"_He"s_ coming all right," says Sally, looking at both sides of the card, and pa.s.sing it on when she has quite done with it. Sally, we may mention, as it occurs to us at this moment,--though _why_ we have no idea,--means to have a double chin when she is five years older than her mother is now. At present it--the chin--is merely so much youthful roundness and softness, very white underneath. Her mother is quite of a different type. Her daughter"s father must have had black hair, for Sally can make huge shining coils, or close plaits, very wide, out of her inheritance. Or it will a.s.sume the form of a bush, if indulged, till Sally is almost hidden under it, as the Bosjesman under his version of Birnam Wood, that he shoots his a.s.segai from. But the mother"s is brown, with a tinge of chestnut; going well with her eyes, which have a claret tone, or what is so called; but we believe people really mean pale old port when they say so. She has had--still has, we might say--a remarkably fine figure, and we don"t feel the same faith in Miss Sally"s. That young la.s.sie will get described as plump some day, if she doesn"t take care.
But really it is a breach of confidence to get behind the scenes and describe two ladies in this way, when they are so very much in _deshabille_--have not even washed! We will look at them again when they have got their things on. However, they may go on talking now.
The blaze has lost its splendour, and dressing cannot be indefinitely delayed. But they can and do talk from room to room, confident that cook and Jane are in the bas.e.m.e.nt out of hearing.
"We shall do nicely, kitten! Six at table. I"m glad Mr. Fenwick can come. Aren"t you?"
"Rather! Fancy having Dr. and Mrs. Vereker and the dear old fossil and n.o.body to help out!"
"My dear! You say "Dr. and Mrs. Vereker" as if he was a married man!"
"Well--him and his mammy, then! He"s good--but he"s professional.
Oh dear--his professional manner! You have to be forming square to receive cavalry every five minutes to prevent his writing you a prescription."
"Ungrateful little monkey! You know the last he wrote you did you no end of good."
"Yes, but I didn"t ask him for it. He wrote it by force. I hate being hectored over and bullied. I say, mother!"
"What, kitten?"
"I hope, as Mr. Fenwick"s coming, you"ll wear your wedding-ring."
"Wear _what_?"
"Wear your wedding-ring. _His_ ring, you know! You know what I mean--the rheumatic one."
"Of course I know perfectly well what you mean," says her mother, with a shade of impatience in her voice. "But why?"
"Why? Because it gives him pleasure always to see it on your finger--he fancies it"s doing good to the neuritis."
"Perhaps it is."
"Very well, then; why not wear it?"
"Because it"s so big, and comes off in the soup, and is a nuisance.
And, then, he didn"t give it to me, either. He was to have had a shilling for it."
"But he never _did_ have it. And it wasn"t a shilling. It was sixpence.
And he says it"s the only little return he"s ever been able to make for what he calls our kindness."
"I couldn"t shovel him out into the street."
"Put his wedding-ring on, mammy, to oblige me!"
"Very well, chick--I don"t mind." And so that point is settled. But something makes the daughter repeat, as she comes into her mother"s room dry-towelling herself, "You"re sure you don"t mind, mammy?" to which the reply is, "No, no! _Why_ should I mind? It"s all quite right," with a forced decision, equivalent to wavering, about it.
Sally looks at her a moment in a pause of dry-towelling, and goes back to her room not quite convinced. Persons of the same blood, living constantly together, are sometimes quite embarra.s.sed by their own brain-waves, and very often misled.
Exigencies of teeth and hair cut the talk short about Mr. Fenwick. But he gets renewed at breakfast, and, in fact, goes on more or less until brought up short by the early service at St. Satisfax, when he is extinguished by a preliminary hymn. But not before his whole story, so far as is known, has been pa.s.sed in review. So that an attentive listener might have gathered from their disjointed chat most of the particulars of his strange appearance on the scene, and of the incidents of the next few weeks, and their result in the foundation of what seemed likely to be a permanent friendship between himself and Krakatoa Villa, and what certainly was (all things considered) that most lucrative and lucky post in a good wine-merchant"s house in the City.
For Mr. Fenwick had nothing to recommend him but his address and capacity, brought into notice by an accidental concurrence of circ.u.mstances.
It had been difficult to talk much about him to himself without seeming to wish to probe into his past life; and as Mrs. Nightingale impressed on Sally for the twentieth time, just as they arrived at St. Satisfax, they really knew nothing of it. How could they even know that this oblivion was altogether genuine? It might easily have been so at first, but who could say how much of his past had come back to him during the last six months? An unwelcome past, perhaps, and one he was glad to help Oblivion in extinguishing.
As this was on the semi-circular path in front of the Saint"s shrine, between two ramparts of swept-up snow, and on a corrective of cinder-grit, Sally ascribed this speculation to a disposition on her mother"s part to preach, she having come, as it were, within the scope and atmosphere of a pending decalogue. Also, she thought the ostentatious way in which Mr. Fenwick had gone away to skate had something to do with it.
But she was at all times conscious of a certain access of severity in her mother as she approached altars--rather beyond the common att.i.tude of mind one ascribes to the bearer of a prayer-book when one doesn"t mean to go to church oneself. (We are indebted for this piece of information to an intermittent church-goer; it is on a subject on which our own impressions have little value.) In the present case Sally _was_ going to church, so she had to account to herself for a _nuance_ in her mother"s manner--after dwelling on the needlessness and inadvisability of pressing Mr. Fenwick as to his recollections--by ascribing it to the consciousness of some secularism elsewhere; and he was the nearest case of unG.o.dliness to hand.
"I wonder whether he believes anything at all!" said Sally, a.s.suming the consecutiveness of her remark.
"I don"t see why he shouldn"t.... Why should he disbelieve more than...? All I mean is, I don"t know." The speaker ended abruptly; but then that may have been because they were at the church door. Possibly as a protest against having carried chat almost into the precinct, Mrs. Nightingale"s preliminary burial of her face in her hands lasted a long time--in fact, Sally almost thought she had gone to sleep, and told her so afterwards. "Perhaps, though," she added, "it was me came up from under the bedclothes too soon." Then she thought her levity displeased her mother, and kissed her. But it wasn"t that. She was thoughtful over something else.
This time, in the church, it may be Sally noticed her mother"s abstraction (or was it, perhaps, devotional tension?) less than she had done when her attention had been caught once or twice lately by a similar strained look. For Miss Sally had her eyes on a little gratifying incident of her own--a trifle that would already have appeared as an incident in her diary, had she kept one, somewhat thus:--"Saw that young idiot from Cattley"s Stores again in church to-day, in a new scarlet necktie. I wonder whether it"s me, or Miss Peplow that gollops, or the large Miss Baker." Which would have shown that she was not always a nun breathless with adoration during religious exercises. The fact is, Sally would have made a very poor St. Teresa indeed.
The young idiot was the same young man who had brought the difficult French idiom to Krakatoa, while Mr. Fenwick was still without an anchorage of his own. Martha the cook, who admitted him, not feeling equal to the negotiation, had merely said--would he mind steppin" in the parlour, and she would send Miss Sally up? and had departed bearing Mrs. Nightingale"s credential-card in a hand as free from grease as an ap.r.o.n so deeply committed could make it, and brought Miss Nightingale in from the garden, where she was gardening--possibly effectually, but what do we know? When you are gardening on a summer afternoon, you may look very fetching, if you are nineteen, and the right s.e.x for the adjective. Miss Sally did, being both, and for our own part we think it was inconsiderate and thoughtless of cook. Sally was sprung upon that young man like a torpedo on a ship with no guards out, saying with fascinating geniality through a smile (as one interests oneself in a civility that means nothing) that Mr. Fenwick had just gone out, and she didn"t know when he would be back. But why not ask Mrs. Prince at the school, opposite St. Satisfax, where we went to church; she was French, and would be sure to know what it meant. _She_ wouldn"t mind! "Say I sent you." And the youth, whom the torpedo had struck amidships, was just departing, conscious of reluctance, when Mr. Fenwick appeared, having come back for his umbrella.
Sally played quite fair. She didn"t hang about as she might have done, to rub her pearly teeth and merry eyebrows into her victim. She went back and gardened honourably, while Mr. Fenwick solved the riddle and supplied the letter. But for all that, the young man appeared next Sunday at St. Satisfax"s, with an extremely new prayer-book that looked as if his religious convictions were recent, and never took his eyes off Sally all through the service--that is, if he did as she supposed, and peeped all the while that his head ought to have been, as she metaphorically expressed it, "under the clothes."
Now, this was naturally a little unaccountable to Sally, after such a very short interview; and on the part, too, of a young gentleman who pa.s.sed all the working hours of the day among working houris, as it were soaked and saturated in their fascinations, and not at liberty to squeeze their hands or ask them for one little lock of hair all through shop-time. Sally did not realise the force of sameness, nor the amount of contempt familiarity will breed. Perhaps the houris got tired and snappish, poor things! and used up their artificial smiles on the customers. Perhaps it had leaked out that the trying-on hands contributed only length, personally, to the loveliness of the trying-on figures. All sorts of things might have happened to influence this young man towards St. Satisfax; and how did Sally know how often he had seen the other young lady communicants she had speculated about? Her mind had certainly thrown in the large Miss Baker with something of derision. But that Sylvia Peplow was just the sort of girl men run after, like a big pale gloire-de-Dijon rose all on one side, with pale golden wavy hair, and great big goggly blue eyes, looking as if she couldn"t help it! Now that we have given you details, from Sally"s inner consciousness, of Miss Peplow"s appearance, we hope you will perceive why she said she "golloped." We don"t, exactly.
However, on this Christmas morning it was made clear whom this young donkey was hankering after--this is Sally"s way of putting it--as Miss Peplow failed to get her usual place through being late, and had to sit in a side-aisle, instead of the opposite of her to the idiot--we are again borrowing from Sally--and now the Idiot would have to glare round over his shoulder at her or go without! It was soon evident that he was quite content to go without, and that Sally herself had been his lode-star. The certainty of this was what prevented her taking so much notice of her mother as she might otherwise have done.
Had she done so closely, she would hardly have put down her preoccupation, or tension, or whatever it was, to displeasure at Mr.
Fenwick"s going to skate on Christmas morning instead of going to church. What concern was it of theirs what Mr. Fenwick did?
CHAPTER VI
OF BOXING DAY MORNING AT KRAKATOA VILLA, AND WHAT OBSERVANT CREATURES FOSSILS ARE
The "dear old fossil" referred to by Miss Sally was one of those occurrences--auxiliaries or enc.u.mbrances, as may be--whom one is liable to meet with in almost any family, who are so forcibly taken for granted by all its members that the infection of their acceptance catches on, and no new-comer ever asks that they should be explained.
If they were relatives, they would be easy of explanation; but the only direct information you ever get about them is that they are not.
This seems to block all avenues of investigation, and presently you find yourself taking them as a matter of course, like the Lion and Unicorn, or the image on a stamp.
Fenwick accepted "the Major," as the old fossil was called, so frankly and completely under that name that he was still uncertain about his real designation at the current moment of the story. n.o.body ever called him anything but "the Major," and he would as soon have asked "Major what?" as called in question the t.i.tle of the King of Hearts instead of playing him on the Queen, and taking the trick. So far as he could conjecture, the Major had accepted him in the same way. When the railway adventure was detailed to him, the fossil said many times, "How _per_fectly extraordinary!" "G.o.d bless my soul!" "You don"t mean _that_!" and so on; but his astonishment always knocked his double eyegla.s.s off, and, when he couldn"t find it, it had to be recovered before he could say, "Eh--eh--what was that?" and get in line again; so he made a disjointed listener.
But these fossils see more than they hear sometimes; and this old Major, for all he was so silent, must have noticed many little things that Christmas evening to cause him to say what he did next day to Sally. For, of course, the Major couldn"t go back to his lodgings in Ball Street in weather like this; so he stayed the night in the spare room, where Mr. Fenwick had been put up tempory, cook said--a room which was, in fact, usually spoken of as "the Major"s room."
Of course, Sally was the sort of girl who would never see anything of that sort--you"ll see what sort directly--though she was as sharp as a razor in a general way. What made her blind in this case was that, in certain things, aspects, relations of life, she had ruled mother out of court as an intrinsically grown-up person--one to whom some speculations would not apply. So she saw nothing in the fact that when Mr. Fenwick"s knock came at the door, her mother said, "There he is,"
and went out to meet him; nor even in her stopping with him outside on the landing, chatting confidentially and laughing. Why shouldn"t she?
She saw nothing--nothing whatever--in Mr. Fenwick"s bringing her mother a beautiful sealskin jacket as a Christmas present. Why shouldn"t he? The only thing that puzzled Sally was, where on earth did he get the money to buy it? But then, of course, he was "in the City," and the City is a sort of Tom Tiddler"s ground. Sally found that enough, on reflection.
She saw nothing, either, in her mother"s carrying her present away upstairs, and saying nothing about it till afterwards. Nor did she notice any abnormal satisfaction on Mr. Fenwick"s countenance as he came into the drawing-room by himself, such as one might discern in a hen--if hens had countenances--after a special egg. Nor did she attach any particular meaning to an expression on the elderly face of the doctor"s mother that any student of Lavater would at once have seen to mean that _we_ saw what was going on, but were going to be maternally discreet about it, and only mention it to every one we met in the very strictest confidence. This lady, who had rather reluctantly joined the party--for she was a martyr to ailments--was somewhat grudgingly admitted by Sally to be a comfortable sort of old thing enough, if only she didn"t "goozle" over you so. She had no _locus standi_ for goozling, whatever it was; for had not Sally as good as told her son that she didn"t want to marry him or anybody else? If you ask us what would be the connecting link between Sally"s att.i.tude towards the doctor and the goozlings of a third party, we have no answer ready.
No; Sally went to bed as wise as ever--so she afterwards told the fossil Major--at the end of the evening. She had enjoyed herself immensely, though the simple material for rapture was only foursquare Halma played by the four acuter intelligences of the six, and draughts for the goozler and the fossil. But then Sally had a rare faculty for enjoying herself, and she was perfectly contented with only one admirer to torment, though he was only old Prosy, as she called him, but not to his face. She was jolly glad mother had put on her maroon-coloured watered silk with velvet facings, because you couldn"t deny that she looked lovely in it. And as for Mr. Fenwick, he looked just like Hercules and Sir Walter Raleigh, after being out skating all day long in the cold. And Sally"s wisdom had not been in the least increased by what was, after all, only a scientific experiment on poor Mr. Fenwick"s mental torpor when her mother, the goozler and old Prosy having departed, got out her music to sing that very old song of hers to him that he had thought the other day seemed to bring back a sort of memory of something. Was it not possible that if he heard it often enough his past might revive slowly? You never could tell!
So when, on Boxing Day morning, Sally"s mother, who had got down early and hurried her breakfast to make a dash for early prayer at St.