"No, my dear, I was like Mrs. Cluppins. The voices were loud, and forced themselves upon my ear. But as you all spoke at once, I have no idea what anybody said. My question was conjectural--purely conjectural. _Is_ anybody going to marry anybody? _I_ don"t know."
"What is your father talking about over there? _Is_ he going to help that tongue or not? Ask him." For a peculiarity in this family was that the two heads of it always spoke to one another through an agent. So clearly was this understood that direct speech between them, on its rare occasions, was always ascribed by distant hearers to an outbreak of hostilities. If either speaker had addressed the other by name, the advent of the Sergeant-at-Arms would have been the next thing looked for. On this occasion Laet.i.tia"s literal transmission of "_Are_ you going to help the tongue or not, papa?" recalled his wandering mind to his responsibilities. Sally"s liver-wing--she was the visitor--was pleading at his elbow for its complement of tongue.
But soon a four-inch s.p.a.ce intervened between the lonely tongue-tip on the dish and what had once been, in military language, its base of operations. Everybody that took tongue had got tongue.
"Well, then, how about who"s married whom?" Thus the Professor, resuming his hand-rubbing, and neglecting the leg of a fowl.
"Make your father eat his lunch, Laet.i.tia. We _cannot_ be late again this afternoon." Whereon every one ate too fast; and Sally felt very glad the Professor had given her such a big slice of tongue, as she knew she wouldn"t have the courage to have a second supply, if offered, much less ask for it.
"Do you hear, papa? I"m to make you eat your lunch," says Laet.i.tia; and her mother murmurs "That"s right; make him," as though he were an anaconda in the snake-house, and her daughter a keeper who could go inside the cage. Laet.i.tia then adds briefly that Mrs. Nightingale is going to marry Fenwick.
"Ha! Mercy on us!" says the Professor quite vaguely, and, even more so, adds: "Chicken--chicken--chicken--chicken--chicken!" Though what he says next is more intelligible, it is unfortunate and ill-chosen: "And who _is_ Mrs. Nightingale?"
The sphinx is mobility itself compared with Mrs. Wilson"s intense preservation of her _status quo_. The import of which is that the Professor"s blunders are things of everyday occurrence--every minute, rather. She merely says to Europe, "You see," and leaves that continent to deal with the position. Sally, who always gets impatient with the Wilson family, except the Professor himself and Laet.i.tia--though _she_ is trying sometimes--now ignores Europe, and gets the offender into order on her own account.
"Why, Professor dear, don"t you know Mrs. Nightingale"s my mother?
I"m Sally Nightingale, you know!"
"I"m not at all sure that I did, my dear. I think I thought you were Sally Something-else. My mind is very absent sometimes. You must forgive me. Sally Nightingale! To be sure!"
"Never mind, Professor dear!" But the Professor still looks vexed at his blunder. So Sally says in confirmation, "I"ve forgiven you. Shake hands!" And doesn"t make matters much better, for her action seems unaccountable to the absent-minded one, who says, "Why?" first, and then, "Oh, ah, yes--I see. Shake hands, certainly!" On which the Sphinx, at the far end of the table, wondered whether the ancient Phoenicians were rude, under her breath.
"I"m so absent, Sally Nightingale, that I didn"t even know your father wasn"t living." Laet.i.tia looks uncomfortable, and when Sally merely says, "I never saw my father," thinks to herself what a very discreet girl Sally is. Naturally she supposes Sally to be a wise enough child to know something about her own father. But the Wilson family were not completely in the dark about an unsatisfactory "something queer" in Sally"s extraction; so that she credits that unconscious young person with having steered herself skilfully out of shoal-waters; but she is not sure whether to cla.s.s her achievement as intrepidity or cheek.
She is wanted in the intelligence department before she can decide this point.
"Perhaps, if you try, Laet.i.tia, you"ll be able to make out whether your father is or is not going to eat his lunch."
But as this appeal of necessity causes the Professor to run the risk of choking himself before Laet.i.tia has time to formulate an inquiry, she can fairly allow the matter to lapse, as far as she is concerned. The dragon, her mother--for that was how Sally spoke of the h.o.r.n.y one--kept an eye firmly fixed on the unhappy honorary member of most learned societies, and gave the word of command, "Take away!" with such prompt.i.tude that Jenkins nearly carried off the plate from under his knife and fork as he placed them on it.
A citation from the Odyssey was received in stony silence by the Dragon, who, however, remarked to her younger daughter that it was no use talking about Phineus and the Harpies, because they had to be at St. Pancras at 3.10, or lose the train. And perhaps, if the servants were to be called Harpies, your father would engage the next one himself. They were trouble enough now, without that.
Owing to all which, the reference to Sally"s father got lost sight of; and she wasn"t sorry, because Theeny, at any rate, wasn"t wanted to know anything about him, whatever Laet.i.tia and her mother knew or suspected.
But, as a matter of fact, Sally"s declaration that she "never saw" him was neither discretion, nor intrepidity, nor cheek. It was simple Nature. She had always regarded her father as having been accessory to herself before the fact; also as having been, for some mysterious reason, unpopular--perhaps a _mauvais sujet_. But he was Ancient History now--had joined the Phoenicians. Why should _she_ want to know?
Her att.i.tude of uninquiring acquiescence had been cultivated by her mother, and it is wonderful what a dominant influence from early babyhood can do. Sally seldom spoke of this mysterious father of hers in any other terms than those she had just used. She had never had an opportunity of making his acquaintance--that was all. In some way, undefined, he had not behaved well to her mother; and naturally she sided with the latter. Once, and once only, her mother had said to her, "Sally darling, I don"t wish to talk about your father, but to forget him. I have forgiven him, because of you. Because--how could I have done without you, kitten?" And thereafter, as Sally"s curiosity was a feeble force when set against the possibility that its gratification might cause pain to her mother, she suppressed it easily.
But now and again little things would be said in her presence that would set her a-thinking--little things such as what the Professor has just said. She may easily have been abnormally sensitive on the point--made more p.r.o.ne to reflection than usual--by last night"s momentous announcement. Anyhow, she resolved to talk to Tishy about her parentage as soon as they should get back to the drawing-room, where they were practising. All the two hours they ought to have played in the morning Tishy would talk about nothing but Julius Bradshaw.
And look how ridiculous it all was! Because she _did_ call him "shop-boy"--you know she did--only six weeks ago. Sally didn"t see why _her_ affairs shouldn"t have a turn now; and although she was quite aware that her friend wanted her to begin again where they had left off before lunch, she held out no helping hand, but gave the preference to her own thoughts.
"I suppose my father drank," said Sally to Tishy.
"If you don"t know, dear, how should I?" said Tishy to Sally. And that did seem plausible, and made Sally the more reflective.
The holly-leaves were gone now that had been conducive to thought at Christmas in this same room when we heard the two girls count four so often, but Sally could pull an azalea flower to pieces over her cogitations, and did so, instead of tuning up forthwith. Laet.i.tia was preoccupied--couldn"t take an interest in other people"s fathers, nor her own for that matter. She tuned up, though, and told Sally to look alive. But while Sally looks alive she backs into a conversation of the forenoon, and out of the pending discussion of Sally"s paternity.
Their two preoccupations pull in opposite directions.
"You _will_ remember not to say anything, won"t you, Sally dear? Do promise."
"Say anything? Oh no; _I_ shan"t say anything. I never do say things.
What about?"
"You know as well as I do, dear--about Julius Bradshaw."
"Of course I shan"t, Tishy. Except mother; she doesn"t count. I say, Tishy!"
"Well, dear. Do look alive. I"m all ready."
"All right. Don"t be in a hurry. I want to know whether you really think my father drank."
"Why should I, dear? I never heard anything about him--at least, I never heard anything myself. Mamma heard something. Only I wasn"t to repeat it. Besides, it was nothing whatever to do with drink." The moment Laet.i.tia said this, she knew that she had lost her hold on her only resource against cross-examination. When the difficulty of concealing anything is thrown into the same scale with the pleasure of telling it, the featherweights of duty and previous resolutions kick the beam. Then you are sorry when it"s too late. Laet.i.tia was, and could see her way to nothing but obeying the direction on her music, which was _attacca_. To her satisfaction, Sally came in promptly in the right place, and a first movement in B sharp went steadily through without a back-lash. There seemed a chance that Sally hadn"t caught the last remark, but, alas! it vanished.
"What was it, then, if it wasn"t drink?" said she, exactly as if there had been no music at all. Laet.i.tia once said of Sally that she was a horribly direct little Turk. She was very often--in this instance certainly.
"I suppose it was the usual thing." Twenty-four, of course, knew more than nineteen, and could speak to the point of what was and wasn"t usual in matters of this kind. But if Laet.i.tia hoped that vagueness would shake hands with delicacy and that details could be lubricated away, she was reckoning without her Turk.
"What _is_ the usual thing?"
"Hadn"t we better go on to the fugue? I don"t care for the next movement, and it"s easy----"
"Not till you say what you mean by "the usual thing.""
"Well, dear, I suppose you know what half the divorce-cases are about?"
"_Tishy!_"
"What, dear?"
"There was _no_ divorce!"
"How do you know, dear?"
"I _should_ have known of it."
"How do you know that?"
"You might go on for ever that way. Now, Tishy dear, do be kind and tell me what you heard and who said it. _I_ should tell _you_. You _know_ I should." This appeal produces concession.
"It was old Major Roper told mamma--with blue pockets under his eyes and red all over, creeks and wheezes when he speaks--do you know him?"
"No, I don"t, and I don"t want to. At least, I"ve just seen him at a distance. I could see he was purple. _Our_ Major--Colonel Lund, you know--says he"s a horrible old gossip, and you can"t rely on a word he says. But what _did_ he say?"
"Well, of course, I oughtn"t to tell you this, because I promised not.
What he _said_ was that your mother went out to be married to your father in India, and the year after he got a divorce because he was jealous of some man your mother had met on the way out."
"How old was I?"
"Gracious me, child! how should _I_ know. He only said you were a baby in arms. Of course, you must have been, if you think of it." Laet.i.tia here feels that possible calculations may be embarra.s.sing, and tries to avert them. "Do let"s get on to the third movement. We shall spend all the afternoon talking."
"Very well, Tishy, fire away! Oh, no; it"s me." And the third movement is got under way, till we reach a _pizzicato_ pa.s.sage which Sally begins playing with the bow by mistake.