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

as it drew near to its final close, spoke to her of the great ocean that lies beyond the crabbed limits of our stinted lives, the boundless sea our rivulets of life steal down to, to be lost in; and while it lasted made it possible for her to be still. She took her eyes from Fenwick, and waited. When she raised them again, in the silence Op. 999 came to an end in, she saw that he had moved. His face had gone into his hands; and as she looked up, his old action of rubbing them into his loose hair, and shaking it, had come back, and his strong identity with his boyhood, dependent on the chance of a moment, had disappeared. He got up suddenly, and after a turn across the room he was in, walked into the other one, and contributed his share to the babble of felicitation or comment that followed what was clearly thought an achievement in musical rendering.

"Oh dear, oh dear!" said Laetitia Wilson. "Was ever a poor girl so sat upon? I feel quite flat!" This was not meant to be taken too much _au pied de la lettre_. It was merely a method of praise of Mr. Bradshaw.

"But what a jolly shame you had to give it up!" This was Sally in undisguised admiration. But in Mr. Julius Bradshaw's eyes, Sally's identity had undergone a change. Her breezy frankness had made hay of a _grande passion_, and was blowing the hay all over the field. He had come close to, and had a good look; but he will hardly go away in a huff, although he feels a little silly over his public worship of these past weeks. Just at this moment of the story, however, he is very apologetic towards Miss Wilson; on whom, if she reports correctly, he has sat. He tries no pretences with a view to her reinstatement, even on a par with himself. He knows, and every one knows, they would be seen through immediately. It is no use assuring her she is a capital player, of her years. Much better let it alone!

"Are you any the worse, Mr. Bradshaw?" says Dr. Vereker. Obviously, as a medical authority, it is his duty to "voice" this inquiry. So he voices it.

"N--no; but that's about as much as I can do, with safety. It won't do to spoil my night's rest, and be late at the shop." It was easy to talk about the shop with perfect unreserve after such a performance as that.

"Oh dear! we are so sorry for you!" Thus the two girls. And concurrence comes in various forms from Vereker, Fenwick, and the pianist, whom we haven't mentioned before. He was a cousin of Miss Wilson's, and was one of those unfortunate young men who have no individuality whatever. But pianists have to be human unless you can afford a pianola. You may speak of them as Mr. What's-his-name, or Miss Thingummy, but you must give them tea or coffee or cake or sandwiches, or whatever is brought in on a tray. This young man's name, we believe, was Elsley--Nobody Elsley, Miss Sally in her frivolity had thought fit to christen him. You know how in your own life people come in and go out, and you never know anything about them. Even so this young man in this story.

"I was very sorry for myself, I assure you"--it is Bradshaw who speaks--"when I had to make up my mind to give it up. But it couldn't be helped!" He speaks without reserve, but as of an unbearable subject; in fact, Sally said afterwards to Tishy, "it seemed as if he was going to cry." He doesn't cry, though, but goes on: "At one time I really thought I should have gone and jumped into the river."

"Why didn't you?" asks Sally. "I should have."

"Yes, silly Sally!" says Laetitia; "and then you would have swum like a fish. And the police would have pulled you out. And you would have looked ridiculous!"

But Sally is off on a visit to her mother in the next room.

"Tired, mammy darling?"

She kisses her, and her mother answers: "Yes, love, a little," and kisses her back.

"Doesn't he play _beautifully_, mother?" says Sally.

But her mother says "Yes" absently. Her attention is taken off by something else. What is wrong with Mr. Fenwick? Sally doesn't think anything is. It's only his way.

"I'm sure there's something wrong," says Mrs. Nightingale, and gets up to go into the front-room rather wearily. "I shall go to bed soon, poppet," she says, "and leave you to do the honours. Is anything wrong, doctor?" She speaks under her voice to Vereker, looking very slightly round at Fenwick, who, after the movement that alarmed her--a rather unusually marked head-shake and pressure of his hands on his eyes--is standing looking down at the fire, on the rug with his back to her, as she speaks to Vereker.

"I fancy he's had what he calls a recurrence," says the doctor. "Nothing to hurt. These half-recollections will go on until the memory comes back in earnest. It may some time."

"Are you talking about me, doctor?" His attention may have been caught by a reflection in a glass before him. "Yes, it was a very queer recurrence. Something about lawn-tennis. Only it had to do with what Miss Wilson said about the police fishing Sally out of the water." He looks round for Miss Wilson, but she is at the other end of the room on a sofa talking to Bradshaw about the Strad, as recorded once before. Sally testifies:

"Tishy said it wouldn't work--trying to drown yourself if you could swim. No more it would."

"But why should that make me think of lawn-tennis? It did." He looks seriously distressed by it--can make nothing out.

"Kitten," says Sally's mother to her suddenly, "I think I shall go away to bed. I'm feeling very tired."

She says good-night comprehensively, and departs. But she is so clearly the worse for something that her daughter follows her to see that the something is not serious. Outside she reassures Sally, who returns. Oh no, she is only tired; really nothing else.

But what drove her out of the room was a feeling that she must be alone and silent. Could her position be borne at all? Yes, with patience and self-control. But that "why should it make me think of lawn-tennis?" was trying. Not only the pain of still more revived association, but the fear that his memory might travel still further into the past. It was living on the edge of the volcano.

Her own memory had followed on, too, taking up the thread of that old interview in the garden of twenty years ago. She had felt again the clasp of his arm, the touch of his hand; had heard his voice of passionate protest--protest against the idea that he could ever forget. And she had then pretended to make a half-joke of his earnestness. What would he do now, really, if she were to tell him she preferred his great friend Arthur Fenwick to him? That was nonsense, he said. She knew she didn't. Besides, Arthur wanted Jessie Nairn. Why, didn't they waltz all the waltzes at the party last week?... Well, so did we, for that matter, all-but.... And just look how they had run away together! Wasn't that them coming back? Yes, it was; and artificial calm ensued, and more self-contained manners. But then, before the other two young lovers could rejoin them, she had time for a word more.

"No, dear Gerry, seriously. If I were to write out _no_ to you in India--a great big final NO--then what do you think you would do?"

"I know what I _think_ I should do. I should throw myself into the Hooghly or the Ganges."

"You silly boy! You would swim about, whether you liked or no. And then Jemadars, or Shastras, or Sudras, or something would come and pull you out. And then how ridiculous you would look!"

"No, Rosey, because I can't swim. Isn't it funny?"

Then she recollected _his_ friend's voice striking in with: "What's that? Gerry Palliser swim! Of course he can't. He can wrestle, or run, or ride, or jump; and he's the best man I know with the gloves on. But swim he _can't_! That's flat!" Also how Gerry had then told eagerly how he was nearly drowned once, and Arthur fished him up from the bottom of Abingdon Lock. The latter went on:

"It was after that we tattooed each other, his name on my arm, my name on his, so as not to quarrel. You know, I suppose, that men who tattoo each other's arms can't quarrel if they try?" Arthur showed "A. Palliser," tattooed blue on his arm. Both young men were very grave and earnest about the safeguard. And then she remembered a question she asked, and how both replied with perfect gravity: "Of course, sure to!" The question had been:--Was it invariable that all men quarrelled if one saved the other from drowning?

She sits upstairs alone by the fire in her bedroom, and dreams again through all the past, except the nightmare of her life--_that_ she always shudders away from. Sally will come up presently, and then she will feel ease again. Now, it is a struggle against fever.

She can hear plainly enough--for the house is but a London suburban villa--the strains from the drawing-room of what is possibly the most hackneyed violin music in the world--the Tartini (so-called) Devil Sonata--every phrase, every run, every chord an enthralling mystery still, an utterance none can explain, an inexhaustible thing no age can wither, and no custom stale. It is so soothing to her that it matters little if it makes them late. But that young man will destroy his nerves to a certainty outright.

Then comes the chaos of dispersal--the broken fragments of the intelligible a watchful ear may pick out. Dr. Vereker won't have a cab; he will leave the 'cello till next time, and walk. Mr. Bradshaw wants to get to Bayswater. Of course, that's all in our way--we being Miss Wilson and the cousin, the nonentity. We can give Mr. Bradshaw a lift as far as he goes, and then he can take the growler on. Then more good-nights are wished than the nature of things will admit of before to-morrow, Fenwick and Vereker light something to smoke, with a preposterous solicitude to use only one tandsticker between them, and walk away umbrella-less. From which we see that "it" is holding up. Then comes silence, and a consciousness of a policeman musing, and suspecting doors have been left stood open.

And it was then Sally went upstairs and indited her friend for sitting on that sofa after calling him a shop-boy. And she didn't forget it, either, for after she and her mother were in bed, and presumably better, she called out to her.

"I say, mammy!"

"What, dear?"

"Isn't that St. John's Church?"

"Isn't which St. John's Church?"

"Where Tishy goes?"

"Yes, Ladbroke Grove Road. Why?"

"Because now Mr. Bradshaw will go there--public worship!"

"Will he, dear? Suppose we go to sleep." But she really meant "you," not "we"; for it was a long time before she went to sleep herself. She had plenty to think of, and wanted to be quiet, conscious of Sally in the neighbourhood.

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