"All right, Miss Sally. I"m serious." The doctor composes a professional face. "I know perfectly what you mean." He waits for the next symptom.
"Now, mother never did wid, and never will wid, I hope. She hasn"t got it in her bones." And then Miss Sally stopped short, and a little extra flush got time to a.s.sert itself. But a moment after she rushed the position without a single casualty. "I want to know what people say, when I"m not there, about who my father was, and why he and mother parted. And I"m sure you can tell me, and will. It"s no use asking Tishy Wilson any more about it." Observe the transparency of this young lady. She wasn"t going to conceal that she had talked of it to Tishy Wilson--not she!
Dr. Vereker, usually reserved, but candid withal, becomes, under the infection of Sally"s frankness, candid and unreserved.
"People haven"t talked any nonsense to _me_; I never let them. But my mother has repeated to me things that have been said to her.... She doesn"t like gossip, you know!" And the young man really believes what he says. Because his mother has been his religion--just consider!
"I know she doesn"t." Sally a.n.a.lyses the position, and decides on the fib in the twinkling of an eye. She is going to make a son break a promise to his mother, and she knows it. So she gives him this as a set-off. "But people _will_ talk to her, of course! Shall I get _her_ to tell _me_?"
The doctor considers, then answers:
"I think, Miss Sally--unless you particularly wish the contrary--I would almost rather not. Mother believed the story all nonsense, and was very much concerned that people should repeat such silly tattle.
She would be very unhappy if she thought it had come to your ears through her repeating it in confidence to me."
"Perhaps you would really rather not tell it, doctor." Disappointment is on Sally"s face.
"No. As you have asked me, I prefer to tell it. Only you won"t speak to her at all, will you?"
"I really won"t. You may trust me."
"Well, then, it"s really very little when all"s said and done. Somebody told her--I won"t say who it was--you don"t mind?" Sally didn"t--"told her that your father behaved very badly to your mother, and that he tried to get a divorce from her and failed, and that after that they parted by mutual consent, and he went away to New Zealand when you were quite a small baby."
"Was that quite all?"
"That was all mother told me. I"m afraid I rather cut her short by saying I thought it was most likely all unfounded gossip. Was any of it true? But I"ve no right to ask questions...."
"Oh, Dr. Vereker--no! That wouldn"t be fair. Of course, when you are asked to tell, you are allowed to ask. Every one always is. Besides, I don"t mind a bit telling you all I know. Only you"ll be surprised at my knowing so very little."
And then Sally, with a clearness that did her credit, repeated all the information she had had--all that her mother had told her--what she had extracted from Colonel Lund with difficulty--and lastly, but as the merest untrustworthy hearsay, the story that had reached her through her friend Laet.i.tia. In fact, she went the length of discrediting it altogether, as "Only Goody Wilson, when all was said and done." The fact that her mother had told her so little never seemed to strike her as strange or to call for comment. It was right that it should be so, because it was in her mother"s jurisdiction, and what she did or said was right. Cannot most of us recall things unquestioned in our youth that we have marvelled at our pa.s.sive acceptance of since? Sally"s mother"s silence about her father was ingrained in the nature of things, and she had never speculated about him so much as she had done since Professor Wilson"s remark across the table had led to Laet.i.tia"s tale about Major Roper and the tiger-shooting.
Sally"s version of her mother"s history was comforting to her hearer on one point: it contained no hint that the fugitive to Australia was not her father. Now, the fact is that the doctor, in repeating what his mother had said to him, had pa.s.sed over some speculations of hers about Sally"s paternity. No wonder the two records confirmed each other, seeing that the point suppressed by the doctor had been studiously kept from Sally by all her informants. He, for his part, felt that the bargain did not include speculations of his mother"s.
"Well, doctor?" Thus Sally, at the end of a very short pause for consideration. Vereker does not seem to need a longer one. "You mean, Miss Sally, do I think people talk spitefully of Mrs. Nightingale--I suppose I must say Mrs. Fenwick now--behind her back? Isn"t that the sort of question?" Sally, for response, looks a little short nod at the doctor, instead of words. He goes on: "Well, then, I don"t think they do. And I don"t think you need fret about it. People will talk about the story of the quarrel and separation, of course, but it doesn"t follow that anything will be said against either your father or mother.
Things of this sort happen every day, with fault on neither side."
"You think it was just a row?"
"Most likely. The only thing that seems to me to tell against your father is what you said your mother said just now--something about having forgiven him for your sake." Sally repeats her nod. "Well, even that might be accounted for by supposing that he had been very hot-tempered and unjust and violent. He was quite a young chap, you see...."
"You mean like--like supposing Jeremiah were to go into a tantrum now and flare up--he does sometimes--and then they were both to miff off?"
"Something of that sort. Very likely they would have understood each other better if they had been a little older and wiser...."
"Like us?" says Sally, with perfect unconsciousness of one aspect of the remark. "And then they might have gone on till now." Regret that they did not do so is on her face, till she suddenly sees a new contingency. "But then we shouldn"t have had Jeremiah. I shouldn"t have fancied that at all." She doesn"t really see why the doctor smiled at this, but adds a grave explanation: "I mean, if I"d tried both, I might have preferred my step." But there they were at Glenmoira Road, and must say good-bye till Brahms on Thursday.
Only, the doctor did (as a matter of history) walk down that road with Sally as far as the gate with Krakatoa Villa on it, and got home late for his mid-day Sunday dinner, and was told by his mother that he might have considered the servants. She herself was, meekly, out of it.
CHAPTER XVIII
OF A SWIMMING-BATH, "ET PRaeTEREA EXIGUUM"
This was the best of the swimming-bath season, and Sally rarely pa.s.sed a day without a turn at her favourite exercise. If her swimming-bath had been open on Sunday, she wouldn"t have gone to church yesterday, not even to meet Dr. Vereker and talk about her father to him. As it was, she very nearly came away from Krakatoa Villa next morning without waiting to see the letter from Rheims, the post being late. Why _is_ everything late on Monday?
However, she was intercepted by the postman and the foreign postmark--a dozen words on a card, but she read them several times, and put the card in her pocket to show to Laet.i.tia Wilson. She was pretty sure to be there. And so she was, and by ten o"clock had seen the card and exhausted its contents. And by five-minutes-past Sally was impending over the sparkling water of Paddington swimming-bath. She was dry so far, and her blue bathing-dress could stick out. But it was not to be for long, for her two hands went together after a preliminary stretch to make a cut.w.a.ter, and down went Sally with a mighty splash into the deep--into the moderately deep, suppose we say--at any rate into ten thousand gallons of properly filtered Thames water, which had been (no doubt) sterilised and disinfected and examined under powerful microscopes until it hadn"t got a microbe to bless itself with. When she came up at the other end, to taunt Laet.i.tia Wilson with her cowardice for not doing likewise, she was a smooth and shiny Sally, like a deep blue seal above water, but with modifications towards floating fins below.
"Now tell me about the row last night," said she, after reproaches met by Laet.i.tia with, "It"s no use, dear. I wasn"t born a herring like you."
Sally must have heard there had been some family dissension at Ladbroke Grove Road as she came into the bath with Laet.i.tia, whom she met at the towel-yielding _guichet_. However, the latter wasn"t disposed to discuss family matters in an open swimming-bath in the hearing of the custodian, to say nothing of possible concealed dressers in horse-boxes alongside.
"My dear child, _is_ this the place to talk about things in? _Do_ be a little discreet sometimes," is her reply to Sally"s request.
"There"s n.o.body here but us. Cut away, Tishy!" But Miss Wilson will _not_ talk about the row, whatever it was, with the chance of goodness-knows-who coming in any minute. For one thing, she wants to enjoy the telling, and not to be interrupted. So it is deferred to a more fitting season and place.
Goodness-knows-who (presumably) came in in the shape of Henriette Prince, who was, after Sally, the next best swimmer in the Ladies"
Club. After a short race or two, won by Sally in spite of heavy odds against her, the two girls turned their attention to the art of rescuing drowning persons. A very amusing game was played, each alternately committing suicide off the edge of the bath while the other took a header to her rescue from the elevation which we just now saw Sally on ready to plunge. The rules were clear. The suicide was to do her best to drag the rescuer under water and to avoid being dragged into the shallow end of the bath.
"I know you"ll both get drowned if you play those tricks," says Laet.i.tia nervously.
"No--we _shan"t_," vociferates Sally from the brink. "Now, are you ready, Miss Prince? Very well. Tishy, count ten!"
"Oh, I wish you wouldn"t! One--two--three...." And Laet.i.tia, all whose dignity and force of character go when she is bathing, does as she is bidden, and, at the "ten," the suicide, with a cry of despair, hurls herself madly into the water, and the rescuer flies to her succour.
What she has to do is to grasp the struggling quarry by the elbows from behind and keep out of the reach of her hands. But the tussle that ensues in the water is a short one, for the rescuer is no match for the supposed involuntary resistance of the convulsed suicide, who eludes the coming grasp of her hand with eel-like dexterity, and has her round the waist and drags her under water in a couple of seconds.
"There now!" says Sally triumphantly, as they stand spluttering and choking in the shallow water to recover breath. "Didn"t I do that beautifully?"
"Well, but _anybody_ could like that. When real people are drowning they don"t do it like that." Miss Prince is rather rueful about it.
But Sally is exultant.
"Oh, don"t they!" she says. "They"re worse when it"s real drowning--heaps worse!" Whereon both the other girls affirm in chorus that then n.o.body can be saved without the Humane Society"s drags--unless, indeed, you wait till they are insensible.
"Can"t they?" says Sally, with supreme contempt. "We were both of us drowned that time fair. But now you go and drown yourself, and see if I don"t fish you out. Fire away!"
They fire away, and the determined suicide plays her part with spirit.
But she is no match for the submarine tactics of her rescuer, who seems just as happy under water as on land, and rising under her at the end of a resolute deep plunge, makes a successful grasp at the head of her prey, who is ignominiously towed into safety, doing her best to drown herself to the last.
This little incident is so amusing and exciting that the three young ladies, who walk home together westward, can talk of nothing but rescues all the way to Notting Hill. Then Miss Henriette Prince goes on alone, and as Laet.i.tia and Sally turn off the main road towards the home of the former, the latter says: "Now tell me about the row."
It wasn"t exactly a row, it seemed; but it came to the same thing.
Mamma had made up her mind to be detestable about Julius Bradshaw--that was the long and short of it. And Sally knew, said Laet.i.tia, how detestable mamma could be when she tried. If it wasn"t for papa, Julius Bradshaw would simply be said not-at-home to, and have to leave a card and go. But she was going to go her own way and not be dictated to, maternal authority or no. Perhaps the speaker felt that Sally was mentally taking exception to universal revolt, for a flavour of excuse or justification crept in.
"Well!--I can"t help it. I _am_ twenty-four, after all. I shouldn"t say so if there was anything against him. But no man can be blamed for a cruel conjunction of circ.u.mstances, and mamma may say what she likes, but being in the office really makes all the difference. And look how he"s supporting his mother and sister, who were left badly off. _I_ call it n.o.ble."
"But you know, Tishy, you did say the negro couldn"t change his spots, and that I must admit there were such things as social distinctions--and you talked about sweeps and dustmen, you know you did. Come, Tishy, did you, or didn"t you?"
"If I said anything it was leopard, not negro. And as for sweeps and dustmen, they were merely parallel cases used as ill.u.s.trations; and I don"t think I deserve to have them raked up...." Miss Wilson is rather injured over this grievance, and Sally appeases her. "She shan"t have them raked up, she shan"t! But what was this row really about, that"s the point? It was yesterday morning, wasn"t it?"