HOW A FORTNIGHT PASSED, AND THE HONEYMOONERS RETURNED. OF A CHAT ON
THE BEACH, AND MISS ARKWRIGHT'S SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE. ALMOST THE
LAST, LAST, LAST--MAN'S HEAD!
Sally to-morrow--and to-morrow--and to-morrow. Sally for fourteen
morrows. And the moon that had lighted the devoted young man to his
fate--whatever it was to be--had waned and left the sky clear for
a new one, on no account to be seen through glass.
They were morrows of inextinguishable, indescribable delight for their
victims or victim--for how shall we classify Sally? Who shall tread
the inner temple of a girl's mind? How shall it be known that she
herself has the key to the Holy of Holies?--that she is not dwelling
in the outer court, unconscious of her function of priestess, its
privileges and responsibilities? Or, in plainer language, metaphors
having been blowed in obedience to a probable wish of the reader's,
how do we know Sally was not falling in love with the doctor? How do
we know she was not in love with him already? How did _she_ know?
All we know is that the morrows went on, each one sweeter than the
last, and all the little incidents went on that were such nothings at
the time, but were so sure to be borne in mind for ever! _You_ know
all about it, you who read. Like enough you can remember now, old as
you are, how you and she (or he, according as your sex is) got lost
in the wood, and never found where the picnic had come to an anchor
till all the wings of chicken were gone and only legs left; or how
there was a bull somewhere; or how next day the cat got caught on the
shoulder of one of you and had to be detached, hooking horribly, by
the other; or how you felt hurt (not jealous, but hurt) because she
(or he) was decently civil to some new he (or she), and how relieved
you were when you heard it was Mr. or Mrs. Some-name-you've-forgotten.
Why, if you were to ask now, of that grey man or woman whose life was
linked with yours, maybe now sixty years agone, did he or she have
a drumstick, or go on to ham-sandwiches?--or, was it really a bull,
after all?--or, had that cat's claws passed out of memory?--or, what
was the name of that lady (or gentleman) at the So-and-so's?--if
you asked any of these things, she or he might want a repeat into
a deaf ear but would answer clear enough in the end, and recall
the drumsticks and the equivocal bull, the cat's claws, and the
unequivocal married person. And then you would turn over all the
little things of old, and wrangle a bit over details here and there;
and all the while you would be the very selfsame two that were young
and were lost in the wood and trampled down the fern and saw the
squirrels overhead all those long years ago.
Many a little thing of a like nature--perhaps some identical--made up
hours that became days in that fortnight we have to skip, and then the
end was drawing near; and Dr. Conrad would have to go back and write
prescriptions with nothing that could possibly do any harm in them,
and abstain with difficulty from telling young ladies with cultivated
waists they were liars when they said you could get a loaf of bread
between all round, and it was sheer nonsense. And other little
enjoyments of a G.P.'s life. Yes, the end was very near. But Sally's
resolute optimism thrust regrets for the coming chill aside, and
decided to be jolly while we could, and acted up to its decision.
Besides, an exciting variation gave an interest to the last week of
the doctor's stay at St. Sennans. The wandering honeymooners, in
gratitude to that saint, proposed to pay him a visit on their way back
to London. Perhaps they would stop a week. So the smallest possible
accommodation worthy of the name was found for them over a brandyball
and bull's-eye shop in a house that had no back rooms, being laid like
a vertical plaster against the cliff behind, and having an exit on
a flat roof where you might bask in the sun and see the bright red
poppies growing in the chalk, and contribute your share towards
a settlement of the vexed question of which are brigs. There wasn't
another room to be had in the real St. Sennans, and it came to that
or the hotel (which was beastly), and you might just as well be in
London. Thus Sally, and settled the question.
And this is how it comes to pass that at the beginning of
this chapter--which we have only just got to, after all this
circumlocution!--Sally and one of the Julius Bradshaws were sitting
talking on the beach in the shadow of a breakwater, while the other
Julius Bradshaw (the original one) was being taken for a walk to the
extremely white lighthouse three miles off, or nearly five if you
went by the road, by Dr. Conrad, who by this time knew all the walks
in the neighbourhood exactly as well as Sally did, neither more nor
less. And both knew them very well.
The tide had come up quite as far as it had contemplated, and seemed
to have made up its mind this time not to go back in too great a
hurry. It was so nice there on the beach, with Tishy and Sally
and Miss Gwendolen Arkwright, the late bridesmaid, who was having
an independent chat all to herself about the many glories of the
pier-end, and the sights to be seen there by visitors for a penny.
And it--we are speaking of the tide--had got a delightful tangle of
floating weed (_Fucus Vesiculosus_) and well-washed scraps of wood
from long-forgotten wrecks--who knows?--and was turning it gently
to and fro, and over and over, with intermittent musical caresses,
against the shingle-bank, whose counter-music spoke to the sea of
the ages it had toiled in vain to grind it down to sand. And the
tide said, wait, we shall see. The day will come, it said, when not
a pebble of you all but shall be scattered drifting sand, unless you
have the luck to be carted up at a shilling a load by permission of
the authorities, to be made into a concrete of a proper consistency
according to the local by-laws. But the pebbles said, please, no; we
will bide our time down here, and you shall have us for your own--play
with us in the sun at the feet of these two ladies, or make the
whirling shoals of us, beaten to madness, thunder back your voice when
it shouts in the storm to the seaman's wife, who stops her ears in the
dark night alone that she may not hear you heralding her husband's
death. And the tide said very good; but a day would come when the
pebbles would be sand, for all that. And even the authority would be
gone, and the local by-laws. But it would sound upon some shore for
ever. So it kept on saying. Probably it was mistaken.
This has nothing to do with our story except that it is approximately
the substance of a statement made by Sally to Miss Arkwright, who was
interested, and had been promised it all over again to-morrow. For
the present she could talk about the pier and take her audience for
granted.
"But was it that Kensington Gardens business that did the job?" asked
Sally, in the shadow of the breakwater, getting the black hair dry
after three-quarters of an hour in the sea; because caps, you know,
are all nonsense as far as keeping water out goes. So Sally had to sit
ever so long with it out to dry. And the very tiny pebbles you can
almost see into stick to your hands, as you know, and come off in your
hair when you run them through it, and have to be combed out. At
least, Sally's had. But she kept on running the pebbles through her
still blue fingers for all that as she half lay, half sat by Tishy
on the beach.
"'Did the job!'" repeats the bride on her honeymoon with some
indignation. "Sally dear, when will you learn to be more refined in
your ways of speech? I'm not a _précieuse_, but--'did the job!'
Really, Sally!..."
"Observe the effect of three weeks in France. The Julius Bradshaws can
parlay like anything! No, Tishy darling, don't be a stuck-upper, but
tell me again about Kensington Gardens."
"I told you. It was just like that. Julius and I were walking up the
avenue--you know...."
"The one that goes up and across, and comes straight like this?"
Tishy, helped by a demonstration of blue finger-tips, recognises this,
strange to say.
"No, not that one. It doesn't matter. We didn't see mamma coming till
she was ever so close, because of the Speke Monument in the way. And
what could possess her to come home that way from Hertford Street,
Mayfair, I cannot imagine!"
"Never mind, Tishy dear! It's no use crying over spilled milk. What
did she say?"
"Nothing, dear. She turned purple, and bowed civilly. To Julius, of
course. But it included me, whether or no."
"But was that what did the job?... We-ell, I do not see _anything_
to object to in that expression. Was it?"
"If you mean, dear, was it that that made us, me and Julius, feel that
matters would get no better by waiting, I think perhaps it was....
Well, when it comes to meeting one's mother in Kensington Gardens,
near the Speke Monument, and being bowed civilly to, it seems to me
it's high time.... Now, isn't it, Sally?"
Sally evaded giving testimony by raising other questions: "What did
your father say?" "Did the Dragon tell him about the meeting in the
park?" "What do you think he'll say now?"
"Now? Well, you know, I've got his letter. _He's_ all right--and
rather dear, _I_ think. What do _you_ think, Sally?"
"I think very."
"Perhaps I should say very. But with papa you never know. He really
does love us all, after a fashion, except Egerton, only I'm never
sure he doesn't do it to contradict mamma."
"Why don't they chuck each other and have done with it?" The vulgar
child lets fly straight into the bull's-eye; then adds thoughtfully:
"_I_ should, only, then, I'm not a married couple."
Tishy elided the absurd figure of speech and ignored it. The chance
of patronising was not to be lost.
"You are not married, dear. When you are, you may feel things
differently. But, of course, papa and mamma _are_ very odd. I used
to hear them through my door between the rooms at L.B.G. Road. It
was wrangle, wrangle, wrangle; fight, fight, fight; all through the
night--till two o'clock sometimes. Oh dear!"
"You're sure they always were quarrelling?"
"Oh dear, yes. I used to catch all the regular words--settlement and
principal and prevaricate. All that sort of thing, you know. But there
they are, and there they'll be ten years hence, that's my belief,
living together, sleeping together, and dining at opposite ends of the
same table, and never communicating in the daytime except through me
or Theeny, but quarrelling like cat and dog."
"What shall you do when you go back? Go straight there?"
"I think so. Julius thinks so. After all, papa's the master of the
house--legally, at any rate."
"Shall you write and say you're coming?"
"Oh, no! Just go and take our chance. We shan't be any nearer if we
give mamma an opportunity of miffing away somewhere when we come. What
_is_ that little maid talking about there?" The ex-bridesmaid is three
or four yards away, and is discoursing eloquently, a word in the above
conversation having reminded her of a tragic event she has mentioned
before in this story. "I seeps with my bid sister Totey's dolly," is
what she appears to be saying.
"Never mind the little poppet, Tishy, till you've told me more about
it." Sally is full of curiosity. "Did that do the job or did it not?
That's what I want to know."
"I suppose it did, dear, indirectly. That was on Saturday afternoon.
Next morning we breakfasted under a thundercloud with Egerton grinning
inside his skin, and looking like 'Won't you catch it, that's all!'
at me out of the corner of his eye. That was bad enough, without one's
married sister up from the country taking one aside to say that _she_
wasn't going to interfere, and calling one to witness that _she_ had
said nothing so far. All she said was, 'Me and mamma settle it between
us.' 'Settle what?' said I; and she didn't answer, and went away to
the first celebration."
"She's not bad, your married sister," Sally decided thoughtfully.
"Oh no, Clarissa's not bad. Only she wants to run with the hare and
explain to the hounds when they come up.... What happened next? Why,
as I went upstairs past papa's room, out comes mamma scarlet with
anger, and restraining herself in the most offensive way for me to go
past. I took no notice, and when she was gone I went down and walked
straight into the library. I said, 'What is it, papa?' I saw he was
chuckling internally, as if he'd made a hit."
"Wasn't he angry? What did he say?"
"Oh no, _he_ wasn't angry. Let's see ... oh!... what he said was,
'That depends so entirely on what _it_ is, my dear. But, broadly
speaking, I should say it was your mother.' 'What has she been saying
to you?' I asked. And he answered, 'I can only give her exact words
without pledging myself to their meaning. She stated that she
"supposed I was going to tell my daughter I approved of her walking
about Kensington Gardens with _that man's_ arm around her waist."
I replied--reasonably, as it seems to me--that I supposed that man
was there himself. Otherwise, it certainly did seem to me a most
objectionable arrangement, and I hope you'll promise your mother not
to do it again.'"
"What on earth did he mean?"
"You don't understand papa. He quibbles to irritate mamma. He meant
like a waistband--separate--don't you see?"
"I see. But it wouldn't bend right." Sally's truthful nature postpones
laughing at the Professor's absurdity; looks at the case on its
merits. When she has done justice to this point, she laughs and adds:
"What did _you_ say, Tishy?"
"Oh, I said what nonsense, and it wasn't tight round like all that;
only a symptom. And we didn't even know mamma was there because of
Speke and Grant's obelisk. There wasn't a soul! Papa saw it quite as
I did, and was most reasonable. So I thought I would feel my way to
developing an idea we had been broaching, Julius and I, just that very
time by the obelisk. I asked papa flatly what he would do if I married
Julius straight off. 'I believe, my dear,' said he, 'that I should
be bound to disapprove most highly of your conduct and his.' 'But
_should_ you, papa?' I said. 'I should be _bound_ to, my dear,'
said he. 'But should you turn us out of the house?' I asked. 'Most
certainly _not_,' said he emphatically. 'But I should disapprove.'
I said I should be awfully sorry for that. 'Of course you would,' said
he. 'Any dutiful daughter would. But I don't exactly see what harm it
would do _you_.' And you see how his letter begins--that he is bound,
as a parent, to feel the strongest disapprobation, and so on. No,
I don't think we need be frightened of papa. As for mamma, of course
it wouldn't be reasonable to expect her to...."
"To expect her to what?"
"Well, I was going to say keep her hair on. The expression is
Egerton's, and I'm sorry to say his expressions are not always
ladylike, however telling they are! So I hesitated. Now what _is_
that baby talking about down there?"
For through the whole of Tishy's interesting tale that baby had been
dwelling on the shocking occurrence of her sister's doll as before
recorded. Her powers of narrative--giving a dramatic form to all
things, and stimulated by Sally's statements of what the beach said
to the sea, and the sea said back--had, it seemed, attracted shoals
of fish from the ocean depths to hear her recital of the tragedy.
"Suppose, now, you come and tell it us up here, Gwenny," says the
bride to the bridesmaid. And Sally adds: "Yes, delicious little
Miss Arkwright, come and tell us all about it too." Whereupon Miss
Arkwright's musical tones are suddenly silent, and her eyes, that are
so nearly the colour of the sea behind her, remain fixed on her two
petitioners, their owner not seeming quite sure whether she shall
acquiesce, or coquette, or possibly even burst into tears. She
decides, however, on compliance, coming suddenly up the beach on all
fours, and exclaiming, "Tate me!" flings herself bodily on Sally,
who welcomes her with, "You sweet little darling!" while Mrs. Julius
Bradshaw, anticipating requisition, looks in her bag for another
chocolate. They will spoil that child between them.
"Now tell us about the fisses and dolly," says Sally. But the
narrator, all the artist rising in her soul, will have everything
in order.
"I _told_ ze fisses," she says, reproach in her voice.
"I see, ducky. You told the fishes, and now you'll tell us all
about dolly."
"I seeps wiv dolly, because my bid sister Totey said 'Yes.' Dolly
seeps in her fings. I seep in my nightgown. Kean from the wass----"
"How nice you must be! Well, then, what next?" Sally may be said to
imbibe the narrator at intervals. Tishy calls her a selfish girl.
"You've got her all to yourself," she says. The story goes on:
"I seep vethy thound. Papa seeps vethy thound. Dolly got between
the theets and the blangticks, and came out. It was a dood dob. Dane
_said_ it _was_--a dood dob!"
"What did Jane say was a good job? Poor dolly coming out?" A long,
grave headshake denies this. The constructive difficulties of the tale
are beyond the young narrator's skill. She has to resort to ellipsis.
"Or I sood have been all over brang and sawduss. Dane _said_ so."
"Don't you see, Sally," says Tishy, "dolly was in another
compartment--the other side of the sheet." But Sally says, of course,
_she_ understands, perhaps even suspects Tishy of claiming more
acquaintance with children than herself because she has been married
three weeks. This isn't fair patronising.
"Dolly came out at ve stisses"--so the sad tale goes on--"and tyed,
dolly did. Dane put her head on to ty wiv my pocket-hanshtiff!"
"I see, you little ducky, of course her head had come off, and she
couldn't cry till it was put on, was that it? Don't dance, but say
yes or no." This referred to a seated triumphal dance the chronicler
indulged in at having put so much safely on record. Having subsided,
she decided on _zass_ as the proper thing to say, but it took time.
Then she added suddenly: "But I _told_ ze fisses." Sally took a good
long draught, and said: "Of course you did, darling. You shan't be
done out of that!" But an addendum or appendix was forthcoming.
"My mummar says I must tate dolly to be socked for a penny where the
man is wiv buttons--and the man let Totey look froo his pyglass,
and see all ve long sips, sits miles long--and I shall see when I'm
a glowed-up little girl, like Totey."
"Coastguard's telescope, evidently," says Sally. "The man up at the
flagstaff. Six miles long is how far off they were, not the length
of the ships at all."
"I saw that. But what on earth were the socks? Does his wife sell
doll's clothes?"
"We must try to find that out." And Sally sets herself to the task.
But it's none so easy. Some mystery shrouds the approach to this
passage in dolly's future life. It is connected with "kymin up," and
"tandin' on a tep," and when it began it went wizzy, wizzy, wizz,
and e-e-e-e, and never stopped. But Gwendolen had not been alarmed
whatever it was, because her "puppar" was there. But it was exhausting
to the intellect to tell of, for the description ended with a musical,
if vacuous, laugh, and a plunge into Sally's bosom, where the narrator
remained chuckling, but quite welcome.
"So Gwenny wasn't pitened! What a courageous little poppet! I wonder
what on earth it was, Sally."
Thus Tishy, at a loss. But Sally is sharper, for in a moment the
solution dawns upon her.
"What a couple of fools we are, Tishy dear! It wasn't _socks_--it was
_shocks_. It was the galvanic battery at the end of the pier. A penny
a time, and you mustn't have it on full up, or you howl. Why on earth
didn't we think of that before?"
But Nurse Jane comes in on the top of the laughter that follows,
which Miss Gwendolen is joining in, rather claiming it as a triumph
for her own dramatic power. She demurs to removal, but goes in the end
on condition that all present shall come and see dolly galvanised at
an early date. Jane agrees to replace dolly's vitals and sew her up
to qualify her for this experience. And so they depart.
"What a dear little mite!" says Mrs. Julius; and then they let the
mite lapse, and go back to the previous question.
"No, Sally dear, mamma will be mamma to the end of the time. But
I didn't tell you all papa said, did I?"
"How on earth can _I_ tell, Tishy dear? You had got to 'any dutiful
daughter would,' etcetera. Cut along! Comes of being in love, I
suppose." This last is a reflection on the low state of Tishy's
reasoning powers.
"Well, just after that, when I was going to kiss him and go, papa
stopped me, and said he had something to say, only he mustn't be too
long because he had to finish a paper on, I think, 'Some Technical
Terms in use in Cnidos in the Sixth Century, B.C.' Or was it...?"
"That was it. That one'll do beautifully. Go ahead!"
"Well--of course it doesn't matter. It was like papa, anyhow.... Oh,
yes--what he said then! It was about Aunt Priscilla's thousand pounds.
He wanted to repeat that the interest would be paid to me half-yearly
if by chance I married Julius or any other man without his consent.
'I wish it to be distinctly understood that if you marry Bradshaw it
will be against my consent. But I only ask you to promise me this,
Lætitia, that you won't marry any other man against my consent at
present.' I promised, and he said I was a dutiful daughter. There
won't be any trouble with papa."
"Don't look like it! I say, Tishy, that thousand pounds is very nice.
How much will you have? Forty pounds a year?"
"It's more than that. It's gone up, somehow--sums of money do--or
down. They're never the same as at first. I'm so glad about it. It's
not as if I brought Julius absolutely nothing."
"How much is it?" Sally is under the impression that sums of
money that exist on the word of signed documents only, and whose
materialisation can only be witnessed by bankers, are like fourpence,
one of whose properties is that it _is_ fourpence. They are not
analogous, and Lætitia is being initiated into the higher knowledge.
"Well, dear, you see the stock has gone up, and it's at six
three-quarters. You must ask Julius. He can do the arithmetic."
"Does that mean it's sixty-seven pounds ten?"
"You'd better ask Julius. Then, you know, there's the interest."
Sally asked what interest. "Why, you see, Aunt Priscilla left it
to me eleven years ago, so there's more." But a vendor of mauve
and magenta woollen goods, known to Sally as "the beach-woman,"
was working up towards them.
"That woman never goes when she comes," said Sally. "Let's get
up and go!"
* * * * *
We like lingering over this pleasant little time. It helps on but
little, if at all, with our story. But in years to come this young
couple, who only slip into it by a side-chance, having really little
more to do with it than any of the thousand and one collaterals
that interest the lives of all of us, and come and go and are
forgotten--this Julius and Lætitia will talk of the pleasant three
days or so they had at St. Sennans when they came back from France.
And we, too, having choice of how much we shall tell of those
three or four days, are in little haste to leave them. Those hours
of unblushing idleness under a glorious sun--idleness fostered and
encouraged until it seems one great exertion to call a fly, and
another to subside into it--idleness on matchless moonlight nights,
on land or on water--idleness with an affectation of astronomical
study, just up to speculating on the identity of Aldebaran or Arcturus,
but scarcely equal to metaphysics--idleness that lends itself readily
to turning tables and automatic writing, and gets some convincing
phenomena, and finds out that so-and-so is an extraordinary
medium--idleness that says that letter will do just as well to-morrow,
and Smith must wait--such hours as these disintegrate the moral fibre
and anæsthetize our sense of responsibility, and make us so oblivious
of musical criticism that we accept brass bands and inexplicable
serenaders, white or black, and even accordions and hurdy-gurdies, as
intrinsic features of the _ensemble_--the _fengshui_ of the time and
place--and give them a penny if we've got one.
That is and will be Mr. and Mrs. Julius Bradshaw's memory of those
three days or so, when they have grown quite old together, as we hope
they may. And if you add memory of an intoxicated delirium of love--of
love that was on no account to be shown or declared or even hinted
at--and of a tiresome hitch or qualification, an unselfish parent in
full blow, you will have the record that is to remain in the mind of
Conrad Vereker.