Somehow Good Part 29

"Indeed, Baron Kreutzkammer, _my_ name is not Harrisson. _My_ name is Fenwick, and this lady is my wife--Mrs. Fenwick. I have never been in any of the places you mention." For the moment he forgot his own state of oblivion: a thing he was getting more and more in the habit of doing. The Baron looked intently at him, and looked again. He slapped his forehead, not lightly at all, but as if good hard slaps would really correct his misapprehensions and put him right with the world.

"I am all _wronck_" he said, borrowing extra force from an indurated _g_. "But it is ferry bustling--I am bustled!" By this he meant puzzled. Fenwick felt apologetic.

"I don't know how to thank you for the cigar Mr. Harrisson ought to have had," said he. He felt really ashamed of having smoked it under false pretences.

"You shall throw it away, and I giff you one for yourself. That is eacey! But I am bustled."

He continued puzzled. Mrs. Fenwick felt that he was only keeping further comment and inquiry in check because it would have been a doubt thrown on her husband's word to make any. Her uneasiness would have been visible if her power of concealing it had not been fortified by her belief that his happiness as well as hers depended (for the present, at any rate) on his ignorance of his own past.

Perhaps she was wrong; with that we have nothing to do; we are telling of things as they happened. Only we wish to record our conviction that Rosalind Fenwick was acting for her husband's sake as well as her own--not from a vulgar instinct of self-preservation.

The Baron made conversation, and polished his little powerful spectacle-lenses. He blew his nose like a salute of one gun in the course of his polis.h.i.+ng. When _we_ blow _our_ nose, we hush our pocket-handkerchief back into its home, and ignore it a little. The Baron didn't. He continued polis.h.i.+ng on an unalloyed corner through the whole of a very perceptible amount of chat about the tricks memory plays us, and the probable depth of the blue water below. Rosalind's uneasiness continued. It grew worse, when the Baron, suddenly replacing his spectacles and fixing his eyes firmly on her husband, said sternly, "Yes, it is a bustle!" but was relieved when equally suddenly, he shouted in a stentorian voice, "We shall meed lader,"

and took his leave.

"He's a jolly fellow, the Baron, anyhow!" said Fenwick. "I wonder whether they heard him at Altdorf?"

"Every word, I should think. But how I should like to see the Mr.

Harrisson he took you for!"

This was really part of a policy of nettle-grasping, which continued.

She always felt happier after defying a difficulty than after flinching. After all, if Gerry's happiness and her own were not motive enough, consider Sally's. If she should really come to know her mother's story, Sally might die of it.

Fenwick went on to the ending of the cigar, dreamily wondering, evidently "bustled" like the Baron. As he blew the last smoke away, and threw the smoking end down the slope, he repeated her words spoken a minute before, "_I_ should like to see the Mr. Harrisson he took me for."

"It would be funny to see oneself as ithers see one. Some power might gie you the giftie, Gerry. If only we could meet that Mr. Harrisson!"

"Do you remember how we saw our profiles in a gla.s.s, and you said, 'I'm sure those are somebody else'? Illogical female!"

"Why was I illogical? I knew they were going to turn out us in the end. But I was sure I shouldn't be convinced at once." And the talk wandered away into a sort of paradoxical metaphysics.

But when, later in the evening, this lady was described by confidential chat at the far end of the salon as that handsome young Mrs. Algernon Fenwick who was only just married, and whose husband was playing chess in the smoking-room, and what a pity it was they were not going to stop over Monday, she thus described, accurately enough, was rather rejoicing that that handsome Mr. Fenwick, who looked like a Holbein portrait, was being kept quiet for half an hour, because she wanted to get a chance for a little chat with that dreadful noisy Prussian Von, who made all the gla.s.ses ring at table when he shouted so. Rosalind had her own share of feminine curiosity, don't you see? and she was not by any means satisfied about Mr. Harrisson. She did not acknowledge the nature of her suspicions to herself, but she would very much like to know, for all that! She got her opportunity.

"I shouldn't the least mind myself if smoking _were_ allowed in the salon, Baron. You saw to-day that I really liked the smoke?"

"Ja! when I make that chogue. It was a root chogue. But I am forgiffen?"

"It was Gerry who had to be forgiven, breaking out like that. I hope he has promised not to do so any more?"

"He has bromiss to be goot. I have bromiss to be goot. We shall be _sages enfants_, as the French say. But I will tell you, Madame Fenwick, about my vrent Harrisson your Cherry is so ligue...."

"Let's go out on the terrace, then you can light a cigar and be comfortable.... Yes, I'll have my wrap ... no, that's wrong-side-out ... that's right now.... Well, perhaps it will be a little cool for sitting down. We can walk about."

"Now I can tell you about my vrent in America that your hussband is so ligue. He could speague French--ferry well indeed." Rosalind looked up.

"It was when I heard your hussband speaguing French to that grosse Grafin Pobzodonoff that I think to myself that was Alchernon Harrisson that I knew in California."

"Suppose we sit down. I don't think it's too cold.... Yes, this place will do nicely. It's sheltered from the wind." If she does look a little pale--and she feels she does--it will be quite invisible in this dark corner, for the night is dark under a canopy of blazing stars.

"What were you saying about French?"

"Alchernon Harrisson--that was his name--he could speague it well. He spogue id ligue a nadiff. Better than I speague English. I speague English so well because I have a knees at Ganderbury." This meant a niece at Canterbury. Baron Kreutzkammer speaks English so well that it is almost a shame to lay stress on his p.r.o.nunciation of consonants.

The spelling is difficult too, so we will give the substance of what he told Rosalind without his articulation. By this time she, for her part, was feeling thoroughly uneasy. It seemed to her--but it may be she exaggerated--that nothing stood between her husband and the establishment of his ident.i.ty with this Harrisson except the difference of name. And how could she know that he had not changed his name? Had she not changed hers?

The Baron's account of Harrisson was that he made his acquaintance about three years since at San Francisco, where he had come to choose gold-mining plant to work a property he had purchased at Klond.y.k.e.

Rosalind found it a little difficult to understand the account of how the acquaintance began, from want of knowledge of mining machinery. But the gist of it was that the Baron, at that time a partner in a firm that constructed stamping-mills, was explaining the mechanism of one to Harrisson, who was standing close to a small vertical pugmill, or mixer of some sort, just at the moment the driving-engine had stopped and the fly-wheel had nearly slowed down. He went carelessly too near the still revolving machinery, and his coat-flap was caught and wound into the helix of the pugmill. "It would have crowned me badly," said the Baron.

But he remained unground, for Harrisson, who was standing close to the moribund fly-wheel, suddenly flung himself on it, and with incredible strength actually cut short the rotation before the Baron could be entangled in a remorseless residuum of crus.h.i.+ng power, which, for all it looked so gentle, would have made short work of a horse's thigh-bone. The Baron's coat was spoiled, though he was intact. But Harrisson's right arm had done more than a human arm's fair share of work, and had to rest and be nursed. They had become intimate friends, and the Baron had gone constantly to inquire after the swelled arm. It took time to become quite strong again, he said. It was a fine strong arm, and burned all over with gunpowder, "what you call daddooed in English."

"Did it get quite well?"

"Ferry nearly. There was a little blaze in the choint here"--the Baron touched his thumb--"where the bane remained--a roomadic bane. He burgessed a gopper ring for it. It did him no goot." Luckily Rosalind had discarded the magic ring long since, or it might have come into court awkwardly.

If she still entertained any doubts about the ident.i.ty of her husband and Harrisson, the Baron's next words removed them. They came in answer to an expression of wonder of hers that he should so readily accept her husband's word for his ident.i.ty in the face of the evidence of his own senses. "I really think," she had said, "that if I were in your place I should think he was telling fibs." This was nettle-grasping.

"Ach, ach! No--no--no!" shouted the Baron, so loud that she was afraid it would reach the chess-players in the smoking-room, "I arrife at it by logic, by rea.s.son. Giff me your attention." He held up one finger firmly, as an act of hypnotism, to procure it. "Either I am ride or I am wronck. I cannot be neither."

"You might be mistaken."

The Baron's finger waved this remark aside impatiently. "I will fairy the syllogism," he shouted. "Either your husband _is_ Mr. Harrisson, or he is _not_. He cannot be neither." This was granted. "Ferry well, then. If he is Mr. Harrisson, Mr. Harrisson has doled fips. But I know Mr. Harrisson would not dell fips. Imbossible!"

"And if he is not?" The Baron points out that in this case his statement is true by hypothesis, to say nothing of the intrinsic probability of truthfulness on the part of any one so like Mr.

Harrisson. He is careful to dwell on the fact that this consideration of the matter is purely a.n.a.lysis of a metaphysical crux, indulged in for scientific illumination. He then goes on to apologize for having been so very positive. But no doubt one or two minor circ.u.mstances had so affected his imagination that he saw a very strong likeness where only a very slight one existed. "I shall look again. I shall be wicer next time." But what were the minor circ.u.mstances, Rosalind asked.

"There was the French--the lankwitch--that was one. But there was another--his _noce_! I will tell you. When my frent Harrisson gribe holt of that wheel, his head go down etchwice." The Baron tried to hint at this with his own head, but his neck, which was like a prize-bull's, would not lend itself to the ill.u.s.tration. "That wheel was ferry smooth--with a sharp gorner. _His noce touch that corner._" The Baron said no more in words, but pantomimic action and a whistle showed plainly how the wheel-rim had glided on the bridge of Mr. Harrisson's nose. "It took off the gewdiggle, and made a sgar. Your hussband's noce has that ferry sgar. That affected my imatchination. It is easy to unterzdant."

But the subject was frightening Rosalind. She would have liked to hear much more about Mr. Harrisson; might ever have ended by taking the fat Baron, whom she thoroughly liked, into her confidence. The difficulty, however, was about decision in immediate action, which would be irrevocable. Silence was safer--or, sleep on it at least. For now, she must change the conversation.

"How sweet the singing sounds under the starlight!" But the Baron will not tolerate any such loose inaccuracy.

"It would sount the same in the taydime. The fibrations are the same."

But he more than makes up for his harsh prosaism by singing, in unison with the singers unseen:

"Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten Da.s.s ich so traurig bin...."

No one could ever have imagined that such heavenly sounds could come from anything so fat and noisy. Mrs. Fenwick shuts her eyes to listen.

When she opens them again, jerked back from a temporary dream-paradise by the Baron remarking with the voice of Stentor or Boanerges that it is a "ferry broody lied," her husband is standing there. He has been listening to the music. The Baron adds that his friend Mr. Harrisson was "ferry vond of that lied."

But when the two of them have said a cordial good-night to the unwieldy nightingale, who goes away to bed, as he has to leave early in the morning, Fenwick is very silent, and once and again brushes his hair about, and shakes his head in his old way. His wife sees what it is.

The music has gone as near touching the torpid memory as the wild autumn night and the cloud-race round the moon had done in the little front garden at home a year ago.

"A recurrence, Gerry?" she asks.

"Something of the sort, Rosey love," he says. "Something quite mad this time. There was a steam-engine in it, of all things in the world!" But it has been painful, evidently--a discomfort at least--as these things always are.

Rosalind's apprehension of untimely revelations dictated a feeling of satisfaction that the Baron was going away next day; her regret at losing the choice of further investigation admitted one of dissatisfaction that he had gone. The net result was unsettlement and discomfort, which lasted through the remainder of Sonnenberg, and did not lift altogether until the normallest of normal life came back in a typical London four-wheeler, which dutifully obeyed the injunction to "go slowly," not only through the arch that injunction brooded over, but even to the end of the furlong outside the radius which commanded an extra sixpence and got more. But what did that matter when Sally was found watching at the gate for its advent, and received her stepfather with an undisguised hug as soon as she found it in her heart to relinquish her mother?

CHAPTER XX

MERE DAILY LIFE AT KRAKATOA. BUT SALLY IS QUITE FENWICK'S DAUGHTER BY NOW. OF HER VIEWS ABOUT DR. VEREKER, AND OF TISHY'S AUNT FRANCES