HOW SALLY DIDN'T CONFESS ABOUT THE DOCTOR, AND JEREMIAH CAME TO ST.
SENNANS ONCE MORE
That evening Sally sat with her mother on the very uncomfortable seat
they affected on what was known as the Parade, a stone's throw from
the house for a good stone-thrower. It had a little platform of
pebbles to stand on, and tamarisks to tickle you from behind when the
wind was northerly. It was a corrugated and painful seat, and had
a strange power of finding out your tender vertebræ and pulverising
them, whatever your stature might be. It fell forward when its
occupants, goaded to madness, bore too hard on its front bar, and
convinced them they would do well, henceforward, to hold it
artificially in its place. But Rosalind and her daughter forgave
it all these defects--perhaps because they were really too lazy to
protest even against torture. It was the sea air. Anyhow, there they
sat that evening, waiting for Padlock's omnibus to come, bringing
Fenwick from the station. Just at the moment at which the story
overtakes them, Rosalind was looking wonderfully handsome in the
sunset light, and Sally was thinking to herself what a beautiful
mother she had; and how, when the after-glow dies, it will leave its
memory in the red gold that is somewhere in the rich brown her eyes
are resting on. Sally was fond of dwelling on her mother's beauty.
Perhaps doing so satisfied her personal vanity by deputy. She was
content with her own self, but had no admiration for it.
"You _are_ a dear good mammy. Fancy your losing all the best time
of the morning indoors!"
"How the best time of the morning, chick?"
"Sitting with that old cat upstairs.... Well, I can't help it. She
_is_ an old cat."
"You're a perverse little monkey, kitten; that's what _you_ are!"
Rosalind laughed with an excuse--or caress, it may be--in her laugh.
"No," she continued, "we are much too hard on that old lady, both of
us. Do you know, to-day she was quite entertaining--told me all about
her own wedding-day, and how all the bridesmaids had the mumps."
"Has she never told you that before?"
"Only once. Then she told me about the late-lamented, and what a
respect he had for her judgment, and how he referred to her at every
crisis. I didn't think her at all bad company."
"Because you're a darling. I suppose you had it all about how
Prosy, when he was a boy, wanted to study music, and how his pa
said that the turning-point in the career of youth lay in the choice
of a profession."
"Oh yes! And how his strong musical turn came from her side of the
family. In herself it was dormant. But her Aunt Sophia had never once
put her finger on a false note of the piano. This was confirmed by
the authority of her eminent uncle, Dr. Everett Gayler, himself no
mean musician."
"Poor Prosy! I know."
"And how musical faculty--amounting to genius--often remained
absolutely unsuspected owing to its professor having no inheritance.
But it would come out in the children. Then, and not till then,
tardy justice was done.... Well, I don't know exactly how she worked
it out, but she managed to suggest that she was Handel and Mozart
in abeyance. Her son's fair complexion clinched matters. It was the
true prototype of her own. A thoroughly musical complexion,
bespeaking German ancestry."
"Isn't that the omnibus?" says Sally. But, no, it isn't. She
continues: "I don't believe in musical complexions. Look at Julius
Bradshaw--dark, with high cheek-bones, and a thin olive hand with
blue veins in it. I say, mother...."
"What, chick?"
"He's changed his identity--Julius Bradshaw has. I can't believe he
was that spooney boy that used to come hankering after me at church."
And the amusement this memory makes hangs about Sally's lips as the
two sit on into a pause of silence.
The face of the mother does not catch the amusement, but remains grave
and thoughtful. She does not speak; but the handsome eyes that rest
so lovingly on the speaker are full of something from the past--some
record that it would be an utter bewilderment to Sally to read--a
bewilderment far beyond that crux of the moment which maybe has struck
her young mind for the first time--the old familiar puzzle of the
change that comes to all of us in our transition from first to last
experience of the strange phenomenon we call a friend. Sally can't
make it out--the way a silly lad, love-struck about her indifferent
self so short a while back, has become a totally altered person, the
husband of her schoolmate, an actual identity of life and thought and
feeling; he who was in those early days little more than a suit of
clothes and a new prayer-book.
But if that is so strange to Sally, how measurelessly stranger is she
herself to her mother beside her! And the man they are waiting and
watching for, who is somewhere between this and St. Egbert's station
in Padlock's venerable 'bus, what a crux is _he_, compared now to
that intoxicated young lover of two-and-twenty years ago, in that
lawn-tennis garden that has passed so utterly from his memory! And a
moment's doubt, "But--has it?" is caught and absorbed by what seemed
to Rosalind now an almost absurd fact--that, a week before, he had
been nothing but a _fidus Achates_ of that other young man provided
to make up the lawn-tennis set, and that it was that other young man
at first, not he, that belonged to _her_. And he had changed away so
easily to--who was it? Jessie Nairn, to be sure--and left the coast
clear for his friend. Whatever now _was_ his name? Oh dear, what a
fool was Rosalind! said she to herself, to have half let slip that it
was _he_ that was Fenwick, and not Gerry at all. All this compares
itself with Sally's experience of Bradshaw's metamorphosis, and her
own seems the stranger.
Then a moment of sharp pain that she cannot talk to Sally of these
things, but must lead a secret life in her own silent heart. And then
she comes back into the living world, and finds Sally well on with
the development of another topic.
"Of course, poor dears! They've not played a note together since the
row. It's been nothing but Kensington Gardens or the Albert Hall. But
I'm afraid he's no better. If only he _could_ be, it would make all
the difference."
"What's that, darling? _Who_ could be...? Not your father?" For, as
often as not, Rosalind would speak of her husband as Sally's father.
"Not Jeremiah--no. I was talking about Julius B. and his nervous
system. Wouldn't it?"
"Wouldn't it what?"
"Make all the difference? I mean that he could get his violin-playing
back. I told you about that letter?"
"No--what letter?"
"From an agent in Paris. Rateau, I think, was the name. Had heard
Signor Carissimi had recovered his health completely, and was
playing. Hoped he might be honoured with his instructions to make
his arrangements in Paris, as he had done so four years ago. Wasn't
it aggravating?"
"Does it make any difference?"
"Why, of course it does, mother darling. The aggravation! Just think
now! Suppose he could rely on ten pounds a night, fancy that!"
"Suppose he could!... Yes, that would be nice." But there is a
preoccupation in her tone, and Sally wants sympathy to be drawn with
a vigorous outline.
"What's my maternal parent thinking about, as grave as a judge?
Jeremiah's all right, mammy darling! _He's_ not killed in a railway
accident. Catch _him_!" This is part of a systematized relationship
between the two. Each always discredits the possibility of mishap
to the other. It might be described as chronic reciprocal Christian
Science.
"I wasn't thinking of Gerry." Which is true in a sense, as she does
not think of the Gerry her daughter knows. And the partial untruth
does not cross her mind--a tacit recognition of the powers of change.
"I was wool-gathering."
"No--what _was_ she thinking of?" For some reason the third person
is thought more persuasive than the second.
"Thinking of her kitten." And this is true enough, as Rosalind is
really always thinking of Sally, more or less.
"We-ell, _I'm_ all right. What's the matter with _me_?"
"Nothing at all that I know of, darling." But it does cross the
speaker's mind that the context of circumstances might make this an
opportunity for getting at some information she wants. For Sally has
remained perfectly inscrutable about Conrad Vereker, and Rosalind has
been asking herself whether it is possible that, after all, there
_is_ nothing. She doesn't know how to set about it, though. Perhaps
the best thing would be to take a leaf out of Sally's own book, and
go straight to the bull's-eye.
"Do you really want to know what I was thinking of, Sallykin?" But
no sooner has she formulated the intention of asking a question, and
allowed the intention to creep into her voice than Sally knows all
about it.
"As if I don't know already. You mean me and Prosy."
"Of course. But how did you know?"
"Mammy _dear_! As if I was born yesterday! If you want people not to
know things, you mustn't have delicate inflexions of voice. I knew
you were going to catechize about Prosy the minute you got to 'did
I really want to know.'"
"But I'm not going to catechize, chick. Only when you ask me what I'm
thinking about, and really want to know, I tell you. I _was_ thinking
about you and Conrad Vereker." For some mysterious reason this mention
of his name in full seems to mature the conversation, and make clearer
definition necessary.
Our own private opinion is that any one who closely observes human
communion will see that two-thirds of it runs on lines like the
foregoing. Very rarely indeed does a human creature say what it means.
Exhaustive definition, lucid statements, concise terminology--even
plain English--are foreign to its nature. The congenial soil in which
the fruit of Intelligence ripens is Suggestion, and the wireless
telegraphs of the mind are the means by which it rejoices to
communicate. Don't try to say what you mean--because _you_ can't. You
are not clever enough. Try to mean what you want to say, and leave the
dictionary to take care of itself.
This little bit of philosophizing of ours has just given Sally time,
pondering gravely with the eyebrows all at rest and lips at ease, to
deal with the developed position created by the mere substitution of
a name for a nickname.
"Ought there to be ... anything to think about?" Thus Sally; and her
mother sees, or thinks she sees, a little new colour in the girl's
cheeks. Or is it only the sunset? Then Rosalind says to herself
that perhaps she has made a mistake, had better have left it alone.
Perhaps. But it's done now. She is not one that goes back on her
resolutions. It is best not to be too tugging and solemn over it. She
speaks with a laugh.
"It's not my little daughter I'm afraid of, Sallykin. She's got the
key of the position. It's that dear good boy."
"He's not a boy. He's thirty-one next February. Only he's not got
a birthday, because it's not leap-year. Going by birthdays he's not
quite half-past seven."
"Then it won't do to go by birthdays. Even at thirty-one, though,
some boys are not old enough to know better. He's very inexperienced
in some things."
"A babe unborn--only he can write prescriptions. Only they don't do
you any good. ("Ungrateful child!"... "Well, they _don't_.") You see,
he hasn't any one to go to to ask about things except me. Of course
_I_ can tell him, if you come to that!"
"There's his mother."
"His mother! That old dianthus! Oh, mammy darling, what different
sorts of mothers do crop up when you think of it!" And Sally is so
moved by this scientific marvel that she suddenly kisses her mother,
there out on the public parade with a gentleman in check trousers
and an eye-glass coming along!
"Why do you call the old lady a dianthus, chick? Really, the way you
treat that poor old body!..."
"Not when Prosy's there. I know my place.... We-ell, you know what
a dianthus's figure is like? When the tentacles are in, I mean."
But Rosalind tacitly condemns the analogy. Is she not herself a
mother, and bound to take part with her kind, however obese? "What
were you and the doctor talking about in the boat all that long time
yesterday?" she asks, skipping an interval which might easily have
contained a review of Mrs. Vereker inside-out like a sea-anemone.
Sally is quite equal to it.
"Resuscitation after drowning. Prosy says death is really due to
carbonic acid poisoning. Anybody would think it was choking, but it's
nothing of the sort. The arterial blood is insufficiently fed with
oxygen, and death ensues."
"How long did you talk about that?"
"Ever so long. Till I asked him what he should do if a visitor were
drowned and couldn't be brought to. Not at the hotel; down here. Me,
for instance."
"What did he say?"
"He was jolly solemn over it, Prosy was. Said he should try his
best, and as soon as he was sure it was no go, put an end to his own
existence. I said that would be wrong, and besides, he couldn't do
it. He said, oh yes, he could--he could inject air into a vein, and
lots of things. He went on a physiological tack, so I quoted Hamlet."
"What did he make of Hamlet?"
"Said the researches of modern science all tended to prove that
extinction awaited us at death, and he would take his chance. He was
quite serious over it."
"And then you said?..."
"I said, suppose it turned out that modern science was tommy-rot,
wouldn't he feel like a fool when all was said and done? He admitted
that he might, in that case. But he would take his chance, he said.
And then we had a long argument, Prosy and I."
"Has he ever resuscitated a drowned person?"
"Oh yes, two or three. But he says he should like a little more
practice, as it's a very interesting subject."
"You really are the most ridiculous little kitten there ever was!
Talking like the President of the Royal College of Surgeons! Not
a smile."
"We-ell, there's nothing in _that_." Slightly offended dignity on Miss
Sally's part. "I say, the 'bus is very late; it's striking seven."
But just as St. Sennan ceases, and leaves the air clear for listening,
Rosalind exclaims, "Isn't that it?" And this time it is it, and
by ten minutes past seven Fenwick is in the arms of his family, who
congratulate him on a beautiful new suit of navy-blue serge, in which
he looks very handsome.
* * * * *
Often now when she looks back to those days can Rosalind see before
her the grave young face in the sundown, and hear the tale of Dr.
Conrad's materialism. And then she sees once more over the smooth
purple sea of the day before the little boat sculled by Vereker, with
Sally in the stern steering. And the white sails of the Grace Darling
of St. Sennans, that had taken a large party out at sixpence each
person three hours ago, and couldn't get back by herself for want
of wind, and had to be towed by a row-boat, whose oars sounded
rhythmically across the mile of intervening water. She was doing
nothing to help, was Grace, but her sails flopped a little now and
again, just enough to show how glad she would have been to do so with
a little encouragement. Rosalind can see it all again quite plain,
and the little white creamy cloud that had taken pity on the doctor
sculling in the boat, and made a cool island of shadow, coloured
imperial purple on the sea, for him and Sally to float in, and talk
of how some unknown person, fool enough to get drowned, should one
day be recalled from the gate of Death.