Satisfax, looked in at her backward daughter and reproached her, and said there was the Major coming down, and no one to get him his chocolate, she spoke to a young lady who was serenely unprepared for any revelations of a startling nature, or, indeed, any revelations at all. Nor did getting the Major his chocolate excite any suspicions.
So Sally was truly taken aback when the old gentleman, having drunk his chocolate, broke a silence which had lasted since a brief and fossil-like good-morning, with, "Well, missy, and what do _you_ say to the idea of a stepfather?" But not immediately, for at first she didn"t understand him, and answered placidly: "It depends on who."
"Mr. Fenwick, for instance!"
"Yes, but who for? And stepfather to step-what? Stepdaughter or stepson?"
"Yourself, little goose! _You_ would be the stepdaughter."
Sally was then so taken aback that she could make nothing of it, but stood in a cloud of mystification. The major had to help her. "How would you like your mother to marry Mr. Fenwick?" He was one of those useful people who never _finesse_, who let you know point-blank where you are, and to whom you feel so grateful for being unfeeling. While others there be who keep you dancing about in suspense, while they break things gently, and all the while are scoring up a little account against you for considerateness.
Sally"s bewilderment, however, recognised one thing distinctly--that the Major"s inquiry was not to get, but to give, information. He didn"t the least want to know what _she_ thought; he was only working to give her a useful tip. So she would take her time about answering.
She took it, looking as grave as a little downy owl-tot. Meanwhile, to show there was no bad feeling, she went and sat candidly on the fossil"s knee, and attended to his old whiskers and moustache.
"Major dear!" said she presently.
"What, my child?"
"Wouldn"t they make an awfully handsome couple?" The Major replied, "Handsome is as handsome does," and seemed to suggest that questions of this sort belonged to a pre-fossilised condition of existence.
"Now, Major dear, why not admit it when you know it"s true? You know quite well they would make a lovely couple. Just fancy them going up the aisle at St. Satisfax! It would be like mediaeval Kings and Queens." For Sally was still in that happy phase of girlhood in which a marriage is a wedding, _et praeterea aliquid_, but not much. "But,"
she continued, "I couldn"t give up any of mamma--no, not so much as _that_--if she was to marry twenty Mr. Fenwicks." As the quant.i.ty indicated was the smallest little finger-end that could be checked off with a thumb-nail, the twenty husbands would have come in for a very poor allowance of matrimony. The Major didn"t seem to think the method of estimation supplied a safe ground for discussion, and allowed it to lapse.
"I may be quite wrong, you know, my dear," said he. "I dare say I"m only an old fool. So we won"t say anything to mamma, will us, little woman?"
"I don"t know, Major dear. I"ll promise not to say anything to her _because_ of what you"ve said to me. But if I suspect it myself on my account later on, of course I shall."
"What shall you say to her?"
"Ask her if it"s true! Why not? But what was it made _you_ think so?"
Whereon the Major gave in detail his impressions of the little incidents recorded above, which Sally had seen nothing in. He laid a good deal of stress on the fact that her mother had suppressed the Christmas present until after Dr. Vereker and his mother had departed.
She wouldn"t have minded the doctor, he said, but she would naturally want to keep the old bird out of the swim. Besides, there was Fenwick himself--one could see what _he_ thought of it! She could perfectly well stop him if she chose, and she didn"t choose.
"Stop his whatting?" asked Sally perplexingly. But she admitted the possibility of an answer by not pressing the question home. Then she went on to say that all these things had happened exactly under her nose, and she had never seen anything in them. The only concession she was inclined to make was in respect of the impression her mother evidently made on Mr. Fenwick. But that was nothing wonderful.
Anything else would have been very surprising. Only it didn"t follow from that that mother wanted to marry Mr. Fenwick, or Mr. Anybody. As far as he himself went, she liked him awfully--but then he couldn"t recollect who he was, poor fellow! It was most pathetic sometimes to see him trying. If only he could have remembered that he hadn"t been a pirate, or a forger, or a wicked Marquis! But to know absolutely nothing at all about himself! Why, the only thing that was known now about his past life was that he once knew a Rosalind Nightingale--what he said to her in the railway-carriage. And now he had forgotten that, too, like everything else.
"I say, Major dear"--Sally has an influx of a new idea--"it ought to be possible to find out something about that Rosalind Nightingale he knew. Mamma says it"s nonsense her being any relation, because she"d know."
"And suppose we did find out who she was?"
"Well, then, if we could get at her, we might get her to tell us who he was. And then we could tell him."
Perhaps it is only his fossil-like way of treating the subject, but certainly the Major shows a very slack interest, Sally thinks, in the ident.i.ty of this namesake of hers. He does, however, ask absently, what sort of way did he speak of her in the train?
"Why--he said so little----"
"But he gave you some impression?"
"Oh, of course. He spoke as if she was a person--not a female you know--a person!"
"A person isn"t a female--when? Eh, missy?" This requires a little consideration, and gets it. The result, when it comes, seems good in its author"s eyes.
"When they sit down. When you ask them to, you know. In the parlour, I mean--not the hall. They might be a female then."
"Did he mean a lady?"
"And take milk and no sugar? And pull her gloves on to go? And leave cards turned up at the corner? Oh no--not a lady, certainly!"
As she makes these instructive distinctions, Miss Sally is kneeling on a ha.s.sock before a mature fire, which will tumble down and spoil presently. When it does it will be time to resort to that hearth-broom, and restrict combustion with collected caput-mortuum of Derby-Brights, selected, twenty-seven shillings. Till then, Sally, who deserted the Major"s knee just as she asked what Mr. Fenwick was to stop in, is at liberty to roast, and does so with undisturbed gravity. The Major is becoming conscious of a smell like Joan of Arc at the beginning of the entertainment, when her mother comes in on a high moral platform, and taxes her with singeing, and dissolves the parliament, and rings to take away breakfast, and forecasts an open window the minute the Major has gone.
Sally doesn"t wait for the open window, but as one recalled to the active duties of life from liquefaction in a Turkish bath, takes a cold plunge as far as the front gate without so much as a hat on--to see if the post is coming, which is absurd--and comes back braced. But though she only wonders what can have put such an idea as her mother marrying Mr. Fenwick in the Major"s dear silly old head, she keeps on a steady current of speculation about who that Rosalind Nightingale he knew could possibly have been; and whether she couldn"t be got at even now. It was such a pity he couldn"t have a tip given about him who he was. If he were once started, he would soon run; she was sure of that.
But did he want to run?--that was a point to consider. Did he really forget as much as he said he did? How came he not to have forgotten his languages he was so fluent with? And how about his book-keeping?
And that curious way he had of knowing about places, and then looking puzzled when asked when he had been there. When they talked about Klond.y.k.e the other day, for instance, and he seemed to know so much about it.... But, then, see how he grasped his head, and ruffled his hair, and shut his eyes, and clenched his teeth over his efforts to recollect whether he had really been there himself, or only read it all in the "Century" or "Atlantic Monthly"! Surely he was in earnest then.
Sally"s speculations lasted her all the way to No. 260, Ladbroke Grove Road, where she was going to a music-lesson, or rather music-practice, with a friend who played the violin; for Sally was learning the viola--to be useful.
CHAPTER VII
CONCERNING PEOPLE"S PASTS, AND THE SEPARATION OF THE SHEEP FROM THE GOATS. OF YET ANOTHER MAJOR, AND HOW HE GOSSIPPED AT THE HURKARU CLUB. SOME TRUSTWORTHY INFORMATION ABOUT AN ALLEGED DIVORCE
You who read this may have met with some cross-chance such as we are going to try to describe to you; possibly with the same effect upon yourself as the one we have to confess to in our own case--namely, that you have been left face to face with a problem to which you have never been able to supply a solution. You have given up a conundrum in despair, and no one has told you the answer.
Here are the particulars of an imaginary case of the sort. You have made acquaintance--made friends--years ago with some man or woman without any special introduction, and without feeling any particular curiosity about his or her antecedents. No inquiry seemed to be called for; all concomitants were so very usual. You may have felt a misgiving as to whether the easy-going ways of your old papa, or the innocent Bohemianisms of his sons and daughters will be welcome to your new friend, whom you credit with being a little old-fashioned and strait-laced, if anything. But it never occurs to you to doubt or investigate; why should you, when no question is raised of any great intimacy between you and the So-and-sos, which may stand for the name of his or her family. They ask no certificate from you, of whom they know just as little. Why should you demand credentials of a pa.s.ser-by because he is so obliging as to offer to lend you a Chinese vocabulary or Whitaker? Why should your wife try to go behind the cheque-book and the prayer-book of a married couple when all she has had to do with the lady was, suppose, to borrow a square bottle of her, marked off in half-inch lengths, to be shaken before taken? Why not accept her unimpeachable Sunday morning as sufficient warranty for talking to her on the beach next day, and finding what a very nice person she is?
Because it would very likely be at the seaside. But suppose any sort of introduction of this sort--you know what we mean!
Well, the So-and-sos have slipped gradually into your life; let this be granted. We need not imagine, for our purpose, any extreme approaches of family intimacy, any love affairs or deadly quarrels.
A tranquil intercourse of some twenty years is all we need, every year of which has added to your conviction of the thorough trustworthiness and respectability of the So-and-sos, of their readiness to help you in any little difficulty, and of the high opinion which the rest of the world has of Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so--the world which knew them when it was a boy, and all their connexions and antecedents, which, you admit, you didn"t....
And then, after all these years, it is suddenly burst upon you that there was a shady story about So-and-so that never was cleared up--something about money, perhaps; or, worse still, one of those stories your informant really doesn"t like to be responsible for the particulars of; you must ask Smith yourself. Or your wife comes to you in fury and indignation that such a scandalous falsehood should have got about as that Clara So-and-so was never married to So-and-so at all till ever so long after Fluffy or Toppy or Croppy or Poppy was born! We take any names at random of this sort, merely to dwell on your good lady"s familiarity with the So-and-so family.
Well, then--there you are! And what can you make of it? There you are face to face with the fact that a man who was a black sheep twenty or thirty years ago has been all this time making believe to be a white sheep so successfully as never was. Or, stranger still, that a woman who has brought up a family of model daughters--daughters whom it would be no exaggeration to speak of as on all fours with your own, and who is quite one of the nicest and most sympathetic people your wife has to go to in trouble--this woman actually--_actually_--if this tale is true, was guilty in her youth ... there--that will do! Suppose we say she was no better than she should be. She hadn"t even the decency to be a married woman before she did it, which always makes it so much easier to talk to strange ladies and girls about it. You can say all the way down a full dinner-table that Lady Polly Andrews got into the Divorce Court without doing violence to any propriety at all.
But the story of Mrs. So-and-so"s indiscretion while still Miss Such-and-such must be talked of more guardedly.
And all the while behold the subjects of these stories, in whom, but for this sudden revelation of a shady past, you can detect no moral difference from your amiable and respectable self! They puzzle you, as they puzzle us, with a doubt whether they really are the same people; whether they have not changed their ident.i.ty since the days of their delinquency. If they really are the same, it almost throws a doubt on how far the permanent unforgiveness of sins is expedient. We of course refer to Human Expediency only--the construction of a working hypothesis of Life, that would favour peace on earth and good-will towards men; that would establish a _modus vivendi_, and enable us to be jolly with these reprobates--at any rate, as soon as they had served their time and picked their oak.u.m. We are not intruding on the province of the Theologian--merely discussing the problem of how we can make ourselves pleasant to one another all round, until that final separation of the sheep from the goats, when, however carefully they may have patched up their own little quarrels, they will have to bid each other farewell reluctantly, and make up their minds to the permanent endurance of Heaven and h.e.l.l respectively.
We confess that we ourselves think there ought to be a Statute of Limitations, and that after a certain lapse of time any offence, however bad, against morality might be held not to have been committed. If we feel this about culprits who tempted us, at the time of their enormity, to put in every honest hand a whip to lash the rascal naked the length of a couple of lamp-posts, how much more when the offence has been one which our own sense of moral law (a perverted one, we admit) scarcely recognises as any offence at all. And how much more yet, when we find it hard to believe that they--actually _they themselves_, that we know now--can have done the things imputed to them. If the stories are really true, were they not possessed by evil spirits? Or have they since come to be possessed by better ones than their normal stock-in-trade?
What is all this prosy speculation about? Well, it"s about our friend in the last chapter, Sally"s mother. At least, it is suggested by her.
She is one of those perplexing cases we have hinted at, and we acknowledge ourselves unable to account for her at the date of the story, knowing what we do of her twenty years previously. It"s little enough, mind, and much of it inferential. Suppose, instead of giving you our inferences, we content ourselves with pa.s.sing on to you the data on which we found them. Maybe you will see your way to some different life-history for Sally"s mother.
The first insight we had into her past was supplied by a friend of Sally"s "old fossil," who was himself a Major, but with a difference.
For he was really a Major, whereas the fossil was only called so by Krakatoa Villa, being in truth a Colonel. This one was Major Roper, of the Hurkaru Club, an old schoolfellow of ours, who was giving us a cup of coffee and a cigar at the said Club, and talking himself hoa.r.s.e about Society. When the Major gets hoa.r.s.e his voice rises to a squeak, and his eyes start out of his head, and he appears to swell. I forget how Mrs. Nightingale came into the conversation, but she did, somehow.
"She"s a very charming woman, that," squeaked the Major--"a _very_ charming woman! I don"t mind tellin" _you_, you know, that I knew her at Madras--ah! before the divorce. I wouldn"t tell Horrocks, nor that dam young fool Silc.o.x, but I don"t mind tellin" _you_! Only, look here, my dear boy, don"t you go puttin" it about that _I_ told you anythin". You know I make it a rule--a guidin" rule--_never to say anythin"_. You follow that rule through life, my boy! Take the word of an old chap that"s seen a deal of service, and just you _hold your tongue_! You make a point--you"ll find it pay----" An asthmatic cough came in here.