HOW SALLY DIVED OFF THE BOAT, AND SHOCKED THE BEACH. OF THE SENSITIVE
DELICACY OF THE OCTOPUS. AND OF DR. EVERETT GAYLER'S OPINIONS
Fenwick had been granted, or had appropriated, another week's holiday,
and the wine-trade was to lose some of his valuable services during
that time. Not all, because in these days you can do so much by
telegraph. Consequently the chimney-piece with the rabbits made of
shells on each side, and the model of the Dreadnought--with real
planks and a companion-ladder that went too far down, and almost
serviceable brass carronades ready for action--and a sampler by Mercy
Lobjoit (1763), showing David much too small for the stitches he was
composed of, and even Goliath not big enough to have two lips--this
chimney-piece soon become a magazine of yellow telegrams, which blew
away when the window and door were open at the same time.
It was on the second of Fenwick's days on this visit that an unusual
storm of telegrams, as he came in to breakfast after an early dip in
the sea, confirmed the statement in the paper of the evening before
that W. and S.W. breezes might be expected later. "Wind freshening,"
was the phrase in which the forecast threw doubts on the permanency
of its recent references to a smooth Channel-passage. However, faith
had already been undermined by current testimony to light easterly
winds backing north, on the coast of Ireland. Sally was denouncing
meteorology as imposture when the returning bather produced the effect
recorded. It interrupted a question on his lips as he entered, and
postponed it until the telegram papers had all been reinstated and the
window closed, so that Mrs. Lobjoit might come in with the hot rolls
and eggs and not have anything blown away. Then peace reigned and the
question got asked.
"What are we going to do to-day?" said Sally, repeating it. "I know
what I'm going to do first. I'm going to swim round the buoy."
"My dear, they'll never put the machines down to-day." This was her
mother.
"They'll do it fast enough, if I tell 'em to. It's half the fun,
having it a little rough."
"Well, kitten, I suppose you'll go your own way; only I shall be very
glad when you're back in your machine. Coffee, Gerry?"
"Yes, coffee--in the big cup with the chip, and lots of milk. You're
a dangerous young monkey, Sarah; and I shall get old Benjamin's boat,
and hang about. And then you'll be happy, Rosey, eh?"
"No, I shan't! We shall have you getting capsized, too. (I put in
three lumps of sugar.... No, _not_ little ones--_big_ ones!) What
a thing it is to be connected with aquatic characters!"
"Never you mind the mother, Jeremiah. You get the boat. I should like
it to dive off."
"All right, I'll get Vereker, and we'll row out. The doctor's not bad
as an oarsman. Bradshaw doesn't make much of it. (Yes, thanks; another
egg. The brown one preferred; don't know why!) Yes, I'll get Dr.
Conrad, and you shall come and dive off."
All which was duly done, and Sally got into great disgrace by
scrambling up into the boat with the help of a looped rope hung over
the side, and was thereafter known to more than one decorous family
group frequenting the beach as that bold Miss Nightingale. But what
did Sally care what those stuffy people thought about her, with such
a set-off against their bad opinion as the glorious plunge down into
the depths, and the rushing sea-murmur in her ears, the only sound in
the strange green silence; and then the sudden magic of the change back
to the dazzling sun on the moving foam, and some human voice that was
speaking when she dived only just ending off? Surely, after so long a
plunge down, down, that voice should have passed on to some new topic.
For that black and shining merpussy, during one deep dive into the
under-world of trackless waters, had had time to recollect an
appointment with a friend, and had settled in her mind that, as soon
as she was once more in upper air, she would mention it to the crew
of the boat she had dived from. She was long enough under for that.
Then up she came into the rise and fall and ripple overhead like a
sudden Loreley, and as soon as she could see where the boat had got
to, and was free of a long stem of floating weed she had caught up
in the foam, she found her voice. And in it, as it rang out in the
morning air, was a world of youth and life and hope from which care
was an outcast, flung to the winds and the waves.
"I say, Jeremiah, we've got to meet a friend of yours on the pier
this afternoon."
"Time for you to come out of that water, Sarah." This name had
become nearly invariable on Fenwick's part. "Who's your friend?"
"A young lady for you! She's going to bring her dolly to be
electrified for a penny. She'll cry if we don't go; so will dolly."
"Then we _must_ go, clearly. The doctor must come to see fair, or
dolly may get electrocuted, like me." Fenwick very rarely spoke of his
accident now; most likely would not have done so this time but for a
motive akin to his wife's nettle-grasping. He knew Sally would think
of it, and would not have her suppose he shirked speaking of it.
But the laugh goes for a moment out of the face down there in the
water, and the pearls that glittered in the sun have vanished and the
eyes are grave beneath their brows. Only for a moment; then all the
Loreley is back in evidence again, and Sally is petitioning for only
one more plunge, and then she really will swim in. The crew protests,
but the Loreley has her way; her sort generally has.
"I always wonder," says Dr. Conrad, as they row to shore with
studied slowness--one must, to keep down to the pace of the swiftest
swimmer--"I always wonder whether they found that half-crown." Probably
he, too, only says this to accentuate the not-necessarily-to-be-avoided
character of the subject.
The reason Fenwick answered nothing, but remained thoughtfully silent,
was, as Dr. Vereker perceived after he had spoken, that the half-crown
was mere hearsay to him, and, as such, naturally enforced speculation
on the strange "B.C." period of which he knew nothing. Time did
but little to minimise the painful character of such speculations,
although it seemed to make them less and less frequent. Vereker said
no more, partly because he felt this, partly because he was so
engrossed with the Loreley. He dropped the half-crown.
"You needn't row away yet," said the voice from the water. "The
machines are miles off. Look here, I'm going to swim under the boat
and come up on the other side!"
Said Fenwick: "You'll be drowned, Sarah, before you've done! Do
consider your mother a little!"
Said the Loreley: "All right! good-bye!" and disappeared. She was so
long under that it was quite a relief when she reappeared, well off
the boat's counter; for, of course, there was some way on the boat,
and Sally made none. The crew's eyes had been watching the wrong water
over the beam.
"Didn't I do that nicely?... 'Beautifully?' Yes, I should rather
think I did! Good-bye; I must go to my machine! They won't leave it
down any longer."
Off went the swimmer in the highest spirits, and landed with some
difficulty, so much had the south-west wind freshened; and the machine
started up the beach at a brisk canter to rejoin its many unused
companions on their higher level.
* * * * *
Dr. Conrad, with the exhilaration of the Loreley in his heart, was
to meet with a damper administered to him by his affectionate parent,
who had improved immensely in the sea air, and was getting quite an
appetite.
"There is nothing, my dear, that I detest more cordially than
interference," said she, after accepting, rather more easily than
usual, her son's apologies for coming in late to lunch, and also being
distinctly gracious to Mrs. Iggulden about the beefsteak-pudding.
"Your father disapproved of it, and the whole of my family. The words
'never meddle' were on their lips from morning till night. Is it
wonderful that I abstain from speaking, as I so often do? Whatever I
see, I am silent." And accordingly was for a few illustrative seconds.
But her son, conceiving that the pause was one very common in cases
of incipient beefsteak-pudding, and really due to kidneys, made an
autopsy of the centre of Mrs. Iggulden's masterpiece; but when he had
differentiated its contents and insulated kidneys beyond a doubt, he
stood exposed and reproved by the tone in which his mother resumed:
"Not for me; I have oceans. I shall never eat what I have, and it
_is_ so wasteful!... No, my dear. You ask, 'What is it, then?' But
I was going to tell you when you interrupted me." Here a pause for
the Universe to settle down to attention. "There is always so much
disturbance; but my meaning is plain. When I was a girl young women
were different.... I dare say it is all right. I do not wish to lay
myself open to ridicule for my old-fashioned opinions.... What
_is_ it? I came back early, certainly, because I found the sun so
tiring; but surely, my dear, you cannot have failed to see that our
front window commands a full view of the bathing-machines. But I
am silent.... Mrs. Iggulden does not understand making mustard.
Hers runs."
Dr. Conrad was not interested in the mustard. He _was_ about the
cryptic attack on Sally's swimming and diving, which he felt to have
been dexterously conveyed in his parent's speech with scarcely a
word really to the point. There was no lack of skill in the Goody's
method. He flushed slightly, and made no immediate reply--even to
a superhumanly meek, "I know I shall be told I am wrong"--until after
he had complied with a requisition for a very little more--so small
a quantity as to seem somehow to reduce the lady's previous total
morally, though it added to it physically--and then he spoke, taking
the indictment for granted:
"I can't see what you find fault with. Not Miss Sally's
bathing-costume; nobody could!" Which was truth itself, for nothing
more elegant could have been found in the annals of bathing. "And if
she has a boat to dive off, somebody must row it. Besides, her mother
would object if...." But the doctor is impatient and annoyed--a rare
thing with him. He treats his beefsteak-pudding coldly, causing his
mother to say: "Then you can ring the bell."
However, she did not intend her text to be spoiled by irruptions
of Mrs. Iggulden, so she waited until the frequent rice-pudding had
elapsed, and then resumed at an advantage:
"You were very snappish and peevish with me just now, Conrad, without
waiting to hear what I had to say. But I overlook it. I am your
mother. If you had waited, I should have told you that I have no fault
whatever to find with Miss Nightingale's bathing-dress. It is, no
doubt, strictly _en règle_. Nor can I say, in these days, what I think
of girls practising exercises that in _my_ day were thought unwomanly.
All is changed now, and I am old-fashioned. But this I do say, that
had your father, or your great-uncle, Dr. Everett Gayler, been told
forty years ago that a time would come when it would be thought no
disgrace for an _English girl_ to jump off a boat with an _unmarried
man_ in it.... My dear, I am sure the latter would have made one of
those acrid and biting remarks for which he was celebrated in his own
circle, and which have even, I believe, been repeated by Royalty. That
is the only thing I have to say. I say nothing of girls learning to
swim and dive. I say nothing of their bicycling. Possibly the young
lady who passed the window this morning with a gentleman _on the same
bicycle_ was properly engaged to him; or his sister. Even about the
practice of Sandow, or Japanese wrestling, I have nothing to say. But
if they are to dive off boats in the open sea, in the face of all the
beach, at least let the boats be rowed by married men. That is all
I ask. It is very little."
What fools mothers sometimes are about their sons! They contrive
that these sons shall pass through youth to early manhood without
a suspicion that even mothers have human weaknesses. Then, all in
a moment, just when love has ridden triumphant into the citadel of
the boys' souls, they will sacrifice all--all they have won in a
lifetime--to indulge some petty spleen against the new _régime_ that
threatens their dethronement. And there is no surer way of undermining
a son's loyalty than to suggest a want of delicate feeling in the new
Queen--nothing that can make him question the past so effectually as
to force him to hold his nostrils in a smell of propriety, puffed
into what seems to him a gale from heaven.
The contrast between the recent merpussy in the freshening seas, and
this, as it seemed to him, perfectly gratuitous intrusion of moral
carbolic acid, gave Dr. Conrad a sense of nausea, which his love for
his mother enjoined ignorance of. His mind cast about, not for ways
of excusing Sally--the idea!--but of whitewashing his mother, without
seeming to suggest that her own mind had anything Fescennine about it.
This is always the great difficulty skywardness has in dealing with
the moral scavenger. Are not the motives of purity unimpeachable?
Goody Vereker, however, did not suspect herself of being a fool. On
the contrary, she felt highly satisfied with her speech, and may be
said to have hugged its peroration. Her son flushed slightly and bit
his lip, giving the old lady time for a corollary in a subdued and
chastened voice.
"Had I been asked--had you consulted me, my dear--I should certainly
have advised that Mr. Fenwick should have been accompanied by another
married man, certainly not by a young, single gentleman. The man
himself--I am referring to the owner of the boat--would have done
quite well, whether married or single. Boatmen are seldom unmarried,
though frequently tattooed with ladies' names when they have been in
the navy. You see something to laugh at, Conrad? In your mother! But
I am used to it." The doctor's smile was in memory of two sun-browned
arms that had pushed the boat off two hours ago. One had Elinor and
Kate on it, the other Bessie and a Union Jack.
"Don't you think, mother dear," said the doctor at last, "that if
Mrs. Fenwick, who knew all about it, had seen anything outrageous
she would have spoken? She really only seemed anxious none of us
should get drowned."
"Very likely, my dear; she would be. You will, I am sure, do me this
justice, that I have throughout said, from the very beginning, that
Mrs. Fenwick is a most excellent person, though I have sometimes
found her tiring."
"I am sorry she has tired you. You must always tell her, you know,
when you're tired, and then she'll come and fetch me." The doctor
resisted a temptation to ask, "From the very beginning of _what_?"
For the suggestion that materials for laceration were simmering was
without foundation; was, in fact, only an example of the speaker's
method. She followed it with another.
"It is so often the case with women who have passed a good deal of
time in India."
"Are women tiring when they have passed a good deal of time in India?"
"My dear Conrad, _is it likely_ I should talk such nonsense? You know
perfectly well what I mean." But the doctor merely awaited natural
development, which came. "Mind, I do not say I _believe_ Mrs. Julius
Bradshaw's story. But it would quite account for it--fully!"
What would account for what? Heaven only knew! However, the speaker
was getting the bit in her teeth, and earth would know very soon. Dr.
Conrad was conscious at this moment of the sensation which had once
made Sally speak of his mamma as an Octopus. She threw out a tentacle.
"And, of course, Mrs. Julius Bradshaw's story may be nothing but idle
talk. I am the last person to give credit to mere irresponsible
gossip. Let us hope it is ill founded."
Whereupon her son, who knew another tentacle would come and entangle
him if he slipped clear from this one, surrendered at discretion. What
_was_ Mrs. Julius Bradshaw's story? A most uncandid way of putting it,
for the fact was he had heard it all from Sally in the strictest
confidence. So the insincerity was compulsory, in a sense.
The Octopus, who was by this time anchored in her knitting-chair
and awaiting her mixture--two tablespoonfuls after every meal--closed
her eyes to pursue the subject, but warmed to the chace visibly.
"Are you going to tell me, my dear Conrad, that you do _not_ know
that it has been said--I vouch for nothing, remember--that Miss
Nightingale's mother was divorced from her father twenty years ago
in India?"
"I don't think it's any concern of yours or mine." But having said
this, he would have liked to recall it and substitute something else.
It was brusque, and he was not sure that it was a fair way of stating
the case, especially as this matter had been freely discussed between
them in the days of their first acquaintance with Sally and her
mother. Dr. Conrad felt mean for renegading from his apparent
admission at that time that the divorce was an affair they might
properly speculate about. Mrs. Vereker knew well that her son would
be hard on himself for the slightest unfairness, and forthwith climbed
up to a pinnacle of flawless rectitude, for his confusion.
"My dear, it is absolutely _none_. Am I saying that it is? People's
past lives are no affair of ours. Am I saying that they are?"
"Well, no!"
"Very well, then, my dear, listen to what I do say, and do not
misrepresent me. What I say is this--(Are you sure Perkins has mixed
this medicine the same as the last? The taste's different)--Now
listen! What I say is, and I can repeat it any number of times, that
it is useless to expect sensitiveness on such points under such
circumstances. I am certain that your father, or your great-uncle,
Dr. Everett Gayler, would not have hesitated to endorse my opinion
that on the broad question of whether a girl should or should not dive
off a boat rowed by an unmarried man, no one is less likely to form a
correct judgment than a lady who was divorced from her husband twenty
years ago in India. But I say nothing against Mrs. Fenwick. She is, so
far as she is known to me, an excellent person, and a good wife and
mother. Now, my dear Conrad, I must rest, for I fear I have talked
too much."
Poor Prosy! All the edge of his joy of the morning was taken off. But
never mind! It would very soon be Sally herself again, and his thirsty
soul would be drinking deep draughts of her at the pier-end, where the
appointment was to be kept with the young lady and her dolly.