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

whom we find new charms in after making her mother's acquaintance. You know how some young people would be passable enough if it were not for a lurid light thrown upon their identity by other members of their family. You know the sister you thought was a beauty and dear, until you met her sister, who was gristly and a jade. But it's a great shame in Tishy's case, because we do honestly believe her seeming _da capo_ of her mother is more skirts than anything else. We credit their respective _apices_ with different dispositions, although (yes, it's quite true what you say) we don't see exactly from what corner of the Professor's his daughter got her better one. He's all very well, but....

Anyhow, we are sorry for Tishy now, as she comes uneasily into the library to be "spoken to." She comes in buttoning a glove and saying, "Yes, papa." She was evidently just going out--probably arrested by the voices in the library.

"Well, my dear, your mother wishes me to speak to you.... H'm! h'm! By-the-bye," he interrupts himself, "it really is a very extraordinary thing, but it's just like work-people. A man spends all his life laying carpets, and the minute he lays mine it's too big or too small."

"The man outside? He's very tiresome. He says the passage is an unusual size."

"I should have taken that point when I measured it. It seems to me late in the day now the carpet's made up. However, that's neither here nor there. Your mother wishes me to--a--to speak to you, my dear."

"What does she want you to say, papa?"

"H'm--well!--it's sometimes not easy to understand your mother. I cannot say that I have gathered precisely what it is she wishes me to say. Nor am I certain that I should be prepared to say it if I knew what it was."--Tishy brightened perceptibly.--"But I am this far in sympathy with what I suppose to be her meaning"--Tishy's face fell--"that I should be very sorry to hear that you had made any binding promises to any young gentleman without knowing more of his antecedents and connexions than I suppose you do at the present about this--a--musical friend of yours--without consulting me." The perfunctory tone in which he added, "and your mother," made the words hardly worth recording.

But perhaps the way they, in a sense, put the good lady out of court, helped to make her daughter brighten up again. "Dear papa," she said, "I should never dream for one moment of doing such a thing. Nor would Mr. Bradshaw dream of asking me to do so."

"That's quite right, my dear--quite enough. Don't say anything more. I am not going to catechize you." And Tishy was not sorry to hear this, because her disclaimer of a binding promise was only true in the letter. In fact, our direct Sally had only the day before pounced upon her friend with, "You know perfectly well he's kissed you heaps of times!" And Tishy had only been able to begin an apology she was not to be allowed to finish with, "And suppose he has...?"

However, her sense of an untruthfulness that was more than merely technical was based not so much on the bare fact of a kissing-relation having come about, as upon a particular example. She knew it was the merest hypocrisy to make believe that the climax of that interview at Riverfordhook, where there were the moonrise and things, did not constitute a pledge on the part of both. However, Tishy is not the first young lady, let me tell you--if you don't know already--who has been guilty of equivocation on those lines. It is even possible that her father was conniving at it, was intentionally accepting what he knew to be untrue, to avoid the trouble of further investigation, and to be able to give his mind to the demolition of that ignoramus. A certain amount of fuss was his duty; but the sooner he could find an excuse to wash his hands of these human botherations and get back to his inner life the better.

Perhaps it was a sense of chill at the suspicion that her father was not concerned enough about her welfare that made Laetitia try to arrest his retirement into his inner life. Or it may have been that she was sensitive, as young folk are, at her new and strange experience of Real Love, and at the same time grated on--scraped the wrong way--in her harsh collision with her mother, who was showing Cupid no quarter, and was only withheld from overt acts of hostility to Julius Bradshaw by the knowledge that excess on her part would precipitate what she sought to avert.

Whatever the cause was, her momentary sense of relief that her father was not going to catechize her was followed by a feeling that she almost wished he would. It would be so nice to have a natural parent that was really interested in his daughter's affairs. Poor Tishy felt lonely, and as if she was going to cry. She must unpack her heart, even if it bored papa, who she knew wanted to turn her out and write. She broke down over it.

"Oh, papa--papa! Indeed, I want to do everything you wish--whatever you tell me. I _will_ be good, as we used to say." A sob grew in her throat over this little nursery recollection. "Only--only--only--it isn't really quite true about no promises. We haven't made them, you know, but they're _there_ all the same." Tishy stops suddenly to avoid a sob she knows is coming. A pocket-handkerchief is called in to remove tears surreptitiously, under a covering pretence of a less elegant function. The Professor hates scenes worse than poison, and Tishy knows it.

"There, there! Well, well! Nothing to cry about. _That's_ right." This is approval of the disappearance of the pocket-handkerchief--some confusion between cause and effect, perhaps. "Come, my child--come, Laetitia--suppose now you tell me all about it."

Tishy acknowledges to herself that she desires nothing better. Yes, papa dear, she will, indeed she will, tell him everything. And then makes a very fair revelation of her love-affair--a little dry and stilted in the actual phrasing, perhaps, but then, what can you expect when one's father is inclined to be stiff and awkward in such a matter, to approach it formally, and consider it an interview? It was all mamma's fault, of course. Why should she be summoned before the bar of the house? Why couldn't her father find his way into her confidence in the natural current of events? However, this was better than nothing.

Besides, we softened gradually as we developed the subject. One of us, who was Mr. Bradshaw at first, became Julius later, with a strong lubricating effect. We began with sincere attachment, but we loved each other dearly before we had done. We didn't know when "it" began exactly--which was a fib, for we were perfectly well aware that "it" began that evening at Krakatoa Villa, which has been chronicled herein--but for a long time past Julius had been asking to be allowed to memorialise the Professor on the subject.

"But you know, papa dear, I couldn't say he was to speak to you until I was quite certain of myself. Besides, I did want him to be on better terms with mamma first."

Professor Wilson flushed angrily, and began with a knitted brow, "I wish your mother would----" but stopped abruptly. Then, calming down: "But you are quite certain _now_, my dear Laetitia?" Oh dear, yes; no doubt of that. And how about Julius? The confident ring of the girl's laugh, and her "Why, you should hear him!" showed that she, at least, was well satisfied of her lover's earnestness.

"Well, my dear child," said the Professor, who was beginning to feel that it was time to go back to his unfinished ignoramus, tyro, or sciolist; "I tell you what I shall do. When's he coming next? Thursday, to dinner. Very well. I shall make a little opportunity for a quiet talk with him, and we shall see."

The young lady came out of the library on the whole comfortabler then she had entered it, and finished buttoning that glove in the passage. As she stood reflecting that papa would really be very nice if he would shave more carefully--for the remains of his adieu was still rasping her cheek--she was aware of the voice of the carpet; she heard it complain, through the medium of its layer, or stretcher, who seemed to mean to pass the remainder of his days scratching the head of perplexity on the scene of his recent failure to add to his professional achievements.

"It's what I say to the guv'nor"--thus ran his Jeremiad--"in dealin' with these here irregular settin's out, where nothin's not to say parallel with anything else, nor dimensions lendin' theirselves to accommodation. 'Just you let me orfer it in,' I says 'afore the final stitchin' to, or even a paper template in extra cases is a savin' in the end.' Because it stands to reason there goes more expense with an ill-cut squint or obtoose angle, involvin' work to rectify, than cut ackerate in the first go-off. Not but what ruckles may disappear under the tread, only there's no reliance to be placed. You may depend on it, to make a job there's nothin' like careful plannin', and foresight in the manner of speakin'. And, as I say to the guv'nor, there's no need for a stout brown-paper template to go to waste, seein' it works in with the under-packin'." And much more which Tishy could still hear murmuring on in the distance as she closed the street door and fled to an overdue appointment with Sally, into whose sympathetic ear she could pour all her new records of the progress of the row.

To tell the whole of the prolonged pitched battle that ensued would take too much ink and paper. The Dragon fought magnificently, so long as she had the powerful backing of her married daughter, Mrs. Sowerby Bagster, and the skirmishing help of Athene. This latter was, however, not to be relied on--might go over to the enemy any moment. Mrs. Bagster, or Clarissa, who was an elder sister of Laetitia's, became lukewarm, too, on a side-issue being raised. It did not appear to connect itself logically with the bone of contention, having reference entirely to vaccination from the calf. But it led to an exaggerated sensitiveness on her part as to the responsibility we incurred by interference with what might (after all) be the Will of Providence. If this should prove so, it would be our duty not to repine. Clarissa contrived to surround the subject with an unprovoked halo of religious meekness, and to work round to the conclusion that it would be presumptuous not to ask Mr. Bradshaw to dinner. Only this resulted absolutely and entirely from her refusing to have her three children all vaccinated from the calf forthwith, because their grandmother thought it necessary. The latter, finding herself deserted in her hour of need by a powerful ally--for three whole children had given Clarissa a deep insight into social ethics, and a weighty authority--surrendered grudgingly. She tried her best to make her invitation to dinner take the form of leave to come to dinner, and partly succeeded. Her suggestions that she hoped Mr. Bradshaw would understand the rules of the game at the table of Society caused the defection of her remaining confederate, Athene, who turned against her, exclaiming: "He won't eat with his knife, at any rate!" However, it was too late to influence current events. The battle was fought and over.

The obnoxious young man didn't eat with his knife when he