OF LOVE, CONSIDERED AS A THUNDERSTORM, AND OF AGUR, THE SON OF JAKEH
(PROV. XXX.). OF A COUNTRY WALK AND A JUDICIOUSLY RESTORED CHURCH.
OF TWO CLASPED HANDS, AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES. NOTHING SO VERY
REMARKABLE AFTER ALL!
Love, like a thunderstorm, is very much more intelligible in its
beginnings--to its chronicler, at least--than it becomes when it is,
so to speak, overhead. We all know the clear-cut magnificence of the
great thundercloud against the sky, its tremendous deliberation, its
hills and valleys of curdling mist, fraught with God knows what
potential of destruction in volts and ohms; the ceaseless muttering
of its wrath as it speaks to its own heart, and its sullen secrets
reverberate from cavern to cavern in the very core of its innermost
blackness. We know the last prismatic benedictions of the sun it means
to hide from us--the strange gleams of despairing light on the other
clouds--clouds that are not in it, mere outsiders or spectators. We
can remember them after we have got home in time to avoid a wetting,
and can get our moist water-colours out and do a recollection of
them before they go out of our heads--or think we can.
But we know, too, that there comes a time of a sudden wind and
agitated panic of the trees, and then big, warm preliminary drops,
and then the first clap of thunder, clear in its own mind and full of
purpose. Then the first downpour of rain, that isn't quite so clear,
and wavers for a breathing-space, till the tart reminder of the first
swift, decisive lightning-flash recalls it to its duty, and it becomes
a steady, intolerable torrent that empties roads and streets of
passers-by, and makes the gutters rivulets. And then the storm
itself--flash upon flash--peal upon peal--up to the blinding and
deafening climax, glare and thunderbolt in a breath. And then it's
overhead, and we are sure something has been struck that time.
It was all plain sailing, two days since, in the love-storm we want
the foregoing sketch of a thunderstorm to illustrate, that was brewing
in the firmament of Conrad Vereker's soul. At the point corresponding
to the first decisive clap of thunder--wherever it was--Chaos set in
in that firmament. And Chaos was developing rapidly at the time when
the doctor, rescued by Sally's intrepidity from the maternal clutch,
started on what he believed would be his last walk with his idol at
St. Sennans. Now he knew that, when he got back to London, though
there might be, academically speaking, opportunities of seeing Sally,
it wasn't going to be the same thing. That was the phrase his mind
used, and we know quite well what it meant.
Of course, when some peevish author or invalid sends out a servant
to make you take your organ farther off, a good way down the street,
you can begin again exactly where you left off, lower down. But a
barrel-organ has no soul, and one has one oneself, usually. Dr.
Vereker's soul, on this occasion, was the sport of the love-storm of
our analogy, and was tossed and driven by whirlwinds, beaten down by
torrents, dazzled by lightning and deafened by thunder, out of reach
of all sane record by the most eloquent of chroniclers. It was not in
a state to accept calmly the idea of transference to Shepherd's Bush.
A tranquil mind would have said, "By all means, go home and start
afresh." But no; the music in this case refused to welcome the change.
Still, he would forget it--make light of it and ignore it--to enjoy
this last little expedition with Sally to the village church across
the downs, that had been so sweetly decorated for the harvest
festival. A bird in the hand was worth two in the bush. _Carpe diem!_
So Dr. Conrad seemed to have grown younger than ever when he and Sally
got away from all the world, after Fenwick had fallen back to rescue
the captive, octopus-caught. Whereat Sally's heart rejoiced; for this
young man's state of subordination to his skilful and overwhelming
parent was a constant thorn in her side. To say she felt for him is
to say nothing. To say that she would have jumped out of her skin with
joy at hearing that he was engaged to that young lady, unknown; and
that that young lady had successfully made terms of capitulation,
involving the disbanding of the Goody, and her ultimate dispersal to
Bedford Park with a companion--to vouch for this actually happening
might be rash. But Sally told herself--and her mother, for that
matter--that she should so jump out of her skin; and you may believe
her, perhaps. We happen not to; but it may have been true, for all
that.
Agur, the son of Jakeh (Prov. xxx.), evidently thought the souls of
women not worth analysis, and the way of a maid with a man not a
matter for Ithiel and Ucal to spend time and thought over, as they
seem to have said nothing to King Solomon on the subject. But then
Agur candidly admitted that he was more brutish than any man, and
had not the understanding of a man. So he contented himself with
wondering at the way of a man with a maid, and made no remarks about
the opposite case. Even with the understanding of a man, would he
have been any nearer seeing into the mystery of a girl's heart? As
for ourselves, we give it up. We have to be content with watching
what Miss Sally will do next, not trying to understand her.
She certainly _believed_ she believed--we may go that far--when she
started to walk to Chalke Church with a young man she felt a strong
interest in, and wanted to see happily settled in life--(all her
words, please, not ours)--that she intended, this walk, to get out
of Prosy who the young lady was that he had hinted at, and, what was
more, she knew exactly how she was going to lead up to it. Only
she wouldn't rush the matter; it would do just as well, or better,
after they had seen the little church, and were walking back in the
twilight. They could be jolly and chatty then. Oh yes, certainly a
good deal better. As for any feeling of shyness about it, of relief at
postponing it--what _nonsense_! Hadn't they as good as talked it all
over already? But, for our own part, we believe that this readiness
to let the subject wait was a concession Sally made towards admitting
a personal interest in the result of her inquiry--so minute a one that
maybe you may wonder why we call it a concession at all. Dr. Conrad
was perhaps paltering a little with the truth, too, when he said to
himself that he was quite prepared to fulfil his half-promise to
Fenwick and reveal his mind to Sally; but not till quite the end of
this walk, in case he should spoil it, and upset Sally. Or, perhaps,
to-morrow morning, on the way to the train. Our own belief is, he was
frightened, and it was an excuse.
"We shall go by the beech-forest," was Sally's last speech to Fenwick,
as he turned back on his mission of rescue. And twenty minutes later
she and Dr. Conrad were crossing the smooth sheep-pasture that ended
at the boundary of the said forest--a tract of woodland that was
always treated with derision on account of its acreage. It was small,
for a forest, certainly; but, then, it hadn't laid claim to the name
itself. Sally spoke forgivingly of it as they approached it.
"It's a handy little forest," said she; "only you can't lie down in
it without sticking out. If you don't expect to, it doesn't matter."
This was said without a trace of a smile, Sally-fashion. It took its
reasonableness for granted, and allowed the speaker to continue
without a pause into conversation sane and unexaggerated.
"What were you and Jeremiah talking about the day before yesterday,
when you went that long walk?"
"We talked about a good many things. I've forgotten half."
"Which was the one you don't want me to know about? Because you
haven't forgotten that, you know." Vereker thinks of Sally's putative
parents, the Arcadian shepherdess and the thunderbolt. Obviously
a reality! Besides--so ran the doctor's thought--with her looking
like _that_, what can I do? He felt perfectly helpless, but wouldn't
confess it. He would make an effort. One thing he was certain of: that
evasion, with those eyes looking at him, would mean instant shipwreck.
"We had a long talk, dear Miss Sally, about how much Jeremiah"--a
slight accent on the name has the force of inverted commas in
text--"can really recollect of his own history." But Sally's reply
takes a form of protest, without seeming warranty.
"I say, Dr. Conrad, I wish you wouldn't.... However, never mind that
now. I want to know about Jeremiah. Has he remembered a lot more, and
not told?"
"He goes on recovering imperfect versions of things. He told me a good
many such yesterday--so imperfect that I am convinced as his mind
clears he will find that some of them, though founded on reality, are
little better than dreams. He can't rely on them himself.... But what
is it you wish I wouldn't?"
"Oh, nothing!--I'll tell you after. Never mind that now. What are the
things--I mean, the things he recovers the imperfect versions of? You
needn't tell me the versions, you know, but you might tell me what
they were versions of, without any breach of confidence." Dr. Conrad
has not time for more than a word or two towards the obvious protest
against this way of stating the case, before Sally becomes frankly
aware of her own unfairness. "No, I won't worm out and inquisit,"
she says--and we are bound to give her exact language. "It isn't
fair on a general practitioner to take him for a walk and get at
his professional secrets." The merry eyebrows and the pearly teeth,
slightly in abeyance for a serious moment or two, are all in evidence
again as the black eyes flash round on the doctor, and, as it were,
convey his reprieve to him. He acknowledges it in this sense.
"I'm glad you don't insist upon my telling, Miss Sally. If you had
insisted, I should have had to tell." He paused a second, drawing an
inference from an expression of Sally's face, then added: "Well, it's
true...."
"I wasn't thinking of that." This refers to her intention to say
something, which never fructified; but somehow got communicated,
magnetically perhaps, to Dr. Conrad. "Never mind what, now. Because
if your soles are as slippy as mine are, we shall never get up. Catch
hold!"
This last refers to the necessity two travellers are under, who,
having to ascend a steep escarpment of slippery grass, can only do so
by mutual assistance. Sally and the doctor got to the top, and settled
down to normal progress on a practicable gradient, and all the
exhilaration of the wide, wind-swept downland. But what had been to
the unconscious merpussy nothing but a mutual accommodation imposed by
a common lot--common subjection to the forces of gravitation and the
extinction of friction by the reaction of short grass on leather--had
been to her companion a phase of stimulus to the storm that was
devastating the region of his soul; a new and prolonged peal of
thunder swift on the heels of a blinding lightning-flash, and a deluge
to follow such as a real storm makes us run to shelter from. On Dr.
Conrad's side of the analogy, there was no shelter, and he didn't ask
for it. Had he asked for anything, it would have been for the power to
tell Sally what she had become to him, and a new language he did not
now know in which to tell it. And such a vocabulary!
But Dr. Conrad didn't know how simple the language was that he felt
the want of--least of all, that there was only one word in its
vocabulary. And when the two of them got to the top of their slippery
precipice, breathless, he was no nearer the disclosure he had made up
his mind to, and as good as promised Fenwick to make, than when they
were treading the beechmast and listening to the wood-doves in the
handy little forest they had left below. But oh, the little things
in this life that are the big ones all the while, and no one ever
suspects them!
A very little thing indeed was to play a big part, unacknowledged till
after, in the story of this walk. For it chanced that as they reached
the hill-top the diminution of the incline was so gradual that at
no exact point could the lease of Sally's hand to that of the doctor
be determined by either landlord or tenant. We do not mean that he
refused to let go, nor that Sally consciously said to herself that it
would be rude to snatch back the gloveless six-and-a-half that she had
entrusted to him, the very minute she didn't want his assistance. It
was a _nuance_ of action or demeanour far, far finer than that on
the part of either. But it was real all the same. And the facts of
the case were as clear to Sally's subconsciousness, unadmitted and
unconfessed, as though Dr. Conrad had found his voice then and there,
and said out boldly: "There is _no_ young lady I am wavering about
except it be you; she's a fiction, and a silly one. There is no one
in the world I care for as I do for you. There is nothing in the world
that I can name or dream of so precious to me as this hand that I now
give up with reluctance, under the delusion that I have not held it
long enough to make you guess the whole of the story." All that was
said, but what an insignificant little thing it was that said it!
As for Miss Sally, it was only her subself that recognised that any
one had said anything at all. Her superself dismissed it as a fancy;
and, therefore, being put on its mettle to justify that action, it
pointed out to her that, after that, it would be the merest cowardice
to shirk finding out about Dr. Conrad's young lady. She would
manage it somehow by the end of this walk. But still an element of
postponement came in, and had its say. Yet it excited no suspicions
in her mind, or she ignored them. She was quite within her rights,
technically, in doing so.
It was necessary, though, to tide over the momentary reciprocity--the
slight exchange of consciousnesses that, if indulged, must have ended
in a climax--with a show of stiffness; a little pretence that we were
a lady and gentleman taking a walk, otherwise undescribed. When the
doctor relinquished Sally's hand, he felt bound to ignore the fact
that hers went on ringing like a bell in the palm of his, and sending
musical messages up his arm; and to talk about dewponds. They occur on
the tops of downs, and are very scientific. High service and no rate
are the terms of their water-supply. Dr. Conrad knew all about them,
and was aware that one they passed was also a relic of prehistoric
man, who had dug it, and didn't live long enough, poor fellow! to know
it was a dewpond, or prehistoric. Sally was interested. A little bird
with very long legs didn't seem to care, and walked away without undue
hurry, but amazingly quickly, for all that.
"What a little darling!" Sally said. "Did you hear that delicious
little noise he made? Isn't he a water-ouzel?" Sally took the first
name that she thought sounded probable. She really was making talk,
to contribute her share to the fiction about the lady and gentleman.
So was her companion. He reflected for a moment whether he could say
anything about Grallæ and Scolopacidæ, or such like, but decided
against heaping up instructive matter on the top of the recent
dewponds. He gave it up, and harked back quite suddenly to congenial
personalities.
"What was it you wished I wouldn't, Miss Sally?"
Our Sally had it on her lips to say, "Why, do _that_--call me _Miss_
Sally, of course! I can't _tell_ you how I hate it." But, this time,
she was seized with a sudden fit of shyness. She could have said it
quite easily before that trivial hand-occurrence, and the momentary
stiffness that followed it. Now she backed out in the meanest way, and
even sought to fortify the lady and gentleman pretext. She looked back
over the panorama they were leaving behind, and discerned that that
was Jeremiah and her maternal parent coming through the clover-field.
But it wasn't, palpably. Nevertheless, Sally held tight to her
groundless opinion long enough for the previous question to be
droppable, without effrontery. Then her incorrigible candour bubbled
up, and she refused to take advantage of her own subterfuge.
"Never mind, Dr. Conrad; I'll tell you presently. I've a bone to pick
with you. Wait till we've seen the little churchy-wurchy--there it
is, over there, with a big weathercock--and then we can quarrel and
go home separate."
Even Agur, the son of Jakeh, would have seen, at this point, the way
that this particular maid, in addressing this particular man, was
exaggerating a certain spirit of bravado; and if he had been
accompanying them unseen from St. Sennans, would certainly have
deserved his own self-censure if he had failed to trace this spirit
to its source--the hand-incident. We believe it was only affectation
in Agur, and that he knew all about the subject, men, maids, and
every other sort; only he didn't think any of the female sorts worth
his Oriental consideration. It was a far cry to the dawn of Browning
in those days.
Down the hill to the flatlands was a steep pathway, where talk paused
naturally. When you travel in single file on a narrow footway with
a grass slide to right or left of you, which it does not do to tread
on with shoe-soles well polished on two miles of previous grass, you
don't talk--especially if you have come to some point in talk where
silence is not unwelcome. Sally and the doctor said scarcely a dozen
words on the way down to the little village that owned the name and
the church of Chalke. When they arrived in its seclusion they found,
for purposes of information and reference, no human creatures visible
except some absolutely brown, white-haired ones whose existence dated
back only a very few years--not enough to learn English in. So, when
addressed, they remained a speechless group, too unaccustomed to man
to be able to say where keys of churches were to be had, or anything
else. But the eldest, a very little girl in a flexible blue bonnet,
murmured what Sally, with insight, interpreted into a reference.
"Yes, dear, that's right. You go and tell moarther t' whoam that
a lady and gentleman want to see inside the church, and ask for the
key." Whereupon the little maid departs down a passage into a smell
of wallflowers, and is heard afar rendering her message as a long
narrative--so long that Dr. Conrad says the child cannot have
understood right, and they had better prosecute inquiry further.
Sally thinks otherwise, and says men are impatient fidgets.
The resolute dumbness of one of the small natives must have been
a _parti-pris_, for it suddenly disappeared during his sister's
absence, and he gave a narrative of a family dissension, not
necessarily recent. He appears proud of his own share in it, which
Sally nevertheless felt she could not appear to sanction by silence.
"You bad little boy," she said. "You smacked your sister Elizabeth in
t' oy, and your foarther smacked you. I hope he hurt." The bad little
boy assented with a nod, and supplied some further details. Then he
asked for a penny before his sister Elizabeth came back. He wanted it
to buy almond-rock, but he wouldn't give any of it to Jacob, nor to
his sister Elizabeth, nor to Reuben, nor to many others, whom he
seemed to exclude from almond-rock with rapture. Asked to whom he
would give some, then, he replied: "Not you--eat it moyself!" and
laughed heartlessly. Sally, we regret to say, gave this selfish
little boy a penny for not being hypocritical. And then his sister
Elizabeth reappeared with the key, which was out of scale with her,
like St. Peter's.
The inward splendours of this church had been inferred by Sally from
a tiptoe view through the window, which commanded its only archaic
object of interest--the monument of a woolstapler who, three hundred
and odd years ago, had the effrontery to have two wives and sixteen
children. He ought to have had one or two more wives, thought Dr.
Conrad. However, the family was an impressive one now, decorated as
it was with roses cut out of turnips, and groups of apples and carrots
and cereals. And no family could have kneeled down more symmetrically,
even in 1580.
But there was plenty to see in that church, too. Indeed, it was
for all the world like the advertisement sheets of _Architectonic
Ecclesiology_ (ask for this paper at your club), and every window was
brim full of new stained glass, and every inch of floor-space was new
encaustic tiles. And, what was more, there was a new mosaic over the
chancel-arch--a modest and wobbly little arch in itself, that seemed
afflicted with its position, and to want to get away into a quiet
corner and meditate. Sally said so, and added so should she, if she
were it.
"I wonder if the woolstapler was married here to one or other of the
little square women," said she.
"I wonder why the angels up there look so sulky," said Dr. Conrad. And
then Sally, who seemed absent-minded, found something else to wonder
about--a certain musical whistling noise that filled the little church.
But it was only a big bunch of moonwort on a stained-glass-window
sill, and the wind was blowing through a vacancy that should have been
a date, and making Æolian music. The little maid with the key found
her voice over this suddenly. Her bruvver had done that, she said
with pride. He had oymed a stoo-an when it was putten up, and brokken
t' glass. So that stained glass was very new indeed, evidently.
"I wonder why they call that stuff 'honesty,' Miss Sally?" said the
doctor. Sally, feeling that the interest of either in the church was
really perfunctory, said vaguely--did they? And then, recoiling from
further wonderment, and, indeed, feeling some terror of becoming
idiotic if this sort of thing went on much longer, she exclaimed, with
reality in her voice: "Because it's not pretending to take an interest
when it doesn't, like us. But I wish you wouldn't, Dr. Conrad; I do
hate it so."
"Hate what? Taking an interest or calling it honesty? _I_ didn't call
it honesty. _They_ did, whoever they are!"
"No, no--I don't mean that. Never mind. I'll tell you when we're out.
Come along--that is, if you've seen enough of the tidy mosaic and the
tidy stained glass, and the tidy nosegays on the tidy table." The
doctor came along--seemed well satisfied to do so. But this was the
third time Sally had wished that Dr. Conrad wouldn't, and this time
she felt she must explain. She wasn't at all sure that the name of
that herb hadn't somehow got into the atmosphere--caught on, as it
were, and twitted her. After all, why shouldn't she speak a plain
thought to an old friend, as poor Prosy was now? Who could gainsay it?
Moreover--now, surely this was an inspiration--why shouldn't she kill
two birds with one stone, and work in her inquiry about the other
young lady with this plain thought that was on her tongue to speak?
The sun was a sheer blaze of golden light as they stepped out of the
little church into its farewell efforts on behalf of the hill-shadowed
land of premature sunsets, and the merpussy looked her best in its
effulgence. Sally's good looks had never been such as to convince her
she was a beauty; and we suppose she wasn't, critically speaking. But
youth and health, and an arrow-straight bearing, and a flawless
complexion, in a flood of evening light, make a bold bid for beauty
even in the eyes of others than young men already half-imbecile with
love. Sally's was, at any rate, enough to dumbfounder the little
janitress with the key, who stood at gaze with violet eyes in her
sunbrowned face in the shadow, looking as though for certain they
would never close again; while, as for Dr. Conrad, he was too far gone
to want a finishing touch, and if he had been, the faintest animation
of an extra flush due to embarrassment at what she was meaning to say
would have done the business for him. What could he do but wonder and
idolize, even while he almost flinched before his idol; and wait to
know what it was she wished he wouldn't? What was there in earth or
heaven he would not, if Sally wished it?
"Dr. Conrad, I'm sure you must know what I mean. I do so hate being
called 'Miss Sally.' Do make it 'Sally,' and have done with it."
The breezy freshness of her spontaneous ease was infectious, and the
shy man's answering laugh showed how it had caught his soul. "Is that
all?" says he. "That's soon done--Sally! You know, I _do_ call you
Sally when I speak to your mother and...."
"Now, _do_ say father. You've no idea how I like it when people call
Jeremiah my father, instead of step."
"Well--father, then. I mean, _they_ said call you Sally; so of
course I do. But speaking to you--don't you see?..." The doctor
hesitates--doesn't actually blush, perhaps. A slight pause in the
conversation eases off the context. The little maiden has to lock up
the church-door with the big key, and to receive sixpence and a kiss
from Sally. The violet eyes follow the lady and gentleman, fixed in
wonderment, as they move off towards the hill, and the last glint of
the sun vanishes. Then Sally goes on where they left off:
"No, I don't see. Speaking to me, what? Be an explicit little general
practitioner, or we shall quarrel, after all, and go home different
ways."
"Well, look here! You know Bailey, the young man that drives me round
in London?"
"Yes. How does he come in?"
"Why, just this way; I've known the youth for years, and the other
day if it doesn't turn out that he's been married ever so long! And
when I taxed him with needless secrecy and mistrust of an old friend,
what does the young humbug say? 'The fact is, sir, I hadn't the cheek
to tell you.' Well, _I_ was like that. I hadn't the cheek."
"At any rate, you have the grace to call him a young humbug. I'm glad
you're repentant, Dr. Conrad."
"Come--I say, now--Sally! That's not fair."
"What's not fair?"
"Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. You called me 'Dr.
Conrad.'"
"We-ell, I don't see anything in _that_. Of course, it's quite a
different thing--you and me."
"Very well, then. I shall say Miss Sally. Miss Sally!"
Here was Sally's opportunity, clear enough. She had never had a
chance till now of bringing back the mysterious young lady of the
jetty-interview into court, and examining her. She felt quite sure of
herself and her powers of conducting the case--and she was mistaken.
She knew nothing of the traps and pitfalls that were gaping for her.
Her opening statement went easily though; it was all prepared.
"Don't you see, Dr. Conrad dear, the cases are quite different? When
you're married, your wife will call _me_ Sally, of course. But ...
well, if I had a husband, you know, _he_ would call _you_ Dr. Vereker.
Sure to!" Sally felt satisfied with the sound of her voice. But the
doctor said never a word, and his face was grave. She would have to
go on, unassisted, and she had invented nothing to say, so far. So
a wavering crept in--nothing in itself at first, apart from her
consciousness of it. "Besides, though, of course _she_ would call _me_
Sally, she mightn't quite--not altogether, you know--I mean, she might
think it...." But ambushes revealed themselves in every hedge, ready
to break out if she ended this sentence. Dr. Conrad made completion
unnecessary.
"Whom do you mean by _she_, Sally?"
"Why, of course! Who could I mean but the girl you told me about that
you think wouldn't agree with your mother?"
"I thought so. See what a mess I made of it! No, Sally, there's no
such person. Now I shall have to speak the truth, and then I shall
have to go away from you, and it will all be spoiled...." But Sally
interposes on the tense speech, and sound of growing determination
in the doctor's voice:
"Oh no, don't--no, don't! Don't say anything that will change it from
_now_. See how happy we are! How could it be better? I'll call you
Conrad, or anything you like. Only, _don't_ make it different."
"Very well, I won't. I promise!" The doctor calms down. "But, Sally
dearest--I may say Sally dearest, mayn't I?..."
"Well, perhaps. Only you must make that do for the present."
But there is a haunting sense of the Octopus in the conscientious soul
of her son, and even though he is allowed to say "Sally dearest," the
burden is on him of knowing that he has been swept away in the turmoil
of this whirlwind of self, and he is feeling round to say _peccavi_,
and make amends by confession. He makes "Sally dearest" do for the
moment, but captures as a set-off the hand that slips readily enough
into the arm he offers for it, with a caressing other hand, before he
speaks again. He renews his promise--but with such a compensation in
the hand that remains at rest in his! and then continues:
"Dearest Sally, I dare say you see how it was--about mother. It was
very stupid of me, and I did it very badly. I got puzzled, and lost
my head."
"I thought it was a real young lady, anyhow."
"I saw you did. And I do think--just now--I should have let you
continue believing in the real young lady ... only when you said
that...."
"Said what?"
"Said that about your husband, and calling me Conrad. I couldn't
stand it. It was just like a knife ... no, I'm in earnest, it _was_.
How could I have borne it--gone on at all--with you married to any
one else?" He asks this in a tone of serious conviction, of one
who is diagnosing a strange case, conscientiously. Sally declines
consultation--won't be too serious over it.
"You would have had to. Men get on capitally when they have to. But
very likely I won't marry you. Don't be too sure! I haven't committed
myself, you know." Nevertheless, the hand remains passive in the
doctor's, as he continues his diagnosis:
"I shouldn't deserve you. But, then, who could?"
Sally tacitly refuses to help in answering this question.
"I vote for neither of us marrying anybody else, but going on like
now," says she thoughtfully.
Sally, you see, was recovering herself after a momentary alarm,
produced by the gust of resolution on Dr. Conrad's part. She had shut
her window on the storm in his soul, and felt safe in resuming her
identity. All through this walk, ever since the hand-incident, she
had been hard at work ignoring suggestions of her inner mind that
her companion was a loaded gun, and not quite safe to play with. Now
she felt she had established a sort of _modus vivendi_ which would
not involve her in the horrors of a formal engagement, with the
concomitants of dissension and bitterness that she had noticed in
friends' families on such occasions. Why shouldn't she and poor Prosy
walk about together as much as they liked--yes, even call in at a
church and get married if they liked--and have no one else fussing
over them? The sort of semi-trothplight she had just hushed into
silence would do for a good long time to come, because she understood
Prosy down to the ground, and, of course, she knew that his
mistrusting her was out of the question.
As for the doctor, his was the sort of temperament one often meets
with in very fair men of his type--intensely shy, but with a backing
of resolution on occasion shown, bred of a capacity for high-strung
passion. He had formed his intention fully and clearly of telling
Sally the whole truth before they arrived at St. Sennans that evening,
and had been hastened to what was virtually an avowal by a premature
accident, as we have seen. Now the murder was out, and he was walking
home slowly beside the marvel, the mystery, that had taken possession
of the inmost recesses of his life--very much in her pocket, if the
truth must be told--with an almost intolerable searching fire of joy
finding every moment a new untouched recess in his innermost heart.
He could have fallen at her feet and kissed them, could have poured
out his very soul in passionate protestations, could and would have
done anything that would have given a moment's respite to the tension
of his love for this all-absorbing other creature that was absolutely
here--a reality, and no dream--beside him. But he was going to be
good, at her bidding, and remain a sane and reasonable general
practitioner, however much his heart beat and his head swam. Poor
Prosy!
No! On consideration, Agur, the son of Jakeh, didn't know all about
it. He only knew the Oriental temperament. He was quite up to date,
no doubt, but neither he nor Ithiel nor Ucal nor King Solomon could
reckon with spiritual volcanoes. Probably nothing in the world could
have explained to either of them the meaning of one or two bits of
music Schubert wrote on this subject of Love--we don't flinch from our
phraseology; we know that all will understand it whom we care should
do so. By-the-bye, Dr. Vereker was partly German, and a musician.
Agur can have had no experience of either. The ancestors of Schubert
and Beethoven were splendid savages in his day, sleeping on the
snow-wreaths in the forests of the north; and somewhere among them
there was a germ of a love-passion that was one day to ring changes
on the peals that were known to Agur, the son of Jakeh.
But this is wandering from the point, and all the while Sally and her
lover have been climbing that hill again, and are now walking over the
lonely down above, towards the sun, and their shadows are long behind
them--at least, their shadow; for they have but one, and we fancy we
have let some of our record slip, for the man's arm is round the
girl's waist. Yes, some further clearer understanding has come into
their lives, and maybe Sally sees by now that the vote she passed
_nem. con._ may be rescinded in the end.
If you had been near them then, invisible, we know you would not have
gone close and listened. You would have been too honourable. But you
would only have heard this--take our word for it!
"Do you know what I always call you behind your back? I always call
you Prosy. I don't know why."
"Because I _am_ prosy--level-headed, slow sort of card--but prosy
beyond a doubt."
"No, you're not. I don't think you know the least what you're like.
But I shall call you Prosy, all the same, or whatever I choose!"
"You don't take to Conrad, somehow?"
"It sounds so reproachful. It's like William."
"Does William sound reproachful?"
"Of course it does! Willy-yum! A most reproachful name. No, Prosy
dear, I shall call you Prosy, whatever the consequences may be. People
must put their own construction upon it."
"Mother calls me Conny very often."
"When she's not taking exception to you ... oh, no! I know. I was only
joking ... there, then! we won't quarrel and go home opposite ways
about that. Besides, I'm the young lady...."
"Oh, Sally darling, dearest, it does make me feel such a fool. Please
don't!"
"Stuff and nonsense, Prosy dear! I shall, if I choose. So there!...
No, but seriously--_why_ did you think I shouldn't get on well with
your mother?" Poor Prosy looks very much embarrassed at this point;
his countenance pleads for respite. But Sally won't let him off. And
he is as wax in her hands, and she knows it, and also that every word
that passes her coral lips seems to the poor stricken man a pearl of
wisdom. And she is girl enough to enjoy her power, is Sally.
"_Why_ do you think I shan't get on with her?" Note the slight
variation in the question, driving the nail home, leaving no escape.
The doctor's manner in reply is that of one who appeals to Truth
herself to help him, before a court that acknowledges no other
jurisdiction.
"Because ... I must say it because it's true, only it seems so ...
so disloyal, you might say, to mother...."
"Well! Because what?"
"Because then it won't be the same as _your_ mother. It can't be."
"Why not?"
"Oh, Sally--dearest love--how can it?"
"Well! Perhaps _why not_ was fibs. And, of course, mother's an angel,
so it's not fair. But, Prosy dear, I'll tell you one thing I _do_
think--that affectionate sons make very bad medical attendants for
their ma's; and I should say the same if they had all the degrees in
Christendom."
"You think a nervous element comes in?..."
* * * * *
And so the conversation ripples on, a quiet undertone of perfect
confidence, freedom without reserve as to another self, suddenly
discovered in the working identity of a fellow-creature. It ripples
on just thus, all the distance of the walk along the topmost down, in
the evening sunlight, and then comes a pause to negotiate the descent
to their handy little forest below. Then a sense that they are coming
back into a sane, dry world, and must be a lady and a gentleman again.
But there must be a little farewell to the enchanted land they are
leaving behind--a recognition of its story, under the beech-trees as
the last gleam goes, and leaves us our inheritance of twilight.
"Do you remember, darling, how we climbed up there, coming, and had
hold to the top?" His lips find hers, naturally and without disguise.
It is the close of the movement, and company-manners will be wanted
directly. But just a bar or two, and a space, before the music
dies!...
"I remember," says Sally. "That began it. Oh, what a long time ago
that does seem now! What a rum start it all is--the whole turn-out!"
For the merpussy is her incorrigible self, and will be to the last.
* * * * *
When Sally reached home, very late, she was not displeased, though she
was a little surprised, to find that Mrs. Lobjoit was keeping dinner
back, and that her mother and Fenwick had not reappeared, having been
away since they parted. Not displeased, because it gave her time to
settle down--the expression she made use of, to think with; not with
any admission, however, that she either felt or looked unusually
_exaltée_--but surprised, because it was eight o'clock, and she felt
that even Mrs. Lobjoit's good-nature might have limits.
But while she was settling down, in a happy, excited dream she half
wondered that she did not wake from, back came the truants; and she
heard from her room above Mrs. Lobjoit's report that Miss Sally was
gone upstairs to get ready, with the faintest hint of reproach in the
tone. Then her mother's "Don't stop to read letters, Gerry--that'll
do after," and Fenwick's "All right!" not followed by immediate
obedience. Then, after half a moment's delay, in which she felt
some surprise at herself for not going out to meet them coming up
the stairs, her mother's voice approaching, that asked where the
kitten was.
"Oh, here you are, chick!--how long have you been in? Why, Sallykin!
what is it, child?... Oh, Gerry--Gerry--come up here and hear this!"
For the merpussy, in spite of many stoical resolutions, had merged
a beginning of verbal communication in a burst of happy tears on her
mother's bosom.
And when Fenwick, coming upstairs three steps at a time, filled the
whole house with "Hullo, Sarah! what's the latest intelligence?" this
young lady had only just time to pull herself together into something
like dignified self-possession, in order to reply ridiculously--how
could she have been our usual Sally, else?--"We-ell! I don't see that
it's anything so very remarkable, after all. I've been encouraging
my medical adviser's attentions, if you want to know, Jeremiah."
Was it only a fancy of Sally's, as she ended off a hurried toilet, for
Mrs. Lobjoit's sake, or did her mother say to Fenwick, "Well!--_that_
is something delightful, at any rate"? As though it were in some sense
a set-off against something not delightful elsewhere.