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

learned societies, and gave the word of command, "Take away!" with such promptitude that Jenkins nearly carried off the plate from under his knife and fork as he placed them on it.

A citation from the Odyssey was received in stony silence by the Dragon, who, however, remarked to her younger daughter that it was no use talking about Phineus and the Harpies, because they had to be at St. Pancras at 3.10, or lose the train. And perhaps, if the servants were to be called Harpies, your father would engage the next one himself. They were trouble enough now, without that.

Owing to all which, the reference to Sally's father got lost sight of; and she wasn't sorry, because Theeny, at any rate, wasn't wanted to know anything about him, whatever Laetitia and her mother knew or suspected.

But, as a matter of fact, Sally's declaration that she "never saw" him was neither discretion, nor intrepidity, nor cheek. It was simple Nature. She had always regarded her father as having been accessory to herself before the fact; also as having been, for some mysterious reason, unpopular--perhaps a _mauvais sujet_. But he was Ancient History now--had joined the Phoenicians. Why should _she_ want to know? Her attitude of uninquiring acquiescence had been cultivated by her mother, and it is wonderful what a dominant influence from early babyhood can do. Sally seldom spoke of this mysterious father of hers in any other terms than those she had just used. She had never had an opportunity of making his acquaintance--that was all. In some way, undefined, he had not behaved well to her mother; and naturally she sided with the latter. Once, and once only, her mother had said to her, "Sally darling, I don't wish to talk about your father, but to forget him. I have forgiven him, because of you. Because--how could I have done without you, kitten?" And thereafter, as Sally's curiosity was a feeble force when set against the possibility that its gratification might cause pain to her mother, she suppressed it easily.

But now and again little things would be said in her presence that would set her a-thinking--little things such as what the Professor has just said. She may easily have been abnormally sensitive on the point--made more prone to reflection than usual--by last night's momentous announcement. Anyhow, she resolved to talk to Tishy about her parentage as soon as they should get back to the drawing-room, where they were practising. All the two hours they ought to have played in the morning Tishy would talk about nothing but Julius Bradshaw. And look how ridiculous it all was! Because she _did_ call him "shop-boy"--you know she did--only six weeks ago. Sally didn't see why _her_ affairs shouldn't have a turn now; and although she was quite aware that her friend wanted her to begin again where they had left off before lunch, she held out no helping hand, but gave the preference to her own thoughts.

"I suppose my father drank," said Sally to Tishy.

"If you don't know, dear, how should I?" said Tishy to Sally. And that did seem plausible, and made Sally the more reflective.

The holly-leaves were gone now that had been conducive to thought at Christmas in this same room when we heard the two girls count four so often, but Sally could pull an azalea flower to pieces over her cogitations, and did so, instead of tuning up forthwith. Laetitia was preoccupied--couldn't take an interest in other people's fathers, nor her own for that matter. She tuned up, though, and told Sally to look alive. But while Sally looks alive she backs into a conversation of the forenoon, and out of the pending discussion of Sally's paternity. Their two preoccupations pull in opposite directions.

"You _will_ remember not to say anything, won't you, Sally dear? Do promise."

"Say anything? Oh no; _I_ shan't say anything. I never do say things. What about?"

"You know as well as I do, dear--about Julius Bradshaw."

"Of course I shan't, Tishy. Except mother; she doesn't count. I say, Tishy!"

"Well, dear. Do look alive. I'm all ready."

"All right. Don't be in a hurry. I want to know whether you really think my father drank."

"Why should I, dear? I never heard anything about him--at least, I never heard anything myself. Mamma heard something. Only I wasn't to repeat it. Besides, it was nothing whatever to do with drink." The moment Laetitia said this, she knew that she had lost her hold on her only resource against cross-examination. When the difficulty of concealing anything is thrown into the same scale with the pleasure of telling it, the featherweights of duty and previous resolutions kick the beam. Then you are sorry when it's too late. Laetitia was, and could see her way to nothing but obeying the direction on her music, which was _attacca_. To her satisfaction, Sally came in promptly in the right place, and a first movement in B sharp went steadily through without a back-lash. There seemed a chance that Sally hadn't caught the last remark, but, alas! it vanished.

"What was it, then, if it wasn't drink?" said she, exactly as if there had been no music at all. Laetitia once said of Sally that she was a horribly direct little Turk. She was very often--in this instance certainly.

"I suppose it was the usual thing." Twenty-four, of course, knew more than nineteen, and could speak to the point of what was and wasn't usual in matters of this kind. But if Laetitia hoped that vagueness would shake hands with delicacy and that details could be lubricated away, she was reckoning without her Turk.

"What _is_ the usual thing?"

"Hadn't we better go on to the fugue? I don't care for the next movement, and it's easy----"

"Not till you say what you mean by 'the usual thing.'"

"Well, dear, I suppose you know what half the divorce-cases are about?"

"_Tishy!_"

"What, dear?"

"There was _no_ divorce!"

"How do you know, dear?"

"I _should_ have known of it."

"How do you know that?"

"You might go on for ever that way. Now, Tishy dear, do be kind and tell me what you heard and who said it. _I_ should tell _you_. You _know_ I should." This appeal produces concession.

"It was old Major Roper told mamma--with blue pockets under his eyes and red all over, creeks and wheezes when he speaks--do you know him?"

"No, I don't, and I don't want to. At least, I've just seen him at a distance. I could see he was purple. _Our_ Major--Colonel Lund, you know--says he's a horrible old gossip, and you can't rely on a word he says. But what _did_ he say?"

"Well, of course, I oughtn't to tell you this, because I promised not. What he _said_ was that your mother went out to be married to your father in India, and the year after he got a divorce because he was jealous of some man your mother had met on the way out."

"How old was I?"

"Gracious me, child! how should _I_ know. He only said you were a baby in arms. Of course, you must have been, if you think of it." Laetitia here feels that possible calculations may be embarrassing, and tries to avert them. "Do let's get on to the third movement. We shall spend all the afternoon talking."

"Very well, Tishy, fire away! Oh, no; it's me." And the third movement is got under way, till we reach a _pizzicato_ passage which Sally begins playing with the bow by mistake.

"That's _pits_!" says the first violin, and we have to begin again at the top of the page, and the Professor in his library wonders why on earth those girls can't play straight on. The Ancient Phoenicians are fidgeted by the jerks in the music.

But it comes to an end in time, and then Sally begins again:

"I _know_ that story's all nonsense now, Tishy."

"Why?"

"Because mother told me once that my father never saw me, so come now! Because the new-bornest baby that ever was couldn't be too small for its father to see." Sally pauses reflectively, then adds: "Unless he was blind. And mother would have said if he'd been blind."

"He couldn't have been blind, because----"

"Now, Tishy, you see! You're keeping back lots of things that old wheezy squeaker said. And you _ought_ to tell me--you know you ought. Why couldn't he?"

"You're in such a hurry, dear. I was going to tell you. Major Roper said he never saw him but once, and it was out shooting tigers, and he was the best shot for a civilian he'd ever seen. There was a tiger was just going to lay hold of a man and carry him off when your father shot him from two hundred yards off----"

"The man or the tiger? I'm on the tiger's side. I always am."

"The tiger, stupid! You wouldn't want your own father to aim at a tiger and hit a man?"

Sally reflects. "I don't think I should. But, I say, Tishy, do you mean to say that Major Roper meant to say that he was out shooting with my father and didn't know what his name was?"

"Oh, no. He said his name, of course. It was Palliser ... that was right, wasn't it?"

"Oh dear, no; it was Graythorpe. Palliser indeed!"

"It was true about the tiger though, because Major Roper says he's got the skin himself now."

"Only it wasn't my father that shot it. That's quite clear." Sally was feeling greatly relieved, and showed it in the way she added: "Now, doesn't that just show what a parcel of nonsense the whole story is?"

Sally had never told her friend about her mother's name before she took that of Nightingale. Very slight hints had sufficed to make her reticent about Graythorpe. Colonel Lund had once said to her: "Of course, your mother was Mrs. Graythorpe when she came to England; that was before she changed her name to Nightingale, you know?" She knew that her mother's money had come to her from a "grandfather Nightingale," whose name had somehow accompanied it, and had been (very properly, as it seemed to her) bestowed on herself as well as her mother. They were part and parcel of each other obviously. In fact, she had never more than just known of the existence of the name Graythorpe in her family at all, and it had been imputed by her to this unpopular father of hers, and put aside, as it were, on a shelf with him. Even if her mother had not suggested a desire that the name should lapse, she herself would have accepted its extinction on her own account.

But now this name came out of the past as a consolation. Palliser indeed! How could mamma have been Mrs. Graythorpe if her husband's name had been Palliser? Sally was not wise enough in worldly matters to know that divorced ladies commonly fall back on their maiden names. And she had been kept, or left, so much in the dark that she had taken for granted that her mother's had been Nightingale--that, in fact, she had retaken her maiden name at her father's wish, possibly as a censure on the misbehaviour of a husband who drank or gambled or was otherwise reprobate. Her young mind had been manipulated all one way--had been in contact only with its manipulators. Had she had a sister or brother, they would have canvassed the subject, speculated, run conclusions to earth, and demanded enlightenment.