"Mother, you _are_ going to marry Mr. Fenwick!" No change of type could do justice to the emphasis with which Sally goes straight to the point.
Italics throughout would be weak. Her mother smiles as she fondles her daughter"s excited face.
"I am, darling. So you may kiss him yourself when he comes to-morrow evening."
And Tishy"s pa.s.sion for the shop-boy had to stand over. But, as the Major had said, the mother and daughter talked till three in the morning--well, past two, anyhow!
CHAPTER XV
CONCERNING DR. VEREKER AND HIS MAMMA, WHO HAD KNOWN IT ALL ALONG. HOW SALLY LUNCHED WITH THE SALES WILSONS, AND GOT SPECULATING ABOUT HER FATHER. HOW TISHY LET OUT ABOUT MAJOR ROPER. HOW THERE WAS A WEDDING
The segment of a circle of Society that did duty for a sphere, in the case of Mrs. Nightingale and Sally, was collectively surprised when it heard of the intended marriage of the former, having settled in its own mind that the latter was the magnet to Mr. Fenwick"s lodestone. But each several individual that composed it had, it seemed, foreseen exactly what was going to happen, and had predicted it in language that could only have been wilfully mistaken by persons interested in proving that the speaker was not a prophet. Exceptional insight had been epidemic. The only wonder was (to the individual speaker) that Mrs.
Nightingale had remained single so long, and the only other wonder was that none of the other cases had seen it. They had evidently only taken seership mildly.
Dr. Vereker had a good opportunity of studying omniscience of a malignant type in the very well marked case of his own mother. You may remember Sally"s denunciation of her as an old hen that came wobbling down on you. When her son (in the simplicity of his heart) announced to her as a great and curious piece of news that Mr. Fenwick was going to marry Mrs. Nightingale, she did not even look up from her knitting to reply: "What did I say to you, Conny?" For his name was Conrad, as Sally had reported. His discretion was not on the alert on this occasion, for he incautiously asked, "When?"
The good lady laid down her knitting on her knees, and folded her hands, interlacing her fingers, which were fat, as far as they would go, and leaning back with closed eyes--eyes intended to remain closed during antic.i.p.ated patience.
"Fancy asking me that!" said she.
"Well, but--hang it!--_when?_"
"Do not use profane language, Conrad, in your mother"s presence. Can you really ask me, "When?" Try and recollect!"
Conrad appeared to consider; but as he had to contend with the problem of finding out when a thing had been said, the only clue to the nature of which was the date of its utterance, it was no great wonder that his cogitations ended in a shake of the head subdivided into its elements--shakes taken a brace at a time--and an expression of face as of one who whistles _sotto voce_. His questioner must have been looking between her eyelids, which wasn"t playing fair; for she indicted him on the spot, and pushed him, as it were, into the dock.
"_That_, I suppose, means that I speak untruth. Very well, my dear!"
Resignation set in.
"Come, mother, I say, now! Be a reasonable maternal parent. When did I say anybody spoke untruth?"
"My dear, you _said_ nothing. But if your father could have heard what you did _not_ say, you know perfectly well, my dear Conrad, what he would have _thought_. Was he likely to sit by and hear me insulted?
Did he ever do so?"
The doctor was writing letters at a desk-table that he used for miscellaneous correspondence as much as possible, in order that this very same mother of his should be left alone as little as possible. He ended a responsible letter, and directed it, and made it a thing of the past with a stamp on it in a little basket on the hall-table outside.
Then he came back to his mother, and bestowed on her the kiss, or peck, of peace. It always made him uncomfortable when he had to go away to the hospital under the shadow of dissension at home.
"Well, mother dear, what was it you really did say about the Fenwick engagement?"
"It would be more proper, my dear, to speak of it as the Nightingale engagement. You will say it is a matter of form, but...."
"All right. The Nightingale engagement...."
"My dear! So abrupt! To your mother!"
"Well, dear mammy, what was it, really now?" This cajolery took effect, and the Widow Vereker"s soul softened. She resumed her knitting.
"If you don"t remember what it was, dear, it doesn"t matter." The doctor saw that nothing short of complete concession would procure a tranquil sea.
"Of course, I remember perfectly well," he said mendaciously. He knew that, left alone, his mother would supply a summary of what he remembered. She did so, with a bound.
"I said, my dear (and I am glad you recollect it, Conrad)--I said from the very first, when Mr. Fenwick was living at Krakatoa--(it was all _quite_ right, my dear. Do you think I don"t know? A grown-up daughter and two servants!)--I said that any one with eyes in their head could see. And has it turned out exactly as I expected, or has it not?"
"Exactly."
"Very well, dear. I"m glad you say so. Now, don"t contradict me another time."
The close observer of the actual (whom we lay claim to be) has occasionally to report the apparently impossible. We do not suppose we shall be believed when we say that Mrs. Vereker added: "Besides, there was the Major."
Professor Sales Wilson, Laet.i.tia"s father, was _the_ Professor Sales Wilson. Only, if you had seen that eminent scholar when he got outside his library by accident and wanted to get back, you wouldn"t have thought he was _the_ anybody, and would probably have likened him to a disestablished hermit-crab--in respect, that is, of such a one"s desire to disappear into his sh.e.l.l, and that respect only. For no hermit-crab would ever cause an acquaintance to wonder why he should shave at all if he could do it no better than that; nor what he was talking to himself about so frequently; nor whether he polished his spectacles so long at a time to give the deep groove they were making across his nose a chance of filling up; nor whether he would be less bald if he rubbed his head less; nor what he had really got inside that overpowering phrenology of brow, and behind that aspect of chronic concentration.
But about the retiring habits of both there could be no doubt.
He lived in his library, attired by nature in a dressing-gown and skull-cap. But from its secret recesses he issued manifestoes which shook cla.s.sical Europe. He corrected versions, excerpted pa.s.sages, disallowed authenticities, ascribed works to their true authors, and exposed the pretensions of sciolists with a vigour which ought to have finally dispersed that unhallowed cla.s.s. Only it didn"t, because they are a cla.s.s incapable of shame, and will go on madly, even when they have been proved to be _mere_, beyond the shadow of a doubt. Perhaps they had secret information about the domestic circ.u.mstances of their destroyer, and didn"t care. If Yamen had had private means of knowing that Vishnu was on uncomfortable terms with his wife, a corrected version of the whole Hindu mythology might have been necessary.
However, so far as can be conjectured, the image the world formed of the Professor was a sort of aggregate of Dr. Johnson, Bentley, Grotius, Mezzofanti, and a slight touch of, say Conington, to bring him well up to date. But so much of the first that whenever the _raconteur_ repeated one of the Professor"s moderately bon-mots, he always put "sir" in--as, for instance, "A punster, sir, is a man who demoralises two meanings in one word;" or, "Should you call that fast life, sir?
_I_ should call it slow death." The _raconteur_ was rather given to making use of him, and a.s.signing to him _mots_ which were not at all _bons_, because they only had the "sir" in them, and were otherwise meaningless. He was distressed, not without reason, when he heard that he had said to Max Muller, or some one of that calibre, "There is no such thing, sir, as the English language!" But he very seldom heard anything about himself, or any one else; as he pa.s.sed his life, as aforesaid, in his library, buried in the Phoenician Dictionary he hoped he might live to bring out. He had begun the fourth letter; but _we_ don"t know the Phoenician alphabet. Perhaps it has only four letters in it.
He came out of the library for meals, of course. But he took very little notice of anything that pa.s.sed at the family board, and read nearly the whole time, occasionally saying something forcible to himself. Indeed, he never conversed with his family unless deprived of his book. This occurred on the occasion when Sally carried the momentous news of her mother"s intended marriage to Ladbroke Grove Road, the second day after they had talked till two in the morning.
Matrimony was canva.s.sed and discussed in all its aspects, and the particular case riddled and sifted, and elucidated from every point of the compa.s.s, without the Professor being the least aware that anything unusual was afoot, until Grotefend got in the mayonnaise sauce.
"Take your master"s book away, Jenkins," said the lady of the house.
And Jenkins, the tender-hearted parlourmaid, allowed master to keep hold just to the end of the sentence. "Take it away, as I told you, and wipe that sauce off!"
Sally did so want to box that woman"s ears--at least, she said so after. She was a great h.o.r.n.y, overbearing woman, was Mrs. Sales Wilson, and Sally was frightened lest Laet.i.tia should grow like her. Only, Tishy"s teeth never _could_ get as big as that! Nor wiggle.
The Professor, being deprived of his volume, seemed to awake compulsorily, and come out into a cold, unlearned world. But he smiled amiably, and rubbed his hands round themselves rhythmically.
"Well, then!" said he. "Say it all again."
"Say what, papa?"
"All the chatter, of course."
"What for, papa?"
"For me to hear. Off we go! _Who"s_ going to be married?"
"You see, he was listening all the time. _I_ shouldn"t tell him, if I were you. Your father is really unendurable. And he gets worse."
Thus the lady of the house.
"What does your mother say?" There is a shade of asperity in the Professor"s voice.
"Says you were listening all the time, papa. So you were!" This is from Laet.i.tia"s younger sister, Theeny. Her name was Athene. Her brother Egerton called her "Gallows Athene"--an offensive perversion of the name of the lady she was called after. Her mother had carefully taught all her children contempt for their father from earliest childhood. But toleration of his weaknesses--etymology, and so on--had taken root in spite of her motherly care, and the Professor was on very good terms with his offspring. He negatived Theeny amiably.