"What do you think, mother?"
"What do _you_ think, kitten?" But the truth is, both wanted time to know what to think. And they hadn"t got much forwarder with the solution of the problem when a light was thrown upon it by the sudden apparition of Laet.i.tia herself, accompanied by the young gentleman whom Sally did not scruple to speak of--but not in his presence--as her counter-jumper. She did this, she said, to "pay Tishy out" for what she had said about him before she made his acquaintance.
The couple were in a mixed state of exaltation and confusion--Tishy half laughing, a third crying, and a sixth keeping up her dignity.
Both were saying might they come in, and doing it without waiting for an answer.
Rosalind"s remark was one of those nonsequences often met with in real life: "There"s enough lunch--or we can send out." Sally"s was: "But are you the Julius Bradshaws, or are you not? That"s what _I_ want to know." Sally won"t be trifled with, not she!
"Well, Sally dear, no,--we"re not--not just yet." Tishy hesitates.
Julius shows firmness.
"But we want to be at two o"clock this afternoon, if you"ll come...."
"Both of us?"
"Why--of course, both of you."
"Then Mrs. Lobjoit will have to be in time with lunch." It does not really matter who were the speakers, nor what the share of each was in the following aggregate:
"How did you manage to get it arranged?" "Why _now_? Have you quarrelled with your mother?" "How long can you be away? I hate a stingy honeymoon!" "You"ve got no things." "Do you think they"ll know at home where you are?" "Where are you going afterwards?" "What do you think your father will say?" "What I want to know is, what put it into your head _now_, more than any other time?"
Responses to the whole of which, much at random, are incorporated in what follows: "Julius isn"t wanted for three weeks." "I"m sure the Professor"s on our side, really." "I left a letter to tell them, anyhow." "Calais. We shan"t be sick, in weather like this. We"ll cross by the night boat." "I"ve got a new dress to be married in, and a new umbrella--oh yes, and other things." "I"ll tell you the whole story, Sally dear, as soon as I"ve had time to turn round." "No--not quarrelled--at least, no more than usual." "Special licence, of course."
What time Vereker, who had been to the post-office, which sold all sorts of things, to inquire if they had a packet of chemical oatmeal (the only thing his mother could digest this morning), and was coming back baffled, called in on his way to Mrs. Iggulden"s. Not to see Sally, but only to take counsel with the family about chemical oatmeal. By a curious coincident, the moment he heard of Miss Sales Wilson"s arrival, he used Sally"s expression, and said that there was "a go!" Perhaps there was, and that accounted for it.
"Here"s Dr. Conrad--he"ll have to come too." Thus Sally explicitly.
To which he replied, "All right. Where?" Sally replied with gravity: "To see these two married by special licence." And Julius added: "You _must_ come, doctor, to be my bottle-holder."
A small undercurrent of thought in the doctor"s mind, in which he can still accommodate pa.s.sing events and the world"s trivialities, begins to receive impressions of the facts of the case. The great river called Sally flows steadily on, on its own account, and makes and meddles not. It despises other folk"s petty affairs. Dr. Conrad masters the position, and goes on to draw inferences.
"Then that must have been _you_ last night, Bradshaw?"
"I dare say it was. When?"
"Walking up and down with another fellow in front here. Smoking cigars, both of you."
"Why didn"t you sing out?"
"Well, now--why didn"t I?" He seems a little unable to account for himself, and no wonder. "I think I recollected it was like you after you had gone."
"Don"t be a brain-case, Dr. Conrad. What would your patients say if they heard you go on like that?" Sally said this, of course. Her mother thought to herself that perhaps the patients would send for a married doctor.
But her mind was taking no strong hold on the current of events, considering what a very vital human interest was afloat on them. It was wandering back to another wedding-day--her own first wedding-day of twenty years ago. As she looked at this bridegroom--all his upspring of hope making light of such fears as needs must be in like case all the world over--he brought back to her vividly, for all he was so unlike him, the face of the much younger man who had met her that day at Umballa, whose utter freedom from suspicion as he welcomed her almost made her able to forget the weeks gone by--the more so that they were like a dream in h.e.l.l, and their sequel like an awakening in Paradise. Well, at any rate, she had recaptured this man from Chaos, and he was hers again. And she had Sally. But at the word the whole world reeled and her feet were on quicksands. What and whence was Sally?
At least this was true--there was no taint of her father there! Sally wasn"t an angel--not a bit of it--no such embarra.s.sment to a merely human family. But her mother could see her truth, honour, purity--call it what you will--in every feature, every movement. As she stood there, giving injunctions to Vereker to look alive or he"d be late, her huge coil of sea-soaked black hair making her white neck look whiter, and her white hands reestablishing hair-pins in the depths of it, she seemed the very incarnation of non-inheritance. Not a trace of the sire her mother shuddered to think of in the music of her voice, in the laughter all who knew her felt in the mirth of her eyebrows and the sparkle of her pearly teeth. All her ident.i.ty was her own. If only it could have been known then that she was going to be Sally!... But how fruitless all speculation was!
"Perhaps mother knows. Chemical oatmeal, mother, for invalids and persons of delicate digestion? They haven"t got it at Pemberton"s."
The eyes and the teeth flash round on her mother, and in a twinkling the unhallowed shadow of the past is gone. It was only a moment in all, though it takes more to record it. Rosalind came back to the life of the present, but she knew nothing about chemical oatmeal. Never mind. The doctor would find out. And he would be sure to be in time.
He was in time--plenty of time, said public opinion. And the couple were duly married, and went away in Padlock"s omnibus to catch the train for Dover in time for the boat. And Dr. Conrad"s eyes were on the eldest bridesmaid. For, after all, two others were obtained--jury-bridesmaids they might be called--in the persons of Miss Gwendolen Arkwright and an even smaller sister, who were somehow commandeered by Sally"s enterprise, and bribed with promises of refreshment. But the smaller sister was an erring sister, for having been told she was on no account to speak during the service, she was suddenly struck with the unfairness of the whole thing, and, pointing at St. Sennans" arch-priest, said very audibly that _he_ was "peatin"," so why wasn"t she to "peat"? However, it was a very good wedding, and there was no doubt the princ.i.p.als had really become the Julius Bradshaws. They started from Dover on a sea that looked like a mill-pond; but Tishy"s husband afterwards reported that the bride sat with her eyes shut the last half of the _trajet_, and said, "Don"t speak to me, and I shall be all right."
That summer night Rosalind and her daughter were looking out over the reputed mill-pond at the silver dazzle with the elves in it. The moon had come to the scratch later than last night, from a feeling of what was due to the almanac, which may (or must) account for an otherwise enigmatical remark of Sally"s, who, when her mother wondered what time it was, replied: "I don"t know--it"s later than it was yesterday." But did that matter, when it was the sort of night you stopped out all night on, according to Sally. They came to an anchor on a seat facing the sea, and adjourned human obligation _sine die_.
"I wonder if they"ve done wisely." Rosalind represents married thoughtfulness.
Sally shelves misgivings of this sort by reflections on the common lot of humanity, and considers that it will be the same for them as every one else.
"_They_"ll be all right," she says, with cheerful optimism. "I wonder what"s become of Prosy."
"He"s up there with his mother. I saw him at the window. But I didn"t mean that: they"ll be happy enough together, I"ve no doubt. I mean, has Laet.i.tia done wisely to quarrel with her family?"
"She hasn"t; it"s only the she-dragon. Tishy told me all about it going to church."
And, oh dear, how poor Prosy, who was up there with his mother, did long to come out to the voices he could hear plain enough, even as far off as that! But then he had been so long away to-day, and he knew his excellent parent always liked to finish the tale of her own wedding-day when she began it--as she often did. So he listened again to the story of the wedding, which was celebrated in the severest thunderstorm experienced in these islands since the days of Queen Elizabeth, by a heroic clergyman who was suffering from pleuro-pneumonia, which made his voice inaudible till a miraculous chance produced one of Squilby"s cough lozenges (which are not to be had now for love or money), and cured him on the spot. And how the bridesmaids all had mumps, more or less. And much concerning the amazingly dignified appearance of her own father and mother, which was proverbial, and therefore no matter of surprise to any one, the proverb being no doubt well known to Europe.
But there, it didn"t matter! Sally would be there to-morrow.
CHAPTER x.x.x
HOW A FORTNIGHT Pa.s.sED, AND THE HONEYMOONERS RETURNED. OF A CHAT ON THE BEACH, AND MISS ARKWRIGHT"S SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE. ALMOST THE LAST, LAST, LAST--MAN"S HEAD!
Sally to-morrow--and to-morrow--and to-morrow. Sally for fourteen morrows. And the moon that had lighted the devoted young man to his fate--whatever it was to be--had waned and left the sky clear for a new one, on no account to be seen through gla.s.s.
They were morrows of inextinguishable, indescribable delight for their victims or victim--for how shall we cla.s.sify Sally? Who shall tread the inner temple of a girl"s mind? How shall it be known that she herself has the key to the Holy of Holies?--that she is not dwelling in the outer court, unconscious of her function of priestess, its privileges and responsibilities? Or, in plainer language, metaphors having been blowed in obedience to a probable wish of the reader"s, how do we know Sally was not falling in love with the doctor? How do we know she was not in love with him already? How did _she_ know?
All we know is that the morrows went on, each one sweeter than the last, and all the little incidents went on that were such nothings at the time, but were so sure to be borne in mind for ever! _You_ know all about it, you who read. Like enough you can remember now, old as you are, how you and she (or he, according as your s.e.x is) got lost in the wood, and never found where the picnic had come to an anchor till all the wings of chicken were gone and only legs left; or how there was a bull somewhere; or how next day the cat got caught on the shoulder of one of you and had to be detached, hooking horribly, by the other; or how you felt hurt (not jealous, but hurt) because she (or he) was decently civil to some new he (or she), and how relieved you were when you heard it was Mr. or Mrs. Some-name-you"ve-forgotten.
Why, if you were to ask now, of that grey man or woman whose life was linked with yours, maybe now sixty years agone, did he or she have a drumstick, or go on to ham-sandwiches?--or, was it really a bull, after all?--or, had that cat"s claws pa.s.sed out of memory?--or, what was the name of that lady (or gentleman) at the So-and-so"s?--if you asked any of these things, she or he might want a repeat into a deaf ear but would answer clear enough in the end, and recall the drumsticks and the equivocal bull, the cat"s claws, and the unequivocal married person. And then you would turn over all the little things of old, and wrangle a bit over details here and there; and all the while you would be the very selfsame two that were young and were lost in the wood and trampled down the fern and saw the squirrels overhead all those long years ago.
Many a little thing of a like nature--perhaps some identical--made up hours that became days in that fortnight we have to skip, and then the end was drawing near; and Dr. Conrad would have to go back and write prescriptions with nothing that could possibly do any harm in them, and abstain with difficulty from telling young ladies with cultivated waists they were liars when they said you could get a loaf of bread between all round, and it was sheer nonsense. And other little enjoyments of a G.P."s life. Yes, the end was very near. But Sally"s resolute optimism thrust regrets for the coming chill aside, and decided to be jolly while we could, and acted up to its decision.
Besides, an exciting variation gave an interest to the last week of the doctor"s stay at St. Sennans. The wandering honeymooners, in grat.i.tude to that saint, proposed to pay him a visit on their way back to London. Perhaps they would stop a week. So the smallest possible accommodation worthy of the name was found for them over a brandyball and bull"s-eye shop in a house that had no back rooms, being laid like a vertical plaster against the cliff behind, and having an exit on a flat roof where you might bask in the sun and see the bright red poppies growing in the chalk, and contribute your share towards a settlement of the vexed question of which are brigs. There wasn"t another room to be had in the real St. Sennans, and it came to that or the hotel (which was beastly), and you might just as well be in London. Thus Sally, and settled the question.
And this is how it comes to pa.s.s that at the beginning of this chapter--which we have only just got to, after all this circ.u.mlocution!--Sally and one of the Julius Bradshaws were sitting talking on the beach in the shadow of a breakwater, while the other Julius Bradshaw (the original one) was being taken for a walk to the extremely white lighthouse three miles off, or nearly five if you went by the road, by Dr. Conrad, who by this time knew all the walks in the neighbourhood exactly as well as Sally did, neither more nor less. And both knew them very well.
The tide had come up quite as far as it had contemplated, and seemed to have made up its mind this time not to go back in too great a hurry. It was so nice there on the beach, with Tishy and Sally and Miss Gwendolen Arkwright, the late bridesmaid, who was having an independent chat all to herself about the many glories of the pier-end, and the sights to be seen there by visitors for a penny.
And it--we are speaking of the tide--had got a delightful tangle of floating weed (_Fucus Vesiculosus_) and well-washed sc.r.a.ps of wood from long-forgotten wrecks--who knows?--and was turning it gently to and fro, and over and over, with intermittent musical caresses, against the shingle-bank, whose counter-music spoke to the sea of the ages it had toiled in vain to grind it down to sand. And the tide said, wait, we shall see. The day will come, it said, when not a pebble of you all but shall be scattered drifting sand, unless you have the luck to be carted up at a shilling a load by permission of the authorities, to be made into a concrete of a proper consistency according to the local by-laws. But the pebbles said, please, no; we will bide our time down here, and you shall have us for your own--play with us in the sun at the feet of these two ladies, or make the whirling shoals of us, beaten to madness, thunder back your voice when it shouts in the storm to the seaman"s wife, who stops her ears in the dark night alone that she may not hear you heralding her husband"s death. And the tide said very good; but a day would come when the pebbles would be sand, for all that. And even the authority would be gone, and the local by-laws. But it would sound upon some sh.o.r.e for ever. So it kept on saying. Probably it was mistaken.
This has nothing to do with our story except that it is approximately the substance of a statement made by Sally to Miss Arkwright, who was interested, and had been promised it all over again to-morrow. For the present she could talk about the pier and take her audience for granted.
"But was it that Kensington Gardens business that did the job?" asked Sally, in the shadow of the breakwater, getting the black hair dry after three-quarters of an hour in the sea; because caps, you know, are all nonsense as far as keeping water out goes. So Sally had to sit ever so long with it out to dry. And the very tiny pebbles you can almost see into stick to your hands, as you know, and come off in your hair when you run them through it, and have to be combed out. At least, Sally"s had. But she kept on running the pebbles through her still blue fingers for all that as she half lay, half sat by Tishy on the beach.