Somehow Good by William Frend De Morgan (best short novels TXT) 📕

and the loss of the piebald cat's temper as aforesaid.

"Oh, Major dear, you haven't gone to bed! You will be so tired! Why didn't you go?"

"I've been very happy, chick. I've been reading 'Harry Lorrequer.' I like Charles Lever, because I read him when I was a boy. What's o'clock?" He pulled out his watch with a pretence, easy of detection, that he had not just done so ten minutes before. It was a lie about "Harry Lorrequer," you see, so a little extra didn't matter.

"It's awfully late!" Sally testified. "Very nearly as late as it's possible to be. But now we're in for it, we may as well make it a nocturnal dissipation. Ann!--don't go to bed; at least, not before you've brought some more fresh water. This will take years to hot up. Oh, Major, Major, why _didn't_ you make yourself some toddy? I never go out for five minutes but you don't make yourself any toddy!"

"I don't want it, dear child. I've been drinking all day--however, of course, it was a wedding...."

"But you must have some now, anyhow. Stop a minute, there's some one coming up the doorsteps and Ann's fastened up.... No, it's not the policeman. _I_ know who it is. Stop a minute." And then presently the Major hears Sally's half of an interview, apparently through a keyhole. "I shan't open the door ... two bolts and a key and a chain--the idea! What is it?... My pocky-anky?... Keep it, it won't bite you ... send it to the wash!... No, really, do keep it if you don't mind--keep it till Brahms on Thursday. Remember! Good-night." But it isn't quite good-night, for Sally arrests departure. "Stop! What a couple of idiots we are!... What for?--why--because you might have stuffed it in the letter-box all along." And the incident closes on the line indicated.

"It was only my medical adviser," Sally says, returning with explanations. "Found my wipe in the cab."

"Dr. Vereker?"

"Yes. Dr. Him. Exactly! We bawled at each other through the keyhole like Pyramus and Trilby----" She becomes so absorbed in the details of the toddy that she has to stand a mere emendation over until it is ready. Then she completes: "I mean Thisbe. I wonder where they've got to?"

"Pyramus and Thisbe?"

"No, mother and her young man.... No, I won't sit on you. I'll sit here; down alongside--so! Then I shan't shake the toddy overboard."

Her white soft hand is so comforting as it lies on the Major's on the chair-arm that he is fain to enjoy it a little, however reproachful the clock-face may be looking. You can pretend your toddy is too hot, almost any length of time, as long as no one else touches the tumbler; also you can drink as slow as you like. No need to hurry. Weddings don't come every day.

"Was it very funny, chick?"

"Oh, wasn't it! But didn't mamma look _lovely_?... I've seen it twice before, you know." This last is by way of apology for giving the conversation a wrench. But the Major didn't want to talk over the wedding--seemed to prefer "Charley's Aunt."

"He dresses up like his aunt, doesn't he?"

"Oh yes--it's glorious fun! But _do_ say you thought mamma looked lovely."

"Of course she did. She always does. But had the others seen 'Charley's Aunt' before?"

"Tishy and her Bradshaw? Oh yes--at least, I suppose so."

"And Dr. Vereker?"

"Oh, of course _he_ had--twice at least. The times we saw it, mother and I. He went too.... We-e-e-ell, there's nothing in that!" (We can only hope again our spelling conveys the way the word _well_ was prolonged.)

"Nothing at all. Why should there be? What a nice fellow Vereker is!"

"My medical adviser? Oh, _he's_ all right. Never mind him; talk about mother."

"They must be very nearly at Rheims by now." This is mere obedience to orders on the Major's part. He feels no real interest in what he is saying.

"How rum it must be!" says Sally, with grave consideration. And the Major's "What?" evolves that "it" means marrying a second husband.

"Going through it all over again when you've done it once before," continues this young philosopher. The Major thinks of asking why it should be rummer the second time than the first, but decides not to, and sips his toddy, and pats the hand that is under his. In a hazy, fossil-like way he perceives that to a young girl's mind the "rumness" of a second husband is exactly proportionate to the readiness of its acceptance of the first. Unity is just as intrinsic a quality of a first husband as the colour of his eyes or hair. Moreover, he is expected to outlive you. Above all, he is perfectly natural and a matter of course. We discern in all this a sneaking tribute to an idea of a hereafter; but the Major didn't go so far as that.

"She looked very jolly over it," said he, retreating on generalities. "So did he."

"Gaffer Fenwick? I should think so indeed! Well he might!" Then, after a moment's consideration: "He looked like my idea of Sir Richard Grenville. It's only an idea. I forget what he did. Elizabethan johnny."

"What do you call him? Gaffer Fenwick? You're a nice, respectable young monkey! Well, he's not half a bad-looking fellow; well set up." But none of this, though good in itself, is what Sally sat down to talk about. A sudden change in her manner, a new earnestness, makes the Major stop an incipient yawn he is utilising as an exordium to a hint that we ought to go to bed, and become quite wakeful to say: "I will tell you all I can, my child." For Sally has thrust aside talk of the day's events, making no more of the wedding ceremony than of "Charley's Aunt," with: "_Why_ did my father and mother part? You _will_ tell me now, won't you, Major dear?"

Lying was necessary--inevitable. But he would minimise it. There was always the resource of the legal fiction; all babes born in matrimony are legally the children of their mother's husband, _quand-meme_. He must make that his sheet-anchor.

"You know, Sallykin, your father and mother fell out before you were born. And the first time I saw your mother--why, bless my soul, my dear! you were quite a growing girl--yes, able to get a staff-officer's thumb in your mouth, and bite it. Indeed, you did! It was General Pellew; they say he's going to be made a peer." The Major thinks he sees his way out of the fire by sinking catechism in reminiscences. "I can recollect it all as if it were yesterday. I said to him, 'Who's the poor pretty little mother, General?' Because he knew your mother, and I didn't. 'Don't you know?' said he. 'She's Mrs. Graythorpe.' I asked about her husband, but Pellew had known nothing except that there was a row, and they had parted." The Major's only fiction here was that he substituted the name Graythorpe for Palliser. "Next time I saw her we picked up some acquaintance, and she asked if I was a Lincolnshire Lund, because her father always used to talk of how he went to Lund's father's, near Crowland, when he was a boy. 'Stop a bit,' said I; 'what was your father's name?' 'Paul Nightingale,' says she." Observe that nothing was untrue in this, because Rosey always spoke and thought of Paul Nightingale as her father.

"That was my grandfather?" Sally was intent on accumulating facts--would save up analysis till after. The Major took advantage of a slight choke over his whiskey to mix a brief nod into it; it was a lie--but, then, he himself couldn't have said which was nod and which was choke; so it hardly counted. He continued, availing himself at times of the remains of the choke to help him to slur over difficult passages.

"He was the young brother of a sort of sweetheart of mine--a silly boyish business--a sort of calf-love. She married and died. But he was her great pet, a favourite younger brother. One keeps a recollection of this sort of thing."--The Major makes a parade of his powers of oblivion, and his failure to carry it out sits well upon him.--"Of course, my romantic memories"--the Major smiles derision of Love's young dream--"had something to do with my interest in your mother, but I hope I should have done the same if there had been no such thing. Well, the mere fact of your father's behaviour to your mother...." He stopped short, with misgivings that his policy of talking himself out of his difficulties was not such a very safe one, after all. Here he was, getting into a fresh mess, gratuitously!

"Mamma won't talk about that," says Sally, "so I suppose I'm not to ask _you_." The Major must make a stand upon this, or the enemy will swarm over his entrenchments. Merely looking at his watch and saying it's time for us to be in bed will only bring a moment's respite. There is nothing for it but decision.

"Sally dear, your mother does not tell you because she wishes the whole thing buried and forgotten. Her wishes must be my wishes...."

He would like to stop here--to cut it short at that, at once and for good. But the pathetic anxiety of the face from which all memories of "Charley's Aunt" have utterly vanished is too much for his fortitude; and, at the risk of more semi-fibs, he extenuates the sentence.

"One day your mother may tell you all about it. She is the proper person to tell it--not me. Neither do I think I know it all to tell."

"You know if there was or wasn't a divorce?" The Major feels very sorry he didn't let it alone.

"I'll tell you that, you inquisitive chick, if you'll promise on honour not to ask any more questions."

"I promise."

"Honour bright?"

"Honest Injun!"

"That's right. Now I'll tell you. There was no divorce, but there was a suit for a divorce, instituted by him. He failed to make out a case." Note that the expression "your father" was carefully excluded. "She was absolutely blameless--to my thinking, at least. Now that's plenty for a little girl to know. And it's high time we were both in bed and asleep."

He kisses the grave, sad young face that is yearning to hear more, but is too honourable to break its compact. "They'll be at Rheims by now," says he, to lighten off the conversation.


CHAPTER XVII


SALLY'S LARK. AND HOW SHE TOOK HER MEDICAL ADVISER INTO HER CONFIDENCE AFTER DIVINE SERVICE

Though Sally cried herself to sleep after her interview with her beloved but reticent old fossil, nevertheless, when she awoke next morning and found herself mistress of the house and the situation, she became suddenly alive to the advantages of complete independence. She was an optimist constitutionally; for it _is_ optimism to decide that it is "rather a lark" to breakfast by yourself when you have just dried the tears you have been shedding over the loss of your morning companion. Sally came to this conclusion as she poured out her tea, after despatching his toast and coffee to the Major in his own room. He sometimes came down to breakfast, but such a dissipation as yesterday put it out of the question on this particular morning.

The lark continued an unalloyed, unqualified lark quite to the end of the second cup of tea, when it seemed to undergo a slight clouding over--a something we