OF A CONTRACT JOB FOR REPAIRS. HOW FENWICK HAD ANOTHER SLEEPLESS NIGHT
AFTER ALL. WHICH IS WHICH, NOW OR TWENTY ODD YEARS AGO? HOW SALLY
FOLLOWED JEREMIAH OUT. WHAT A LOT OF TALK ABOUT A LIFE-BELT!
A colourless dawn chased a grey twilight from the sea and white cliffs
of St. Sennans, and a sickly effort of the sun to rise visibly,
ending above a cloud-bank in a red half-circle that seemed a thing
quite unconnected with the struggling light, was baffled by a higher
cloud-bank still that came discouragingly from the west, and quenched
the hopes of the few early risers who were about as St. Sennans
tower chimed six. The gull that flew high above the green waste of
white-flecked waters was whiter still against the inky blue of the
cloud-curtain that had disallowed the day, and the paler vapour-drifts
that paused and changed and lost themselves and died; but the air that
came from the sea was sweet and mild for the time of year, and the
verdict of the coastguardsman at the flagstaff, who in pursuance of
his sinecure had seen the night out, was that the day was pretty sure
to be an uncertain sart, with little froshets on the water, like over
yander. He seemed to think that a certainty of uncertainty had all the
value of a forecast, and was as well satisfied with his report as he
was that he had not seen a smuggler through the telescope he closed
as he uttered it.
"Well, I should judge it might be fairly doubtful," was the reply
of the man he was speaking with. It was the man who had "Elinor"
and "Bessie" tattooed on his arm. They were not legible now, as a
couple of life-belts, or hencoops, as they are sometimes called,
hung over the arm and hid them. The boy Benjamin was with his
father, and carried a third. An explanation of them came in answer
to interrogation in the eye of the coastguard. "Just to put a touch
of new paint on 'em against the weather." The speaker made one
movement of his head say that they had come from the pier-end, and
another that he had taken them home to repaint by contract.
"What do you make out of S. S. P. C.?" the coastguard asked, scarcely
as one who had no theory himself, more as one archæologist addressing
another, teeming with deference, but ready for controversy. The other
answered with some paternal pride:
"Ah, there now! Young Benjamin, he made _that_ good, and asked for to
make it red in place of black himself! Didn't ye, ye young sculping?
St. Sennans Pier Company, that's all it comes to, followed out. But
I'm no great schoolmaster myself, and that's God's truth." Both
contemplated the judicious restoration with satisfaction; and young
Benjamin, who had turned purple under publicity, murmured that it was
black afower. He didn't seem to mean anything, but to think it due
to himself to say something, meaning or no. The coastguardsman merely
said, "Makes a tidy job!" and the father and son went on their way
to the pier.
A quarter of an hour before, this coastguard had looked after the
visitor in a blue serge suit up at Lobjoit's, who had passed him
going briskly towards the fishing-quarter. He had recognised him
confidently, for he knew Fenwick well, and saw nothing strange in his
early appearance. Now that he saw him returning, and could take full
note of him, he almost suspected he had been mistaken, so wild and
pallid was the face of this man, who, usually ready with a light word
for every chance encounter--even with perfect strangers--now passed
him by ungreeted, and to all seeming unconscious of his presence.
The coastguard was for a moment in doubt if he should not follow him,
inferring something in the nature of delirium from his aspect; but
seeing that he made straight for the pier, and knowing that young
Benjamin's father was more familiar with him than himself, he was
contented to record in thought that that was a face with a bad day
ahead, and leave it.
For Gerry, when Rosalind left him, was rash in assuming he could let
her do so safely. His well-meant pretext of sleep was not destined to
grow into a reality. He had really believed that it would, so soothing
was the touch of her hand in his own. The moment he was alone his mind
leapt, willy-nilly, to the analysis of one point or other in the past
that had just come back to him. He tried to silence thought, and to
sleep, knowing that his best hope was in rest; but each new effort
only ended in his slipping back to what he had just dismissed. And
that terrible last interview with Rosey at Umballa, when he parted
from her, as he thought, never to see her again, was the Rome to which
all the roads of recollection led. Each involuntary visit there had
its _renchérissement_ on the previous one, and in the end the image of
that hour became a brain-oppression, and wrote the word "fever" large
on the tablets of his apprehension.
He knew now it was not to be sleep; he knew it as he sat up in bed
feeling his pulse, and stimulating it with his anxiety that it should
go slow. Was there nothing he could take that would make him sleep?
Certainly he knew of nothing, anywhere, except it was to be found by
waking Rosalind, probably sound asleep by now. Out of the question!
Oh, why, why, with all the warning he had had, had he neglected to
provide himself with a mysterious thing known to him all his life as
a soothing-draught? It would have been so useful now, and Conrad would
have defined it down to the prosaic requirements of pharmacy. But it
was too late!
So long as her hand was in his, so long as her lips were near his own,
what did it matter what he recollected? The living present cancelled
the dead past. But to be there alone in the dark, with the image
of that Rosalind of former years clinging to him, and crying for
forgiveness because his mind, warped against her by a false conception
of the truth, could not forgive; to be defenceless against her last
words, coming through the long interval to him again just as he heard
them, twenty years ago, bringing back the other noises of the Indian
night--the lowing of the bullocks in the compound, the striking of
the hour on the Kutcherry gongs, the grinding of the Persian wheels
unceasingly drawing water for the irrigation of the fields--to be
exposed to this solitude and ever-growing imagination was to become
the soil for a self-sown crop of terrors--fear of fever, fear of
madness, fear at the very least of perturbation such that Sally might
come, through it, to a knowledge that had to be kept from her at all
costs.
He lighted his candle with a cautious match, and found what might be
a solace--a lucky newspaper of the morning. If only he could read it
without audible rustling, unheard by the sleepers!
The print was almost too small to be read by the light of a single
candle; but there were the usual headings, the usual ranks of capitals
that tell us so quick that there is nothing we shall care about in
the pale undecipherable paragraphs below, and that we have spent our
halfpenny in vain. There was the usual young lady who had bought, or
was trying on, a large hat, and whose top-story above, in profile,
had got so far ahead of her other stories below. There were the
consignments of locust-flights of boots, for this young lady's
friends, with heels in the instep. And all the advertisements that
some one _must_ believe, or they would not pay for insertion; but that
_we_ ignore, incredulous. Fenwick tried hard, for his own sake, to
make the whole thing mean something, but his dazed brain and feverish
eyes refused to respond to his efforts, and he let the paper go, and
gave himself up, a prey to his own memories. After all, the daylight
was sure to come in the end to save him.
He tried hard to reason with himself, to force himself to feel the
reality of his own belief that all was well; for he had no doubt of
it, as an abstract truth. It was the power of getting comfort from it
that was wanting. If only his heart could stop thumping and his brain
burning, _he_ would have done the rejoicing that Rosalind was there,
knowing all he knew, and loving him; that Sally was there, loving him
too, but knowing nothing, and needing to know nothing; that one of
his first greetings in the day to come would be from Conrad Vereker,
probably too much intoxicated with his own happiness to give much
attention to what he was beginning to acknowledge was some kind of
physical or nervous fever. If he could only sleep!
But he could not--could hardly close his eyes. He said to himself
again and again that nothing was the matter; that, if anything, he and
Rosey were better off than they had been yet; that they had passed
through a land of peril to a great deliverance. But he did not believe
his own assurance, and the throng of memories that his feverish
condition would not let sleep, or that were its cause, came on him
more and more thickly through all those hours of the dreary night.
They came, too, with a growing force, each one as it returned having
more the character of a waking dream, vivid almost to the point of
reality. But all ended alike. He always found himself breaking away
from Rosey in the veranda in the bungalow at Umballa, and could hear
again her cry of despair: "Oh, Gerry, Gerry! It is not as you think.
Oh, stay, stay! Give me a chance to show you how I love you!" The
tramp of his horse as he rode away from his home and that white figure
left prostrate in the veranda above him, became a real sound that beat
painfully upon his ears; and the voice of the friend he sought--an old
soldier in camp at Sabatoo, where he rode almost without a halt--as he
roused him in the dawn of the next day, came to him again almost as
though spoken in the room beside him: "Left _your_ wife, Palliser!
My God, sir! what's to come next?" And then the wicked hardness of
his own heart, and his stubborn refusal to listen to the angry
remonstrance that followed. "I tell you this, young man! the man's
a fool--a damned fool--that runs from the woman who loves him!" And the
asseveration that the speaker would say the same if she was anything
short of the worst character in camp, only in slightly different
words. His remorse for his own obduracy, and the cruelty of his
behaviour then; his shame when he thought of his application, months
later, to the Court at Lahore--for "relief" from Rosey: just imagine
it!--these were bad enough to think back on, even from the point of
view of his previous knowledge; but how infinitely worse when he
thought what she had been to him, how she had acted towards him two
years ago!
Even the painful adventure he could now look back to clearly, and with
a rather amused interest, as to an event with no laceration in it--his
wandering in an Australian forest, for how many days he could not
say, and his final resurrection at a town a hundred miles from his
starting-point--even this led him back in the end to the old story.
The whole passed through his mind like the scenes of a drama--his
confidence, having lost the track, that his horse, left to himself,
would find it again; his terror when, coming back from a stone's-throw
off, he found the tree deserted he had tied his horse to; his foolish
starting off to catch him, when the only sane course was to wait for
his return. But the second act of the drama took his mind again to
Rosey in her loneliness; for when he was found by a search-party at
the foot of a telegraph-post he had used his last match to burn down,
he was inarticulate, and seemed to give his name as Harrisson. As he
slowly recovered sense and speech at the telegraph-station--for the
interruption of the current had been his cry for help to its
occupants--he heard himself addressed by the name and saw the mistake;
but he did not correct it, being, indeed, not sorry for an incognito,
sick of his life, as it were, and glad to change his identity. But how
if Rosey wrote to him then--think of it!--under his old name? Fancy
_her_ when the time came for a possible reply, with who could say what
of hope in it! Fancy her many decisions that it was still too soon for
an answer, followed by as many others as time went on that it was not
too late! If he had received such a letter from her then, might it
not all have been different? May she not have written one? He had
talked so little with her; nothing forbade the idea. And so his mind
travelled round with monotonous return, always to that old time, and
those old scenes, and all the pain of them.
It was curious--he noted the oddity himself--that his whole life in
America took the drama character, and _he_ became the spectator. He
never caught himself playing his own part over again, with all its
phases of passion or excitement, as in the earlier story. In that,
his identification of himself with his past grew and grew, and as his
fever increased through the small hours of the morning, got more and
more the force of a waking dream. And when the dawn came at last, and
the gleam from the languid sun followed it, the man who got up and
looked out towards its great blue bank of cloud was only half sure he
was not another former self, looking out towards another sea, twenty
years ago, to see if he could identify the ship that was to take him
from Kurachi to Port Jackson.
What did it all mean? Yes, sure enough he had taken his passage, and
to-morrow leagues of sea would lie between him and Rosey. That would
end it for ever. No reconciliations, no repentance then!... Was
there not still time? a chance if he chose to catch at it? Puny
irresolution! Shake it all off, and have done with it.... He shuddered
as he thought through his old part again, and then came back with
a jerk to the strange knowledge that he was opening a closed book,
a tragedy written twenty years ago; and that there, within a few feet
of where he gazed with a jaded sight out to the empty sea, was Rosey
herself, alive and breathing; and in an hour or two he was to see
her, feel the touch of her hand and lips, be his happy self again of
three days only gone by, if he could but face masterfully the strange
knowledge this mysterious revival of a former self had brought upon
him. And there was Sally....
But at the name, as it came to his mind, came also the shock of
another mystery--who and what was Sally?
Let him lie down again and try to think quietly. Was not this part
of his delirium? Could he have got the story right? Surely! Was it not
of her that Rosey had said, only a few hours since, "_His_ baby was
Sally--_my_ Sallykin"? And was he not then able to reply collectedly
and with ease, "She is _my_ daughter now," and to feel the power of
his choice that it should be so? But the strength of Rosalind was
beside him then, and now he was here alone. He beat off--fought
against--that hideous fatherhood of Sally's that he could not bear,
that image that he felt might drive him mad. Oh, villain, villain!
Far, far worse to him was--perforce must be--this miscreant's crime
than that mere murder that shook Hamlet's reason to its foundation. He
dared not think of it lest he should cry out aloud. But, patience!
Only two or three hours more, and Rosalind would be there to help him
to bear it.... What a coward's thought!--to help him to bear what she
herself had borne in silence for twenty years!
Would he not be better up, now that it was light? Of course! But how
be sure he should not wake them?
Well, the word was caution; he must be very quiet about it, that was
all. He slipped on his clothes without washing--it always makes a
noise--ran a comb through the tangled hair his pillow-tossings of
four hours had produced, and got away stealthily without accident,
or meeting any early riser, speech with whom would have betrayed him.
He had little trouble with the door-fastenings, that often perplex
us in a like case, blocking egress with mysterious mechanisms.
Housebreakers were rare in St. Sennans. He had more fear his footsteps
would be audible; but it seemed not, and he walked away towards the
cliff pathway unnoticed.
* * * * *
The merpussy waked to a consciousness of happiness undefined, a
sense of welcome to the day. What girl would not have done so, under
her circumstances? For Sally had no doubt in her mind of her own
satisfaction at the outcome of yesterday. She might have treated the
feelings and experience of other lovers--regular ones, prone to
nonsense--with contempt, but she never questioned the advantages of
her own position as compared with theirs. Her feast was better cooked,
altogether more substantial and real than the kickshaws and sweetmeats
she chose to ascribe to the _menus_ of Arcadia. Naturally; because
see what a much better sort Conrad was! It was going to be quite a
different kind of thing this time. And as for the old Goody, she was
not half bad. Nothing was half bad in Sally's eyes that morning, and
almost everything was wholly good.
She had slept so sound she was sure it was late. But it was only
half-past six, and the early greetings of Mrs. Lobjoit below were
not to the baker, nor even to the milk, but to next door, which was
dealing with the question of its mat and clean step through the agency
of its proprietress, whose voice chimed cheerfully with Mrs. Lobjoit's
over the surprise of the latter finding _her_ street door had been
opened, and that some one had already passed out. For Mrs. Lobjoit had
made _that_ sure, the night before, that she had "shot to" the bottom
bolt that _would_ shet, _because_ she had ignored as useless the top
bolt that _wouldn't_ shet--the correlation of events so often appealed
to by witnesses under examination; which Law, stupidly enough, prides
itself on snubbing them for. Further, Mrs. Lobjoit would have flown
to the solution that it was her gentleman gone out, only that it was
quite into the night before they stopped from talking.
Sally heard this because she had pulled down the top sash of her
window to breathe the sea air, regardless of the fact she well knew,
and described thus--that the sash-weight stuck and clunkled and
wouldn't come down. She decided against running the risk of disturbing
Jeremiah on the strength of Mrs. Lobjoit's impressions; although, if
he had gone out, she certainly would follow him. But she slipped on
a dressing-gown and went half-way downstairs, to see if his hat was
still on its peg. It was gone. So she went back to her room, and
dressed furtively. Because if they _had_ been talking late into the
night, it would be just as well for her mother to have her sleep out.
But she had hardly finished washing when she became aware of a
footstep outside--Jeremiah's certainly. She went to the window, saw
him approach the house, look up at it, but as though he did not
recognise that she was there, and then turn away towards the flagstaff
and the old town. It was odd and unlike him, and Sally was alarmed.
Besides, how white he looked!
Bear this in mind, that Sally knew absolutely nothing of the cataclysm
of revived memory in Jeremiah. Remember that the incident of the
galvanic battery at the pier-end is only four days old. Do not be
misled by the close details we have given of these four days.
Sally's alarm at the haggard look of her stepfather's face took away
her breath; at least, she did not find her voice soon enough for him
to hear her call out--she did not like to shout loud because of her
mother--as he turned away. Or it seemed so, for that was the only way
she could account for his walking away so abruptly. In her hurry to
get dressed and follow him, she caught up an undergarment that lay on
the floor, without seeing that her own foot was on the tape that was
to secure it, and a rip and partial disruption was the consequence.
Never mind, it would hold up till she came in. Or, if it didn't, where
was that safety-pin that was on her dressing-table yesterday? Not
there? Again, never mind! She would do, somehow. She hurried on her
clothes, and her hat and waterproof, and left the house, going quickly
on what she supposed to be the track of Jeremiah, who was, by now, no
longer visible.
But she caught sight of him returning, while she was still two or
three minutes' walk short of the flagstaff he was approaching from the
other side. He would stop to talk with the coastguard. He always did.
Surely he would, this time. But no--he didn't.
He may have spoken, but he did not stop. So Sally noted as she
hesitated an instant, seeing him turn off at an angle and go towards
the pier. There was a shorter cut to the pier, without going to the
flagstaff. Sally turned herself, and took it. She would catch him as
he came back from the pier-end, if he was going to walk along it.
She saw him as she descended the slope that, part pathway and part
steps, led down towards the sea. He walked straight towards the pier,
passing as he went a man and boy, who were carrying what she took,
at that distance, for well-made coils of rope; and then, arriving at
the pier-turnstile just as they did, pass them, and, leaving them
apparently in conversation with the gatekeeper, walk steadily on
towards the pier-end.
* * * * *
"I shouldn't call the paint properly hardened on myself. Nor won't be
yet-a-piece, if you ask my opinion." It was young Benjamin's father
said these words to the veteran in charge of the pier-turnstile; who,
as an early bird, was counting his tickets, so to speak, before they
were hatched--his actual professional cabinet-séance not having begun.
For the pier wasn't open yet, and his permission to Fenwick to pass
the open side-gate was an indulgence to an acquaintance.
His reply to the speaker was that he must bide awhile in patience,
then. Paint was good to dry while the grass grew, and there was plenty
else to fret about for them as wanted it. He seemed only to mention
this from consideration of the wants of others. He either had plenty
to fret about, or was happier without anything. He ended with, "What
have you to say to that, Jake Tracy?" showing that the father of
Benjamin was Jacob, following precedent.
But Jacob preferred not to be led away into ethics. "I should stand
'em by, in the shadow, for the matter of a day or two," said he.
"In yander." And the life-belts being safely disposed of, he added:
"I thought to carry back number fower from the pier-end, and make a
finish of the job. But looking to the condition of this paint, maybe
better leave her for service. She'll do as well next week." But the
moralist inclined to make a finish of the job. Who was going overboard
afore the end of next week? And supposing they did, the resources of
civilisation wouldn't be exhausted, for we could throw 'em a clean
one paint or no.
"Send your lad to fetch her along, Jake. I'll make myself answerable."
And young Benjamin, confirmed by a nod from his father, departed for
the mysteriously feminine hencoop.
Just as the boy turned to go, Fenwick came up, and, paying no
attention to greetings from the two men, passed through the side-gate
and walked rather briskly away along the pier. Each of the men looked
at the other, as though asking a question. But neither answered, and
then both said, "Queer, too!" A nascent discussion of whether one or
other should not follow him--for the look of his face had gone home
to both, as he was, of course, well known to them--was cut short by
Jacob Tracy saying, "Here's his daughter coming to see for him." And,
just after, Sally had passed them, leaving them pleasantly stirred
by the bright smile and eye-flash that seemed this morning brighter
than ever. The boy shouted something from the pier-end, to which his
father's shouted reply was that he must bide a minute and he would
come to see himself.
"The yoong beggar's got the use of his eyes," he said, not hurrying.
"I'll go bail he'll find her. She's there all right, I suppose?" He
was still referring to the hencoop, not to any lady.
"Ah, _she's_ there, quite safe. You'd best step along and find her.
Boys are boys, when all's told."
But Jacob wanted Benjamin to distinguish himself, and still didn't
hurry. The strange appearance of Mrs. Lobjoit's gentleman supplied
materials for chat. Presently his son shouted again, and he answered,
"Not there, is she? I'll come." He walked away towards the pier-end
just as Sally, who had fancied Jeremiah would be somewhere
alongside of the pagoda-building that nearly covered it, came
back from her voyage of exploration, and looked down the steps to
the under-platform, that young Benjamin had just come up shouting.
What little things life and death turn on sometimes!