are! You don't care _what_ you say."
"We-e-ell! there's nothing in that.... But look here, mammy darling.
Did that good woman in all she said to-night--all the time she was
jawing--did she once lose sight of her meritorious attitude?"
"It may only be a _façon de parler_--a sort of habit."
"But it isn't. Jeremiah says so. We've talked it over, us two. He
says he wouldn't like his daughter--meaning me--to marry poor Prosy,
because of the Goody."
"Are you sure he meant you? Did you ask him?"
"No, because I wasn't going to twit Jeremiah with being only step.
We kept it dark who was what. But, of course, he meant me. Like a
submarine telegraph." Sally stopped a moment in gravity. Then she
said: "Mother dear!"
"What, kitten?"
"What a pity it is Jeremiah is only step! Just think how nice if
he'd been real. Now, if you'd only met twenty years sooner...."
A nettle to grasp presented itself--a bad one. Rosalind seized it
bodily. "I shouldn't have had my kitten," she said.
"I see. I should have been somebody else. But that wouldn't have
mattered to me."
"It would have--to me!" But this is the most she can do in the way
of nettle-grasping. She is glad when St. Sennan, from his tower with
the undoubted piece of Norman, begins to count twelve, and gives her
an excuse for a recall to duty. "Do think how we're keeping poor Mrs.
Lobjoit up, you unfeeling child!" is her appeal on behalf of their own
fisherman's wife. Sally is just taking note of a finale of the Ethiop
choir. "They've done Pesky Jane, and they're going away to bed," she
says. "How the black must come off on the sheets!" And then they
hurried home to sleep sound.
But there was little sleep for the doctor that night, perhaps because
he had got so young all of a sudden. So it didn't matter much that his
mother countermanded his proposal that bed should be gone to, on the
ground that it was so late now that she wouldn't be able to sleep
a wink. If she _could_ have gone an hour ago it would have been
different. Now it was too late. An aggressive submissiveness was
utilized by the good lady to the end of his discomfort and that of
Mrs. Iggulden, who--perhaps from some memories of the Norman Conquest
hanging about the neighbourhood--would never go to bed as long as a
light was burning in the house.
"It is very strange and most unusual, I know," she continued saying
after she had scarified a place to scratch on. "Your great-uncle
Everett Gayler did not scruple to call it phenomenal, and that when
I was the merest child. After eleven no sleep!" She continued her
knitting with tenacity to illustrate her wakefulness. "But I am glad,
dear Conrad, that you forgot about me. You were in pleasanter society
than your old mother's. No one shall have any excuse for saying I am
a burden on my son. No, my dear boy, my wish is that you shall feel
_free_." She laid aside the knitting needles, and folding her hands
across the outline Sally was to be dragged up, or along, dropped her
eyelids over a meek glare, and sat with a fixed, submissive undersmile
slightly turned towards her son.
"But I thought, mother, as Mrs. Fenwick was here...." Slow, slight,
acquiescent nods stopped him; they were enough to derail any speech
except the multiplication-table or the House-that-Jack-built! But
she waited with exemplary patience for certainty that the train had
stopped. Then spoke as one that gives a commission to speech,
and observes its execution at a distance. Her expression remained
immutable. "She is a well-meaning person," said she.
"I didn't know how late it was." Poor Dr. Conrad gives up
self-defence--climbs down. "The time ran away." It _had_ done so,
there was no doubt about that.
"And you forgot your mother. But Mrs. Fenwick is a well-meaning
person. We will say no more about it."
Whereupon her son, feeling that silence is golden, said nothing. But
he went and kissed her for all that. She said inscrutably: "You might
have kissed me." But whether she was or wasn't referring to the fact
that she had succeeded in negotiating his kiss on the rim of her
spectacles, Conrad couldn't tell. Probably she meant he might have
kissed her before.
There was no doubt, however, about her intention of knitting till past
one in the morning. She did it enlarging on the medical status of her
illustrious uncle, Dr. Everett Gayler, who had just crept into the
conversation. Her son wasn't so sorry for this as Mrs. Iggulden, who
dozed and waked with starts, on principle, outside in the passage
unseen. _He_ could stand at the wide-open window, and hear the little
waves plash "Sally" in the moonlight, and the counter-music of the
down-drawn shingle echo "Sally" back. Sometimes the pebbles and the
water gave place for a moment to the tread of two persistent walkers
up and down--men who smoked cigars, and became a little audible and
died again at every time of passing.
One time the doctor caught a rise of voice--though they did not pass
so very near--that said: "My idea is to stay here till...."
Then at the next turn the same voice grew from inaudibility to ...
"So I arranged with the parson here for to-morrow, and we shall
get...." and died again. At this moment Dr. Everett Gayler was at
the climax of his fame, having just performed tracheotomy on the
Grand Duke of Hesse-Junkerstadt, and been created Knight-Commander
of some Order whose name Mrs. Vereker wasn't sure about.
Next time the men returned, the same voice that seemed to do all the
talking said: "... Expensive, of course, but she hates the idea of
a registry-office." They paused, and the listener heard that the other
voice had said something to which the first replied: "No, not Grundy.
But she had some friends cooked at one, and they said it was stuffy,
and they would sooner have endured twenty short homilies...."
A wax vesta scratched, blazed, lighted another cigar, and the second
voice said, "Oh--ah!" and both grew inaudible again.
Dr. Everett Gayler had just pronounced the Grand Duchess's
disease--they were an afflicted family--a disease his narrator
couldn't pronounce at all. Most of her bones, in a state of necrosis,
had been skilfully removed by the time the smokers had passed back.
But so much more was Dr. Conrad listening to what the waves said to
the shingle and the shingle answered back, than to either the Grand
Duchess or the registry-office, that it never crossed his mind whose
the voice was who lit the vesta. He heard it say good-night--its owner
would get back to the hotel--and the other make due response. And
then nothing was left but the coastguard.
But the Grand Duke's family were not quite done with. It had to be
recorded how many of his distinguished ancestors had suffered from
_Plica polonica_. Still, the end did come at last, and the worthy lady
thought perhaps if she could lie down now she might drop off. So Mrs.
Iggulden got her release and slept.
Dr. Conrad didn't, not a wink. The whole place was full of Sally. The
flashlight at intervals, in couplets, seemed to say "Sally" twice when
it came, and then to leave a blank for him to think about her in. The
great slow steamer far out to sea showed a green eye of jealousy or a
red one of anger because it could not come ashore where Sally was, but
had perforce to go on wherever it was navigated. The millions of black
sea-elves--did you ever discriminate them?--that the slight observer
fancies are the interstices of the moonlight on the water, were all
busy about Sally, though it was hard to follow their movements. And
every time St. Sennan said what o'clock it was, he added, "One hour
nearer to Sally to-morrow!"
Poor Prosy!