"No need to wait for the music; they can"t hear a word we say in there.
We can"t hear a word _they_ say."
"Because they"re making such a racket." Mrs. Nightingale paused with a listening eye, trying to disprove their inaudibility. The examination confirmed Fenwick. "I like it," she continued--"a lot of young voices.
It"s much better when you don"t make out what they say. When you can"t hear a word, you fancy some sense in it." And then went on listening, and Fenwick waited, too. He couldn"t well fidget her to keep her promise; she would do it of herself in time. It might be she preferred talking under cover of the music. She certainly remained silent till it came; then she spoke.
"What was it made me say that to you about something I would tell you?
Oh, I know. You said, perhaps if you knew your past, you would not court catechism about it. And I said that, knowing mine, _I_ should not either. Wasn"t that it?" She fixed her eyes on him as though to hold him to the truth. Perhaps she wanted his verbal recognition of the possibility that she, too, like others, might have left things in the past she would like to forget on their merits--cast-off garments on the road of life. It may have been painful to her to feel his faith in herself an obstacle to what she wished at least to hint to him, even if she could not tell him outright. She did not want too much divine worship at her shrine--a ready recognition of her position of mortal frailty would be so much more sympathetic, really. A feeling perhaps traceably akin to what many of us have felt, that if our father the devil--"auld Nickie Ben"--would only tak" a thought and mend, as he aiblins might, he would be the very king of father confessors. If details had to be gone into, we should be sure of _his_ sympathy.
"Yes, that was it. And I suppose I looked incredulous." Thus Fenwick.
"You looked incredulous. I would sooner you should believe me. Would you hand me down that fire-screen off the chimney-piece? Thank you."
She was hardening herself to the task she had before her. He gave her the screen, and as he resumed his seat drew it nearer to her. Mozart"s Op. 999 had just started, and it was a little doubtful if voices could be heard unless, in Sally"s phrase, they were close to.
"I shall believe you. Does what you were going to tell me relate to----"
"Go on."
"To your husband?"
"Yes." The task had become easier suddenly. She breathed more freely about what was to come. "I wish you to know that he may be still living. I have heard nothing to the contrary. But I ought to speak of him as the man who was my husband. He is no longer that." Fenwick interposed on her hesitation.
"You have divorced him?" But she shook her head--shook a long negative. And Fenwick looked up quickly, and uttered a little sharp "Ah!" as though something had struck him. The slow head-shake said as plain as words could have said it, "I wish I could say yes." So expressive was it that Fenwick did not even speculate on the third alternative--a separation without a divorce. He saw at once he could make it easier for her if he spoke out plain, treating the bygone as a thing that _could_ be spoken of plainly.
"He divorced you?" She was very white, but kept her eyes steadily fixed on him over the fire-screen, and her voice remained perfectly firm and collected. The music went on intricately all the while. She spoke next.
"To all intents and purposes. There was a technical obstacle to a legal divorce, but he tried for one. We parted sorely against my will, for I loved him, and now it is over nineteen years since I saw him last, or heard of him or from him. But he was absolutely blameless.
Unless, indeed, it is to be counted blame to him that he could not bear what no other man could have borne. I cannot possibly give you all details. But I wish you to hear this that I have to tell you from myself. It is painful to me to tell, but it would be far worse that you should hear it from any one else. I feel sure it is safe to tell you; that you will not talk of it to others--least of all to that little chick of mine."
"You may trust me--indeed, you may--without reserve. I see you wish to tell me no more, so I will not ask it."
"And blame me as little as possible?"
"I cannot blame you."
"Before you say that, listen to as much as I can tell you of the story. I was a young girl when I went out alone to be married to him in India. We had parted in England eight months before, and he had remained unchanged--his letters all told the same tale. I quarrelled with my mother--as I now see most unreasonably--merely because she wished to marry again. Perhaps she was a little to blame not to be more patient with a headstrong, ill-regulated girl. I was both. It ended in my writing out to him in India that I should come out and marry him at once. My mother made no opposition." She remained silent for a little, and her eyes fell. Then she spoke with more effort, rather as one who answers her own thoughts. "No, I need say nothing of the time between. It was no excuse for the wrong I did _him_. I can tell you what that was...." It did not seem easy, though, when it came to actual words. Fenwick spoke into the pause.
"Why tell me now? Tell me another time."
"I prefer now. It was this way: I kept something back from him till after we were married--something I should have told him before. Had I done so, I believe to this moment we should never have parted. But my concealment threw doubt on all else I said.... I am telling more than I meant to tell." She hesitated again, and then went on. "That was my wrong to him--the concealment. But, of course, it was not the ground of the divorce proceedings." Fenwick stopped her again.
"Why tell me any more? You are being led on--are leading yourself on--to say more than you wish."
"Well, I will leave it there. Only, Fenwick, understand this: my husband was young and generous and n.o.ble-hearted. Had I trusted him, I believe all might have gone well, even though he...." She hesitated again, and then cancelled something unsaid. "The concealment was my fault--the mistrust. That was all. Nothing else was my _fault_." As she says the words in praise of her husband she finds it a pleasure to let her eyes rest on the grave, handsome, puzzled face that, after all, really is _his_. She catches herself wondering--so oddly do the undercurrents of mind course about--where he got that sharp white scar across his nose. It was not there in the old days.
She looks at him until he, too, looks up, and their eyes meet. "Well, then," she says, "I will tell you no more. Blame me as little as possible." And to this repet.i.tion of her previous words he says again, "I cannot blame you," very emphatically.
But Mrs. Nightingale felt perplexed at his evident sincerity; would rather he should have indulged in truisms, we were not all of us perfect, and so forth. When she spoke again, some bars of the music later, she took for granted that his mind, like hers, was still dwelling on his last words. She felt half sorry she had, so to speak, switched off the current of the conversation.
"If you will think over what I have told you, Fenwick, you will see that you cannot help doing so."
"How can that be?"
"Surely! My husband sought to divorce me, and was himself absolutely blameless. How can you do otherwise than blame me?"
"Partly--only partly--because I see you are keeping back something--something that would exonerate you. I cannot believe you were to blame."
"Listen, Fenwick! As I said, I cannot tell you the whole; and the Major, who is the only man alive who knows all the story, will, I know, refuse to tell you anything, even if you ask him, and that I wish you not to do."
"I should not dream of asking him."
"Well, he would refuse. I know it. But I want you to know all I can tell you. I do not want any groundless excuses made for me. I will not accept any absolution from any one on a false pretence. You see what I mean."
"I see perfectly. I am not sure, though, that you see my meaning. But never mind that. Is there anything further you would really like me to know?"
She waited a little, and then answered, keeping her eyes always fixed on Fenwick: "Yes, there is."
But at this moment the first movement of Op. 999 came to a perfect and well thought out conclusion, bearing in mind everything that had been said on six pages of ideas faultlessly interchanged by four instruments, and making due allowance for all exceptions each had courteously taken to the other. But Op. 999 was going on to the second movement directly, and only tolerated a pause for a few string-tightenings and trial-squeaks, to get in tune, and the removal of a deceased fly from a piano-candle. The remark from the back-room that we could hear beautifully in here seemed to fall flat, the second violin merely replying "All right!" pa.s.sionlessly. The instruments then asked each other if they were ready, and answered yes. Then some one counted four suggestively, for a start, and life went on again.
Mrs. Nightingale and Fenwick sat well on into the music before either spoke. He, resolved not to seem to seek or urge any information at all; all was to come spontaneously from her. She, feeling the difficulty of telling what she had to tell, and always oppressed with the recollection of what it had cost her to make her revelation to this selfsame man nineteen years ago. She wished he would give the conversation some lift, as he had done before, when he asked if what she had to tell referred to her husband. But, although he would gladly have repeated his a.s.sistance, he could see his way to nothing, this time, that seemed altogether free from risk. How if he were to blunder into ascribing to her something more culpable than her actual share in the past? She half guessed this; then, seeing that speech must come from herself in the end, took heart and faced the position resolutely. She always did.
"You know this, Fenwick, do you not, that when there is a divorce, the husband takes the children from their mother--always, when she is in the wrong; too often, when she is blameless. I have told you I was the one to blame, and I tell you now that though my husband"s application for a divorce failed, from a technical point of law, all things came about just as though he had succeeded. Don"t a.n.a.lyse it now; take it all for granted--you understand?"
"I understand. Suppose it so! And then?"
"And then this. That little monkey of mine--that little unconscious fiddling thing in there"--and as Mrs. Nightingale speaks, the sound of a caress mixes with the laugh in her voice; but the pain comes back as she goes on--"My Sallykin has been mine, all her life! My poor husband never saw her in her childhood." As she says the word _husband_ she has again a vivid _eclat_ of the consciousness that it is he--himself--sitting there beside her. And the odd thought that mixes itself into this, strange to say, is--"The pity of it! To think how little he has had of Sally in all these years!"
He, for his part, can for the moment make nothing of this part of the story. He can give his head the lion-mane shake she knows him by so well, but it brings him no light. He is reduced to mere slow repet.i.tion of her data; his hand before his eyes to keep his brain, that has to think, clear of distractions from without.
"Your husband never saw her. She has been yours all her life. Had she been your husband"s child, he would have exercised his so-called rights--his _legal_ rights--and taken her away. Are those the facts--so far?"
"Yes--go on. No--stop; I will tell you. At the beginning of this year I should have been married exactly twenty years. Sally is nineteen--you remember her birthday?"
"Nineteen in August. Now, let me think!" Just at this moment the second movement of Op. 999 came to an end, and gave an added plausibility to the blank he needed to ponder in. The viola in the next room looked round across her chair-back, and said, "I say, mother"--to a repet.i.tion of which Mrs. Nightingale replied what did her daughter say? What she said was that her mother and Mr. Fenwick were exactly like the canaries. They talked as hard as they could all through the music, and when it stopped they shut up. Wasn"t that true? To which her mother answered affirmatively, adding, "You"ll have to put a cloth over us, chick, and squash us out."
Fenwick was absorbed in thought, and did not notice this interlude. He did not speak until the music began again. Then he said abruptly:
"I see the story now. Sally"s father was not...."
"Was not my husband." There is not a trace of cowardice or hesitation in her filling out the sentence. There is pain, but that again dies away in her voice as she goes on to speak of her daughter. "I do not connect him with her now. She is--a thing of itself--a thing of herself!
She is--she is Sally. Well, you see what she is."
"I see she is a very dear little person." Then he seems to want to say something and to pause on the edge of it; then, in answer to a "yes"
of encouragement from her, continues, "I was going to say that she must be very like him--like her father."
"Very like?" she asks--"or very unlike? Which did you mean?"
"I mean very like as to looks. Because she is so unlike you."