"No, dear Gerry, seriously. If I were to write out _no_ to you in India--a great big final NO--then what do you think you would do?"
"I know what I _think_ I should do. I should throw myself into the Hooghly or the Ganges."
"You silly boy! You would swim about, whether you liked or no. And then Jemadars, or Shastras, or Sudras, or something would come and pull you out. And then how ridiculous you would look!"
"No, Rosey, because I can"t swim. Isn"t it funny?"
Then she recollected _his_ friend"s voice striking in with: "What"s that? Gerry Palliser swim! Of course he can"t. He can wrestle, or run, or ride, or jump; and he"s the best man I know with the gloves on. But swim he _can"t_! That"s flat!" Also how Gerry had then told eagerly how he was nearly drowned once, and Arthur fished him up from the bottom of Abingdon Lock. The latter went on:
"It was after that we tattooed each other, his name on my arm, my name on his, so as not to quarrel. You know, I suppose, that men who tattoo each other"s arms can"t quarrel if they try?" Arthur showed "A. Palliser," tattooed blue on his arm. Both young men were very grave and earnest about the safeguard. And then she remembered a question she asked, and how both replied with perfect gravity: "Of course, sure to!"
The question had been:--Was it invariable that all men quarrelled if one saved the other from drowning?
She sits upstairs alone by the fire in her bedroom, and dreams again through all the past, except the nightmare of her life--_that_ she always shudders away from. Sally will come up presently, and then she will feel ease again. Now, it is a struggle against fever.
She can hear plainly enough--for the house is but a London suburban villa--the strains from the drawing-room of what is possibly the most hackneyed violin music in the world--the Tartini (so-called) Devil Sonata--every phrase, every run, every chord an enthralling mystery still, an utterance none can explain, an inexhaustible thing no age can wither, and no custom stale. It is so soothing to her that it matters little if it makes them late. But that young man will destroy his nerves to a certainty outright.
Then comes the chaos of dispersal--the broken fragments of the intelligible a watchful ear may pick out. Dr. Vereker won"t have a cab; he will leave the "cello till next time, and walk. Mr. Bradshaw wants to get to Bayswater. Of course, that"s all in our way--we being Miss Wilson and the cousin, the nonent.i.ty. We can give Mr. Bradshaw a lift as far as he goes, and then he can take the growler on. Then more good-nights are wished than the nature of things will admit of before to-morrow, Fenwick and Vereker light something to smoke, with a preposterous solicitude to use only one tandsticker between them, and walk away umbrella-less. From which we see that "it" is holding up.
Then comes silence, and a consciousness of a policeman musing, and suspecting doors have been left stood open.
And it was then Sally went upstairs and indited her friend for sitting on that sofa after calling him a shop-boy. And she didn"t forget it, either, for after she and her mother were in bed, and presumably better, she called out to her.
"I say, mammy!"
"What, dear?"
"Isn"t that St. John"s Church?"
"Isn"t which St. John"s Church?"
"Where Tishy goes?"
"Yes, Ladbroke Grove Road. Why?"
"Because now Mr. Bradshaw will go there--public worship!"
"Will he, dear? Suppose we go to sleep." But she really meant "you,"
not "we"; for it was a long time before she went to sleep herself. She had plenty to think of, and wanted to be quiet, conscious of Sally in the neighbourhood.
We hope our reader was not misled, as we ourselves were, when Mrs.
Nightingale first saw the name on Fenwick"s arm, into supposing that she accepted it as his real name. She knew better. But then, how was she to tell him his name was Palliser? Think it over.
CHAPTER XIII
OF A SLEEPLESS NIGHT MRS. NIGHTINGALE HAD, AND HOW SALLY WOKE UP AND TALKED
Was it possible, thought Rosalind in the sleepless night that followed, that the recurrence of the tennis-garden in Fenwick"s mind might grow and grow, and be a nucleus round which the whole memory of his life might re-form? Even so she had seen, at a chemical lecture, a supersaturated solution, translucent and spotless, suddenly fill with innumerable ramifications from one tiny crystal dropped into it. Might not this shred of memory chance to be a crystal of the right salt in the solvent of his mind, and set going a swift arborescence to penetrate the whole? Might not one branch of that tree be a terrible branch--one whose leaves and fruit were poisoned and whose stem was clothed with thorns? A hideous metaphor of the moment--call it the worst in her life--when her young husband, driven mad with the knowledge that had just forced its way into his reluctant mind, had almost struck her away from him, and with angry words, of which the least was traitress, had broken through the effort of her hands to hold him, and left her speechless in her despair.
It was such a nightmare idea, this antic.i.p.ation that next time she met Gerry"s eyes she might see again the anger that was in them on that blackest of her few married days, might see him again vanish from her, this time never to return. And it spread an ever growing horror, greater and greater in the silence and the darkness of the night, till it filled all s.p.a.ce and became a power that thrilled through every nerve, and denied the right of any other thing in the infinite void to be known or thought of. Which of us has not been left, with no protection but our own weak resolutions, to the mercy of a dominant idea in the still hours when others were near us sleeping whom we might not wake to say one word to save us?
What would his face be like--how would his voice sound--when she saw him next? Or would some short and cruel letter come to say he had remembered all, and now--for all the grat.i.tude he owed her--he could not bear to look upon her face again, hers who had done him such a wrong! If so, what should she--what could she do?
There was only one counter-thought to this that brought with it a momentary balm. She would send Sally to him to beg, beseech, implore him not to repeat his headstrong error of the old years, to swear to him that if only he could know all he would forgive--nay, more, that if he could know quite all--the very whole of the sad story--not only would he forgive, but rather seek forgiveness for himself for the too harsh judgment he so rashly formed.
What should she say to Sally? how should she instruct her to plead for her? Never mind that now. All she wanted in her lonely, nervous delirium was the ease the thought gave her, the mere thought of the force of Sally"s fixed, immovable belief--_that_ she was certain of--that whatsoever her mother had done was right. Never mind the exact amount of revelation she would have to make to Sally. She might surely indulge the idea, just to get at peace somehow, till--as pray Heaven it might turn out--she should know that Gerry"s mind was still unconscious of its past. The chances were, so she thought mechanically to herself, that all her alarms were groundless.
And at the first--strange as it is to tell--Sally"s ident.i.ty was only that of the daughter she had now, that filled her life, and gave her the heart to live. She was the Sally s.p.a.ce was full of for her. _What_ she was, and _why_ she was, merged, as it usually did, in the broad fact of her existence. But there was always the chance that this _what_ and _why_--two bewildering imps--should flaunt their unsolved conundrum through her mother"s baffled mind. There they were, sure enough in the end, enjoying her inability to answer, dragging all she prayed daily to be better able to forget out into the light of the memory they had kindled. There they were, chuckling over her misery, and hiding--so Rosalind feared--a worse question than any, keeping it back for a final stroke to bring her mental fever to its height--how could Sally be the daughter of a devil and her soul be free from the taint of his d.a.m.nation?
If Rosalind had only been well read in the mediaeval cla.s.sics, and had known that story of Merlin"s birth--the Nativity that was to rewrite the Galilean story in letters of h.e.l.l, and give mankind for ever to be the thrall of the fallen angel his father! And now the babe at its birth was s.n.a.t.c.hed away to the waters of baptism, and poor Satan--alas!--obliged to cast about for some new plan of campaign; which, to say truth, he must have found, and practised with some success. But Rosalind had never read this story. Had she done so she might have felt, as we do, that the tears of an absolutely blameless mother might serve to cleanse the inherited sin from a babe unborn as surely as the sacramental fount itself.
And it may be that some such thought had woven itself into the story Fenwick"s imagination framed for Rosalind the evening before--that time that she said of Sally, "She is not a devil!" The exact truth, the ever-present record that was in her mind as she said this, must remain unknown to us.
But to return to her as she is now, racked by a twofold mental fever, an apprehension of a return of Fenwick"s memory, and a stimulated recrudescence of her own; with the pain of all the scars burnt in twenty years ago revived now by her talk with him of a few hours since.
She could bear it no longer, there alone in the darkness of the night.
She _must_ get at Sally, if only to look at her. Why, that child never could be got to wake unless shaken when she was wanted. Ten to one she wouldn"t this time. And it would make all the difference just to see her there, alive and leagues away in dreamland. If her sleep lasted through the crackle of a match to light her candle, heard through the open door between their rooms, the light of the candle itself wouldn"t wake her. Rosalind remembered as she lit the candle and found her dressing-gown--for the night air struck cold--how once, when a ten-year-old, Sally had locked herself in, and no noise or knocking would rouse her; how she herself, alarmed for the child, had thereon summoned help, and the door was broken open, but only to be greeted by the sleeper, after explanation, with, "Why didn"t you knock?"
She was right in her forecast, and perhaps it was as well the girl did not wake. She would only have had a needless fright, to see her mother, haggard with self-torment, by her bedside at that hour. So Rosalind got her full look at the rich coils of black hair that framed up the unconscious face, that for all its unconsciousness had on it the contentment of an amused dreamer, at the white ivory skin it set off so well, at the one visible ear that heard nothing, or if it did, translated it into dream, and the faint rhythmic movement that vouched for soundless breath. She looked as long as she dared, then moved away.
But she had barely got her head back on her pillow when "Was that you, mother?" came from the next room. Her mother always said of Sally that nothing was certain but the _imprevu_, and ascribed to her a monstrous perversity. It was this that caused her to sleep profoundly through that most awakening of incidents, a person determined not to disturb you, and then to wake up short into that person"s self-congratulations on success.
"Of course it was, darling. Who else could it have been?"
Sally"s reply, "I thought it was," seems less reasonable--mere conversation making--and a sequel as of one reviewing new and more comfortable positions in bed follows naturally. A decision on the point does not prohibit conversation, rather facilitates it.
"What did you come for, mammy?"
"Eau-de-Cologne." The voice has a fell intention of instant sleep in it which Sally takes no notice of.
"Have you got it?"
"Got it? Yes. Go to sleep, chatterbox."
It was true about the eau-de-Cologne, for Rosalind, with a self-acting instinct that explanation might be called for, had picked up the bottle on her return journey. You see, she was always practising wicked deceits and falsehoods, all to save that little chit being made miserable on her account. But the chit wasn"t going to sleep again. She was going to enjoy her new att.i.tude awake. Who woke her up? Answer that.
"I say, mother!"
"What, kitten? Go to sleep."
"All right--in a minute. Do you remember Mr. Fenwick"s bottle of eau-de-Cologne?"
"Of course I do. Go to sleep."
"Just going. But wasn"t it funny?"
"What funny?--Oh, the eau-de-Cologne!"