Somehow Good Part 71

But this is wandering from the point, and all the while Sally and her lover have been climbing that hill again, and are now walking over the lonely down above, towards the sun, and their shadows are long behind them--at least, their shadow; for they have but one, and we fancy we have let some of our record slip, for the man's arm is round the girl's waist. Yes, some further clearer understanding has come into their lives, and maybe Sally sees by now that the vote she pa.s.sed _nem. con._ may be rescinded in the end.

If you had been near them then, invisible, we know you would not have gone close and listened. You would have been too honourable. But you would only have heard this--take our word for it!

"Do you know what I always call you behind your back? I always call you Prosy. I don't know why."

"Because I _am_ prosy--level-headed, slow sort of card--but prosy beyond a doubt."

"No, you're not. I don't think you know the least what you're like.

But I shall call you Prosy, all the same, or whatever I choose!"

"You don't take to Conrad, somehow?"

"It sounds so reproachful. It's like William."

"Does William sound reproachful?"

"Of course it does! w.i.l.l.y-yum! A most reproachful name. No, Prosy dear, I shall call you Prosy, whatever the consequences may be. People must put their own construction upon it."

"Mother calls me Conny very often."

"When she's not taking exception to you ... oh, no! I know. I was only joking ... there, then! we won't quarrel and go home opposite ways about that. Besides, I'm the young lady...."

"Oh, Sally darling, dearest, it does make me feel such a fool. Please don't!"

"Stuff and nonsense, Prosy dear! I shall, if I choose. So there!...

No, but seriously--_why_ did you think I shouldn't get on well with your mother?" Poor Prosy looks very much embarra.s.sed at this point; his countenance pleads for respite. But Sally won't let him off. And he is as wax in her hands, and she knows it, and also that every word that pa.s.ses her coral lips seems to the poor stricken man a pearl of wisdom. And she is girl enough to enjoy her power, is Sally.

"_Why_ do you think I shan't get on with her?" Note the slight variation in the question, driving the nail home, leaving no escape.

The doctor's manner in reply is that of one who appeals to Truth herself to help him, before a court that acknowledges no other jurisdiction.

"Because ... I must say it because it's true, only it seems so ...

so disloyal, you might say, to mother...."

"Well! Because what?"

"Because then it won't be the same as _your_ mother. It can't be."

"Why not?"

"Oh, Sally--dearest love--how can it?"

"Well! Perhaps _why not_ was fibs. And, of course, mother's an angel, so it's not fair. But, Prosy dear, I'll tell you one thing I _do_ think--that affectionate sons make very bad medical attendants for their ma's; and I should say the same if they had all the degrees in Christendom."

"You think a nervous element comes in?..."

And so the conversation ripples on, a quiet undertone of perfect confidence, freedom without reserve as to another self, suddenly discovered in the working ident.i.ty of a fellow-creature. It ripples on just thus, all the distance of the walk along the topmost down, in the evening sunlight, and then comes a pause to negotiate the descent to their handy little forest below. Then a sense that they are coming back into a sane, dry world, and must be a lady and a gentleman again.

But there must be a little farewell to the enchanted land they are leaving behind--a recognition of its story, under the beech-trees as the last gleam goes, and leaves us our inheritance of twilight.

"Do you remember, darling, how we climbed up there, coming, and had hold to the top?" His lips find hers, naturally and without disguise.

It is the close of the movement, and company-manners will be wanted directly. But just a bar or two, and a s.p.a.ce, before the music dies!...

"I remember," says Sally. "That began it. Oh, what a long time ago that does seem now! What a rum start it all is--the whole turn-out!"

For the merp.u.s.s.y is her incorrigible self, and will be to the last.

When Sally reached home, very late, she was not displeased, though she was a little surprised, to find that Mrs. Lobjoit was keeping dinner back, and that her mother and Fenwick had not reappeared, having been away since they parted. Not displeased, because it gave her time to settle down--the expression she made use of, to think with; not with any admission, however, that she either felt or looked unusually _exaltee_--but surprised, because it was eight o'clock, and she felt that even Mrs. Lobjoit's good-nature might have limits.

But while she was settling down, in a happy, excited dream she half wondered that she did not wake from, back came the truants; and she heard from her room above Mrs. Lobjoit's report that Miss Sally was gone upstairs to get ready, with the faintest hint of reproach in the tone. Then her mother's "Don't stop to read letters, Gerry--that'll do after," and Fenwick's "All right!" not followed by immediate obedience. Then, after half a moment's delay, in which she felt some surprise at herself for not going out to meet them coming up the stairs, her mother's voice approaching, that asked where the kitten was.

"Oh, here you are, chick!--how long have you been in? Why, Sallykin!

what is it, child?... Oh, Gerry--Gerry--come up here and hear this!"

For the merp.u.s.s.y, in spite of many stoical resolutions, had merged a beginning of verbal communication in a burst of happy tears on her mother's bosom.

And when Fenwick, coming upstairs three steps at a time, filled the whole house with "Hullo, Sarah! what's the latest intelligence?" this young lady had only just time to pull herself together into something like dignified self-possession, in order to reply ridiculously--how could she have been our usual Sally, else?--"We-ell! I don't see that it's anything so very remarkable, after all. I've been encouraging my medical adviser's attentions, if you want to know, Jeremiah."

Was it only a fancy of Sally's, as she ended off a hurried toilet, for Mrs. Lobjoit's sake, or did her mother say to Fenwick, "Well!--_that_ is something delightful, at any rate"? As though it were in some sense a set-off against something not delightful elsewhere.

CHAPTER XLII

OF A RECURRENCE FROM _AS YOU LIKE IT_ AND HOW FENWICK DIDN'T. WHY A SAILOR WOULD NOT LEARN TO SWIM. THE BARON AGAIN. OF A CUTTLE-FISH AND HIS SQUIRT. OF THE POWER OF _A PRIORI_ REASONING. OF SALLY'S CONFESSION, AND HOW FENWICK WENT TO A FIRST-CLa.s.s HOTEL

When Fenwick turned back towards home, ostensibly to shorten Rosalind's visit to the doctor's mother, he had no intention of doing so early enough to allow of his rejoining his companions, however slowly they might walk. Neither did he mean to deprive old Mrs.

Vereker of Rosalind until she had had her full allowance of her. In an hour would do--or three-quarters. He discounted twenty-five per cent., owing to a recollection of the green veil and spectacles. Then he felt unkind, and said to himself, that, after all, the old woman couldn't help it.

Fenwick felt he was making a great concession in giving up three-quarters of an hour of Rosalind. As soon as he had had exercise enough for the day, and was in a mood to smoke and saunter about idly, he wanted Rosalind badly, and was little disposed to give her up. But the old Goody was going away to-morrow, and he would be liberal. He would take a turn along the sea-front--would have time to get down to the jetty--and then would invade the cave of the Octopus and extract the prisoner from its tentacles.

His intention in forsaking Sally and the doctor was half suspected by the latter, quite clear to himself, and only unperceived by his opaque stepdaughter. As he idled down towards the old fisher-dwellings and the net-huts, he tried to picture the form the declaration would take, and the way it would be received. That this would be favourable he never doubted for a moment; but he recalled the speech of Benedict to Beatrice, "By my troth I take thee for pity," and fancied Sally's response might be of the same complexion. His recollection of these words produced a mental recurrence, a distressing and imperfect one, connected with the earlier time he could not reach back to, of the words being used to himself by a girl who ascribed them to Rosalind in _As You Like It_, and a discussion after of their whereabouts in Shakespeare.

The indescribable wrench this gave his mind was so painful that he was quite relieved to recall Vereker's opinion that it was always the imperfection of the memory and the effort that gave pain, not the thing remembered. And in this case there could be no doubt that it was a mere dream, for the girl not only took the form of his Rosey he was going back to directly, but actually claimed her name, saying distinctly, "like my namesake, Celia's friend, in Shakespeare." Could any clearer proof be given that it was mere brain-froth?

The man with "Bessie" and "Elinor" tattooed on his arm was enjoying a pipe and mending a net, not to be too idle. The gla.s.s might be rising--or not. He was independent of Science. A trifle of wind in the night was his verdict, gla.s.s or no! The season was drawing nigh to a close now for a bathing-resort, as you might say. Come another se'nnight, you wouldn't see a machine down, as like as not. But you could never say, to a nicety. He'd known every lodging in the old town full, times and again, to the end of September month, before now. But this year was going to fall early, and your young lady would lose her swimming.

"She's a rare la.s.s, too, for the water," he concluded, without any consciousness of familiarity in the change of phrase. "Not that I know much myself, touching swimming and the like. For I can't swim myself, never a stroke."

"That's strange, too, for a seaman," said Fenwick.

"No, sir! Not so strange as you might think it. You ask up and down among we, waterside or seafaring, and you'll find a many have never studied it, for the purpose. Many that would make swimmers, with a bit of practice, will hold off, for the reason I tell you. Overboard in mid-ocean, and none to help, and not a spar, would you soonest drown, end on, or have to fight for it, like it or no?"

"Drown! The sooner the better." Fenwick has no doubt about the matter.

"Why, sure! So I say, master. And I've put no encouragement on young Benjamin, over yonder, to give study to the learning of it, for the same reason. And not a stroke can he swim, any more than his father."