Somehow Good - William Frend De Morgan (the little red hen read aloud .TXT) 📗

one. Are they not at it all day long, all of them? Do they do anything but waver?

When Sally said she wished her viola was a Strad, Mr. Bradshaw's mind shortly became conscious that some passing spook, of a low nature, had murmured almost inaudibly that it was a good job _his_ Strad wasn't a viola. "Because, you see," added the spook, "that quashes all speculation whether you, Mr. Bradshaw, are glad or sorry you needn't lay your instrument at this young lady's feet. Now, if immediately after you first had that overwhelming impression of her--got metaphorically torpedoed, don't you know?--such a wish as hers had been expressed, you probably would have laid both your Strad and your heart at her feet, and said take my all!" But now that he had been so far disillusioned by Sally's robust and breezy treatment of the position, he was not quite sure the spook had not something to say for himself. Mr. Bradshaw was content to come down off his high horse, and to plod along the dull path of a mere musical evening visitor at a very nice house. Pleasant, certainly, but not the aim of his aspirations from afar at St. Satisfax's. His _amour propre_ was a little wounded by that spook, too. Nothing keeps it up to the mark better than a belief in one's stability--in love-matters, especially.

He was not quite sure of the exact moment the spook intruded his opinion, so _we_ can't be expected to know. Perhaps about the time Miss Wilson came in (just as he was showing how carefully he had listened to Joachim) and said could _he_ play those? She wished _she_ could. She was thrown off her guard by the finished execution, and for the moment quite forgot Cattley's and the classitudes. Sally instantly perceived her opening. She would enjoy catching Tishy out in any sort of way. So she said: "Mr. Bradshaw will show you how, Tishy dear; of course he will. Only, not now, because if we don't begin, we shan't have time for the long quartet." If you say this sort of thing about strangers in Society, you really ought to give them a chance. So thought Laetitia to herself, and resolved to blow Sally up at the first opportunity.

As for that culprit, she completed her work, from her own position of perfect security, with complacency at least. And she felt at the end of her evening (which we needn't dwell on, as it was all crotchets, minims, and F sharps and G flats) that her entrenchments had become spontaneously stronger without exertion on her part. For there were Tishy and Mr. Bradshaw, between whom Sally had certainly understood there was a great gulf fixed, sitting on the very same sofa and talking about a Stradivarius. She concluded that, broadly speaking, Debrett's bark is worse than his bite, and that he is, at heart, a very accommodating character.

"I hope you saw Tishy, mamma dear." So spoke Sally to her mother, after the musicians first, and then Fenwick, had dispersed their several ways. Mrs. Nightingale seemed very _distraite_ and preoccupied.

"Saw Tishy what, kitten?"

"Tishy and Mr. Bradshaw on that sofa."

"No, darling. Oh yes, I did. What about them?"

"After all that rumpus about shop-boys!" But her mother's attention is not easy to engage this evening, somehow. Her mind seems somewhere else altogether. But from where it is, it sees the vulgar child very plainly indeed, as she puts up her face to be kissed with all its animation on it. She kisses it, animation and all, caressing the rich black hair with a hand that seems thoughtful. A hand can. Then she makes a little effort to shake off something that draws her away, and comes back rather perfunctorily to her daughter's sphere of interest and the life of town.

"Did Laetitia call Mr. Bradshaw a shop-boy, chick?"

"Very nearly--at least, I don't know what you call not calling anybody shop-boy if she didn't." Her mother makes a further effort--comes back a little more.

"What did she say, child?"

"Said you could always tell, and it was no use my talking, and the negro couldn't change his spots."

"She has some old-fashioned ideas. But how about calling him a shop-boy?"

"Not in words, but worse. Tishy always goes round and round. I wish she'd _say_! However, Dr. Vereker quite agrees with me. _We_ think it _dishonest_!"

"What did Dr. Vereker think of Mr. Bradshaw?" We have failed to note that the doctor was the 'cello in the quartet.

"Now, mamma darling, fancy asking Dr. Prosy what he thinks! I wasn't going to. Besides, as if it mattered what they think of each other!... Who? Why, men, of course!"

"Mr. Fenwick's a man, and you asked him."

"Mr. Fenwick's a man on other lines--absolutely other. He doesn't come in really." Her mother repeats the last four words, not exactly derisively--rather, if anything, her accent and her smile may be said to caress her daughter's words as she says them. She is such a silly, but such a dear little goose--that seems the implication.

"We-e-ll," says Sally, as she has said before, and we have tried to spell her. "I don't see anything in that, because, look how reasonable! Mr. Fenwick's ... Mr. Fenwick's ... why, of course, entirely different. I say, mother dearest...."

"What, kitten?"

"What were you and Mr. Fenwick talking about so seriously in the back drawing-room?" The two are upstairs in the front bedroom at this minute, by-the-bye.

"Did you hear us, darling?"

"No, because of the row. But one could tell, for all that." Then Sally sees in an instant that it is something her mother is not going to tell her about, and makes immediate concession. "Where was the Major going that he couldn't come?" she asks. "He generally makes a point of coming when it's music."

"I fancy he's dining at the Hurkaru," says her mother. But she has gone back into her preoccupation, and from within it externalises an opinion that we should be better in bed, or we shall never be up in the morning.


CHAPTER XII


WHAT FENWICK AND SALLY'S MOTHER HAD BEEN SAYING IN THE BACK DRAWING-ROOM. OP. 999. BACK IN THAT OLD GARDEN AGAIN, AND HOW GERRY COULD NOT SWIM. THE OLD TARTINI SONATA

As soon as ever Mr. Bradshaw touched his violin, and before ever he began to play his Hungarian Dance on all four strings at once, Mrs. Nightingale and Mr. Fenwick went away into the back drawing-room, not to be too near the music. Because there was a fire in both rooms.

In the interval of time that had passed since Christmas Sally had contrived to "dismiss from her mind" Colonel Lund's previsions about her mother and Mr. Fenwick. Or they had given warning, and gone of their own accord. For by now she had again fallen into the frame of mind which classified her mother and Fenwick as semi-elderly people, and, so to speak, out of it all. So her mind assented readily to distance from the music as a sufficient reason for a secession to the back room. Non-combatants are just as well off the field of battle.

But a closer observer than Sally at this moment would have noticed that chat in an undertone had already set in in the back drawing-room even before the Hungarians had stopped dancing. Also that the applause that came therefrom, when they did stop, had a certain perfunctory air, as of plaudits something else makes room for, and comes back again after. Not that she would have "seen anything in it" if she had, because, whatever her mother said or did was, in Sally's eyes, right and normal. Abnormal and bad things were conceived and executed outside the family. Nor, in spite of the _sotto voce_, was there anything Sally could not have participated in, whatever exception she might have taken to something of a patronising tone, inexcusable towards our own generation even in the most semi-elderly people on record.

Her mother, at Sally's latest observation point, had taken the large armchair quite on the other side of the rug, to be as far off the music as possible. Mr. Fenwick, in reply to a flying remark of her own, she being at the moment a music-book seeker, wouldn't bring the other large armchair in front of the fire and be comfortable, thank you. He liked this just as well. Sally had then commented on Mr. Fenwick's unnatural love of uncomfortable chairs "when he wasn't walking about the room." She fancied, as she passed on, that she heard her mother address him as "Fenwick," without the "Mr." So she did.

"You are a restless man, Fenwick! I wonder were you so before the accident? Oh dear! there I am on that topic again!" But he only laughed.

"It doesn't hurt _me_," he said. "That reminds me that I wanted to remind _you_ of something you said you would tell me. You know--that evening the kitten went to the music-party--something you would tell me some time."

"I know; I'll tell you when they've got to their music, if there isn't too much row. Don't let's talk while this new young man's playing; it seems unkind. It won't matter when they're all at it together." But in spite of good resolutions silence was not properly observed, and the perfunctory pause came awkwardly on the top of a lapse. Fenwick then said, as one who avails himself of an opportunity:

"No need to wait for the music; they can't hear a word we say in there. We can't hear a word _they_ say."

"Because they're making such a racket." Mrs. Nightingale paused with a listening eye, trying to disprove their inaudibility. The examination confirmed Fenwick. "I like it," she continued--"a lot of young voices. It's much better when you don't make out what they say. When you can't hear a word, you fancy some sense in it." And then went on listening, and Fenwick waited, too. He couldn't well fidget her to keep her promise; she would do it of herself in time. It might be she preferred talking under cover of the music. She certainly remained silent till it came; then she spoke.

"What was it made me say that to you about something I would tell you? Oh, I know. You said, perhaps if you knew your past, you would not court catechism about it. And I said that, knowing mine, _I_ should not either. Wasn't that it?" She fixed her eyes on him as though to hold him to the truth. Perhaps she wanted his verbal recognition of the possibility that she, too, like others, might have left things in the past she would like to forget on their merits--cast-off garments on the road of life. It may have been painful to her to feel his faith in herself an obstacle to what she wished at least to hint to him, even if she could not tell him outright. She did not want too much divine worship at her shrine--a ready recognition of her position of mortal frailty would be so much more sympathetic, really. A feeling perhaps traceably akin to what many of us have felt, that if our father the devil--"auld Nickie Ben"--would only tak' a thought and mend, as he aiblins might, he would be the very king of father confessors. If details had to be gone into, we should be sure of _his_ sympathy.

"Yes, that was it. And I suppose I looked incredulous." Thus Fenwick.

"You looked incredulous. I would sooner you should believe me. Would you hand me down that fire-screen off the chimney-piece? Thank you."