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

now! Acrorst a bridge!" This boy had quite lost sight of the importance of selecting a destination with reference to its chooser's life-purposes, in his contemplation of the advantages of being professionally conducted to it. Sally was not sorry when the coming of the fire-engine distracted his attention, and led to his disappearance in the fog.

Pedestrians must have been stopping at home to get a breath of fresh air indoors, as the spectres that shot out of the fog, to become partly solid and vanish again in an instant, seemed to come always one at a time.

"Can you tell me, sir"--Sally is addressing a promising spectre, an old gentleman of sweet aspect--"have I passed the Hurkaru Club?" The spectre helps an imperfect hearing with an ear-covering outspread hand, and Sally repeats her question.

"I hope so, my dear," he says, "I hope so. Because if you haven't, I have. I wonder where we are. What's this?" He pats a building at its reachable point--a stone balustrade at a step corner. "Why, here we are! This is the Club. Can I do anything for you?"

"I want Major Roper"--and then, thinking more explanation asked for, adds--"who wheezes." It is the only identification she can recall from Tishy's conversation and her mother's description. She herself had certainly seen their subject once from a distance, but she had only an impression of something purple. She could hardly offer that as identification.

"Old Jack! He lives in a kennel at the top. Mulberry, tell Major Roper lady for him. Yes, better send your card up, my dear; that's right!"

By this time they are in a lobby full of fog, in which electric light spots are showing their spiritless nature. Mulberry, who is like Gibbon the historian painted in carmine (a colour which clashes with his vermilion lappets), incites a youth to look sharp; also, to take that card up to Major Roper. As the boy goes upstairs with it two steps at a time Sally follows the old gentleman into a great saloon with standing desks to read skewered journals on and is talking to him on the hearthrug. She thinks she knows who he is.

"I came to stop Major Roper coming round to see _our_ Major--Colonel Lund, I mean. It isn't fit for him to come out in the fog."

"Of course, it isn't. And Lund mustn't come out at his age. Why, he's older than I am.... What? Very ill with bronchitis? I heard he'd been ailing, but they said he was all right again. Are you his Rosey?"

"No, no; mamma's that! She's more the age, you know. I'm only twenty."

"Ah dear! how one forgets! Of course, but he's bad, I'm afraid."

"He's very bad. Oh, General Pellew--because I know it's you--his cough is so dreadful, and there's no air for him because of this nasty fog! Poor mamma's there, and the nurse. I ought to hurry back; but he wanted to prevent Major Roper coming round and getting worse himself; so we agreed for me to come. I'll just give my message and get back."

"Your mamma was Mrs. Graythorpe. I remember her at Umballa years ago. I know; she changed her name to Nightingale. She is now Mrs...?" Sally supplied her mother's married name. "And you," continued Lord Pellew, "were Baby Graythorpe on the boat."

"Of course. You came home with Colonel Lund; he's told me about that. Wasn't I a handful?" Sally is keenly interested.

"A small handful. You see, you made an impression. I knew you before, though. You had bitten me at Umballa."

"He's told me about that, too. Isn't that Major Roper coming now?" If it is not, it must be some one exactly like him, who stops to swear at somebody or something at every landing. He comes down by instalments. Till the end of the last one, conversation may continue. Sally wants to know more about her _trajet_ from India--to take the testimony of an eyewitness. "Mamma says always I was in a great rage because they wouldn't let me go overboard and swim."

"I couldn't speak to that point. It seems likely, though. I always want to jump overboard now, but reason restrains me. You were not reasonable at that date."

"It _is_ funny, though, that I have got so fond of swimming since. I'm quite a good swimmer."

Major Roper is by this time manifest volcanically at the bottom of the staircase, but before he comes in Lord Pellew has time to say so is his nasturtium granddaughter a good swimmer. He has thirteen, and has christened each of them after a flower. He hopes thirteen isn't unlucky, and then Major Roper comes in apologetic. Sally can just recollect having seen him before, and thinks him as purple as ever.

"Lund--er!--Lund--er!--Lund--er!--Lund," he begins; each time he says the name being baffled by a gasp, but holding tight to Sally's hand, as though to make sure of her staying till he gets a chance. He gets none, apparently, for he gives it up, whatever he was going to say, with the hand, and says instead, in a lucky scrap of intermediate breath: "I was comin' round--just comin'--only no gettin' those dam boots on!" And then becomes convulsively involved in an apology for swearing before a young lady. She, for her part, has no objection to his damning his boots if he will take them off, and not go out. This she partly conveys, and then, after a too favourable brief report of the patient's state--inevitable under the circumstances--she continues:

"That's what I came on purpose to say, Major Roper. You're not to come out on any account in the fog. Colonel Lund wouldn't be any better for your coming, because he'll think of you going back through the fog, and he'll fret. Please do give up the idea of coming until it clears. Besides, he isn't my grandfather." An inconsecutive finish to correct a mistake of Old Jack's. She resumes the chair she had risen from when he came in, and thereupon he, suffering fearfully from having no breathing-apparatus and nothing to use it on, makes concession to a chair himself, but all the while waves a stumpy finger to keep Sally's last remark alive till his voice comes. The other old soldier remains standing, but somewhat on Sally's other side, so that she does not see both at once. A little voice, to be used cautiously, comes to the Major in time.

"Good Lard, my dear--excuse--old chap, you know!--why, good Lard, what a fool I am! Why, I knoo your father in India."

But he stops suddenly, to Sally inexplicably. She does not see that General Pellew has laid a finger of admonition on his lips.

"I never saw my father," she says. It is a kind of formula of hers which covers all contingencies with most people. This time she does not want it to deadlock the conversation, which is what it usually serves for, so she adds: "You really knew him?"

"Hardly knoo," is the reply. "Put it I met him two or three times, and you'll about toe the line for a start. Goin' off at that, we soon come up to my knowin' the Colonel's not your grandfather." Major Roper does not get through the whole of the last word--asthma forbids it--but his meaning is clear. Only, Sally is a direct Turk, as we have seen, and likes clearing up things.

"You know my friend Laetitia Wilson's mother, Major Roper?" The Major expresses not only that he does, but that his respectful homage is due to her as a fine woman--even a queenly one--by kissing his finger-tips and raising his eyes to heaven. "Well, Laetitia (Tishy, I call her) says you told her mother you knew my father in India, and went out tiger-hunting with him, and he shot a tiger two hundred yards off and gave you the skin." Sally lays stress on the two hundred yards as a means of identification of the case. No doubt the Major owned many skins, but shot at all sorts of distances.

It is embarrassing for the old boy, because he cannot ignore General Pellew's intimations over Sally's head, which she does not see. He is to hold his tongue--that is their meaning. Yes, but when you have made a mistake, it may be difficult to begin holding it in the middle. Perhaps it would have been safer to lose sight of the subject in the desert of asthma, instead of reviving it the moment he got to an oasis.

"Some misunderstanding'," said he, when he could speak. "I've got a tiger-skin the man who shot it gave me out near Nagpore, but he wasn't your father." How true that was!

"Do you remember his name?" Sally wants him to say it was Palliser again, to prove it all nonsense, but a warning finger of the old General makes him desperate, and he selects, as partially true, the supposed alias which--do you remember all this?--he had ascribed to the tiger-shooter in his subsequent life in Australia.

"Perfectly well. His name was Harrisson. A fine shot. He went away to Australia after that."

Sally laughs out. "How very absurd of Tishy!" she says. "She hadn't even got the name you said right. _She_ said it was Palliser. It sounds like Harrisson." She stopped to think a minute. "But even if she had said it right it wouldn't be my father, because his name, you know, was Graythorpe--like mine before we both changed to Nightingale--mother and I. We did, you know."

Old Jack assents to this with an expenditure of breath not warranted where breath is so scarce. He cannot say "of course," and that he recollects, too often. Perhaps he is glad to get on a line of veracity. The General says "of course," also. "Your mother, my dear, was Mrs. Graythorpe when I knew her at Umballa and on the boat." Both these veterans call Sally "my dear," and she doesn't resent it.

But her message is really given, and she ought to get back. She succeeds in finally overruling Major Roper's scheme of coming out into the fog, which has contrived to get blacker still during this conversation; but has more trouble with the other old soldier. She only overcomes that victor in so many battle-fields by representing that if he does see her safe to Ball Street _she_ will be miserable if she doesn't see _him_ safe back to the club. "And then," she adds, "we shall go on till doomsday. Besides, I _am_ young and sharp!" At which the old General laughs, and says isn't _he_? Ask his granddaughters! Sally says no, he isn't, and she can't have him run over to please anybody. However, he will come out to see her off, though Old Jack must do as he's told, and stop indoors. He watches the little figure vanish in the fog, with a sense of the merry eyebrows in the pretty shoulders, like the number of a cab fixed on behind.

* * * * *


When General Pellew had seen Sally out, to the great relief of Gibbon of the various reds in the lobby, he returned and drew a chair for himself beside Major Roper, who still sat, wrestling with the fog, where he had left him.

"What a dear child!... Oh yes; she'll be all right. Take better care of herself than I should of her. She would only have been looking after me, to see that I didn't