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

fro, and over and over, with intermittent musical caresses, against the shingle-bank, whose counter-music spoke to the sea of the ages it had toiled in vain to grind it down to sand. And the tide said, wait, we shall see. The day will come, it said, when not a pebble of you all but shall be scattered drifting sand, unless you have the luck to be carted up at a shilling a load by permission of the authorities, to be made into a concrete of a proper consistency according to the local by-laws. But the pebbles said, please, no; we will bide our time down here, and you shall have us for your own--play with us in the sun at the feet of these two ladies, or make the whirling shoals of us, beaten to madness, thunder back your voice when it shouts in the storm to the seaman's wife, who stops her ears in the dark night alone that she may not hear you heralding her husband's death. And the tide said very good; but a day would come when the pebbles would be sand, for all that. And even the authority would be gone, and the local by-laws. But it would sound upon some shore for ever. So it kept on saying. Probably it was mistaken.

This has nothing to do with our story except that it is approximately the substance of a statement made by Sally to Miss Arkwright, who was interested, and had been promised it all over again to-morrow. For the present she could talk about the pier and take her audience for granted.

"But was it that Kensington Gardens business that did the job?" asked Sally, in the shadow of the breakwater, getting the black hair dry after three-quarters of an hour in the sea; because caps, you know, are all nonsense as far as keeping water out goes. So Sally had to sit ever so long with it out to dry. And the very tiny pebbles you can almost see into stick to your hands, as you know, and come off in your hair when you run them through it, and have to be combed out. At least, Sally's had. But she kept on running the pebbles through her still blue fingers for all that as she half lay, half sat by Tishy on the beach.

"'Did the job!'" repeats the bride on her honeymoon with some indignation. "Sally dear, when will you learn to be more refined in your ways of speech? I'm not a _precieuse_, but--'did the job!' Really, Sally!..."

"Observe the effect of three weeks in France. The Julius Bradshaws can parlay like anything! No, Tishy darling, don't be a stuck-upper, but tell me again about Kensington Gardens."

"I told you. It was just like that. Julius and I were walking up the avenue--you know...."

"The one that goes up and across, and comes straight like this?" Tishy, helped by a demonstration of blue finger-tips, recognises this, strange to say.

"No, not that one. It doesn't matter. We didn't see mamma coming till she was ever so close, because of the Speke Monument in the way. And what could possess her to come home that way from Hertford Street, Mayfair, I cannot imagine!"

"Never mind, Tishy dear! It's no use crying over spilled milk. What did she say?"

"Nothing, dear. She turned purple, and bowed civilly. To Julius, of course. But it included me, whether or no."

"But was that what did the job?... We-ell, I do not see _anything_ to object to in that expression. Was it?"

"If you mean, dear, was it that that made us, me and Julius, feel that matters would get no better by waiting, I think perhaps it was.... Well, when it comes to meeting one's mother in Kensington Gardens, near the Speke Monument, and being bowed civilly to, it seems to me it's high time.... Now, isn't it, Sally?"

Sally evaded giving testimony by raising other questions: "What did your father say?" "Did the Dragon tell him about the meeting in the park?" "What do you think he'll say now?"

"Now? Well, you know, I've got his letter. _He's_ all right--and rather dear, _I_ think. What do _you_ think, Sally?"

"I think very."

"Perhaps I should say very. But with papa you never know. He really does love us all, after a fashion, except Egerton, only I'm never sure he doesn't do it to contradict mamma."

"Why don't they chuck each other and have done with it?" The vulgar child lets fly straight into the bull's-eye; then adds thoughtfully: "_I_ should, only, then, I'm not a married couple."

Tishy elided the absurd figure of speech and ignored it. The chance of patronising was not to be lost.

"You are not married, dear. When you are, you may feel things differently. But, of course, papa and mamma _are_ very odd. I used to hear them through my door between the rooms at L.B.G. Road. It was wrangle, wrangle, wrangle; fight, fight, fight; all through the night--till two o'clock sometimes. Oh dear!"

"You're sure they always were quarrelling?"

"Oh dear, yes. I used to catch all the regular words--settlement and principal and prevaricate. All that sort of thing, you know. But there they are, and there they'll be ten years hence, that's my belief, living together, sleeping together, and dining at opposite ends of the same table, and never communicating in the daytime except through me or Theeny, but quarrelling like cat and dog."

"What shall you do when you go back? Go straight there?"

"I think so. Julius thinks so. After all, papa's the master of the house--legally, at any rate."

"Shall you write and say you're coming?"

"Oh, no! Just go and take our chance. We shan't be any nearer if we give mamma an opportunity of miffing away somewhere when we come. What _is_ that little maid talking about there?" The ex-bridesmaid is three or four yards away, and is discoursing eloquently, a word in the above conversation having reminded her of a tragic event she has mentioned before in this story. "I seeps with my bid sister Totey's dolly," is what she appears to be saying.

"Never mind the little poppet, Tishy, till you've told me more about it." Sally is full of curiosity. "Did that do the job or did it not? That's what I want to know."

"I suppose it did, dear, indirectly. That was on Saturday afternoon. Next morning we breakfasted under a thundercloud with Egerton grinning inside his skin, and looking like 'Won't you catch it, that's all!' at me out of the corner of his eye. That was bad enough, without one's married sister up from the country taking one aside to say that _she_ wasn't going to interfere, and calling one to witness that _she_ had said nothing so far. All she said was, 'Me and mamma settle it between us.' 'Settle what?' said I; and she didn't answer, and went away to the first celebration."

"She's not bad, your married sister," Sally decided thoughtfully.

"Oh no, Clarissa's not bad. Only she wants to run with the hare and explain to the hounds when they come up.... What happened next? Why, as I went upstairs past papa's room, out comes mamma scarlet with anger, and restraining herself in the most offensive way for me to go past. I took no notice, and when she was gone I went down and walked straight into the library. I said, 'What is it, papa?' I saw he was chuckling internally, as if he'd made a hit."

"Wasn't he angry? What did he say?"

"Oh no, _he_ wasn't angry. Let's see ... oh!... what he said was, 'That depends so entirely on what _it_ is, my dear. But, broadly speaking, I should say it was your mother.' 'What has she been saying to you?' I asked. And he answered, 'I can only give her exact words without pledging myself to their meaning. She stated that she "supposed I was going to tell my daughter I approved of her walking about Kensington Gardens with _that man's_ arm around her waist." I replied--reasonably, as it seems to me--that I supposed that man was there himself. Otherwise, it certainly did seem to me a most objectionable arrangement, and I hope you'll promise your mother not to do it again.'"

"What on earth did he mean?"

"You don't understand papa. He quibbles to irritate mamma. He meant like a waistband--separate--don't you see?"

"I see. But it wouldn't bend right." Sally's truthful nature postpones laughing at the Professor's absurdity; looks at the case on its merits. When she has done justice to this point, she laughs and adds: "What did _you_ say, Tishy?"

"Oh, I said what nonsense, and it wasn't tight round like all that; only a symptom. And we didn't even know mamma was there because of Speke and Grant's obelisk. There wasn't a soul! Papa saw it quite as I did, and was most reasonable. So I thought I would feel my way to developing an idea we had been broaching, Julius and I, just that very time by the obelisk. I asked papa flatly what he would do if I married Julius straight off. 'I believe, my dear,' said he, 'that I should be bound to disapprove most highly of your conduct and his.' 'But _should_ you, papa?' I said. 'I should be _bound_ to, my dear,' said he. 'But should you turn us out of the house?' I asked. 'Most certainly _not_,' said he emphatically. 'But I should disapprove.' I said I should be awfully sorry for that. 'Of course you would,' said he. 'Any dutiful daughter would. But I don't exactly see what harm it would do _you_.' And you see how his letter begins--that he is bound, as a parent, to feel the strongest disapprobation, and so on. No, I don't think we need be frightened of papa. As for mamma, of course it wouldn't be reasonable to expect her to...."

"To expect her to what?"

"Well, I was going to say keep her hair on. The expression is Egerton's, and I'm sorry to say his expressions are not always ladylike, however telling they are! So I hesitated. Now what _is_ that baby talking about down there?"

For through the whole of Tishy's interesting tale that baby had been dwelling on the shocking occurrence of her sister's doll as before recorded. Her powers of narrative--giving a dramatic form to all things, and stimulated by Sally's statements of what the beach said to the sea, and the sea said back--had, it seemed, attracted shoals of fish from the ocean depths to hear her recital of the tragedy.

"Suppose, now, you come and tell it us up here, Gwenny," says the bride to the bridesmaid. And Sally adds: "Yes, delicious little Miss Arkwright, come and tell us all about it too." Whereupon Miss Arkwright's musical tones are suddenly silent, and her eyes, that are so nearly the colour of the sea behind her, remain fixed on her two petitioners, their owner not seeming quite sure whether she shall acquiesce, or coquette, or possibly even burst into tears. She decides, however, on compliance, coming suddenly up the beach on all fours, and exclaiming, "Tate me!" flings herself bodily on Sally, who welcomes her with, "You sweet little darling!" while Mrs. Julius Bradshaw, anticipating requisition, looks in her bag for another chocolate. They will spoil that child between them.

"Now tell us about the fisses and dolly," says Sally. But the narrator, all the artist rising in her soul, will have everything in order.

"I _told_ ze fisses," she says, reproach in her voice.

"I see, ducky. You told the