Somehow Good Part 74

"Stop a bit, dearest love! I shall be able to tell it all directly."

She, too, was glad of a lull, and welcomed his sitting down beside her on the bed-end, drawing her face to his, and keeping it with the hand that was not caressing hers. Presently he spoke again, more at ease, but always in the undertone, just above a whisper, that meant the consciousness of Sally, too, near. Rosalind said, "She won't hear," and he replied, "No; it's all right, I think," and continued:

"Diedrich Kreutzkammer--he's Diedrich--don't you remember? Of course you do!... I heard him down on the beach to-day singing. I wanted to go to him at once, but I had to think of it first, so I came home.

Then I settled to go to him at the hotel. I had not remembered anything then--anything to speak of--I had not remembered IT. Now it is all back upon me, in a whirl." He freed the hand that held hers for a moment, and pressed his fingers hard upon his eyes; then took her hand again, as before. "I wanted to see the dear old fellow and talk over old times, at 'Frisco and up at the Gold River--that, of course! But I wanted, too, to make him repeat to me all the story I had told him of my early marriage--oh, my darling!--_our_ marriage, and I did not know it! I know it now--I know it now."

Rosalind could feel the thrill that ran through him as his hand tightened on hers. She spoke, to turn his mind for a moment. "How came Baron Kreutzkammer at St. Sennans?"

"Diedrich? He has a married niece living at Canterbury. Don't you remember? He told you and you told me...." Rosalind had forgotten this, but now recalled it. "Well, we talked about the States--all the story I shall have to tell you, darling, some time; but, oh dear, how confused I get! _That_ wasn't the first. The first was telling him my story--the accident, and so on--and it was hard work to convince him it was really me at Sonnenberg. That was rather a difficulty, because I had sent him in the name I had in America, and he only saw an old friend he thought was dead. All _that_ was a trifle; but, oh, the complications!..."

"What was the name you had in America?"

Fenwick answered musingly, "Harrisson," and then paused before saying, "No, I had better not...." and leaving the sentence unfinished. She caught his meaning, and said no more. After all, it could matter very little if she never heard his American experiences, and the name Harrisson had no a.s.sociation for her. She left him to resume, without suggestion.

"He might have reminded me of anything that happened in the States, and I should just have come back here and told it you, because, you see, I should have been sure it was true, and no dream. It was India.

I had told him all, don't you see? And I got him to repeat it, and then it all came back--all at once, the moment I saw it was _you_, my darling--you yourself! It all became quite easy then. It was _us_--you and me! I know it now--I know it now!"

"But, dearest, what made you see that it was us?"

"Why, of course, because of the name! He told me all I had told him from the beginning in German. We always spoke German. He could not remember your first name, but he remembered your mother's--it had stayed in his mind--because of the German word _Nachtigall_ being so nearly the same. As he said the word my mind got a frightful twist, and I thought I was mad. I did, indeed, my dearest love--raving mad!"

"And then you knew it?"

"And then I knew it. I nearly fainted clean off, and he went for brandy; but I came round, and the dear old boy saw me to this door here. It has all only just happened." He remained silent again for a little s.p.a.ce, holding her hand, and then said suddenly: "It _has_ happened, has it not? Is it all true, or am I dreaming?"

"Be patient, darling. It is all true--at least, I think so. It is all true if it is like this, because remember, dear, you have told me almost nothing.... I only know that it has come back to you that I am Rosey and that you are Gerry--the old Rosey and Gerry long ago in India...." She broke down over her own words, as her tears, a relief in themselves, came freely, taxing her further to keep her voice under for Sally's sake. It was only for a moment; then she seemed to brush them aside in an effort of self-mastery, and again began, dropping her voice even lower. "It is all true if it is like this. I came out to marry you in India ... my darling!... and a terrible thing happened to me on the way ... the story you know more of now than I could tell you then ... for how _could_ I tell it ... think?..."

Her husband started up from her side gasping, beating his head like a madman. She was in terror lest she had done wrong in her speech.

"Gerry, Gerry!" she appealed to him in a scarcely raised voice, "think of Sally!" She rose and went to him, repeating, "Think of Sally!" then drew him back to his former place. His breath went and came heavily, and his forehead was drenched with sweat, as in epilepsy; but the paroxysm left him as he sank back beside her, saying only, "My G.o.d!

that miscreant!" but showing that he had heard her by the force of the constraint he put upon his voice. It gave her courage to go on.

"I could not get it told then. I did not know the phrases--and you were so happy, my darling--so happy when you met me at the station!

Oh, how could I? But I was wrong. I ought not to have let you marry me, not knowing. And then ... it seemed deception, and I could not right it...." Her voice broke again, as she hid her face on his shoulder; but she knew her safety in the kiss she felt on her free hand, and the gentleness of his that stroked her hair. Then she heard his almost whispered words above her head, close to her ear:

"Darling, forgive me--forgive me! It was _I_ that was in fault.

I might have known...."

"Gerry, dear ... no!..."

"Yes, I might. There was a woman there--had been an officer's wife.

She came to me and spoke rough truths about it--told me her notion of the tale in her own language. 'Put her away from you,' she said, 'and you won't get another like her, and won't deserve her!' And she was right, poor thing! But I was headstrong and obstinate, and would not hear her. Oh, my darling, _how_ we have paid for it!"

"But you have found me again, dear love!" He did not answer, but raised up her face from his shoulder, parting the loose hair tenderly--for it was all free on her shoulders--and gazing straight into her eyes with an expression of utter bewilderment. "Yes, darling, what is it?" said she, as though he had spoken.

"I am getting fogged!" he said, "and cannot make it out. Was it pure accident? Surely something must have happened to bring it about."

"Bring what about?"

"How came we to find each other again, I mean?"

"Oh, I see! Pure accident, I should say, dear! Why not? It would not have happened if it had not been possible. Thank G.o.d it did!"

"Thank G.o.d it did! But think of the strangeness of it all! How came Sally in that train?"

"Why not, darling? Where else could she have been? She was coming back to tea, as usual."

"And she put me in a cab--bless her!--she and Conrad Vereker--and brought me home to you. But did you know me at once, darling?"

"At once."

"But why didn't you tell me?"

"If you had shown the slightest sign of knowing me I should have told you, and taken my chance; but you only looked at me and smiled, and never knew me! Was mine a good plan? At least, it has answered." A clasp and a kiss was the reply. She was glad that he should choose the line of conversation, and did not break into the pause that followed.

The look of fixed bewilderment on his face was painful, but she did not dare any suggestion of guidance to his mind. She had succeeded but ill before in going back to the cause of their own early severance.

Yet that was what she naturally had most at heart, and longed to speak of. Could she have chosen, she would have liked to resume it once for all, in spite of the pain--to look the dreadful past in the face, and then agree to forget it together. She was hungry to tell him that even when he broke away from her that last time she saw him at Umballa--broke away from her so roughly that his action had all the force and meaning of a blow--she only saw _his_ image of the wrong she had done, or seemed to have done him; that she had nothing for him through it all but love and forgiveness. At least, she would have tried to make sure that he had been able to connect and compare the tale she had told him since their reunion with his new memory of the facts of twenty years ago. But she dared say nothing further as yet.

For his part, at this moment, he seemed strangely willing to let all the old story lapse, and to dwell only on the incredible chance that had brought them again together. All that eventful day our story began with had leaped into the foreground of his mind.

Presently he said, still almost whispering hoa.r.s.ely, with a constant note of amazement and something like panic in his voice: "If it hadn't happened--the accident--I suppose I should have gone back to the hotel. And what should I have done next? I should never have found you and Sally...."

"Were you poor, Gerry darling?"

"Frightfully rich! Gold-fields, mining-place up the Yu-kon. Near the Arctic Circle." He went on in a rapid undertone, as if he were trying to supply briefly what he knew the woman beside him must be yearning to know, if not quite unlike other women. "I wasn't well off before--didn't get on at the Bar at St. Louis--but not poor exactly.

Then I made a small pile cattle-ranching in Texas, and somehow went to live at Quebec. There were a lot of French Canadians I took to.

Then after that, 'Frisco and the gold...."

"Gerry dear!"

"Yes, love, what?"

"Have you any relations living in England?"

"Heaps, but I haven't spoken to one of them for years and years--not since _then_. One of them's a Bart. with a fungus on his nose in Shrops.h.i.+re. He's an uncle. Then there's my sister, if she's not dead--my sister Livy. She's Mrs. Huxtable. I fancy they all think I'm dead in the bush in Australia. I had a narrow squeak there...."

"Now, Gerry darling, I'll tell you what I want you to do...."

"Yes, dear, I will."

"You can't tell me all these things now, and you'll be ill; so lie down on the bed there, and I'll sit by you till you go to sleep. Or look, you get to bed comfortably, and I'll be back in a few minutes and sit by you. Just till you go off. Now do as I tell you."

He obeyed like a child. It was wonderful how, in the returning power of her self-command, she took him, as it were, in hand, and rescued him from the tension of his bewilderment. Apart from the fact that the fibre of her nature was exceptionally strong, her experience of this last hour had removed the most part of the oppression that had weighed her down for more than a twelvemonth--the doubt as to which way a discovery of his past would tell on her husband's love for her. She had no feeling now but anxiety on his behalf, and this really helped her towards facing the situation calmly. All things do that take us out of ourselves.

She stood again a moment outside Sally's door to make sure she was not moving, then went to her own room, not sorry to be alone. She wanted a pause for the whirl in her brain to stop, for the torrent of new event that had rushed in upon it to find its equilibrium. If Gerry fell asleep before she returned to him so much the better! She did not even light her candle, preferring to be in the dark.

But this did not long defer her return to her husband's room. A very few minutes in the darkness and the silence of her own were enough for her, and she was grateful for both. Then she went back, to find him in bed, sitting up and pressing his fingers on his eyes, as one does when suffering from nervous headache. But he disclaimed any such feeling in answer to her inquiry. She sat down beside him, holding his hand, just as she had done in the night of the storm, and begged him for her sake and his own to try to sleep. It would all seem so much easier and clearer in the morning.

Yes, he would sleep, he said. And, indeed, he had resolved to affect sleep, so as to induce her to go away herself and rest. But it was not so easy. Half-grasped facts went and came--recollections that he knew he should before long be able to marshal in their proper order and make harmonious. For the time being, though they had not the nightmare character of the recurrences he had suffered from before his memory-revival, they stood between him and sleep effectually. But he could and would simulate sleep directly, for Rosalind's sake. He had looked at his watch and seen that it was near two in the morning.

Yes, he would sleep; but he must ask one question, or lose his reason if she left him alone with it unanswered.

"Rosey darling!"