Somehow Good Part 24

"That's _pits_!" says the first violin, and we have to begin again at the top of the page, and the Professor in his library wonders why on earth those girls can't play straight on. The Ancient Phoenicians are fidgeted by the jerks in the music.

But it comes to an end in time, and then Sally begins again:

"I _know_ that story's all nonsense now, Tishy."

"Why?"

"Because mother told me once that my father never saw me, so come now!

Because the new-bornest baby that ever was couldn't be too small for its father to see." Sally pauses reflectively, then adds: "Unless he was blind. And mother would have said if he'd been blind."

"He couldn't have been blind, because----"

"Now, Tishy, you see! You're keeping back lots of things that old wheezy squeaker said. And you _ought_ to tell me--you know you ought.

Why couldn't he?"

"You're in such a hurry, dear. I was going to tell you. Major Roper said he never saw him but once, and it was out shooting tigers, and he was the best shot for a civilian he'd ever seen. There was a tiger was just going to lay hold of a man and carry him off when your father shot him from two hundred yards off----"

"The man or the tiger? I'm on the tiger's side. I always am."

"The tiger, stupid! You wouldn't want your own father to aim at a tiger and hit a man?"

Sally reflects. "I don't think I should. But, I say, Tishy, do you mean to say that Major Roper meant to say that he was out shooting with my father and didn't know what his name was?"

"Oh, no. He said his name, of course. It was Palliser ... that was right, wasn't it?"

"Oh dear, no; it was Graythorpe. Palliser indeed!"

"It was true about the tiger though, because Major Roper says he's got the skin himself now."

"Only it wasn't my father that shot it. That's quite clear." Sally was feeling greatly relieved, and showed it in the way she added: "Now, doesn't that just show what a parcel of nonsense the whole story is?"

Sally had never told her friend about her mother's name before she took that of Nightingale. Very slight hints had sufficed to make her reticent about Graythorpe. Colonel Lund had once said to her: "Of course, your mother was Mrs. Graythorpe when she came to England; that was before she changed her name to Nightingale, you know?" She knew that her mother's money had come to her from a "grandfather Nightingale," whose name had somehow accompanied it, and had been (very properly, as it seemed to her) bestowed on herself as well as her mother. They were part and parcel of each other obviously. In fact, she had never more than just known of the existence of the name Graythorpe in her family at all, and it had been imputed by her to this unpopular father of hers, and put aside, as it were, on a shelf with him. Even if her mother had not suggested a desire that the name should lapse, she herself would have accepted its extinction on her own account.

But now this name came out of the past as a consolation. Palliser indeed! How could mamma have been Mrs. Graythorpe if her husband's name had been Palliser? Sally was not wise enough in worldly matters to know that divorced ladies commonly fall back on their maiden names. And she had been kept, or left, so much in the dark that she had taken for granted that her mother's had been Nightingale--that, in fact, she had retaken her maiden name at her father's wish, possibly as a censure on the misbehaviour of a husband who drank or gambled or was otherwise reprobate. Her young mind had been manipulated all one way--had been in contact only with its manipulators. Had she had a sister or brother, they would have canva.s.sed the subject, speculated, run conclusions to earth, and demanded enlightenment. She had none but her mother to go to, unless it were Colonel Lund; and the painful but inevitable task of both was to keep her in the dark about her parentage at all hazards.

"If ever," said the former to the latter, "my darling girl has a child of her own, I may be able to tell her her mother's story." Till then, it would be impossible.

Sally had had a narrow escape of knowing more about this story when the veteran Sub-Dean qualified himself for an obituary in the "Times,"

which she chanced upon and read before her mother had time to detect and suppress it. Luckily, a reasonable economy of type had restricted the names and designations of all the wives he had driven tandem, and no more was said of his third than that she was Rosalind, the widow of Paul Nightingale. So, as soon as Sally's mother had read the text herself, she was able to say to the Major, quite undisturbedly, that the old Sub-Dean had gone at last, leaving thirteen children. The name Graythorpe had not crept in.

But we left Sally with a question unanswered. Didn't that show what nonsense old Major Roper's story was? Laet.i.tia was rather glad to a.s.sent, and get the story quashed, or at least prorogued _sine die_.

"It did seem rather nonsense, Sally dear. Major Roper was a stupid old man, and evidently took more than was good for him." Intoxicants are often of great service in conversation.

In this case they contributed to the reinstatement of Mr. Bradshaw.

Dear me, it did seem so funny to Sally! Only the other day this young man had been known to her on no other lines than as an established fool, who came to stare at _her_ out of the corners of his dark eyes all through the morning service at St. Satisfax. And now it was St.

John's, Ladbroke Grove Road, and, what was more, he was being tolerated as a semi-visitor at the Wilsons'--a visitor with explanations in an undertone. This was the burden of Laet.i.tia, as soon as she had contrived to get Sally's troublesome parent shelved.

"Why mamma needs always to be in such a furious fuss to drag in his violin, I do _not_ know. As if he needed to be accounted for! Of course, if you ask a Hottentot to evenings, you have to explain him.

But the office-staff at Cattley's (which is really one of the largest firms in the country) are none of them Hottentots, but the contrary....

Now I know, dear, you're going to say what's the contrary of a Hottentot, and all the while you know perfectly well what I mean."

"Cut away, Tishy! What next?"

"Well--next, don't you think it very dignified of Mr. Bradshaw to be _able_ to be condescended to and explained in corners under people's breaths and not to show it?"

"He's got to lump it, if he doesn't like it." Sally, you see, has given up her admirer readily enough, but, as she herself afterwards said, it's quite another pair of shoes when you're called on to give three cheers for what's really no merit at all! What does the young man expect?

"Now, that's unkind, Sally dear. You wouldn't like _me_ to. Anyhow, that's what mamma _does_. Takes ladies of a certain position or with expectations into corners, and says she hates the expression gentleman and lady, but _they_ know what she means...."

"_I_ know. And they goozle comfortably at her, like Goody Vereker."

"Doesn't it make one's flesh creep to have a mother like that? I do get to hate the very sight of shot silk and binoculars on a leg when she goes on so. But I suppose we never shall get on together--mamma and I."

"What does the Professor think about him?"

"Oh--papa? Of course, papa's _perfectly hopeless_! It's the only true thing mamma ever says--that he's _perfectly hopeless_. What do you suppose he did that Sunday afternoon when Julius Bradshaw came and had tea and brought the Strad--the first time, I mean?... Why, he actually fancied he had come from the shop with a parcel, and never found out he couldn't have when he had tea in the drawing-room, and only suspected something when he played Rode's 'Air with Variations for Violin and Piano.' Just fancy! He wanted to know why he shouldn't have tea when every one else did, and offered him cake! And Sunday afternoon and a Stradivarius! _Do_ say you think my parents trying, Sally dear!"

Sally a.s.sented to everything in an absent way; but that didn't matter as long as she did it. Laet.i.tia only wanted to talk. She seemed, thought Sally, improved by the existing combination of events. She had had to climb down off the high stilts about Bradshaw, and had only worked in one or two slight _Grundulations_ (a word of Dr. Vereker's) into her talk this morning. Tishy wasn't a bad fellow at all (Sally's expression), only, if she hadn't been taught to strut, she wouldn't have been any the worse. It was all that overpowering mother of hers!

Before she parted with her friend that afternoon Sally had a sudden access of Turkish directness:

"Tishy dear, _are_ you going to accept Julius Bradshaw if he asks you, or _not_?"

"Well, dear, you know we must look at it from the point of view of what he would have been if it hadn't been for that unfortunate nervous system of his. The poor fellow couldn't help it."

"But are you, or not? That's what _I_ want an answer to."

"Sally dear! Really--you're just like so much dynamite. What would you do yourself if you were me? I ask you."

"I should do exactly whatever you settle to do if I were you. It stands to reason. But what's it going to be? That's the point."

"He hasn't proposed yet."

"That has nothing whatever to do with it. What you've got to do is to make--up--your--mind." These last four words are very _staccato_ indeed. Tishy recovers a dignity she has rather been allowing to lapse.

"By the time you're my age, Sally dear, you'll see there are ways and ways of looking at things. Everything can't be wrapped up in a nutsh.e.l.l. We're not Ancient Phoenicians nowadays, whatever papa may say. But you're a dear, impulsive little puss."

The protest was feeble in form and substance, and quite unworthy of Miss Sales Wilson, the daughter of _the_ Professor Sales Wilson. No wonder Sally briefly responded, "Stuff and nonsense!" and presently went home.

Of course, the outer circle of Mrs. Nightingale's society (for in this matter we are all like Regents Park) had their say about her proposed marriage. But they don't come into our story; and besides, they had too few data for their opinions to be of any value. What a difference it would have made if old Major Roper had met Fenwick and recalled the face of the dead shot who, it seemed, had somehow ceded his tiger-skin to him. But no such thing happened, nor did anything else come about either to revive the story of the divorce or to throw a light on the ident.i.ty of Palliser and Fenwick. Eight weeks after the latter (or the former?) had for the second time disclosed his pa.s.sion to the same woman, the couple were married at the church of St. Satisfax, and, having started for the Continent the same afternoon, found themselves, quite unreasonably happy, wandering about in France with hardly a thought beyond the day at most, so long as a letter came from Sally at the _postes-restantes_ when expected. And he had remembered nothing!

CHAPTER XVI

OF A WEDDING PARTY AND AN OLD MAN'S RETROSPECT. A HOPE OF RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE HEREAFTER. CHARLEY'S AUNT, AND PYRAMUS AND THISBE. HOW SALLY TRIED TO PUMP THE COLONEL AND GOT HALF A BUCKETFUL