Somehow Good by William Frend De Morgan (free ebook reader for iphone .txt) 📖

of the cake and a coin, and he goes away presumably to the doss-house he smells so strong of, having been warmed, that a flavour of the heap in the mews would have been welcome in exchange. So Rosalind thinks as she opens the window a moment and looks out. She can quite see the houses opposite. The fog has cleared till the morning.

Perhaps it is the relenting of the atmospheric conditions, or perhaps it is the oxygen that the patient has been inhaling off and on, that has slightly revived him. Or perhaps it is the champagne that comes up through a tap in the cork, and reminds Rosalind's ill-slept brain of something heard very lately--what on earth exactly was it? Oh, she knows! Of course, the thing in the street the sanitary engineer's son drew the pails of water at for the house with the balcony. It is pleasanter to know; might have fidgeted her if she had not found out. But she is badly in want of sleep, that's the truth!

"I thought Major Roper was gone, Rosey." He can talk through his heavy breathing. It must be the purer air.

"So he is, dear. He went two hours ago." She sits by him, taking his hand as before. The nurse is, by arrangement, to take her spell of sleep now.

"I suppose it's my head. I thought he was here just now--just this minute."

"No, dear; you've mixed him up with Gerry, when he came in to say good-night. Major Roper went away first. It wasn't seven o'clock." But there is something excited and puzzled in the patient's voice as he answers--something that makes her feel creepy.

"Are you _sure_? I mean, when he came back into the room with his coat on."

"You are dreaming, dear! He never came back. He went straight away."

"Dreaming! Not a bit of it. You weren't here." He is so positive that Rosalind thinks best to humour him.

"I suppose I was speaking to Mrs. Kindred. What did he come back to say, dear?"

"Oh, nothing! At least, I had told him not to chatter to Sallykin about the old story, and he came back, I suppose, to say he wouldn't." He seemed to think the incident, as an incident, closed; but presently goes on talking about things that arise from it.

"Old Jack's the only one of them all that knew anything about it--that Sallykin is likely to come across. Pellew knew, of course; but he's not an old chatterbox like Roper."

Ought not Rosalind to tell the news that has just reached her? She asks herself the question, and answers it: "Not till he rallies, certainly. If he does not rally, why then----!" Why then he either will know or won't want to.

She has far less desire to tell him this than she has to talk of the identity of her husband. She would almost be glad, as he is to die--her old friend--that she should have some certainty beforehand of the exact time of his death, so that she might, only for an hour a companion in her secrecy. If only he and she might have borne the burden of it together! She reproached herself, now that it was too late, with her mistrust of his powers of retaining a secret. See how keenly alive he was to the need of keeping Sally's parentage in the dark! And _that_ was what the whole thing turned on. Gerry's continued ignorance might be desirable, but was a mere flea-bite by comparison. In her strained, sleepless, overwrought state the wish that "the Major" should know of her happiness while they could still speak of it together grew from a passing thought of how nice it might have been, that could not be, to a dumb dominant longing that it should be. Still, after all, the only fear was that he should talk to Gerry; and how easy to keep Gerry out of the room! And suppose he did talk! Would Gerry believe him? There was risky ground there, though.

She was not sorry when no more speech came through the heavy breathing of the invalid. He had talked a good deal, and a semi-stupor followed, relieving her from the strong temptation she had felt to lead him back to their past memories, and feel for some means of putting him in possession of the truth. As the tension of her mind grew less, she became aware this would have been no easy thing to do. Then, as she sat holding the old hand, and wondering that anything so frail could still keep in bond a spirit weary of its prison, drowsiness crept over her once more, all the sooner for the monotonous rhythm of the heavy breath. Consciousness gave place to a state of mysterious discomfort, complicated with intersecting strings and a grave sense of responsibility, and then to oblivion. After a few thousand years, probably minutes on the clock, a jerk woke her.

"Oh dear! I was asleep."

"You might give me another nip of the champagne, Rosey dear. And then you must go and lie down. I shall be all right. Is it late?"

"Not very. About twelve. I'll look at my watch." She does so, and it is past one. Then the invalid, being raised up towards his champagne, has a sudden attack of coughing, which brings in the nurse as a reserve. Presently he is reinstated in semi-comfort, half a tone weaker, but with something to say. And so little voice to say it with! Rosalind puts her ear close, and repeats what she catches.

"Why did Major Roper come back? He didn't, dear. He went away about seven, and has not been here since."

"He was in the room just this minute." The voice is barely audible, the conviction of the speaker absolute. He is wandering. The nurse's mind decides, in an innermost recess, that it won't be very long now.

* * * * *


Rosalind looked out through a spot she had rubbed clean on the frozen window-pane, and saw that it was bright starlight. The fog had gone. That boy--he was asleep at the twopenny doss, and the trousers were drying. What a good thing that he should be totally insensitive to atmosphere, as no doubt he was.

The hardest hours for the watcher by a sick-bed are those that cannot be convinced that they belong to the previous day. One o'clock may be coaxed or bribed easily enough into winking at a pretence that it is only a corollary of twelve; two o'clock protests against it audibly, and every quarter-chime endorses its claim to be to-morrow; three o'clock makes short work of an imposture only a depraved effrontery can endeavour to foist upon it. Rosalind was aware of her unfitness to sit up all night--all this next night--but nursed the pretext that it had not come, and that it was still to-day, until a sense of the morning chill, and something in the way the sound of each belated cab confessed to its own scarcity, convinced her of the uselessness of further effort. Then she surrendered the point, short of the stroke of three, and exchanged posts with the nurse, who promised to call her at once should it seem necessary to do so. Sleep came with a rush, and dreamless oblivion. Then, immediately, the hand of the nurse on her shoulder, and her voice, a sudden shock in the absolute stillness:

"I thought it better to wake you, Mrs. Nightingale. I am _so_ sorry...."

"Oh dear! how long have I slept?" Rosalind's mind leaped through a second of unconsciousness of where she is and what it's all about to a state of intense wakefulness. "What o'clock is it?"

"It's half-past six. I should have left you to have your sleep out, only he wanted you.... Yes, he woke up and asked for you, and then asked again. He's hardly coughed."

"I'll come." Rosalind tried for alacrity, but found she was quite stiff. The fire was only a remnant of red glow that collapsed feebly as the nurse touched it with the poker. It was a case for a couple of little gluey wheels, and a good contribution to the day's fog, already in course of formation, with every grate in London panting to take shares. Rosalind did not wait to see the black column of smoke start for its chimney-pot, but went straight to the patient's bedside.

"Is that Rosey? I can't see very well. Come and sit beside me. I want you." He was speaking more easily than before, so his hearer thought. Could it be a change for the better? She put her finger on the pulse, but it was hard to find. The fever had left him for the time being, but its work was done. It was wonderful, though, that he should have so much life in him for speech.

"What is it, Major dear?... Let's get the pillow right.... There, that's better! Yes, dear; what is it?"

"I've got my marching orders, Rosey. I shall be all right. Shan't be sorry ... when it's over.... Rosey girl, I want you to do something for me.... Is my watch there, with the keys?"

"Yes, dear; the two little keys."

"The little one opens my desk ... with the brass corners.... Yes, that one.... Open the top flap, and look in the little left-hand drawer. Got it?"

"Yes; you want the letters out? There's only one packet."

"That's the lot. Read what's written on them."

"Only 'Emily, 1837.'"

"Quite right! That was your aunt, you know--your father's sister. Don't cry, darling. Nothing to cry about! I'm only an old chap. There, there!" Rosalind sat down again by the bed, keeping the packet of letters in her hand. Presently the old man, who had closed his eyes as though dozing, opened them and said: "Have you put them on the fire?"

"No. Was I to?"

"That was what I meant. I thought I said so.... Yes; pop 'em on." Rosalind went to the fireside and stood hesitating, till the old man repeated his last words; then threw the love-letters of sixty years ago in a good hot place in the burning coal. A flare, and they were white ash trying to escape from a valley of burning rocks; then even that was free to rise. Maybe the only one who ever read them would be soon--would be a mere attenuated ash, at least, as far as what lay on that bed went, so pale and evanescent even now.

"A fool of a boy, Rosey dear," said the old voice, as she took her place by the bed again. "Just a fool of a boy, to keep them all those years. And _she_ married to another fellow, and a great-grandmother. Ah, well!... don't you cry about it, Rosey.... All done now!" She may have heard him wrong, for his voice went to a whisper. She wondered at the way the cough was sparing him.

Then she thought he was falling asleep again; but presently he spoke. "I shall do very well now.... Nothing but a little rest ... that's all I want now. Only there's something I wanted to say about ... about...."

"About Sally?" Rosalind guessed quickly, and certainly.

"Ah ... about the baby. _Your_ baby, Rosey.... That man that was her father ... he's on my mind...."

"Oh me, forget him, dear--forget him! Leave him to God!" Rosalind repeated a