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

at a distance. Her expression remained immutable. "She is a well-meaning person," said she.

"I didn't know how late it was." Poor Dr. Conrad gives up self-defence--climbs down. "The time ran away." It _had_ done so, there was no doubt about that.

"And you forgot your mother. But Mrs. Fenwick is a well-meaning person. We will say no more about it."

Whereupon her son, feeling that silence is golden, said nothing. But he went and kissed her for all that. She said inscrutably: "You might have kissed me." But whether she was or wasn't referring to the fact that she had succeeded in negotiating his kiss on the rim of her spectacles, Conrad couldn't tell. Probably she meant he might have kissed her before.

There was no doubt, however, about her intention of knitting till past one in the morning. She did it enlarging on the medical status of her illustrious uncle, Dr. Everett Gayler, who had just crept into the conversation. Her son wasn't so sorry for this as Mrs. Iggulden, who dozed and waked with starts, on principle, outside in the passage unseen. _He_ could stand at the wide-open window, and hear the little waves plash "Sally" in the moonlight, and the counter-music of the down-drawn shingle echo "Sally" back. Sometimes the pebbles and the water gave place for a moment to the tread of two persistent walkers up and down--men who smoked cigars, and became a little audible and died again at every time of passing.

One time the doctor caught a rise of voice--though they did not pass so very near--that said: "My idea is to stay here till...."

Then at the next turn the same voice grew from inaudibility to ... "So I arranged with the parson here for to-morrow, and we shall get...." and died again. At this moment Dr. Everett Gayler was at the climax of his fame, having just performed tracheotomy on the Grand Duke of Hesse-Junkerstadt, and been created Knight-Commander of some Order whose name Mrs. Vereker wasn't sure about.

Next time the men returned, the same voice that seemed to do all the talking said: "... Expensive, of course, but she hates the idea of a registry-office." They paused, and the listener heard that the other voice had said something to which the first replied: "No, not Grundy. But she had some friends cooked at one, and they said it was stuffy, and they would sooner have endured twenty short homilies...."

A wax vesta scratched, blazed, lighted another cigar, and the second voice said, "Oh--ah!" and both grew inaudible again.

Dr. Everett Gayler had just pronounced the Grand Duchess's disease--they were an afflicted family--a disease his narrator couldn't pronounce at all. Most of her bones, in a state of necrosis, had been skilfully removed by the time the smokers had passed back. But so much more was Dr. Conrad listening to what the waves said to the shingle and the shingle answered back, than to either the Grand Duchess or the registry-office, that it never crossed his mind whose the voice was who lit the vesta. He heard it say good-night--its owner would get back to the hotel--and the other make due response. And then nothing was left but the coastguard.

But the Grand Duke's family were not quite done with. It had to be recorded how many of his distinguished ancestors had suffered from _Plica polonica_. Still, the end did come at last, and the worthy lady thought perhaps if she could lie down now she might drop off. So Mrs. Iggulden got her release and slept.

Dr. Conrad didn't, not a wink. The whole place was full of Sally. The flashlight at intervals, in couplets, seemed to say "Sally" twice when it came, and then to leave a blank for him to think about her in. The great slow steamer far out to sea showed a green eye of jealousy or a red one of anger because it could not come ashore where Sally was, but had perforce to go on wherever it was navigated. The millions of black sea-elves--did you ever discriminate them?--that the slight observer fancies are the interstices of the moonlight on the water, were all busy about Sally, though it was hard to follow their movements. And every time St. Sennan said what o'clock it was, he added, "One hour nearer to Sally to-morrow!"

Poor Prosy!


CHAPTER XXIX


OF A MARRIAGE BY SPECIAL LICENCE. ROSALIND'S COMPARISONS. OF THE THREE BRIDESMAIDS, AND HOW THE BRIDE WAS A GOOD SAILOR

But it never occurred to Dr. Vereker that the voice of the smoking gentleman, whose "_she_" knew a couple that had been cooked at a registry office, was a voice quite familiar to him. The only effect it had on his Sally-dazed mind was to make him wonder four hours after what it was that kept putting Julius Bradshaw into his head. If a brain-molecule could have been found not preoccupied with Sally he might have been able to give her next day a suggestive hint about a possibility ahead. But never a word said he to Sally; and when, on her return from bathing the following morning, Mrs. Lobjoit, the fisherman's wife, surprised her with the news that "the young lady" had come and had left her luggage, but would be back in half-an-hour, she was first taken aback, and thought it was a mistake next. But no--no chance of that! The young lady had asked for Mrs. Algernon Fenwick, or, in default, for Miss Sally, quite distinctly. She hadn't said any name, but there was a gentleman with her. Mrs. Lobjoit seemed to imply that had there been no gentleman she might have been nameless. Padlock's omnibus they came in.

So Sally went on being taken aback where she had left off, and was still pondering over the phenomenon when her mother followed her through the little yard paved with round flints bedded in mortar--all except the flower-beds, which were in this case marigold-beds and fuschia-beds and tamarisk-shakedowns--and the street door which always stood open, and it was very little use ringing, the bell being broken. But you could pass through, and there would always be old Mr. Lobjoit in the kitchen, even if Mrs. Lobjoit was not there herself.

"Why not look on the boxes, you stupid kitten? There's a name on them, or ought to be." Thus Rosalind, after facts told.

"What a thing it is to have a practical maternal parent!" Thus Sally. And Mrs. Lobjoit put on record with an amiable smile that that is what she kept saying to Miss Nightingale, "Why not look?" Whereas the fact is Mrs. Lobjoit never said anything of the sort.

"Here's a go!" says Sally, who gets at the label-side of the trunk first. "If it isn't Tishy!" And the mother and daughter look at each other's faces, each watching the other's theory forming of what this sudden apparition means.

"What do you think, mother?"

"What do _you_ think, kitten?" But the truth is, both wanted time to know what to think. And they hadn't got much forwarder with the solution of the problem when a light was thrown upon it by the sudden apparition of Laetitia herself, accompanied by the young gentleman whom Sally did not scruple to speak of--but not in his presence--as her counter-jumper. She did this, she said, to "pay Tishy out" for what she had said about him before she made his acquaintance.

The couple were in a mixed state of exaltation and confusion--Tishy half laughing, a third crying, and a sixth keeping up her dignity. Both were saying might they come in, and doing it without waiting for an answer.

Rosalind's remark was one of those nonsequences often met with in real life: "There's enough lunch--or we can send out." Sally's was: "But are you the Julius Bradshaws, or are you not? That's what _I_ want to know." Sally won't be trifled with, not she!

"Well, Sally dear, no,--we're not--not just yet." Tishy hesitates. Julius shows firmness.

"But we want to be at two o'clock this afternoon, if you'll come...."

"Both of us?"

"Why--of course, both of you."

"Then Mrs. Lobjoit will have to be in time with lunch." It does not really matter who were the speakers, nor what the share of each was in the following aggregate:

"How did you manage to get it arranged?" "Why _now_? Have you quarrelled with your mother?" "How long can you be away? I hate a stingy honeymoon!" "You've got no things." "Do you think they'll know at home where you are?" "Where are you going afterwards?" "What do you think your father will say?" "What I want to know is, what put it into your head _now_, more than any other time?"

Responses to the whole of which, much at random, are incorporated in what follows: "Julius isn't wanted for three weeks." "I'm sure the Professor's on our side, really." "I left a letter to tell them, anyhow." "Calais. We shan't be sick, in weather like this. We'll cross by the night boat." "I've got a new dress to be married in, and a new umbrella--oh yes, and other things." "I'll tell you the whole story, Sally dear, as soon as I've had time to turn round." "No--not quarrelled--at least, no more than usual." "Special licence, of course."

What time Vereker, who had been to the post-office, which sold all sorts of things, to inquire if they had a packet of chemical oatmeal (the only thing his mother could digest this morning), and was coming back baffled, called in on his way to Mrs. Iggulden's. Not to see Sally, but only to take counsel with the family about chemical oatmeal. By a curious coincident, the moment he heard of Miss Sales Wilson's arrival, he used Sally's expression, and said that there was "a go!" Perhaps there was, and that accounted for it.

"Here's Dr. Conrad--he'll have to come too." Thus Sally explicitly. To which he replied, "All right. Where?" Sally replied with gravity: "To see these two married by special licence." And Julius added: "You _must_ come, doctor, to be my bottle-holder."

A small undercurrent of thought in the doctor's mind, in which he can still accommodate passing events and the world's trivialities, begins to receive impressions of the facts of the case. The great river called Sally flows steadily on, on its own account, and makes and meddles not. It despises other folk's petty affairs. Dr. Conrad masters the position, and goes on to draw inferences.

"Then that must have been _you_ last night, Bradshaw?"

"I dare say it was. When?"

"Walking up and down with another fellow in front here. Smoking cigars, both of you."

"Why didn't you sing out?"

"Well, now--why didn't I?" He seems a little unable to account for himself, and no wonder. "I think I recollected it was like you after you had gone."

"Don't be a brain-case, Dr. Conrad. What would your patients say if they heard you go on like that?" Sally said this, of course. Her mother thought to herself that perhaps the patients would send for a married doctor.

But her mind was taking no strong hold on the current of events, considering what a very vital human interest was afloat on them. It was wandering back to another wedding-day--her own first wedding-day of twenty years ago. As she looked at this bridegroom--all his upspring of hope making light of such fears as needs must be in like case all the world over--he brought back to her vividly, for all he was so unlike him, the face of the much younger man who had met her that day at Umballa, whose utter freedom from suspicion