Chapter XLI…

Chapter XLI

OF LOVE, CONSIDERED AS A THUNDERSTORM, AND OF AGUR, THE SON OF JAKEH (PROV. XXX.). OF A COUNTRY WALK AND A JUDICIOUSLY RESTORED CHURCH. OF TWO CLASPED HANDS, AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES. NOTHING SO VERY REMARKABLE AFTER ALL!

Love, like a thunderstorm, is very much more intelligible in its beginnings--to its chronicler, at least--than it becomes when it is, so to speak, overhead. We all know the clear-cut magnificence of the great thundercloud against the sky, its tremendous deliberation, its hills and valleys of curdling mist, fraught with God knows what potential of destruction in volts and ohms; the ceaseless muttering of its wrath as it speaks to its own heart, and its sullen secrets reverberate from cavern to cavern in the very core of its innermost blackness. We know the last prismatic benedictions of the sun it means to hide from us--the strange gleams of despairing light on the other clouds--clouds that are not in it, mere outsiders or spectators. We can remember them after we have got home in time to avoid a wetting, and can get our moist water-colours out and do a recollection of them before they go out of our heads--or think we can.

But we know, too, that there comes a time of a sudden wind and agitated panic of the trees, and then big, warm preliminary drops, and then the first clap of thunder, clear in its own mind and full of purpose. Then the first downpour of rain, that isn't quite so clear, and wavers for a breathing-space, till the tart reminder of the first swift, decisive lightning-flash recalls it to its duty, and it becomes a steady, intolerable torrent that empties roads and streets of passers-by, and makes the gutters rivulets. And then the storm itself--flash upon flash--peal upon peal--up to the blinding and deafening climax, glare and thunderbolt in a breath. And then it's overhead, and we are sure something has been struck that time.

It was all plain sailing, two days since, in the love-storm we want the foregoing sketch of a thunderstorm to illustrate, that was brewing in the firmament of Conrad Vereker's soul. At the point corresponding to the first decisive clap of thunder--wherever it was--Chaos set in in that firmament. And Chaos was developing rapidly at the time when the doctor, rescued by Sally's intrepidity from the maternal clutch, started on what he believed would be his last walk with his idol at St. Sennans. Now he knew that, when he got back to London, though there might be, academically speaking, opportunities of seeing Sally, it wasn't going to be the same thing. That was the phrase his mind used, and we know quite well what it meant.

Of course, when some peevish author or invalid sends out a servant to make you take your organ farther off, a good way down the street, you can begin again exactly where you left off, lower down. But a barrel-organ has no soul, and one has one oneself, usually. Dr. Vereker's soul, on this occasion, was the sport of the love-storm of our analogy, and was tossed and driven by whirlwinds, beaten down by torrents, dazzled by lightning and deafened by thunder, out of reach of all sane record by the most eloquent of chroniclers. It was not in a state to accept calmly the idea of transference to Shepherd's Bush. A tranquil mind would have said, "By all means, go home and start afresh." But no; the music in this case refused to welcome the change. Still, he would forget it--make light of it and ignore it--to enjoy this last little expedition with Sally to the village church across the downs, that had been so sweetly decorated for the harvest festival. A bird in the hand was worth two in the bush. Carpe diem!

So Dr. Conrad seemed to have grown younger than ever when he and Sally got away from all the world, after Fenwick had fallen back to rescue the captive, octopus-caught. Whereat Sally's heart rejoiced; for this young man's state of subordination to his skilful and overwhelming parent was a constant thorn in her side. To say she felt for him is to say nothing. To say that she would have jumped out of her skin with joy at hearing that he was engaged to that young lady, unknown; and that that young lady had successfully made terms of capitulation, involving the disbanding of the Goody, and her ultimate dispersal to Bedford Park with a companion--to vouch for this actually happening might be rash. But Sally told herself--and her mother, for that matter--that she should so jump out of her skin; and you may believe her, perhaps. We happen not to; but it may have been true, for all that.

Agur, the son of Jakeh (Prov. xxx.), evidently thought the souls of women not worth analysis, and the way of a maid with a man not a matter for Ithiel and Ucal to spend time and thought over, as they seem to have said nothing to King Solomon on the subject. But then Agur candidly admitted that he was more brutish than any man, and had not the understanding of a man. So he contented himself with wondering at the way of a man with a maid, and made no remarks about the opposite case. Even with the understanding of a man, would he have been any nearer seeing into the mystery of a girl's heart? As for ourselves, we give it up. We have to be content with watching what Miss Sally will do next, not trying to understand her.

She certainly believed she believed--we may go that far--when she started to walk to Chalke Church with a young man she felt a strong interest in, and wanted to see happily settled in life--(all her words, please, not ours)--that she intended, this walk, to get out of Prosy who the young lady was that he had hinted at, and, what was more, she knew exactly how she was going to lead up to it. Only she wouldn't rush the matter; it would do just as well, or better, after they had seen the little church, and were walking back in the twilight. They could be jolly and chatty then. Oh yes, certainly a good deal better. As for any feeling of shyness about it, of relief at postponing it--what nonsense! Hadn't they as good as talked it all over already? But, for our own part, we believe that this readiness to let the subject wait was a concession Sally made towards admitting a personal interest in the result of her inquiry--so minute a one that maybe you may wonder why we call it a concession at all. Dr. Conrad was perhaps paltering a little with the truth, too, when he said to himself that he was quite prepared to fulfil his half-promise to Fenwick and reveal his mind to Sally; but not till quite the end of this walk, in case he should spoil it, and upset Sally. Or, perhaps, to-morrow morning, on the way to the train. Our own belief is, he was frightened, and it was an excuse.

"We shall go by the beech-forest," was Sally's last speech to Fenwick, as he turned back on his mission of rescue. And twenty minutes later she and Dr. Conrad were crossing the smooth sheep-pasture that ended at the boundary of the said forest--a tract of woodland that was always treated with derision on account of its acreage. It was small, for a forest, certainly; but, then, it hadn't laid claim to the name itself. Sally spoke forgivingly of it as they approached it.

"It's a handy little forest," said she; "only you can't lie down in it without sticking out. If you don't expect to, it doesn't matter." This was said without a trace of a smile, Sally-fashion. It took its reasonableness for granted, and allowed the speaker to continue without a pause into conversation sane and unexaggerated.

"What were you and Jeremiah talking about the day before yesterday, when you went that long walk?"

"We talked about a good many things. I've forgotten half."

"Which was the one you don't want me to know about? Because you haven't forgotten that, you know." Vereker thinks of Sally's putative parents, the Arcadian shepherdess and the thunderbolt. Obviously a reality! Besides--so ran the doctor's thought--with her looking like that, what can I do? He felt perfectly helpless, but wouldn't confess it. He would make an effort. One thing he was certain of: that evasion, with those eyes looking at him, would mean instant shipwreck.

"We had a long talk, dear Miss Sally, about how much Jeremiah"--a slight accent on the name has the force of inverted commas in text--"can really recollect of his own history." But Sally's reply takes a form of protest, without seeming warranty.

"I say, Dr. Conrad, I wish you wouldn't.... However, never mind that now. I want to know about Jeremiah. Has he remembered a lot more, and not told?"

"He goes on recovering imperfect versions of things. He told me a good many such yesterday--so imperfect that I am convinced as his mind clears he will find that some of them, though founded on reality, are little better than dreams. He can't rely on them himself.... But what is it you wish I wouldn't?"

"Oh, nothing!--I'll tell you after. Never mind that now. What are the things--I mean, the things he recovers the imperfect versions of? You needn't tell me the versions, you know, but you might tell me what they were versions of, without any breach of confidence." Dr. Conrad has not time for more than a word or two towards the obvious protest against this way of stating the case, before Sally becomes frankly aware of her own unfairness. "No, I won't worm out and inquisit," she says--and we are bound to give her exact language. "It isn't fair on a general practitioner to take him for a walk and get at his professional secrets." The merry eyebrows and the pearly teeth, slightly in abeyance for a serious moment or two, are all in evidence again as the black eyes flash round on the doctor, and, as it were, convey his reprieve to him. He acknowledges it in this sense.

"I'm glad you don't insist upon my telling, Miss Sally. If you had insisted, I should have had to tell." He paused a second, drawing an inference from an expression of Sally's face, then added: "Well, it's true...."

"I wasn't thinking of that." This refers to her intention to say something, which never fructified; but somehow got communicated, magnetically perhaps, to Dr. Conrad. "Never mind what, now. Because if your soles are as slippy as mine are, we shall never get up. Catch hold!"

This last refers to the necessity two travellers are under, who, having to ascend a steep escarpment of slippery grass, can only do so by mutual assistance. Sally and the doctor got to the top, and settled down to normal progress on a practicable gradient, and all the exhilaration of the wide, wind-swept downland. But what had been to the unconscious merpussy nothing but a mutual accommodation imposed by a common lot--common subjection to the forces of gravitation and the extinction of friction by the reaction of short grass on leather--had been to her companion a phase of stimulus to the storm that was devastating the region of his soul; a new and prolonged peal of thunder swift on the heels of a blinding lightning-flash, and a deluge to follow such as a real storm makes us run to shelter from. On Dr. Conrad's side of the analogy, there was no shelter, and he didn't ask for it. Had he asked for anything, it would have been for the power to tell Sally what she had become to him, and a new language he did not now know in which to tell it. And such a vocabulary!

But Dr. Conrad didn't know how simple the language was that he felt the want of--least of all, that there was only one word in its vocabulary. And when the two of them got to the top of their slippery precipice, breathless, he was no nearer the disclosure he had made up his mind to, and as good as promised Fenwick to make, than when they were treading the beechmast and listening to the wood-doves in the handy little forest they had left below. But oh, the little things in this life that are the big ones all the while, and no one ever suspects them!

A very little thing indeed was to play a big part, unacknowledged till after, in the story of this walk. For it chanced that as they reached the hill-top the diminution of the incline was so gradual that at no exact point could the lease of Sally's hand to that of the doctor be determined by either landlord or tenant. We do not mean that he refused to let go, nor that Sally consciously said to herself that it would be rude to snatch back the gloveless six-and-a-half that she had entrusted to him, the very minute she didn't want his assistance. It was a nuance of action or demeanour far, far finer than that on the part of either. But it was real all the same. And the facts of the case were as clear to Sally's subconsciousness, unadmitted and unconfessed, as though Dr. Conrad had found his voice then and there, and said out boldly: "There is no young lady I am wavering about except it be you; she's a fiction, and a silly one. There is no one in the world I care for as I do for you. There is nothing in the world that I can name or dream of so precious to me as this hand that I now give up with reluctance, under the delusion that I have not held it long enough to make you guess the whole of the story." All that was said, but what an insignificant little thing it was that said it!

As for Miss Sally, it was only her subself that recognised that any one had said anything at all. Her superself dismissed it as a fancy; and, therefore, being put on its mettle to justify that action, it pointed out to her that, after that, it would be the merest cowardice to shirk finding out about Dr. Conrad's young lady. She would manage it somehow by the end of this walk. But still an element of postponement came in, and had its say. Yet it excited no suspicions in her mind, or she ignored them. She was quite within her rights, technically, in doing so.

It was necessary, though, to tide over the momentary reciprocity--the slight exchange of consciousnesses that, if indulged, must have ended in a climax--with a show of stiffness; a little pretence that we were a lady and gentleman taking a walk, otherwise undescribed. When the doctor relinquished Sally's hand, he felt bound to ignore the fact that hers went on ringing like a bell in the palm of his, and sending musical messages up his arm; and to talk about dewponds. They occur on the tops of downs, and are very scientific. High service and no rate are the terms of their water-supply. Dr. Conrad knew all about them, and was aware that one they passed was also a relic of prehistoric man, who had dug it, and didn't live long enough, poor fellow! to know it was a dewpond, or prehistoric. Sally was interested. A little bird with very long legs didn't seem to care, and walked away without undue hurry, but amazingly quickly, for all that.

"What a little darling!" Sally said. "Did you hear that delicious little noise he made? Isn't he a water-ouzel?" Sally took the first name that she thought sounded probable. She really was making talk, to contribute her share to the fiction about the lady and gentleman. So was her companion. He reflected for a moment whether he could say anything about Grallæ and Scolopacidæ, or such like, but decided against heaping up instructive matter on the top of the recent dewponds. He gave it up, and harked back quite suddenly to congenial personalities.

"What was it you wished I wouldn't, Miss Sally?"

Our Sally had it on her lips to say, "Why, do that--call me Miss Sally, of course! I can't tell you how I hate it." But, this time, she was seized with a sudden fit of shyness. She could have said it quite easily before that trivial hand-occurrence, and the momentary stiffness that followed it. Now she backed out in the meanest way, and even sought to fortify the lady and gentleman pretext. She looked back over the panorama they were leaving behind, and discerned that that was Jeremiah and her maternal parent coming through the clover-field. But it wasn't, palpably. Nevertheless, Sally held tight to her groundless opinion long enough for the previous question to be droppable, without effrontery. Then her incorrigible candour bubbled up, and she refused to take advantage of her own subterfuge.

"Never mind, Dr. Conrad; I'll tell you presently. I've a bone to pick with you. Wait till we've seen the little churchy-wurchy--there it is, over there, with a big weathercock--and then we can quarrel and go home separate."

Even Agur, the son of Jakeh, would have seen, at this point, the way that this particular maid, in addressing this particular man, was exaggerating a certain spirit of bravado; and if he had been accompanying them unseen from St. Sennans, would certainly have deserved his own self-censure if he had failed to trace this spirit to its source--the hand-incident. We believe it was only affectation in Agur, and that he knew all about the subject, men, maids, and every other sort; only he didn't think any of the female sorts worth his Oriental consideration. It was a far cry to the dawn of Browning in those days.

Down the hill to the flatlands was a steep pathway, where talk paused naturally. When you travel in single file on a narrow footway with a grass slide to right or left of you, which it does not do to tread on with shoe-soles well polished on two miles of previous grass, you don't talk--especially if you have come to some point in talk where silence is not unwelcome. Sally and the doctor said scarcely a dozen words on the way down to the little village that owned the name and the church of Chalke. When they arrived in its seclusion they found, for purposes of information and reference, no human creatures visible except some absolutely brown, white-haired ones whose existence dated back only a very few years--not enough to learn English in. So, when addressed, they remained a speechless group, too unaccustomed to man to be able to say where keys of churches were to be had, or anything else. But the eldest, a very little girl in a flexible blue bonnet, murmured what Sally, with insight, interpreted into a reference.

"Yes, dear, that's right. You go and tell moarther t' whoam that a lady and gentleman want to see inside the church, and ask for the key." Whereupon the little maid departs down a passage into a smell of wallflowers, and is heard afar rendering her message as a long narrative--so long that Dr. Conrad says the child cannot have understood right, and they had better prosecute inquiry further. Sally thinks otherwise, and says men are impatient fidgets.

The resolute dumbness of one of the small natives must have been a parti-pris, for it suddenly disappeared during his sister's absence, and he gave a narrative of a family dissension, not necessarily recent. He appears proud of his own share in it, which Sally nevertheless felt she could not appear to sanction by silence.

"You bad little boy," she said. "You smacked your sister Elizabeth in t' oy, and your foarther smacked you. I hope he hurt." The bad little boy assented with a nod, and supplied some further details. Then he asked for a penny before his sister Elizabeth came back. He wanted it to buy almond-rock, but he wouldn't give any of it to Jacob, nor to his sister Elizabeth, nor to Reuben, nor to many others, whom he seemed to exclude from almond-rock with rapture. Asked to whom he would give some, then, he replied: "Not you--eat it moyself!" and laughed heartlessly. Sally, we regret to say, gave this selfish little boy a penny for not being hypocritical. And then his sister Elizabeth reappeared with the key, which was out of scale with her, like St. Peter's.

The inward splendours of this church had been inferred by Sally from a tiptoe view through the window, which commanded its only archaic object of interest--the monument of a woolstapler who, three hundred and odd years ago, had the effrontery to have two wives and sixteen children. He ought to have had one or two more wives, thought Dr. Conrad. However, the family was an impressive one now, decorated as it was with roses cut out of turnips, and groups of apples and carrots and cereals. And no family could have kneeled down more symmetrically, even in 1580.

But there was plenty to see in that church, too. Indeed, it was for all the world like the advertisement sheets of Architectonic Ecclesiology (ask for this paper at your club), and every window was brim full of new stained glass, and every inch of floor-space was new encaustic tiles. And, what was more, there was a new mosaic over the chancel-arch--a modest and wobbly little arch in itself, that seemed afflicted with its position, and to want to get away into a quiet corner and meditate. Sally said so, and added so should she, if she were it.

"I wonder if the woolstapler was married here to one or other of the little square women," said she.

"I wonder why the angels up there look so sulky," said Dr. Conrad. And then Sally, who seemed absent-minded, found something else to wonder about--a certain musical whistling noise that filled the little church. But it was only a big bunch of moonwort on a stained-glass-window sill, and the wind was blowing through a vacancy that should have been a date, and making Æolian music. The little maid with the key found her voice over this suddenly. Her bruvver had done that, she said with pride. He had oymed a stoo-an when it was putten up, and brokken t' glass. So that stained glass was very new indeed, evidently.

"I wonder why they call that stuff 'honesty,' Miss Sally?" said the doctor. Sally, feeling that the interest of either in the church was really perfunctory, said vaguely--did they? And then, recoiling from further wonderment, and, indeed, feeling some terror of becoming idiotic if this sort of thing went on much longer, she exclaimed, with reality in her voice: "Because it's not pretending to take an interest when it doesn't, like us. But I wish you wouldn't, Dr. Conrad; I do hate it so."

"Hate what? Taking an interest or calling it honesty? I didn't call it honesty. They did, whoever they are!"

"No, no--I don't mean that. Never mind. I'll tell you when we're out. Come along--that is, if you've seen enough of the tidy mosaic and the tidy stained glass, and the tidy nosegays on the tidy table." The doctor came along--seemed well satisfied to do so. But this was the third time Sally had wished that Dr. Conrad wouldn't, and this time she felt she must explain. She wasn't at all sure that the name of that herb hadn't somehow got into the atmosphere--caught on, as it were, and twitted her. After all, why shouldn't she speak a plain thought to an old friend, as poor Prosy was now? Who could gainsay it? Moreover--now, surely this was an inspiration--why shouldn't she kill two birds with one stone, and work in her inquiry about the other young lady with this plain thought that was on her tongue to speak?

The sun was a sheer blaze of golden light as they stepped out of the little church into its farewell efforts on behalf of the hill-shadowed land of premature sunsets, and the merpussy looked her best in its effulgence. Sally's good looks had never been such as to convince her she was a beauty; and we suppose she wasn't, critically speaking. But youth and health, and an arrow-straight bearing, and a flawless complexion, in a flood of evening light, make a bold bid for beauty even in the eyes of others than young men already half-imbecile with love. Sally's was, at any rate, enough to dumbfounder the little janitress with the key, who stood at gaze with violet eyes in her sunbrowned face in the shadow, looking as though for certain they would never close again; while, as for Dr. Conrad, he was too far gone to want a finishing touch, and if he had been, the faintest animation of an extra flush due to embarrassment at what she was meaning to say would have done the business for him. What could he do but wonder and idolize, even while he almost flinched before his idol; and wait to know what it was she wished he wouldn't? What was there in earth or heaven he would not, if Sally wished it?

"Dr. Conrad, I'm sure you must know what I mean. I do so hate being called 'Miss Sally.' Do make it 'Sally,' and have done with it."

The breezy freshness of her spontaneous ease was infectious, and the shy man's answering laugh showed how it had caught his soul. "Is that all?" says he. "That's soon done--Sally! You know, I do call you Sally when I speak to your mother and...."

"Now, do say father. You've no idea how I like it when people call Jeremiah my father, instead of step."

"Well--father, then. I mean, they said call you Sally; so of course I do. But speaking to you--don't you see?..." The doctor hesitates--doesn't actually blush, perhaps. A slight pause in the conversation eases off the context. The little maiden has to lock up the church-door with the big key, and to receive sixpence and a kiss from Sally. The violet eyes follow the lady and gentleman, fixed in wonderment, as they move off towards the hill, and the last glint of the sun vanishes. Then Sally goes on where they left off:

"No, I don't see. Speaking to me, what? Be an explicit little general practitioner, or we shall quarrel, after all, and go home different ways."

"Well, look here! You know Bailey, the young man that drives me round in London?"

"Yes. How does he come in?"

"Why, just this way; I've known the youth for years, and the other day if it doesn't turn out that he's been married ever so long! And when I taxed him with needless secrecy and mistrust of an old friend, what does the young humbug say? 'The fact is, sir, I hadn't the cheek to tell you.' Well, I was like that. I hadn't the cheek."

"At any rate, you have the grace to call him a young humbug. I'm glad you're repentant, Dr. Conrad."

"Come--I say, now--Sally! That's not fair."

"What's not fair?"

"Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. You called me 'Dr. Conrad.'"

"We-ell, I don't see anything in that. Of course, it's quite a different thing--you and me."

"Very well, then. I shall say Miss Sally. Miss Sally!"

Here was Sally's opportunity, clear enough. She had never had a chance till now of bringing back the mysterious young lady of the jetty-interview into court, and examining her. She felt quite sure of herself and her powers of conducting the case--and she was mistaken. She knew nothing of the traps and pitfalls that were gaping for her. Her opening statement went easily though; it was all prepared.

"Don't you see, Dr. Conrad dear, the cases are quite different? When you're married, your wife will call me Sally, of course. But ... well, if I had a husband, you know, he would call you Dr. Vereker. Sure to!" Sally felt satisfied with the sound of her voice. But the doctor said never a word, and his face was grave. She would have to go on, unassisted, and she had invented nothing to say, so far. So a wavering crept in--nothing in itself at first, apart from her consciousness of it. "Besides, though, of course she would call me Sally, she mightn't quite--not altogether, you know--I mean, she might think it...." But ambushes revealed themselves in every hedge, ready to break out if she ended this sentence. Dr. Conrad made completion unnecessary.

"Whom do you mean by she, Sally?"

"Why, of course! Who could I mean but the girl you told me about that you think wouldn't agree with your mother?"

"I thought so. See what a mess I made of it! No, Sally, there's no such person. Now I shall have to speak the truth, and then I shall have to go away from you, and it will all be spoiled...." But Sally interposes on the tense speech, and sound of growing determination in the doctor's voice:

"Oh no, don't--no, don't! Don't say anything that will change it from now. See how happy we are! How could it be better? I'll call you Conrad, or anything you like. Only, don't make it different."

"Very well, I won't. I promise!" The doctor calms down. "But, Sally dearest--I may say Sally dearest, mayn't I?..."

"Well, perhaps. Only you must make that do for the present."

But there is a haunting sense of the Octopus in the conscientious soul of her son, and even though he is allowed to say "Sally dearest," the burden is on him of knowing that he has been swept away in the turmoil of this whirlwind of self, and he is feeling round to say peccavi, and make amends by confession. He makes "Sally dearest" do for the moment, but captures as a set-off the hand that slips readily enough into the arm he offers for it, with a caressing other hand, before he speaks again. He renews his promise--but with such a compensation in the hand that remains at rest in his! and then continues:

"Dearest Sally, I dare say you see how it was--about mother. It was very stupid of me, and I did it very badly. I got puzzled, and lost my head."

"I thought it was a real young lady, anyhow."

"I saw you did. And I do think--just now--I should have let you continue believing in the real young lady ... only when you said that...."

"Said what?"

"Said that about your husband, and calling me Conrad. I couldn't stand it. It was just like a knife ... no, I'm in earnest, it was. How could I have borne it--gone on at all--with you married to any one else?" He asks this in a tone of serious conviction, of one who is diagnosing a strange case, conscientiously. Sally declines consultation--won't be too serious over it.

"You would have had to. Men get on capitally when they have to. But very likely I won't marry you. Don't be too sure! I haven't committed myself, you know." Nevertheless, the hand remains passive in the doctor's, as he continues his diagnosis:

"I shouldn't deserve you. But, then, who could?"

Sally tacitly refuses to help in answering this question.

"I vote for neither of us marrying anybody else, but going on like now," says she thoughtfully.

Sally, you see, was recovering herself after a momentary alarm, produced by the gust of resolution on Dr. Conrad's part. She had shut her window on the storm in his soul, and felt safe in resuming her identity. All through this walk, ever since the hand-incident, she had been hard at work ignoring suggestions of her inner mind that her companion was a loaded gun, and not quite safe to play with. Now she felt she had established a sort of modus vivendi which would not involve her in the horrors of a formal engagement, with the concomitants of dissension and bitterness that she had noticed in friends' families on such occasions. Why shouldn't she and poor Prosy walk about together as much as they liked--yes, even call in at a church and get married if they liked--and have no one else fussing over them? The sort of semi-trothplight she had just hushed into silence would do for a good long time to come, because she understood Prosy down to the ground, and, of course, she knew that his mistrusting her was out of the question.

As for the doctor, his was the sort of temperament one often meets with in very fair men of his type--intensely shy, but with a backing of resolution on occasion shown, bred of a capacity for high-strung passion. He had formed his intention fully and clearly of telling Sally the whole truth before they arrived at St. Sennans that evening, and had been hastened to what was virtually an avowal by a premature accident, as we have seen. Now the murder was out, and he was walking home slowly beside the marvel, the mystery, that had taken possession of the inmost recesses of his life--very much in her pocket, if the truth must be told--with an almost intolerable searching fire of joy finding every moment a new untouched recess in his innermost heart. He could have fallen at her feet and kissed them, could have poured out his very soul in passionate protestations, could and would have done anything that would have given a moment's respite to the tension of his love for this all-absorbing other creature that was absolutely here--a reality, and no dream--beside him. But he was going to be good, at her bidding, and remain a sane and reasonable general practitioner, however much his heart beat and his head swam. Poor Prosy!

No! On consideration, Agur, the son of Jakeh, didn't know all about it. He only knew the Oriental temperament. He was quite up to date, no doubt, but neither he nor Ithiel nor Ucal nor King Solomon could reckon with spiritual volcanoes. Probably nothing in the world could have explained to either of them the meaning of one or two bits of music Schubert wrote on this subject of Love--we don't flinch from our phraseology; we know that all will understand it whom we care should do so. By-the-bye, Dr. Vereker was partly German, and a musician. Agur can have had no experience of either. The ancestors of Schubert and Beethoven were splendid savages in his day, sleeping on the snow-wreaths in the forests of the north; and somewhere among them there was a germ of a love-passion that was one day to ring changes on the peals that were known to Agur, the son of Jakeh.

But this is wandering from the point, and all the while Sally and her lover have been climbing that hill again, and are now walking over the lonely down above, towards the sun, and their shadows are long behind them--at least, their shadow; for they have but one, and we fancy we have let some of our record slip, for the man's arm is round the girl's waist. Yes, some further clearer understanding has come into their lives, and maybe Sally sees by now that the vote she passed nem. con. may be rescinded in the end.

If you had been near them then, invisible, we know you would not have gone close and listened. You would have been too honourable. But you would only have heard this--take our word for it!

"Do you know what I always call you behind your back? I always call you Prosy. I don't know why."

"Because I am prosy--level-headed, slow sort of card--but prosy beyond a doubt."

"No, you're not. I don't think you know the least what you're like. But I shall call you Prosy, all the same, or whatever I choose!"

"You don't take to Conrad, somehow?"

"It sounds so reproachful. It's like William."

"Does William sound reproachful?"

"Of course it does! Willy-yum! A most reproachful name. No, Prosy dear, I shall call you Prosy, whatever the consequences may be. People must put their own construction upon it."

"Mother calls me Conny very often."

"When she's not taking exception to you ... oh, no! I know. I was only joking ... there, then! we won't quarrel and go home opposite ways about that. Besides, I'm the young lady...."

"Oh, Sally darling, dearest, it does make me feel such a fool. Please don't!"

"Stuff and nonsense, Prosy dear! I shall, if I choose. So there!... No, but seriously--why did you think I shouldn't get on well with your mother?" Poor Prosy looks very much embarrassed at this point; his countenance pleads for respite. But Sally won't let him off. And he is as wax in her hands, and she knows it, and also that every word that passes her coral lips seems to the poor stricken man a pearl of wisdom. And she is girl enough to enjoy her power, is Sally.

"Why do you think I shan't get on with her?" Note the slight variation in the question, driving the nail home, leaving no escape. The doctor's manner in reply is that of one who appeals to Truth herself to help him, before a court that acknowledges no other jurisdiction.

"Because ... I must say it because it's true, only it seems so ... so disloyal, you might say, to mother...."

"Well! Because what?"

"Because then it won't be the same as your mother. It can't be."

"Why not?"

"Oh, Sally--dearest love--how can it?"

"Well! Perhaps why not was fibs. And, of course, mother's an angel, so it's not fair. But, Prosy dear, I'll tell you one thing I do think--that affectionate sons make very bad medical attendants for their ma's; and I should say the same if they had all the degrees in Christendom."

"You think a nervous element comes in?..."

* * * * *

And so the conversation ripples on, a quiet undertone of perfect confidence, freedom without reserve as to another self, suddenly discovered in the working identity of a fellow-creature. It ripples on just thus, all the distance of the walk along the topmost down, in the evening sunlight, and then comes a pause to negotiate the descent to their handy little forest below. Then a sense that they are coming back into a sane, dry world, and must be a lady and a gentleman again. But there must be a little farewell to the enchanted land they are leaving behind--a recognition of its story, under the beech-trees as the last gleam goes, and leaves us our inheritance of twilight.

"Do you remember, darling, how we climbed up there, coming, and had hold to the top?" His lips find hers, naturally and without disguise. It is the close of the movement, and company-manners will be wanted directly. But just a bar or two, and a space, before the music dies!...

"I remember," says Sally. "That began it. Oh, what a long time ago that does seem now! What a rum start it all is--the whole turn-out!" For the merpussy is her incorrigible self, and will be to the last.

* * * * *

When Sally reached home, very late, she was not displeased, though she was a little surprised, to find that Mrs. Lobjoit was keeping dinner back, and that her mother and Fenwick had not reappeared, having been away since they parted. Not displeased, because it gave her time to settle down--the expression she made use of, to think with; not with any admission, however, that she either felt or looked unusually exaltée--but surprised, because it was eight o'clock, and she felt that even Mrs. Lobjoit's good-nature might have limits.

But while she was settling down, in a happy, excited dream she half wondered that she did not wake from, back came the truants; and she heard from her room above Mrs. Lobjoit's report that Miss Sally was gone upstairs to get ready, with the faintest hint of reproach in the tone. Then her mother's "Don't stop to read letters, Gerry--that'll do after," and Fenwick's "All right!" not followed by immediate obedience. Then, after half a moment's delay, in which she felt some surprise at herself for not going out to meet them coming up the stairs, her mother's voice approaching, that asked where the kitten was.

"Oh, here you are, chick!--how long have you been in? Why, Sallykin! what is it, child?... Oh, Gerry--Gerry--come up here and hear this!" For the merpussy, in spite of many stoical resolutions, had merged a beginning of verbal communication in a burst of happy tears on her mother's bosom.

And when Fenwick, coming upstairs three steps at a time, filled the whole house with "Hullo, Sarah! what's the latest intelligence?" this young lady had only just time to pull herself together into something like dignified self-possession, in order to reply ridiculously--how could she have been our usual Sally, else?--"We-ell! I don't see that it's anything so very remarkable, after all. I've been encouraging my medical adviser's attentions, if you want to know, Jeremiah."

Was it only a fancy of Sally's, as she ended off a hurried toilet, for Mrs. Lobjoit's sake, or did her mother say to Fenwick, "Well!--that is something delightful, at any rate"? As though it were in some sense a set-off against something not delightful elsewhere.

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Chapter XLII

OF A RECURRENCE FROM AS YOU LIKE IT AND HOW FENWICK DIDN'T. WHY A SAILOR WOULD NOT LEARN TO SWIM. THE BARON AGAIN. OF A CUTTLE-FISH AND HIS SQUIRT. OF THE POWER OF A PRIORI REASONING. OF SALLY'S CONFESSION, AND HOW FENWICK WENT TO A FIRST-CLASS HOTEL

When Fenwick turned back towards home, ostensibly to shorten Rosalind's visit to the doctor's mother, he had no intention of doing so early enough to allow of his rejoining his companions, however slowly they might walk. Neither did he mean to deprive old Mrs. Vereker of Rosalind until she had had her full allowance of her. In an hour would do--or three-quarters. He discounted twenty-five per cent., owing to a recollection of the green veil and spectacles. Then he felt unkind, and said to himself, that, after all, the old woman couldn't help it.

Fenwick felt he was making a great concession in giving up three-quarters of an hour of Rosalind. As soon as he had had exercise enough for the day, and was in a mood to smoke and saunter about idly, he wanted Rosalind badly, and was little disposed to give her up. But the old Goody was going away to-morrow, and he would be liberal. He would take a turn along the sea-front--would have time to get down to the jetty--and then would invade the cave of the Octopus and extract the prisoner from its tentacles.

His intention in forsaking Sally and the doctor was half suspected by the latter, quite clear to himself, and only unperceived by his opaque stepdaughter. As he idled down towards the old fisher-dwellings and the net-huts, he tried to picture the form the declaration would take, and the way it would be received. That this would be favourable he never doubted for a moment; but he recalled the speech of Benedict to Beatrice, "By my troth I take thee for pity," and fancied Sally's response might be of the same complexion. His recollection of these words produced a mental recurrence, a distressing and imperfect one, connected with the earlier time he could not reach back to, of the words being used to himself by a girl who ascribed them to Rosalind in As You Like It, and a discussion after of their whereabouts in Shakespeare.

The indescribable wrench this gave his mind was so painful that he was quite relieved to recall Vereker's opinion that it was always the imperfection of the memory and the effort that gave pain, not the thing remembered. And in this case there could be no doubt that it was a mere dream, for the girl not only took the form of his Rosey he was going back to directly, but actually claimed her name, saying distinctly, "like my namesake, Celia's friend, in Shakespeare." Could any clearer proof be given that it was mere brain-froth?

The man with "Bessie" and "Elinor" tattooed on his arm was enjoying a pipe and mending a net, not to be too idle. The glass might be rising--or not. He was independent of Science. A trifle of wind in the night was his verdict, glass or no! The season was drawing nigh to a close now for a bathing-resort, as you might say. Come another se'nnight, you wouldn't see a machine down, as like as not. But you could never say, to a nicety. He'd known every lodging in the old town full, times and again, to the end of September month, before now. But this year was going to fall early, and your young lady would lose her swimming.

"She's a rare lass, too, for the water," he concluded, without any consciousness of familiarity in the change of phrase. "Not that I know much myself, touching swimming and the like. For I can't swim myself, never a stroke."

"That's strange, too, for a seaman," said Fenwick.

"No, sir! Not so strange as you might think it. You ask up and down among we, waterside or seafaring, and you'll find a many have never studied it, for the purpose. Many that would make swimmers, with a bit of practice, will hold off, for the reason I tell you. Overboard in mid-ocean, and none to help, and not a spar, would you soonest drown, end on, or have to fight for it, like it or no?"

"Drown! The sooner the better." Fenwick has no doubt about the matter.

"Why, sure! So I say, master. And I've put no encouragement on young Benjamin, over yonder, to give study to the learning of it, for the same reason. And not a stroke can he swim, any more than his father."

"Well! I can't swim myself, so there's three of us!" said Fenwick. "My daughter swims enough for the lot." It gave him such pleasure to speak thus of Sally boldly, where there need be no exact definition of their kinship. The net-mender pursued the subject with the kind of gravity on him that always comes on a seaman when drowning is under discussion.

"She's a rare one, for sure. Never but three, or may be fower, have I seen in my time to come anigh to her--man nor woman. The best swimmer a long way I've known--Peter Burtenshaw by name--I helped bring to after drowning. He'd swum--at a guess--the best part of six hours afower we heard the cry of him on our boat. Too late a bit we were, but we found him, just stone-dead like, and brought him round. It was what Peter said of that six hours put me off of letting 'em larn yoong Benjamin to swim when he was a yoongster. And when he got to years of understanding I told him my mind, and he never put himself to study it."

Fenwick would have liked to go on talking with the fisherman, as his mental recurrence about Shakespeare had fidgeted him, and he found speech a relief. But some noisy visitors from the new St. Sennans on the cliff above had made an irruption into the little old fishing-quarter, and the attention of the net-mender was distracted by possibilities of a boat-to-day being foisted on their simplicity; it was hardly rough enough to forbid the idea. Fenwick, therefore, sauntered on towards the jetty, but presently turned to go back, as half his time had elapsed.

As he repassed the net-mender with a short word or two for valediction, his ear was caught by a loud voice among the party of visitors, who were partly sitting on the beach, partly throwing stones in the water. Something familiar about that voice, surely!

"I gannod throw stoanss. I am too vat. I shall sit on the peach and see effrypotty else throw stoanss. I shall smoke another cigar. Will you haff another cigar, Mr. Prown? You will not? Ferry well! Nor you, Mrs. Prown? Not for the worlt? Ferry well! Nor you, Mr. Bilkington? Ferry well! I shall haff one myself, and you shall throw stoanss." And then, as though to remove the slightest doubt about the identity of the speaker, the voice broke into song:

"Ich hatt' einen Kameraden, Einen bessern findst du nicht--"

but ended on "Mein guter Kamerad," exclaiming stentorianly, "Opleitch me with a madge," and lighting his cigar in spite of his companions' indignation at the music stopping.

Fenwick stood hesitating a moment in doubt what to do. His inclination was to go straight down the beach to his old friend, whom--of course, you understand?--he now remembered quite well, and explain the strange circumstances that had rendered their meeting in Switzerland abortive. But then!--what would the effect be on his present life, in his relation to Rosalind and (almost as important) to Sally? Diedrich Kreutzkammer had been, for some time in California, a most intimate friend. Fenwick had made him the confidant of his marriage and his early life, all that he had since forgotten, and he had it now in his power to recover all this from the past. Strange to say, although he could remember the telling of these things, he could only remember weak, confused snatches of what he told. It was unaccountable--but there!--he could not try to unravel that skein now. He must settle, and promptly, whether to speak to the Baron or to run.

He was not long in coming to a decision, especially as he saw that hesitation was sure to end in the adoption of the former course--probably the wrong one. He just caught the Baron's last words--a denunciation of the hotel he was stopping at, loud enough to reach the new St. Sennans, of which it was the principal constituent--and then walked briskly off. He arrived at Iggulden's within the hour he had first conceded to the Octopus, and got Rosalind out for a walk, as originally proposed.

There was no apparent reason why the impossibility of overtaking Sally and the doctor should be interpreted into an excuse for going in the opposite direction; but each accepted it as such, or as a justification at least. Rosalind had not so distinct a reason as her husband for wishing not to break in upon them, as he had not reported the whole of his last talk with Vereker. But though she did not know that Dr. Conrad had as good as promised to make a clean breast of it before returning to London, she thought nothing was more likely than that he should do so, and resolved to leave the stage clear for the leading parts. She may even have flattered herself that she was showing tact--keeping an unconscious Gerry out of the way, who might else interfere with the stars in their courses, in the manner of the tactless. Rosalind suspected this of Sally, that whatever she might think she thought, and whatever parade she made of an even mind no sentiments whatever prevailed in, there was in her inmost heart another Sally, locked in and unconfessed, that had strong views on the subject. And she wanted this Sally to be let out for a spell, or for poor Prosy to be allowed into her cell long enough to speak for himself. Anyhow, this was their last chance here, and she wasn't going to spoil it.

She had gone near to making up her mind--after her sufferings from Gwenny's mamma in the morning--to attempt, at any rate, a communication of their joint story to her husband. But it must depend on circumstances and possibilities. She foresaw a long period of resolutions undermined by doubts, decisions rescinded at the last moment, and suddenly-revealed ambushes, and perhaps in the end self-reproach for a mismanaged revelation that might have been so much more skilfully done. Never mind--it was all in the day's work! She had borne much, and would bear more.

"How do you know they are all nonsense, Gerry darling?" We catch their conversation in the middle as they walk along the sands the tide is leaving clear, after accommodating the few morning-bathers with every opportunity to get out of their depths. "How do you know? Surely the parts that you do seem to remember clearly must be all right, however confused the rest is."

Fenwick gives his head the old shake, dashes his hair across his brow and rubs it, then replies: "The worst of the job is, you see, that the bits I remember clearest are the greatest gammon. What do you make of that?"

Rosalind's hand closes on her nettle. "Instance, Gerry!--give me an instance, and I shall know what you mean."

Fenwick is outrageously confident of the safety of his last imperfect recollection. He can trust to its absurdity if he can trust to anything.

"Well! For instance, just now--an hour ago--I recollected something about a girl who would have it Rosalind in As You Like It said, 'By my troth I take thee for pity,' to Orlando. And all the while it was Benedict said it to Beatrice in All's Well that Ends Well."

The hand on the nettle tightens. "Gerry dearest!" she remonstrates. "There's nothing in that, as Sallykin says. Of course it was Benedict said it to Beatrice."

"Yes--but the gammon wasn't in that. It was the girl that said it. When I tried to think who it was, she turned into you! I mean, she became exactly like you."

"But I'm a woman of forty." This was a superb piece of nettle-grasping; and there was not a tremor in the voice that said it, and the handsome face of the speaker was calm, if a little pale. Fenwick noticed nothing.

"Like what I should suppose you were as a girl of eighteen or twenty. It's perfectly clear how the thing worked. It was from something else I seem to recollect her saying, 'Like my namesake, Celia's friend in Shakespeare.' The moment she said that, of course the name Rosalind made me think you into the business. It was quite natural."

"Quite natural! And when I was that girl that was what I said." She had braced herself up, in all the resolution of her strong nature, to the telling of her secret, and his; and she thought this was her opportunity. She was mistaken. For as she stood, keeping, as it were, a heartquake in abeyance, till she should see him begin to understand, he replied without the least perceiving her meaning--evidently accounting her speech only a variant on "If I had been that girl," and so forth--"Of course you did, sweetheart," said he, with a laugh in his voice, "when you were that girl. And I expect that girl said it when she was herself, whoever she was, and the name Rosalind turned her into you? Look at this cuttlefish before he squirts."

For a moment Rosalind Fenwick was almost two people, so distinctly did the two aspects or conditions of herself strike her mind. The one was that of breath drawn freely, of a respite, a reprieve, a heartquake escaped; for, indeed, she had begun to feel, as she neared the crisis, that the trial might pass her powers of endurance. The other of a new terror--that the tale, perhaps, could not be told at all! that, unassisted by a further revival of her husband's memory, it would remain permanently incredible by him, with what effect of a half-knowledge of the past God only knew. The sense of reprieve got the better of the new-born apprehension--bid it stand over for a while, at least. Sufficient for the day was the evil thereof.

Meanwhile, Gerry, absolutely unconscious of her emotion, and seeming much less disconcerted over this abortive recollection than over previous ones, stood gazing down into the clear rock-pool that contained the cuttlefish. "Do come and look at him, Rosey love," said he. "His manners are detestable, but there can be no doubt about the quality of his black."

She leaned a bit heavily on the arm she took as they left the cuttlefish to his ill-conditioned solitude. "Tired, dearest?" said her husband; and she answered, "Just a little!" But his mind was a clean sheet on which his story would have to be written in ink as black as the cuttlefish's Parthian squirt, and in a full round hand without abbreviations, unless it should do something to help itself. Let it rest while she rested and thought.

She thought and thought--happy for all her strain of nerve and mind, on the quiet stretch of sand and outcrop of chalk, slippery with weed, that the ebbing tide would leave safe for them for hours to come. So thinking, and seeing the way in which her husband's reason was entrenched against the facts of his own life, in a citadel defended by human experience at bay, she wavered in her resolution of a few hours since--or, rather, she saw the impossibility of forcing the position, thinking contentedly that at least if it was so impracticable to her it would be equally so to other agencies, and he might be relied on to remain in the dark. The status quo would be the happiest, if it could be preserved. So when, after a two hours' walk through the evening glow and the moonrise, Rosalind came home to Sally's revelation, as we have seen, the slight exception her voice took to universal rejoicing was the barest echo of the tension of her absolutely unsuccessful attempt to get in the thin end of the wedge of an incredible revelation.

Quite incredible! So hopeless is the case of a mere crude, unadulterated fact against an irresistible a priori belief in its incredibility.

Sally was reserved about details, but clear about the outcome of her expedition with Prosy. They perfectly understood each other, and it wasn't anybody else's concern; present company's, of course, excepted. Questioned as to plans for the future--inasmuch as a marriage did not seem inconsequent under the circumstances--Sally became enigmatical. The word "marriage" had not been so much as mentioned. She admitted the existence of the institution, but proposed--now and for the future--to regard it as premature. Wasn't even sure she would tell anybody, except Tishy; and perhaps also Henriette Prince, because she was sure to ask, and possibly Karen Braun if she did ask. But she didn't seem at all clear what she was going to say to them, as she objected to the expression "engaged." A thing called "it" without an antecedent, got materialised, and did duty for something more intelligible. Yes!--she would tell Tishy about It, and just those one or two others. But if It was going to make any difference, or there was to be any fuss, she would just break It off, and have done with It.

Sentiments of this sort provoked telegraphic interchanges of smile-suggestion between her hearers all through the evening meal that was so unusually late. This lateness received sanction from the fact that Mr. Fenwick would very likely have letters by the morning post that would oblige him to return to town by the afternoon train. If so, this was his last evening, and clearly nothing mattered. Law and order might be blowed, or hanged.

It was, under these circumstances, rather a surprise to his hearers when he said, after smoking half through his first cigar, that he thought he should walk up to the hotel in the new town, because he fancied there was a man there he knew. As to his name, he thought it was Pilkington, but wasn't sure. Taunted with reticence, he said it was nothing but business. As Rosalind could easily conceive that Gerry might not want to introduce all the Pilkingtons he chanced across to his family, she didn't press for explanation. "He'll very likely call round to see your young man, chick, when he's done with Pilkington." To which Sally replied, "Oh, he'll come round here. Told him to!" Which he did, at about ten o'clock. But Fenwick had never called at Iggulden's, neither had he come back to his own home. It was after midnight before his foot was on the stairs, and Sally had retired for the night, telling her mother not to fidget--Jeremiah would be all right.

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Chapter XLIII

OF AN OBSERVANT AND THOUGHTFUL, BUT SNIFFY, WAITER; AND HOW HE OPENED A NEW BOTTLE OF COGNAC. HOW THE BARON SAW FENWICK HOME, WITHOUT HIS HAT. AN OLD MEMORY FROM ROSALIND'S PAST AND HIS. AND THEN FACE TO FACE WITH THE WHOLE. SLEEP UPON IT! BUT WHAT BECAME OF HIS HORRIBLE BABY?

At eleven o'clock that night a respectable man with weak eyes and a cold was communing with a commanding Presence that lived in a bureau--nothing less!--in the entrance-hall of the big hotel at the new St. Sennans. It was that of a matron with jet earrings and tube-curls and a tortoise-shell comb, and an educated contempt for her species. It lived in that bureau with a speaking-pipe to speak to every floor, and a telephone for the universe beyond. He that now ventured to address it was a waiter, clearly, for he carried a table-napkin, on nobody's behalf and uselessly, but with a feeling for emblems which might have made him Rouge Dragon in another sphere. As it was, he was the head waiter in the accursed restaurant or dining-salon at the excruciating new hotel, where he would bring you cold misery from the counter at the other end, or lukewarm depression à la carte from the beyond--but nothing that would do you any good inside, from anywhere.

"Are those parties going, in eighty-nine, do you make out?" The Presence speaks, but with languid interest.

"Hapathetic party, and short customer. Takes you up rather free. Name of Pilkington. Not heard 'em say anything!"

"Who did you say was going?"

"The German party. Party of full 'abit. Call at seven in the morning. Fried sole and cutlets à la mangtynong and sweet omelet at seven-thirty sharp. Too much by way of smoking all day, in my thinking! But they say plums and greengages, took all through meals, is a set-off."

"I don't pretend to be an authority. Isn't that him, in the smoking-room?"

"Goin' on in German? Prob'ly." Both stop and listen. What they hear is the Baron, going on very earnestly indeed in German. What keeps them listening is that another voice comes in occasionally--a voice with more than mere earnestness in it; a voice rather of anguish under control. Then both voices pause, and silence comes suddenly.

"Who's the other party?"

"In a blue soote, livin' in one of the sea-'ouses down on the beach. Big customer. Prodooces a rousin' impression!"

"Is that his daughter that swims?... That's him--coming away."

But it isn't. It is the Baron, wrathful, shouting, swearing, neither in German nor English, but in either or both. Where is that tamned kellner? Why does he not answer the pell? This is an abscheuliches hotel, and every one connected with it is an Esel. What he wants is some cognac and a doctor forthwith. His friend has fainted, and he has been pressing the tamned puddon, and nobody comes.

The attitude of the lady with the earrings epitomizes the complete indifference of a hotel-keeper to the private lives of its guests nowadays. That bell must be seen to, she says. Otherwise she is callous. The respectable waiter hurries for the cognac, and returns with a newly-drawn bottle and two glasses to the smoking-room, to find that the gentleman has recovered and won't have any. He suggests that our young man could step round for Dr. Maccoll; but the proposed patient says, "The devil fly away with Dr. Maccoll!" which doesn't look like docility. The respectable waiter takes note of his appearance, and reports of it to his principal on dramatic grounds, not as a matter into which human sympathies enter.

"Very queer he looks. Doo to reaction, or the coatin's of the stomach. Affectin' the action of the heart.... No, there's nobody else in the smoking-room. Party with the 'ook instead of a hand's watching of 'em play penny-pool in the billiard-room." Surely a tale to bring a tear to the eye of sensibility! But not to one that sees in mankind only a thing that comes and goes and pays its bill--or doesn't. The lady in the bureau appears to listen slightly to the voices that come afresh from the smoking-room, but their duration is all she is concerned with. "He's going now," she says. He is; and he does look queer--very queer. His companion does not leave him at the door, but walks out into the air with him without his hat, speaking to him volubly and earnestly, always in German. His speech suggests affectionate exhortation, and the way he takes his arm is affectionate. The voices go out of hearing, and it is so long before the Baron returns, hatless, that he must have gone all the way to the sea-houses down on the beach.

* * * * *

Sally retired to her own couch in order to supply an inducement to her mother to go to bed herself, and sit up no longer for Gerry's return, which might be any time, of course. Rosalind conceded the point, and was left alone under a solemn promise not to be a goose and fidget. But she was very deliberate about it; and though she didn't fidget, she went all the slower that she might think back on a day--an hour--of twenty years ago, and on the incident that Gerry had half recalled, quite accurately as far as it went, but strangely unsupported by surroundings or concomitants.

It came back to her with both. She could remember even the face of her mother's coachman Forsyth, who had driven her with Miss Stanynaught, her chaperon in this case, to the dance where she was to meet Gerry, as it turned out; and how Forsyth was told not to come for them before three in the morning, as he would only have to wait; and how Miss Stanynaught, her governess of late, who was over forty, pleaded for two, and Forsyth did have to wait; and how she heard the music and the dancing above, for they were late; and how they waded upstairs against a descending stream of muslin skirts and marked attentions going lawnwards towards the summer night, and bent on lemonade and ices; and then their entry into the dancing-room, and an excited hostess and daughters introducing partners like mad; and an excited daughter greeting a gentleman who had come upstairs behind them, with "Well, Mr. Palliser, you are late. You don't deserve to be allowed to dance at all." And that was Jessie Nairn, of course, who added, "I've jilted you for Arthur Fenwick."

How well Rosalind could remember turning round and seeing a splendid young chap who said, "What a jolly shame!" and didn't seem to be oppressed by that or anything else; also Jessie's further speech, apologizing for having also appropriated Miss Graythorpe's partner. So they would have to console each other. What a saucy girl Jessie was, to be sure! She introduced them with a run, "Mr. Algernon Palliser, Miss Rosalind Graythorpe, Miss Rosalind Graythorpe, Mr. Algernon Palliser," and fled. And Rosalind was piqued about Arthur Fenwick's desertion. It seemed all so strange now--such a vanished world! Just fancy!--she had been speculating if she should accept Arthur, if he got to the point of offering himself.

But a shaft from Cupid's bow must have been shot from a slack string, for Rosalind could remember how quickly she forgot Arthur Fenwick as she took a good look at Gerry Palliser, his great friend, whom he had so often raved about to her, and who was to be brought to play lawn-tennis next Monday. And then to the ear of her mind, listening back to long ago, came a voice so like the one she was to hear soon, when that footstep should come on the stair.

"I can't waltz like Arthur, Miss Graythorpe. But you'll have to put up with me." And the smile that spread over his whole face was so like him now. Then came the allusion to As You Like It.

"I'll take you for pity, Mr. Palliser--'by my troth,' as my namesake Rosalind, Celia's friend, in Shakespeare, says to what's his name ... Orlando...."

"Come, I say, Miss Graythorpe, that's not fair. It was Benedict said it to Beatrice."

"Did he? And did Beatrice say she wouldn't waltz with him?"

"Oh, please! I'm so sorry. No--it wasn't Benedict--it was Rosalind."

"That's right! Now let me button your glove for you. You'll be for ever, with those big fingers." For both of us, thought Rosalind, were determined to begin at once and not lose a minute. That dear old time ... before...!

Then, even clearer still, came back to her the dim summer-dawn in the garden, with here and there a Chinese lantern not burned out, and the flagging music of the weary musicians afar, and she and Gerry with the garden nearly to themselves. She could feel the cool air of the morning again, and hear the crowing of a self-important cock. And the informal wager which would live the longer--a Chinese lantern at the point of death, or the vanishing moon just touching the line of tree-tops against the sky, stirred by the morning wind. And the voice of Gerry when return to the house and a farewell became inevitable. She shut her eyes, and could hear it and her own answer.

"I shall go to India in six weeks, and never see you again."

"Yes, you will; because Arthur Fenwick is to bring you round to lawn-tennis...."

"That won't make having to go any better. And then when I come back, in ever so many years, I shall find you...."

"Gone to kingdom come?"

"No--married!... Oh no, do stop out--don't go in yet...."

"We ought to go in. Now, don't be silly."

"I can't help it.... Well!--a fellow I know asked a girl to marry him he'd only known two hours."

"What very silly friends you must have, Mr. Palliser! Did she marry him?"

"No! but they're engaged, and he's in Ceylon. But you wouldn't marry me...."

"How on earth can you tell, in such a short time? What a goose you are!... There!--the music's stopped, and Mrs. Nairn said that must be the last waltz. Come along, or we shall catch it."

They had known each other exactly four hours!

Rosalind remembered it all, word for word. And how Gerry captured a torn glove to keep; and when he came, as appointed, to lawn-tennis, went back at once to Shakespeare, and said he had looked it up, and it was Beatrice and Benedict, and not Rosalind at all. She could remember, too, her weary and reproachful chaperon, and the well-deserved scolding she got for the way she had been going on with that young Palliser. Eight dances!

So long ago! And she could think through it all again. And to him it had become a memory of shreds and patches. Let it remain so, or become again oblivion--vanish with the rest of his forgotten past! Her thought that it would do so was confidence itself as she sat there waiting for his footstep on the stair. For had she not spoken of herself unflinchingly as the girl who said those words from Shakespeare, and had not her asseveration slipped from the mind that could not receive it as water slips from oil? She could wait there without misgiving--could even hope that, whatever it was due to, this recent stirring of the dead bones of memory might mean nothing, and die away leaving all as it was before.

* * * * *

Sally, acknowledging physical fatigue with reluctance, after her long walk and swim in the morning, went to bed. It presented itself to her as a thing practicable, and salutary in her state of bewilderment, to lie in bed with her eyes closed, and think over the events of the day. It would be really quiet. And then she would be awake when Jeremiah came in, and would call out for information if there was a sound of anything to hear about. But her project fell through, for she had scarcely closed her eyes when she fell into a trap laid for her by sleep--deep sleep, such as we fancy dreamless. And when Fenwick came back she could not have heard his words to her mother, even had they risen above the choking undertone in which he spoke, nor her mother's reply, more audible in its sudden alarm, but still kept down--for, startled as she was at Gerry's unexpected words, she did not lose her presence of mind.

"What is it, Gerry darling? What is it, dear love? Has anything happened? I'll come."

"Yes--come into my room. Come away from our girl. She mustn't hear."

She knew then at once that his past had come upon him somehow. She knew it at once from the tone of his voice, but she could make no guess as to the manner of it. She knew, too, that that heartquake was upon her--the one she had felt so glad to stave off that day upon the beach--and that self-command had to be found in an emergency she might not have the strength to meet.

For the shock, coming as it did upon her false confidence--a sudden thunderbolt from a cloudless sky--was an overwhelming one. She knew she would have a moment's outward calm before her powers gave way, and she must use it for Sally's security. What Gerry said was true--their girl must not hear.

But oh, how quick thought travels! By the time Rosalind, after stopping a second outside Sally's door, listening for any movement, had closed that of her husband's room as she followed him in, placing the light she carried on a chair as she entered, she had found in the words "our girl" a foretaste of water in the desert that might be before her.

Another moment and she knew she was safe, so far as Gerry himself went. As he had himself said, he would be the same Gerry to her and she the same Rosey to him, whatever wild beast should leap out of the past to molest them. She knew it was as he caught her to his heart, crushing her almost painfully in the great strength that went beyond his own control as he shook and trembled like an aspen-leaf under the force of an emotion she could only, as yet, guess at the nature of. But the guess was not a wrong one, in so far as it said that each was there to be the other's shield and guard against ill, past, present, and to come--a refuge-haven to fly to from every tempest fate might have in store. She could not speak--could not have found utterance even had words come to her. She could only rest passive in his arms, inert and dumb, feeling in the short gasps that caught his breath how he struggled for speech and failed, then strove again. At last his voice came--short, spasmodic sentences breaking or broken by like spans of silence:

"Oh, my darling, my darling, remember!... remember!... whatever it is ... it shall not come between us ... it shall not ... it shall not.... Oh, my dear!... give me time, and I shall speak ... if I could only say at once ... in one word ... could only understand ... that is all ... to understand...." He relaxed his hold upon her; but she held to him, or she might have fallen, so weak was she, and so unsteady was the room and all in it to her sight. The image of him that she saw seemed dim and in a cloud, as he pressed his hands upon his eyes and stood for a moment speechless; then struggled again to find words that for another moment would not come, caught in the gasping of his breath. Then he got a longer breath, as for ease, and drawing her face towards his own--and this time the touch of his hand was tender as a child's--he kissed it repeatedly--kissed her eyes, her cheeks, her lips. And in his kiss was security for her, safe again in the haven of his love, come what might. She felt how it brought back to her the breath she knew would fail her, unless her heart, that had beaten so furiously a moment since, and then died away, should resume its life. The room became steady, and she saw his face and its pallor plainly, and knew that in a moment she should find her voice. But he spoke first, again.

"That is what I want, dear love--to understand. Help me to understand," he said. And then, as though feeling for the first time how she was clinging to him for support, he passed his arm round her gently, guiding her to sit down. But he himself remained standing by her, as though physically unaffected by the storm of emotion, whatever its cause, that had passed over him. Then Rosalind found her voice.

"Gerry darling--let us try and get quiet over it. After all, we are both here." As she said this she was not very clear about her own meaning, but the words satisfied her. "I see you have remembered more, but I cannot tell how much. Now try and tell me--have you remembered all?"

"I think so, darling." He was speaking more quietly now, as one docile to her influence. His manner gave her strength to continue.

"Since you left Mr. Pilkington--your friend at the hotel--didn't you say the name Pilkington?"

"No--there was no Pilkington! Oh yes, there was!--a friend of Diedrich's...."

"Has it come back, I mean, since you left the house? Who is Diedrich?"

"Stop a bit, dearest love! I shall be able to tell it all directly." She, too, was glad of a lull, and welcomed his sitting down beside her on the bed-end, drawing her face to his, and keeping it with the hand that was not caressing hers. Presently he spoke again, more at ease, but always in the undertone, just above a whisper, that meant the consciousness of Sally, too, near. Rosalind said, "She won't hear," and he replied, "No; it's all right, I think," and continued:

"Diedrich Kreutzkammer--he's Diedrich--don't you remember? Of course you do!... I heard him down on the beach to-day singing. I wanted to go to him at once, but I had to think of it first, so I came home. Then I settled to go to him at the hotel. I had not remembered anything then--anything to speak of--I had not remembered IT. Now it is all back upon me, in a whirl." He freed the hand that held hers for a moment, and pressed his fingers hard upon his eyes; then took her hand again, as before. "I wanted to see the dear old fellow and talk over old times, at 'Frisco and up at the Gold River--that, of course! But I wanted, too, to make him repeat to me all the story I had told him of my early marriage--oh, my darling!--our marriage, and I did not know it! I know it now--I know it now."

Rosalind could feel the thrill that ran through him as his hand tightened on hers. She spoke, to turn his mind for a moment. "How came Baron Kreutzkammer at St. Sennans?"

"Diedrich? He has a married niece living at Canterbury. Don't you remember? He told you and you told me...." Rosalind had forgotten this, but now recalled it. "Well, we talked about the States--all the story I shall have to tell you, darling, some time; but, oh dear, how confused I get! That wasn't the first. The first was telling him my story--the accident, and so on--and it was hard work to convince him it was really me at Sonnenberg. That was rather a difficulty, because I had sent him in the name I had in America, and he only saw an old friend he thought was dead. All that was a trifle; but, oh, the complications!..."

"What was the name you had in America?"

Fenwick answered musingly, "Harrisson," and then paused before saying, "No, I had better not...." and leaving the sentence unfinished. She caught his meaning, and said no more. After all, it could matter very little if she never heard his American experiences, and the name Harrisson had no association for her. She left him to resume, without suggestion.

"He might have reminded me of anything that happened in the States, and I should just have come back here and told it you, because, you see, I should have been sure it was true, and no dream. It was India. I had told him all, don't you see? And I got him to repeat it, and then it all came back--all at once, the moment I saw it was you, my darling--you yourself! It all became quite easy then. It was us--you and me! I know it now--I know it now!"

"But, dearest, what made you see that it was us?"

"Why, of course, because of the name! He told me all I had told him from the beginning in German. We always spoke German. He could not remember your first name, but he remembered your mother's--it had stayed in his mind--because of the German word Nachtigall being so nearly the same. As he said the word my mind got a frightful twist, and I thought I was mad. I did, indeed, my dearest love--raving mad!"

"And then you knew it?"

"And then I knew it. I nearly fainted clean off, and he went for brandy; but I came round, and the dear old boy saw me to this door here. It has all only just happened." He remained silent again for a little space, holding her hand, and then said suddenly: "It has happened, has it not? Is it all true, or am I dreaming?"

"Be patient, darling. It is all true--at least, I think so. It is all true if it is like this, because remember, dear, you have told me almost nothing.... I only know that it has come back to you that I am Rosey and that you are Gerry--the old Rosey and Gerry long ago in India...." She broke down over her own words, as her tears, a relief in themselves, came freely, taxing her further to keep her voice under for Sally's sake. It was only for a moment; then she seemed to brush them aside in an effort of self-mastery, and again began, dropping her voice even lower. "It is all true if it is like this. I came out to marry you in India ... my darling!... and a terrible thing happened to me on the way ... the story you know more of now than I could tell you then ... for how could I tell it ... think?..."

Her husband started up from her side gasping, beating his head like a madman. She was in terror lest she had done wrong in her speech. "Gerry, Gerry!" she appealed to him in a scarcely raised voice, "think of Sally!" She rose and went to him, repeating, "Think of Sally!" then drew him back to his former place. His breath went and came heavily, and his forehead was drenched with sweat, as in epilepsy; but the paroxysm left him as he sank back beside her, saying only, "My God! that miscreant!" but showing that he had heard her by the force of the constraint he put upon his voice. It gave her courage to go on.

"I could not get it told then. I did not know the phrases--and you were so happy, my darling--so happy when you met me at the station! Oh, how could I? But I was wrong. I ought not to have let you marry me, not knowing. And then ... it seemed deception, and I could not right it...." Her voice broke again, as she hid her face on his shoulder; but she knew her safety in the kiss she felt on her free hand, and the gentleness of his that stroked her hair. Then she heard his almost whispered words above her head, close to her ear:

"Darling, forgive me--forgive me! It was I that was in fault. I might have known...."

"Gerry, dear ... no!..."

"Yes, I might. There was a woman there--had been an officer's wife. She came to me and spoke rough truths about it--told me her notion of the tale in her own language. 'Put her away from you,' she said, 'and you won't get another like her, and won't deserve her!' And she was right, poor thing! But I was headstrong and obstinate, and would not hear her. Oh, my darling, how we have paid for it!"

"But you have found me again, dear love!" He did not answer, but raised up her face from his shoulder, parting the loose hair tenderly--for it was all free on her shoulders--and gazing straight into her eyes with an expression of utter bewilderment. "Yes, darling, what is it?" said she, as though he had spoken.

"I am getting fogged!" he said, "and cannot make it out. Was it pure accident? Surely something must have happened to bring it about."

"Bring what about?"

"How came we to find each other again, I mean?"

"Oh, I see! Pure accident, I should say, dear! Why not? It would not have happened if it had not been possible. Thank God it did!"

"Thank God it did! But think of the strangeness of it all! How came Sally in that train?"

"Why not, darling? Where else could she have been? She was coming back to tea, as usual."

"And she put me in a cab--bless her!--she and Conrad Vereker--and brought me home to you. But did you know me at once, darling?"

"At once."

"But why didn't you tell me?"

"If you had shown the slightest sign of knowing me I should have told you, and taken my chance; but you only looked at me and smiled, and never knew me! Was mine a good plan? At least, it has answered." A clasp and a kiss was the reply. She was glad that he should choose the line of conversation, and did not break into the pause that followed. The look of fixed bewilderment on his face was painful, but she did not dare any suggestion of guidance to his mind. She had succeeded but ill before in going back to the cause of their own early severance. Yet that was what she naturally had most at heart, and longed to speak of. Could she have chosen, she would have liked to resume it once for all, in spite of the pain--to look the dreadful past in the face, and then agree to forget it together. She was hungry to tell him that even when he broke away from her that last time she saw him at Umballa--broke away from her so roughly that his action had all the force and meaning of a blow--she only saw his image of the wrong she had done, or seemed to have done him; that she had nothing for him through it all but love and forgiveness. At least, she would have tried to make sure that he had been able to connect and compare the tale she had told him since their reunion with his new memory of the facts of twenty years ago. But she dared say nothing further as yet. For his part, at this moment, he seemed strangely willing to let all the old story lapse, and to dwell only on the incredible chance that had brought them again together. All that eventful day our story began with had leaped into the foreground of his mind.

Presently he said, still almost whispering hoarsely, with a constant note of amazement and something like panic in his voice: "If it hadn't happened--the accident--I suppose I should have gone back to the hotel. And what should I have done next? I should never have found you and Sally...."

"Were you poor, Gerry darling?"

"Frightfully rich! Gold-fields, mining-place up the Yu-kon. Near the Arctic Circle." He went on in a rapid undertone, as if he were trying to supply briefly what he knew the woman beside him must be yearning to know, if not quite unlike other women. "I wasn't well off before--didn't get on at the Bar at St. Louis--but not poor exactly. Then I made a small pile cattle-ranching in Texas, and somehow went to live at Quebec. There were a lot of French Canadians I took to. Then after that, 'Frisco and the gold...."

"Gerry dear!"

"Yes, love, what?"

"Have you any relations living in England?"

"Heaps, but I haven't spoken to one of them for years and years--not since then. One of them's a Bart. with a fungus on his nose in Shropshire. He's an uncle. Then there's my sister, if she's not dead--my sister Livy. She's Mrs. Huxtable. I fancy they all think I'm dead in the bush in Australia. I had a narrow squeak there...."

"Now, Gerry darling, I'll tell you what I want you to do...."

"Yes, dear, I will."

"You can't tell me all these things now, and you'll be ill; so lie down on the bed there, and I'll sit by you till you go to sleep. Or look, you get to bed comfortably, and I'll be back in a few minutes and sit by you. Just till you go off. Now do as I tell you."

He obeyed like a child. It was wonderful how, in the returning power of her self-command, she took him, as it were, in hand, and rescued him from the tension of his bewilderment. Apart from the fact that the fibre of her nature was exceptionally strong, her experience of this last hour had removed the most part of the oppression that had weighed her down for more than a twelvemonth--the doubt as to which way a discovery of his past would tell on her husband's love for her. She had no feeling now but anxiety on his behalf, and this really helped her towards facing the situation calmly. All things do that take us out of ourselves.

She stood again a moment outside Sally's door to make sure she was not moving, then went to her own room, not sorry to be alone. She wanted a pause for the whirl in her brain to stop, for the torrent of new event that had rushed in upon it to find its equilibrium. If Gerry fell asleep before she returned to him so much the better! She did not even light her candle, preferring to be in the dark.

But this did not long defer her return to her husband's room. A very few minutes in the darkness and the silence of her own were enough for her, and she was grateful for both. Then she went back, to find him in bed, sitting up and pressing his fingers on his eyes, as one does when suffering from nervous headache. But he disclaimed any such feeling in answer to her inquiry. She sat down beside him, holding his hand, just as she had done in the night of the storm, and begged him for her sake and his own to try to sleep. It would all seem so much easier and clearer in the morning.

Yes, he would sleep, he said. And, indeed, he had resolved to affect sleep, so as to induce her to go away herself and rest. But it was not so easy. Half-grasped facts went and came--recollections that he knew he should before long be able to marshal in their proper order and make harmonious. For the time being, though they had not the nightmare character of the recurrences he had suffered from before his memory-revival, they stood between him and sleep effectually. But he could and would simulate sleep directly, for Rosalind's sake. He had looked at his watch and seen that it was near two in the morning. Yes, he would sleep; but he must ask one question, or lose his reason if she left him alone with it unanswered.

"Rosey darling!"

"What, dearest?"

"We'll forget the old story, won't we, and only think of now? That's the right way to take it, isn't it?"

She kissed his face as she answered, just as she might have kissed a child. "Quite right, dear love," she said; "and now go to sleep. Or if you must talk a little more, talk about Conrad and Sally."

"Ah yes!" he answered; "that's all happiness. Conrad and Sally! But there's a thing...."

"What thing, dear? What is it?"

"I shall ask it you in the end, so why not now?" She felt in his hand a shudder that ran through him, as his hold on her fingers tightened.

"So why not now?" she repeated after him. "Why hesitate?"

The tremor strengthened in her hand and was heard in his voice plainly as he answered with an effort: "What became of the baby?"

"What became of the baby!" There was a new terror in Rosalind's voice as she repeated the words--a fear for his reason. "What baby?"

"The baby--his baby--his horrible baby!"

"Gerry darling! Gerry dearest! do think...." His puzzled eyes, bloodshot in his white face, turned full upon her; but he remained silent, waiting to hear more. "You have forgotten, darling," she said quietly.

His free hand that lay on the coverlid clenched, and a spasm caught his arm, as though it longed for something to strike or strangle. "No, no!" said he; "I am all right. I mean that damned monster's baby. There was a baby?" His voice shook on these last words as though he, too, had a fear for his own reason. His face flushed as he awaited her reply.

"Oh, Gerry darling! but you have forgotten. His baby was Sally--my Sallykin!"

For it was absolutely true that, although he had as complete a knowledge, in a certain sense, of Sally's origin as the well-coached student has of the subject he is to answer questions in, he had forgotten it under the stress of his mental trial as readily as the student forgets what his mind has only acquiesced in for its purpose, in his joy at recovering his right to ignorance. Sally had an existence of her own quite independent of her origin. She was his and Rosalind's--a part of their existence, a necessity. It was easy and natural for him to dissociate the living, breathing reality that filled so much of their lives from its mere beginnings. It was less easy for Rosalind, but not an impossibility altogether, helped by the forgiveness for the past that grew from the soil of her daughter's love.

"You had forgotten, dear," she repeated; "but you know now."

"Yes, I had forgotten, because of Sally herself; but she is my daughter now...."

She waited, expecting him to say more; but he did not speak again. As soon as he was, or seemed to be, asleep, she rose quietly and left him.

She was so anxious that no trace of the tempest that had passed over her should be left for Sally to see in the morning that she got as quickly as possible to bed; and, with a little effort to tranquillise her mind, soon sank into a state of absolute oblivion. It was the counterswing of the pendulum--Nature's protest against a strain beyond her powers to bear, and its remedy.

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Chapter XLIV

OF A CONTRACT JOB FOR REPAIRS. HOW FENWICK HAD ANOTHER SLEEPLESS NIGHT AFTER ALL. WHICH IS WHICH, NOW OR TWENTY ODD YEARS AGO? HOW SALLY FOLLOWED JEREMIAH OUT. WHAT A LOT OF TALK ABOUT A LIFE-BELT!

A colourless dawn chased a grey twilight from the sea and white cliffs of St. Sennans, and a sickly effort of the sun to rise visibly, ending above a cloud-bank in a red half-circle that seemed a thing quite unconnected with the struggling light, was baffled by a higher cloud-bank still that came discouragingly from the west, and quenched the hopes of the few early risers who were about as St. Sennans tower chimed six. The gull that flew high above the green waste of white-flecked waters was whiter still against the inky blue of the cloud-curtain that had disallowed the day, and the paler vapour-drifts that paused and changed and lost themselves and died; but the air that came from the sea was sweet and mild for the time of year, and the verdict of the coastguardsman at the flagstaff, who in pursuance of his sinecure had seen the night out, was that the day was pretty sure to be an uncertain sart, with little froshets on the water, like over yander. He seemed to think that a certainty of uncertainty had all the value of a forecast, and was as well satisfied with his report as he was that he had not seen a smuggler through the telescope he closed as he uttered it.

"Well, I should judge it might be fairly doubtful," was the reply of the man he was speaking with. It was the man who had "Elinor" and "Bessie" tattooed on his arm. They were not legible now, as a couple of life-belts, or hencoops, as they are sometimes called, hung over the arm and hid them. The boy Benjamin was with his father, and carried a third. An explanation of them came in answer to interrogation in the eye of the coastguard. "Just to put a touch of new paint on 'em against the weather." The speaker made one movement of his head say that they had come from the pier-end, and another that he had taken them home to repaint by contract.

"What do you make out of S. S. P. C.?" the coastguard asked, scarcely as one who had no theory himself, more as one archæologist addressing another, teeming with deference, but ready for controversy. The other answered with some paternal pride:

"Ah, there now! Young Benjamin, he made that good, and asked for to make it red in place of black himself! Didn't ye, ye young sculping? St. Sennans Pier Company, that's all it comes to, followed out. But I'm no great schoolmaster myself, and that's God's truth." Both contemplated the judicious restoration with satisfaction; and young Benjamin, who had turned purple under publicity, murmured that it was black afower. He didn't seem to mean anything, but to think it due to himself to say something, meaning or no. The coastguardsman merely said, "Makes a tidy job!" and the father and son went on their way to the pier.

A quarter of an hour before, this coastguard had looked after the visitor in a blue serge suit up at Lobjoit's, who had passed him going briskly towards the fishing-quarter. He had recognised him confidently, for he knew Fenwick well, and saw nothing strange in his early appearance. Now that he saw him returning, and could take full note of him, he almost suspected he had been mistaken, so wild and pallid was the face of this man, who, usually ready with a light word for every chance encounter--even with perfect strangers--now passed him by ungreeted, and to all seeming unconscious of his presence. The coastguard was for a moment in doubt if he should not follow him, inferring something in the nature of delirium from his aspect; but seeing that he made straight for the pier, and knowing that young Benjamin's father was more familiar with him than himself, he was contented to record in thought that that was a face with a bad day ahead, and leave it.

For Gerry, when Rosalind left him, was rash in assuming he could let her do so safely. His well-meant pretext of sleep was not destined to grow into a reality. He had really believed that it would, so soothing was the touch of her hand in his own. The moment he was alone his mind leapt, willy-nilly, to the analysis of one point or other in the past that had just come back to him. He tried to silence thought, and to sleep, knowing that his best hope was in rest; but each new effort only ended in his slipping back to what he had just dismissed. And that terrible last interview with Rosey at Umballa, when he parted from her, as he thought, never to see her again, was the Rome to which all the roads of recollection led. Each involuntary visit there had its renchérissement on the previous one, and in the end the image of that hour became a brain-oppression, and wrote the word "fever" large on the tablets of his apprehension.

He knew now it was not to be sleep; he knew it as he sat up in bed feeling his pulse, and stimulating it with his anxiety that it should go slow. Was there nothing he could take that would make him sleep? Certainly he knew of nothing, anywhere, except it was to be found by waking Rosalind, probably sound asleep by now. Out of the question! Oh, why, why, with all the warning he had had, had he neglected to provide himself with a mysterious thing known to him all his life as a soothing-draught? It would have been so useful now, and Conrad would have defined it down to the prosaic requirements of pharmacy. But it was too late!

So long as her hand was in his, so long as her lips were near his own, what did it matter what he recollected? The living present cancelled the dead past. But to be there alone in the dark, with the image of that Rosalind of former years clinging to him, and crying for forgiveness because his mind, warped against her by a false conception of the truth, could not forgive; to be defenceless against her last words, coming through the long interval to him again just as he heard them, twenty years ago, bringing back the other noises of the Indian night--the lowing of the bullocks in the compound, the striking of the hour on the Kutcherry gongs, the grinding of the Persian wheels unceasingly drawing water for the irrigation of the fields--to be exposed to this solitude and ever-growing imagination was to become the soil for a self-sown crop of terrors--fear of fever, fear of madness, fear at the very least of perturbation such that Sally might come, through it, to a knowledge that had to be kept from her at all costs.

He lighted his candle with a cautious match, and found what might be a solace--a lucky newspaper of the morning. If only he could read it without audible rustling, unheard by the sleepers!

The print was almost too small to be read by the light of a single candle; but there were the usual headings, the usual ranks of capitals that tell us so quick that there is nothing we shall care about in the pale undecipherable paragraphs below, and that we have spent our halfpenny in vain. There was the usual young lady who had bought, or was trying on, a large hat, and whose top-story above, in profile, had got so far ahead of her other stories below. There were the consignments of locust-flights of boots, for this young lady's friends, with heels in the instep. And all the advertisements that some one must believe, or they would not pay for insertion; but that we ignore, incredulous. Fenwick tried hard, for his own sake, to make the whole thing mean something, but his dazed brain and feverish eyes refused to respond to his efforts, and he let the paper go, and gave himself up, a prey to his own memories. After all, the daylight was sure to come in the end to save him.

He tried hard to reason with himself, to force himself to feel the reality of his own belief that all was well; for he had no doubt of it, as an abstract truth. It was the power of getting comfort from it that was wanting. If only his heart could stop thumping and his brain burning, he would have done the rejoicing that Rosalind was there, knowing all he knew, and loving him; that Sally was there, loving him too, but knowing nothing, and needing to know nothing; that one of his first greetings in the day to come would be from Conrad Vereker, probably too much intoxicated with his own happiness to give much attention to what he was beginning to acknowledge was some kind of physical or nervous fever. If he could only sleep!

But he could not--could hardly close his eyes. He said to himself again and again that nothing was the matter; that, if anything, he and Rosey were better off than they had been yet; that they had passed through a land of peril to a great deliverance. But he did not believe his own assurance, and the throng of memories that his feverish condition would not let sleep, or that were its cause, came on him more and more thickly through all those hours of the dreary night. They came, too, with a growing force, each one as it returned having more the character of a waking dream, vivid almost to the point of reality. But all ended alike. He always found himself breaking away from Rosey in the veranda in the bungalow at Umballa, and could hear again her cry of despair: "Oh, Gerry, Gerry! It is not as you think. Oh, stay, stay! Give me a chance to show you how I love you!" The tramp of his horse as he rode away from his home and that white figure left prostrate in the veranda above him, became a real sound that beat painfully upon his ears; and the voice of the friend he sought--an old soldier in camp at Sabatoo, where he rode almost without a halt--as he roused him in the dawn of the next day, came to him again almost as though spoken in the room beside him: "Left your wife, Palliser! My God, sir! what's to come next?" And then the wicked hardness of his own heart, and his stubborn refusal to listen to the angry remonstrance that followed. "I tell you this, young man! the man's a fool--a damned fool--that runs from the woman who loves him!" And the asseveration that the speaker would say the same if she was anything short of the worst character in camp, only in slightly different words. His remorse for his own obduracy, and the cruelty of his behaviour then; his shame when he thought of his application, months later, to the Court at Lahore--for "relief" from Rosey: just imagine it!--these were bad enough to think back on, even from the point of view of his previous knowledge; but how infinitely worse when he thought what she had been to him, how she had acted towards him two years ago!

Even the painful adventure he could now look back to clearly, and with a rather amused interest, as to an event with no laceration in it--his wandering in an Australian forest, for how many days he could not say, and his final resurrection at a town a hundred miles from his starting-point--even this led him back in the end to the old story. The whole passed through his mind like the scenes of a drama--his confidence, having lost the track, that his horse, left to himself, would find it again; his terror when, coming back from a stone's-throw off, he found the tree deserted he had tied his horse to; his foolish starting off to catch him, when the only sane course was to wait for his return. But the second act of the drama took his mind again to Rosey in her loneliness; for when he was found by a search-party at the foot of a telegraph-post he had used his last match to burn down, he was inarticulate, and seemed to give his name as Harrisson. As he slowly recovered sense and speech at the telegraph-station--for the interruption of the current had been his cry for help to its occupants--he heard himself addressed by the name and saw the mistake; but he did not correct it, being, indeed, not sorry for an incognito, sick of his life, as it were, and glad to change his identity. But how if Rosey wrote to him then--think of it!--under his old name? Fancy her when the time came for a possible reply, with who could say what of hope in it! Fancy her many decisions that it was still too soon for an answer, followed by as many others as time went on that it was not too late! If he had received such a letter from her then, might it not all have been different? May she not have written one? He had talked so little with her; nothing forbade the idea. And so his mind travelled round with monotonous return, always to that old time, and those old scenes, and all the pain of them.

It was curious--he noted the oddity himself--that his whole life in America took the drama character, and he became the spectator. He never caught himself playing his own part over again, with all its phases of passion or excitement, as in the earlier story. In that, his identification of himself with his past grew and grew, and as his fever increased through the small hours of the morning, got more and more the force of a waking dream. And when the dawn came at last, and the gleam from the languid sun followed it, the man who got up and looked out towards its great blue bank of cloud was only half sure he was not another former self, looking out towards another sea, twenty years ago, to see if he could identify the ship that was to take him from Kurachi to Port Jackson.

What did it all mean? Yes, sure enough he had taken his passage, and to-morrow leagues of sea would lie between him and Rosey. That would end it for ever. No reconciliations, no repentance then!... Was there not still time? a chance if he chose to catch at it? Puny irresolution! Shake it all off, and have done with it.... He shuddered as he thought through his old part again, and then came back with a jerk to the strange knowledge that he was opening a closed book, a tragedy written twenty years ago; and that there, within a few feet of where he gazed with a jaded sight out to the empty sea, was Rosey herself, alive and breathing; and in an hour or two he was to see her, feel the touch of her hand and lips, be his happy self again of three days only gone by, if he could but face masterfully the strange knowledge this mysterious revival of a former self had brought upon him. And there was Sally....

But at the name, as it came to his mind, came also the shock of another mystery--who and what was Sally?

Let him lie down again and try to think quietly. Was not this part of his delirium? Could he have got the story right? Surely! Was it not of her that Rosey had said, only a few hours since, "His baby was Sally--my Sallykin"? And was he not then able to reply collectedly and with ease, "She is my daughter now," and to feel the power of his choice that it should be so? But the strength of Rosalind was beside him then, and now he was here alone. He beat off--fought against--that hideous fatherhood of Sally's that he could not bear, that image that he felt might drive him mad. Oh, villain, villain! Far, far worse to him was--perforce must be--this miscreant's crime than that mere murder that shook Hamlet's reason to its foundation. He dared not think of it lest he should cry out aloud. But, patience! Only two or three hours more, and Rosalind would be there to help him to bear it.... What a coward's thought!--to help him to bear what she herself had borne in silence for twenty years!

Would he not be better up, now that it was light? Of course! But how be sure he should not wake them?

Well, the word was caution; he must be very quiet about it, that was all. He slipped on his clothes without washing--it always makes a noise--ran a comb through the tangled hair his pillow-tossings of four hours had produced, and got away stealthily without accident, or meeting any early riser, speech with whom would have betrayed him.

He had little trouble with the door-fastenings, that often perplex us in a like case, blocking egress with mysterious mechanisms. Housebreakers were rare in St. Sennans. He had more fear his footsteps would be audible; but it seemed not, and he walked away towards the cliff pathway unnoticed.

* * * * *

The merpussy waked to a consciousness of happiness undefined, a sense of welcome to the day. What girl would not have done so, under her circumstances? For Sally had no doubt in her mind of her own satisfaction at the outcome of yesterday. She might have treated the feelings and experience of other lovers--regular ones, prone to nonsense--with contempt, but she never questioned the advantages of her own position as compared with theirs. Her feast was better cooked, altogether more substantial and real than the kickshaws and sweetmeats she chose to ascribe to the menus of Arcadia. Naturally; because see what a much better sort Conrad was! It was going to be quite a different kind of thing this time. And as for the old Goody, she was not half bad. Nothing was half bad in Sally's eyes that morning, and almost everything was wholly good.

She had slept so sound she was sure it was late. But it was only half-past six, and the early greetings of Mrs. Lobjoit below were not to the baker, nor even to the milk, but to next door, which was dealing with the question of its mat and clean step through the agency of its proprietress, whose voice chimed cheerfully with Mrs. Lobjoit's over the surprise of the latter finding her street door had been opened, and that some one had already passed out. For Mrs. Lobjoit had made that sure, the night before, that she had "shot to" the bottom bolt that would shet, because she had ignored as useless the top bolt that wouldn't shet--the correlation of events so often appealed to by witnesses under examination; which Law, stupidly enough, prides itself on snubbing them for. Further, Mrs. Lobjoit would have flown to the solution that it was her gentleman gone out, only that it was quite into the night before they stopped from talking.

Sally heard this because she had pulled down the top sash of her window to breathe the sea air, regardless of the fact she well knew, and described thus--that the sash-weight stuck and clunkled and wouldn't come down. She decided against running the risk of disturbing Jeremiah on the strength of Mrs. Lobjoit's impressions; although, if he had gone out, she certainly would follow him. But she slipped on a dressing-gown and went half-way downstairs, to see if his hat was still on its peg. It was gone. So she went back to her room, and dressed furtively. Because if they had been talking late into the night, it would be just as well for her mother to have her sleep out.

But she had hardly finished washing when she became aware of a footstep outside--Jeremiah's certainly. She went to the window, saw him approach the house, look up at it, but as though he did not recognise that she was there, and then turn away towards the flagstaff and the old town. It was odd and unlike him, and Sally was alarmed. Besides, how white he looked!

Bear this in mind, that Sally knew absolutely nothing of the cataclysm of revived memory in Jeremiah. Remember that the incident of the galvanic battery at the pier-end is only four days old. Do not be misled by the close details we have given of these four days.

Sally's alarm at the haggard look of her stepfather's face took away her breath; at least, she did not find her voice soon enough for him to hear her call out--she did not like to shout loud because of her mother--as he turned away. Or it seemed so, for that was the only way she could account for his walking away so abruptly. In her hurry to get dressed and follow him, she caught up an undergarment that lay on the floor, without seeing that her own foot was on the tape that was to secure it, and a rip and partial disruption was the consequence. Never mind, it would hold up till she came in. Or, if it didn't, where was that safety-pin that was on her dressing-table yesterday? Not there? Again, never mind! She would do, somehow. She hurried on her clothes, and her hat and waterproof, and left the house, going quickly on what she supposed to be the track of Jeremiah, who was, by now, no longer visible.

But she caught sight of him returning, while she was still two or three minutes' walk short of the flagstaff he was approaching from the other side. He would stop to talk with the coastguard. He always did. Surely he would, this time. But no--he didn't.

He may have spoken, but he did not stop. So Sally noted as she hesitated an instant, seeing him turn off at an angle and go towards the pier. There was a shorter cut to the pier, without going to the flagstaff. Sally turned herself, and took it. She would catch him as he came back from the pier-end, if he was going to walk along it.

She saw him as she descended the slope that, part pathway and part steps, led down towards the sea. He walked straight towards the pier, passing as he went a man and boy, who were carrying what she took, at that distance, for well-made coils of rope; and then, arriving at the pier-turnstile just as they did, pass them, and, leaving them apparently in conversation with the gatekeeper, walk steadily on towards the pier-end.

* * * * *

"I shouldn't call the paint properly hardened on myself. Nor won't be yet-a-piece, if you ask my opinion." It was young Benjamin's father said these words to the veteran in charge of the pier-turnstile; who, as an early bird, was counting his tickets, so to speak, before they were hatched--his actual professional cabinet-séance not having begun. For the pier wasn't open yet, and his permission to Fenwick to pass the open side-gate was an indulgence to an acquaintance.

His reply to the speaker was that he must bide awhile in patience, then. Paint was good to dry while the grass grew, and there was plenty else to fret about for them as wanted it. He seemed only to mention this from consideration of the wants of others. He either had plenty to fret about, or was happier without anything. He ended with, "What have you to say to that, Jake Tracy?" showing that the father of Benjamin was Jacob, following precedent.

But Jacob preferred not to be led away into ethics. "I should stand 'em by, in the shadow, for the matter of a day or two," said he. "In yander." And the life-belts being safely disposed of, he added: "I thought to carry back number fower from the pier-end, and make a finish of the job. But looking to the condition of this paint, maybe better leave her for service. She'll do as well next week." But the moralist inclined to make a finish of the job. Who was going overboard afore the end of next week? And supposing they did, the resources of civilisation wouldn't be exhausted, for we could throw 'em a clean one paint or no.

"Send your lad to fetch her along, Jake. I'll make myself answerable." And young Benjamin, confirmed by a nod from his father, departed for the mysteriously feminine hencoop.

Just as the boy turned to go, Fenwick came up, and, paying no attention to greetings from the two men, passed through the side-gate and walked rather briskly away along the pier. Each of the men looked at the other, as though asking a question. But neither answered, and then both said, "Queer, too!" A nascent discussion of whether one or other should not follow him--for the look of his face had gone home to both, as he was, of course, well known to them--was cut short by Jacob Tracy saying, "Here's his daughter coming to see for him." And, just after, Sally had passed them, leaving them pleasantly stirred by the bright smile and eye-flash that seemed this morning brighter than ever. The boy shouted something from the pier-end, to which his father's shouted reply was that he must bide a minute and he would come to see himself.

"The yoong beggar's got the use of his eyes," he said, not hurrying. "I'll go bail he'll find her. She's there all right, I suppose?" He was still referring to the hencoop, not to any lady.

"Ah, she's there, quite safe. You'd best step along and find her. Boys are boys, when all's told."

But Jacob wanted Benjamin to distinguish himself, and still didn't hurry. The strange appearance of Mrs. Lobjoit's gentleman supplied materials for chat. Presently his son shouted again, and he answered, "Not there, is she? I'll come." He walked away towards the pier-end just as Sally, who had fancied Jeremiah would be somewhere alongside of the pagoda-building that nearly covered it, came back from her voyage of exploration, and looked down the steps to the under-platform, that young Benjamin had just come up shouting.

What little things life and death turn on sometimes!

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Chapter XLV

OF CONRAD VEREKER'S REVISION OF PARADISE, AND OF FENWICK'S HIGH FEVER. OF AN ENGLISH OFFICER WHO WAVERED AT BOMBAY, AND OF FENWICK'S SURPRISE-BATH IN THE BRITISH CHANNEL. WHY HE DID NOT SINK. THE ELLEN JANE OF ST. SENNANS. ONLY SALLY IS IN THE WATER STILL. MORE BOATS. FOUND!

Fenwick, haunted by the phantoms of his own past--always, as his fever grew, assuming more and more the force of realities--but convinced of their ephemeral nature, and that the crisis of this fever would pass and leave him free, had walked quickly along the sea front towards the cliff pathway. Had Dr. Conrad seen him as he passed below his window and looked up at it, he would probably have suspected something and followed him. And then the events of this story would have travelled a different road. But Vereker, possessed by quite another sort of delirium, had risen even earlier--almost with the dawn--and, taking Sally's inaccessibility at that unearthly hour for granted, had gone for a long walk over what was now to him a land of enchantment--the same ground he and Sally had passed over on the previous evening. He and his mother would be on their way to London in a few hours, and he would like to see the landmarks that were to be a precious memory for all time yet once more while he had the chance. Who could say that he would ever visit St. Sennans again?

If Fenwick, in choosing this direction first, had a half-formed idea of attracting the doctor's attention, the appearance of Mrs. Iggulden's shuttered parlour-window would have discouraged him. It told a tale of a household still asleep, and quite truly as far as she herself was concerned. For Dr. Conrad, as might have been expected, was very late in coming home the night before; and his mother's peculiarity of not being able to sleep if kept up till eleven, combined with the need of a statement of her position, a declaration of policy, and almost a budget, if not quite, on the subject of her son's future housekeeping, having resulted in what threatened to become an all-night sitting, the good woman's dozes and repentances, with jerks, on the stairs overnight, had produced their consequences in the morning. Fenwick passed the house, and walked on as far as where the path rose to the cliffs; then turned back, and, pausing a moment, as we have seen, under Sally's window, failed in his dreamy state to see her as she looked over the cross-bar at him, and then went on towards the old town. It may be she was not very visible; the double glasses of an open sash-window are almost equal to opacity. But even with that, the extreme aberration of Fenwick's mind at the moment is the only way to account for his not seeing her.

In fact, his mental perturbation came and went by gusts, as his memory caught at or relinquished agitating points of reminiscence, always dwelling on that parting from Rosalind at Umballa. His brain and nervous system were in a state that involved a climax and reaction; and, unhappily, this climax, during which his identification of his present self with his memory of its past was intensified to the point of absolute hallucination, came at an inopportune moment. If he could only have kept the phantoms of his imagination at bay until he met Sally! But, really, speculation on so strange a frame of mind is useless; we can only accept the facts as they stand.

He had no recollection afterwards of what followed when he passed the house and failed to see Sally or hear her call out to him. For the time being he was back again in his life of twenty years ago. Those who find this hard to believe may see no way of accounting for what came about but by ascribing to Fenwick an intention of suicide. For our part we believe him to have been absolutely incapable of such an act from a selfish impulse; and, moreover, it is absurd to impute to him such a motive, at this time, however strongly he might have been impelled towards it by discovering the injustice and cruelty of his own unforgiveness towards his young wife at some previous time--as, for instance, in America--when she herself was beyond his reach, and a recantation of his error impossible. Unless we accept his conduct as the result of a momentary dementia, produced by overstrain, it must remain inexplicable.

It appeared to him, so far as he was afterwards able to define or record it, that he was no longer walking on the familiar track between the few lodging-houses that made up the old St. Sennans, and the still older fishing-quarter near the jetty, but that he was again on his way from Lahore to Kurachi, from which he was to embark for a new land where his broken heart might do its best to heal; for if ever a man was utterly broken-hearted it was he when he came away from Lahore, after his futile attempt to procure a divorce. He no longer saw the cold northern sea under its great blue cloud-curtain that had shrouded the coming day; nor the line of fishing-smacks, beached high and dry, and their owners' dwellings near at hand, a little town of tar and timber in behind the stowage-huts of nets and tackle, nor the white escarpment of the cliffs beyond, that the sea had worked so many centuries to plunder from the rounded pastures of the sheep above. He no longer heard the music of the waves on the shingle, nor the cry of the sea-bird that swept over them, nor the tinkle of the sheep-bell the wind knows how to carry so far in the stillness of the morning, nor the voices of the fisher-children playing in the boats that one day may bear them to their death. His mind was far away in the Indian heat, parching and suffocated on the long railway journey from Lahore to Kurachi, scarcely better when he had reached his first boat that was to take him to Bombay, to embark again a day or two later for Australia. How little he had forgotten of the short but tedious delay in that chaotic emporium of all things European and Asiatic, that many-coloured meeting-ground of a thousand nationalities! How little, that the whole should come back to him now, and fill his brain with its reality, till the living present grew dim and vanished; reviving now and again, as fiction, read in early years, revives with a suggested doubt--is it true or false?

He sat again on the Esplanade at Bombay, as the sun vanished in a flood of rosy gold, and released the world from his heat. He felt again the relief of the evening wind; heard again the chat of a group of English officers who sipped sherry-cobblers at a table a few paces off. "I always change my mind," said one of them, "backwards and forwards till the last minute; then I make it the last one." He quite understood this man's speech, and thought how like himself! For from the time he left Lahore he, too, had gone backwards and forwards, now resolving to return, come what might, now telling himself firmly there was no remedy but in distance apart, and all there might be of oblivion. Was there not yet time? He could still go back, even now. But no; the old obduracy was on him. Rosey had deceived him!

Then he seemed to have come again to his last minute. Once he was fairly on the ship that was even now coaling for her voyage, once the screw was on the move and the shore-lights vanishing, the die would be cast. The stars that he and Rosey had seen in that cool English garden that night he met her first would vanish, too, and a world would be between them. Still, the hour had not come; it was not too late yet. But still the inveterate thought came back--she had deceived him.

So his delirium ended as its prototype of over twenty years ago had ended. He hardened his heart, thrust aside all thought of forgiveness and repentance, and went resolutely down to the quay, as he thought, to embark on the little boat for the ship, and so practically put all thought of hesitation and return out of his mind. This moment was probably what would have been the crisis of his fever, and it was an evil hour for him in which the builder of the pier at St. Sennans made it so like the platform of that experience of long ago. But the boat that he saw before him as he stepped unhesitatingly over its edge was only the image of a distempered brain, and in an instant he was struggling with the cold, dark water. A sudden shock of chill, an intolerable choking agony of breath involuntarily held, an instantaneous dissipation of his dream, the natural result of the shock, and Fenwick knew himself for what he was, and fought the cruel water in his despair. Even so a drowning man fights who in old failures to learn swimming has just mastered its barest rudiments. A vivid pageant rushed across his mind of all the consequences of what seemed to him now his inevitable death, clearest of all a sad vision of Sally and Rosalind returning to their home alone--the black dresses and the silence. He found voice for one long cry for help, without a hope that it could be heard or that help could be at hand.

But he was neither unseen nor unheard, as you will know if we have not failed in showing the succession of events. Sally never hesitated an instant as she caught sight of the delirious man's involuntary plunge into the green waves that had no terrors for her. She threw off as she ran, fast, fast down the wooden stairway, the only clothes she could get rid of--her hat and light summer cloak--and went straight, with a well-calculated dive, to follow him and catch him as he rose. If only she did not miss him! Let her once pinion his arms from behind, and she would get him ashore even if no help came. Why, there was no sea to speak of!

* * * * *

The man Jacob Tracy, the father of Benjamin, saw something to quicken his speed as he walked along the pier to help in the discovery of the life-belt. Why did the swimming young lady from Lobjoit's want to be rid of her wrap-up at that rate as she turned so sharp round to run down the ladder? He increased a brisk walk to a run as the lad, who had followed the young lady down the steps, came running up again; for there was hysterical terror in his voice--he was a mere boy--as he shouted something that became, as distance lessened, "In t' wa-ater! in t' wa-ater! in t' wa-ater! in t' wa-ater!" And he was waving something in his hand--a lady's hat surely; for with an instinct of swift presence of mind--a quality that is the breath of life to all that go down to the sea in ships, mariners or fisher-folk--he had seen that the headgear Sally threw away would tell its tale quicker than any words he could rely on finding.

"Roon smart, yoong Benjamin--roon for the bo'ats and call out 'oars'! Roon, boy--you've no time to lose!" And as the father dashes down the steps he spoke of as "the ladder" the son runs for all he is worth to carry the alarm to the shore. He shouts, "Oars, oars, oars!" as he was told. But it is not needed, for his thought of bringing up the hat has done his work already for him. The coastguard, though the pier itself hid the two immersions from him, is quick of apprehension and ready with his glass, and has seen the boy's return from below; and at the same time heard, not his words, but the terror in them, and by some mysterious agency has sent a flying word along the beach that has brought a population out to help.

A bad time of the tide to get a boat off sharp, and a long shelving run of sandy shingle before we reach the sea; for all the boats are on the upper strand of the beach, above the last high-water mark, and the flow of the tide is scarcely an hour old. There is a short squat cobble, flat-bottomed and of intolerable weight, down near the waters, and its owner makes for it. Another man drives him out seawards, against the constant lift of breaking waves, large enough to be troublesome, small enough to be numerous. They give no chance to the second man to leap into the boat, so deep has he to go, pushing on until the pads are out and the boat controlled; but he has barely time to feel the underdraw of the recoiling wave when the straight scour of a keel comes down along the sand and pebbles--the Ellen Jane, St. Sennans--half-pushed, half-borne by a crew three minutes have extemporised. You two in the bows, and you two astarn, and the spontaneous natural leader--the man the emergency makes--at the tiller-ropes, and Ellen Jane is off, well drenched at the outset. An oar swings round high in the air, not to knock one of you two astarn into the water, and then, "Give way!" and then the short, quick rhythm of the stroke, and four men at their utmost stress, each knowing life and death may hang upon the greatness of his effort.

The cobble is soon outshot, but its owner will not give in. He bears away from the course of the boat that has passed him, to seek their common object where the tide-drift may have swept it, beyond some light craft at their moorings which would have hidden it for a while. He has the right of it this time, for as he passes, straining at his sculls, under the stern of a pleasure-yacht at anchor, his eye is caught by a black spot rising on a wave, and he makes for it. Not too fast at the last, though, but cautiously, so as to grasp the man with the life-belt and hold him firm till help shall come to get him on board. He might easily have overshot him; but he has him now, and the four-oar sights him as she swings round between the last-moored boat and the pier; and comes apace, the quicker for the tide.

"What is it ye say, master? What do ye make it out the gentleman says, Peter?" For Fenwick, hauled on board the cobble with the help of a man from the other boat, who returns to his oar, is alive and conscious, but not much more. A brandy-flask comes from somewhere in the steerage, where a mop and a tin pot and a boathook live, and its effect is good. The half-drowned man becomes articulate enough to justify the report. "It's his daughter he's asking for--overboard, too!" and then the man who spoke first says: "You be easy in your mind, master; we'll find her. Bear away a bit, and lie to, Tom." Tom is the man in the cobble, and he does as he is bidden. He ships his sculls and drifts, watching round on all sides for what may be just afloat near the surface. The four-oar remains, and the eyes of her crew are straining hard to catch a sight of anything that is not mere lift and ripple of a wave.

Then more boats one after another, and more, and the gathering crowd that lines the shore sees them scatter and lie to, some way apart, to watch the greater space of water. All drift, because they know that what they seek is drifting, too, and that if they move they lose their only chance; for the thing they have to find is so small, so small, and that great waste of pitiless sea is so large. It is their only chance.

The crowd, always growing, moves along the beach as the flotilla of drifting boats move slowly with the tide. They can hear the shouting from boat to boat, but catch but little of the words. They follow on, with little speech among themselves, and hope dying slowly out of their hearts. Gradually towards the jetty, where the girl they are seeking sat, only a few days since, beside the man whose heart the memory of yesterday is still rejoicing; the only trouble of whose unconscious soul is the thought that he and she must soon be parted, however short the term of their separation may be. He will know more soon.

Suddenly the shouting increases in the boats, and excited voices break the silence on the shore. It won't do to hope too much, but surely all the boats are thickening to one spot.... No, it's nothing!... Yes, it is--it is something--one knows what--sighted abaft the Ellen Jane, whose steersman catches it with a boathook as the oars we on the beach saw suddenly drop back water--slowly, cautiously--and only wait for him to drag the light weight athwart the gunwale to row for the dear life towards the town. The scattered crowd turns and comes back, trampling the shingle, to meet the boat as she lands, and follow what she brings to the nearest haven.

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Chapter XLVI

AN ERRAND IN VAIN, AND HOW DR. CONRAD CAME TO KNOW. CONCERNING LLOYD'S COFFEEHOUSE, AND THE BATTLE OF CAMPERDOWN. MARSHALL HALL'S SYSTEM AND SILVESTER'S. SOCIAL DISADVANTAGES. A CHAT WITH A CENTENARIAN, AND HOW ROSALIND CAME TO KNOW. THOMAS LOCOCK OF ROCHESTER. ONE O'CLOCK!

"Is that you, Dr. Conrad?" It was Rosalind who spoke, through the half-open window of her bedroom, to the happy, expectant face of the doctor in the little front garden below. "I'm only just up, and they're both gone out. I shall be down in a few minutes." For she had looked into her husband's room, and then into Sally's, and concluded they must have gone out together. So much the better! If Sally was with him, no harm could come to him.

"I don't see them anywhere about," said the doctor. Sally had not been gone ten minutes, and at this moment had just caught sight of Fenwick making for the pier. The short cut down took her out of sight of the house. Rosalind considered a minute.

"Very likely they've gone to the hotel--the 'beastly hotel,' you know." There is the sound of a laugh, and the caress in her voice, as she thinks of Sally, whom she is quoting. "Gerry found a friend there last night--a German gentleman--who was to go at seven-fifty. Very likely he's walked up to say good-bye to him. Suppose you go to meet them! How's Mrs. Vereker this morning?"

"Do you know, I haven't seen her yet! We talked rather late, so I left without waking her. I've been for a walk."

"Well, go and meet Gerry. I feel pretty sure he's gone there." And thereon Dr. Conrad departed, and so, departing towards the new town, lost sight for the time being of the pier and the coast. He went by the steps and Albion Villas, and as he caught a glimpse therefrom of the pier-end in the distance, had an impression of a man running along it and shouting; but he drew no inferences, although it struck him there was panic, with the energy of sudden action, in this man's voice.

He arrived at the hotel, of course without meeting either Sally or Fenwick. He had accepted them as probably there, on perhaps too slight evidence. But they might be in the hotel. Had the German gentleman gone?--he asked. The stony woman he addressed replied from her precinct, with no apparent consciousness that she was addressing a fellow-creature, that No. 148, if you meant him, had paid and gone by last 'bus. She spoke as to space, but as one too indifferent on all points to care much who overheard her.

Vereker thanked her, and turned to go. As he departed he caught a fragment of conversation between her and the waiter who had produced the brandy the evening before. He was in undress uniform--a holland or white-jean jacket, and a red woollen comforter. He had lost his voice, or most of it, and croaked; and his cold had got worse in the night. He was shedding tears copiously, and wiping them on a cruet-stand he carried in one hand. The other was engaged by an empty coal-scuttle with a pair of slippers in it, inexplicably.

"There's a start down there. Party over the pier-end! Dr. Maccoll he's been 'phoned for."

"Party from this hotel?"

"Couldn't say. Porcibly. No partic'lars to identify, so far."

"They're not bringing him here?"

"Couldn't say, miss; but I should say they wasn't myself."

"If you know you can say. Who told you, and what did he say? Make yourself understood."

"Dr. Maccoll he's been 'phoned for. You can inquire and see if I ain't right. Beyond that I take no responsibility."

The Lady of the Bureau came out; moved, no doubt, by an image of a drowned man whose resources would not meet the credits she might be compelled to give him. She came out to the front through the swing-door, looked up and down the road, and seemed to go back happier. Dr. Conrad's curiosity was roused, and he started at once for the beach, but absolutely without a trace of personal misgiving. No doubt the tendency we all have to impute public mishaps to a special class of people outside our own circle had something to do with this. As he passed down an alley behind some cottages--a short way to the pier--he was aware of a boy telling a tale in a terrified voice to a man and an elderly woman. It was the man with the striped shirt, and the boy was young Benjamin. He had passed on a few paces when the man called to him, and came running after him, followed by the woman and boy.

"I ask your pardon, sir--I ask your pardon...." What he has to say will not allow him to speak, and his words will not come. He turns for help to his companion. "You tell him, Martha woman," he says, and gives in.

"My master thinks, sir, you may find something on the beach...."

"Something on the beach!..." Fear is coming into Dr. Conrad's face and voice.

"Find something has happened on the beach. But they've got him out...."

"Got him out! Got whom out? Speak up, for Heaven's sake!"

"It might be the gentleman you know, sir, and...." But the speaker's husband, having left the telling to his wife, unfairly strikes in here, to have the satisfaction of lightening the communication. "But he's out safe, sir. You may rely on the yoong lad." He has made it harder for his wife to tell the rest, and she hesitates. But Dr. Conrad has stayed for no more. He is going at a run down the sloped passage that leads to the sea. The boy follows him, and by some dexterous use of private thoroughfares, known to him, but not to the doctor, arrives first, and is soon visible ahead, running towards the scattered groups that line the beach. The man and woman follow more slowly.

Few of those who read this, we hope, have ever had to face a shock so appalling as the one that Conrad Vereker sustained when he came to know what it was that was being carried up the beach from the boat that had just been driven stern on to the shingle, as he emerged to a full view of the sea and the running crowd, thickening as its last stragglers arrived to meet it. But most of us who are not young have unhappily had some experience of the sort, and many will recognise (if we can describe it) the feeling that was his in excess when a chance bystander--not unconcerned, for no one was that--used in his hearing a phrase that drove the story home to him, and forced him to understand. "It's the swimming girl from Lobjoit's, and she's drooned." It was as well, for he had to know. What did it matter how he became the blank thing standing there, able to say to itself, "Then Sally is dead," and to attach their meaning to the words, but not to comprehend why he went on living? One way of learning the thing that closes over our lives and veils the sun for all time is as good as another; but how came he to be so colourlessly calm about it?

If we could know how each man feels who hears in the felon's dock the sentence of penal servitude for life, it may be we should find that Vereker's sense of being for the moment a cold, unexplained unit in an infinite unfeeling void, was no unusual experience. But this unit knew mechanically what had happened perfectly well, and its duty was clear before it. Just half a second for this sickness to go off, and he would act.

It was a longer pause than it seemed to him, as all things appeared to happen quickly in it, somewhat as in a photographic life-picture when the films are run too quick. At least, that remained his memory of it. And during that time he stood and wondered why he could not feel. He thought of her mother and of Fenwick, and said to himself they were to be pitied more than he; for they were human, and could feel it--could really know what jewel they had lost--had hearts to grieve and eyes to weep with. He had nothing--was a stupid blank! Oh, he had been mistaken about himself and his love: he was a stone.

A few moments later than his first sight of that silent crowd--moments in which the world had changed and the sun had become a curse; in which he had for some reason--not grief, for he could not grieve--resolved on death, except in an event he dared not hope for--he found himself speaking to the men who had borne up the beach the thing whose germ of life, if it survived, was his only chance of life hereafter.

"I am a doctor; let me come." The place they had brought it to was a timber structure that was held as common property by the fisher-world, and known as Lloyd's Coffeehouse. It was not a coffeehouse, but a kind of spontaneous club-room, where the old men sat and smoked churchwarden pipes, and told each other tales of storm and wreck, and how the news of old sea-battles came to St. Sennans in their boyhood; of wives made widows for their country's good, and men all sound of limb when the first gun said "Death!" across the water, crippled for all time when the last said "Victory!" and there was silence and the smell of blood. Over the mantel was an old print of the battle of Camperdown, with three-deckers in the smoke, flanked by portraits of Rodney and Nelson. There was a long table down the centre that had been there since the days of Rodney, and on this was laid what an hour ago was Sally; what each man present fears to uncover the face of, but less on his own account than for the sake of the only man who seems fearless, and lays hands on the cover to remove it; for all knew, or guessed, what this dead woman might be--might have been--to this man.

"I am a doctor; let me come."

"Are ye sure ye know, young master? Are ye sure, boy?" The speaker, a very old man, interposes a trembling hand to save Vereker from what he may not anticipate, perhaps has it in mind to beseech him to give place to the local doctor, just arriving. But the answer is merely, "I know." And the hand that uncovers the dead face never wavers, and then that white thing we see is all there is of Sally--that coil and tangle of black hair, all mixed with weed and sea-foam, is the rich mass that was drying in the sun that day she sat with Fenwick on the beach; those eyes that strain behind the half-closed eyelids were the merry eyes that looked up from the water at the boat she dived from two days since; those lips are the lips the man who stands beside her kissed but yesterday for the first time. The memory of that kiss is on him now as he wipes the sea-slime from them and takes the first prompt steps for their salvation.

The old Scotch doctor, who came in a moment later, wondered at the resolute decision and energy Vereker was showing. He had been told credibly of the circumstances of the case, and gave way on technical points connected with resuscitation, surrendering views he would otherwise have contended for about Marshall Hall's and Silvester's respective systems. Perhaps one reason for this was that auscultation of the heart convinced him that the case was hopeless, and he may have reflected that if any other method than Dr. Vereker's was used that gentleman was sure to believe the patient might have been saved. Better leave him to himself.

* * * * *

Rosalind returned to her dressing, after Dr. Conrad walked away from the house, with a feeling--not a logical one--that now she need not hurry. Why having spoken with him and forwarded him on to look for Sally and Gerry should make any difference was not at all clear, and she did not account to herself for it. She accepted it as an occurrence that put her somehow in touch with the events of the day--made her a part of what was going on elsewhere. She had felt lapsed, for the moment, when, waking suddenly to advanced daylight, she had gone first to her husband's room and then to Sally's, and found both empty. The few words spoken from her window with her recently determined son-in-law had switched on her current again, metaphorically speaking.

So she took matters easily, and was at rest about her husband, in spite of the episode of the previous evening--rather, we should have said, of the small hours of that morning. The fact is, it was her first sleep she had waked from, an unusually long and sound one after severe tension, and in the ordinary course of events she would probably have gone to sleep again. Instead, she had got up at once, and gone to her husband's room to relieve her mind about him. A momentary anxiety at finding it empty disappeared when she found Sally's empty also; but by that time she was effectually waked, and rang for Mrs. Lobjoit and the hot water.

If Mrs. Lobjoit, when she appeared with it, had been able to give particulars of Sally's departure, and to say that she and Mr. Fenwick had gone out separately, Rosalind would have felt less at ease about him; but nothing transpired to show that they had not gone out together. Mrs. Lobjoit's data were all based on the fact that she found the street door open when she went to do down her step, and she had finished this job and gone back into the kitchen by the time Sally followed Fenwick out. Of course, she never came upstairs to see what rooms were empty; why should she? And as no reason for inquiry presented itself, the question was never raised by Rosalind. Sally was naturally an earlier bird than herself, and quite as often as not she would join Gerry in his walk before breakfast.

How thankful she felt, now that the revelation was over, that Sally was within reach to help in calming down the mind that had been so terribly shaken by it; for all her thoughts were of Gerry; on her own behalf she felt nothing but contentment. Think what her daily existence had been! What had she to lose by a complete removal of the darkness that had shrouded her husband's early life with her--or rather, what had she not to gain? Now that it had been assured to her that nothing in the past could make a new rift between them, the only weight upon her mind was the possible necessity for revealing to Sally in the end the story of her parentage. What mother, to whom a like story of her own early days was neither more nor less than a glimpse into Hell, could have felt otherwise about communicating it to her child? She felt, too, the old feeling of the difficulty there would be in making Sally understand. The girl had not chanced across devildom enough to make her an easy recipient of such a tale.

Oh, the pleasure with which she recalled his last words of the night before: "She is my daughter now!" It was the final ratification of the protest of her life against the "rights" that Law and Usage grant to technical paternity; rights that can only be abrogated or ignored by a child's actual parent--its mother--at the cost of insult and contumely from a world that worships its own folly and ignores its own gods. Sally was hers--her own--hard as the terms of her possession had been, and she had assigned a moiety of her rights in her to the man she loved. What was the fatherhood of blood alone to set against the one her motherhood had a right to concede, and had conceded, in response to the spontaneous growth of a father's love? What claim had devilish cruelty and treachery to any share in their result--a result that, after all, was the only compensation possible to their victim?

We do not make this endeavour to describe Rosalind's frame of mind with a view to either endorsing or disclaiming her opinions. We merely record them as those of a woman whose life-story was an uncommon one; but not without a certain sympathy for the new definition of paternity their philosophy involves, backed by a feeling that its truth is to some extent acknowledged in the existing marriage-law of several countries. As a set-off against this, no woman can have a child entirely her own except by incurring what are called "social disadvantages." The hare that breaks covert incurs social disadvantages. A happy turn of events had shielded Rosalind from the hounds, or they had found better sport elsewhere. And her child was her own.

But even as the thought was registered in her mind, that child lay lifeless; and her husband, stunned and dumb in his despair, dared not even long that she, too, should know, to share his burden.

"Those people are taking their time," said she. Not that she was pressingly anxious for them to come home. It was early still, and the more Gerry lived in the present the better. Sally and her lover were far and away the best foreground for the panorama of his mind just now, and she herself would be quite happy in the middle distance. There would be time and enough hereafter, when the storm had subsided, for a revelation of all those vanished chapters of his life in Canada and elsewhere.

It was restful to her, after the tension and trial of the night, to feel that he was happy with Sally and poor Prosy. What did it really matter how long they dawdled? She could hear in anticipation their voices and the laughter that would tell her of their coming. In a very little while it would be a reality, and, after all, the pleasure of a good symposium over Sally's betrothal was still to come. She and Gerry and the two principals had not spoken of it together yet. That would be a real happiness. How seldom it was that an engagement to marry gave such complete satisfaction to bystanders! And, after all, they are the ones to be consulted; not the insignificant bride and bridegroom elect. Perhaps, though, she was premature in this case. Was there not the Octopus? But then she remembered with pleasure that Conrad had represented his mother as phenomenally genial in her attitude towards the new arrangement; as having, in fact, a claim to be considered not only a bestower of benign consent, but an accomplice before the fact. Still, Rosalind felt her own reserves on the subject, although she had always taken the part of the Octopus on principle when she thought Sally had become too disrespectful towards her. Anyhow, no use to beg and borrow troubles! Let her dwell on the happiness only that was before them all. She pictured a variety of homes for Sally in the time to come, peopling them with beautiful grandchildren--only, mind you, this was to be many, many years ahead! She could not cast herself for the part of grandmother while she twined that glorious hair into its place with hands that for softness and whiteness would have borne comparison with Sally's own.

In the old days, before the news of evil travelled fast, the widowed wife would live for days, weeks, months, unclouded by the knowledge of her loneliness, rejoicing in the coming hour that was to bring her wanderer back; and even as her heart laughed to think how now, at last, the time was drawing near for his return, his heart had ceased to beat, and, it may be, his bones were already bleaching where the assassin's knife had left him in the desert; or were swaying to and fro in perpetual monotonous response to the ground-swell, in some strange green reflected light of a sea-cavern no man's eye had ever seen; or buried nameless in a common tomb with other victims of battle or of plague; or, worst of all, penned in some dungeon, mad to think of home, waking from dreams of her to the terror of the intolerable night, its choking heat or deadly chill. And all those weeks or months the dearth of news would seem just the chance of a lost letter, no more--a thing that may happen any day to any of us. And she would live on in content and hope, jesting even in anticipation of his return.

Even so Rosalind, happy and undisturbed, dwelt on the days that were to come for the merpussy and poor Prosy, as she still had chosen to call him, for her husband and herself; and all the while there, so near her, was the end of it all, written in letters of death.

They were taking their time, certainly, those people; so she would put her hat on and go to meet them. Mrs. Lobjoit wasn't to hurry breakfast, but wait till they came. All right!

It looked as if it would rain later, so it was just as well to get out a little now. Rosalind was glad of the sweet air off the sea, for the night still hung about her. The tension of it was on her still, for all that she counted herself so much the better, so much the safer, for that interview with Gerry. But oh, what a thing to think that now he knew her as she had known him from the beginning! How much they would have to tell each other, when once they were well in calm water!... Why were those girls running, and why did that young man on the beach below shout to some one who followed him, "It's over at the pier"?

"Is anything the matter?" She asked the question of a very old man, whom she knew well by sight, who was hurrying his best in the same direction. But his best was but little, as speed, though it did credit to his age; for old Simon was said to be in his hundredth year. Rosalind walked easily beside him as he answered:

"I oondersta'and, missis, there's been a fall from the pier-head.... Oh yes, they've getten un out; ye may easy your mind o' that." But, for all that, Rosalind wasn't sorry her party were up at the hotel. She had believed them there long enough to have forgotten that she had no reason for the belief to speak of.

"You've no idea who it is?"

"Some do say a lady and a gentleman." Rosalind felt still gladder of her confidence that Sally and Gerry were out of the way. "'Ary one of 'em would be bound to drown but for the boats smart and handy--barring belike a swimmer like your young lady! She's a rare one, to tell of!"

"I believe she is. She swam round the Cat Buoy in a worse sea than this two days ago."

"And she would, too!" Then the old boy's voice changed as he went on, garrulous: "But there be seas, missis, no man can swim in. My fower boys, they were fine swimmers--all fower!"

"But were they?..." Rosalind did not like to say drowned; but old Simon took it as spoken.

"All fower of 'em--fine lads all--put off to the wreck--wreck o' th' brig Thyrsis, on th' Goodwins--and ne'er a one come back. And I had the telling of it to their mother. And the youngest, he never was found; and the others was stone dead ashore, nigh on to the Foreland. There was none to help. Fifty-three year ago come this Michaelmas."

"Is their mother still living?" Rosalind asked, interested. Old Simon had got to that stage in which the pain of the past is less than the pleasure of talking it over. "Died, she did," said he, almost as though he were unconcerned, "thirty-five year ago--five year afower ever I married my old missis yander." Rosalind felt less sympathy. If she were to lose Sally or Gerry, would she ever be able to talk like this, even if she lived to be ninety-nine? Possibly yes--only she could not know it now. She felt too curious about what had happened at the pier to think of going back, and walked on with old Simon, not answering him much. He seemed quite content to talk.

She did not trouble herself on the point of her party returning and not finding her. Ten chances to one they would hear about the accident, and guess where she had gone. Most likely they would follow her. Besides, she meant to go back as soon as ever she knew what had happened.

Certainly there were a great many people down there round about Lloyd's Coffeehouse! Had a life been lost? How she hoped not! What a sad end it would be to such a happy holiday as theirs had been! She said something to this effect to the old man beside her. His reply was: "Ye may doubt of it, in my judgment, missis. The rowboats were not long enough agone for that. Mayhap he'll take a bit of nursing round, though." But he quickened his pace, and Rosalind was sorry that a sort of courtesy towards him stood in her way. She would have liked to go much quicker.

She could not quite understand the scared look of a girl to whom she said, "Is it a bad accident? Do you know who it is?" nor why this girl muttered something under her breath, then got away, nor why so many eyes, all tearful, should be fixed on her. She asked again of the woman nearest her, "Do you know who it is?" but the woman gasped, and became hysterical, making her afraid she had accosted some anxious relative or near friend, who could not bear to speak of it. And still all the eyes were fixed upon her. A shudder ran through her. Could that be pity she saw in them--pity for her?

"For God's sake, tell me at once! Tell me what this is...."

Still silence! She could hear through it sobs here and there in the crowd, and then two women pointed to where an elderly man who looked like a doctor came from a doorway close by. She heard the hysterical woman break down outright, and her removal by friends, and then the strong Scotch accent of the doctor-like man making a too transparent effort towards an encouraging tone.

"There's nae reason to anteecipate a fatal tairmination, so far. I wouldna undertake myself to say the seestolic motion of the heart was...." But he hesitated, with a puzzled look, as Rosalind caught his arm and hung to it, crying out: "Why do you tell me this? For God's sake, speak plain! I am stronger than you think."

His answer came slowly, in an abated voice, but clearly: "Because they tauld me ye were the girl's mither."

In the short time that had passed since Rosalind's mind first admitted an apprehension of evil the worst possibility it had conceived was that Vereker or her husband was in danger. No misgiving about Sally had entered it, except so far as a swift thought followed the fear of mishap to one of them. "How shall Sally be told of this? When and where will she know?"

Two of the women caught her as she fell, and carried her at the Scotch doctor's bidding into a house adjoining, where Fenwick had been carried in a half-insensible collapse that had followed his landing from the cobble-boat in which he was sculled ashore.

* * * * *

"Tell me what has happened. Where is Dr. Vereker?" Rosalind asks the question of any of the fisher-folk round her as soon as returning consciousness brings speech. They look at each other, and the woman the cottage seems to belong to says interrogatively, "The young doctor-gentleman?" and then answers the last question. He is looking to the young lady in at the Coffeehouse. But no one says what has happened. Rosalind looks beseechingly round.

"Will you not tell me now? Oh, tell me--tell me the whole!"

"It's such a little we know ourselves, ma'am. But my husband will be here directly. It was he brought the gentleman ashore...."

"Where is the gentleman?" Rosalind has caught up the speaker with a decisive rally. Her natural strength is returning, prompted by something akin to desperation.

"We have him in here, ma'am. But he's bad, too! Here's my husband. Have ye the brandy, Tom?"

Rosalind struggles to her feet from the little settee they had laid her on. Her head is swimming, and she is sick, but she says: "Let me come!" She has gathered this much--that whatever has happened to Sally, Vereker is there beside her, and the other doctor she knows of. She can do nothing, and Gerry is close at hand. They let her come, and the woman and her husband follow. The one or two others go quietly out; there were too many for the tiny house.

That is Gerry, she can see, on the trestle-bedstead near the window with the flowerpots in it. He seems only half conscious, and his hands and face are cold. She cannot be sure that he has recognised her. Then she knows she is being spoken to. It is the fisherman's wife who speaks.

"We could find no way to get the gentleman's wet garments from him, but we might make a shift to try again. He's a bit hard to move. Not too much at once, Tom." Her husband is pouring brandy from his flask into a mug.

"Has he had any brandy?"

"Barely to speak of. Tell the lady, Tom!"

"No more than the leaving of a flask nigh empty out in my boat. It did him good, too. He got the speech to tell of the young lady, else--God help us!--we might have rowed him in, and lost the bit of water she was under. But we had the luck to find her." It was the owner of the cobble who spoke.

"Gerry, drink some of this at once. It's me--Rosey--your wife!" She is afraid his head may fail, for anything may happen now; but the brandy the fisherman's wife has handed to her revives him. No one speaks for awhile, and Rosalind, in the dazed state that so perversely notes and dwells on some small thing of no importance, and cannot grasp the great issue of some crisis we are living through, is keenly aware of the solemn ticking of a high grandfather clock, and of the name of the maker on its face--"Thomas Locock, Rochester." She sees it through the door into the front room, and wonders what the certificate or testimonial in a frame beside it is; and whether the Bible on the table below it, beside the fat blue jug with a ship and inscriptions on it, has illustrations and the Stem of Jesse rendered pictorially. Or is it "Pilgrim's Progress," and no Bible at all? Who or what is she, that can sit and think of this and that, knowing that a world--her world and her husband's--is at stake, and that a terrible game is being played to save it, there within twenty yards of them? If she could only have given active help! But that she knows is impossible. She knows enough to be satisfied that all that can be done is being done; that even warmth and stimulants are useless, perhaps even injurious, till artificial respiration has done its work. She can recall Sally's voice telling her of these things. Yes, she is best here beside her husband.

What is it that he says in a gasping whisper? Can any one tell him what it is has happened? She cannot--perhaps could not if she knew--and she does not yet know herself. She repeats her question to the fisherman and his wife. They look at each other and say young Ben Tracy was on the pier. Call him in. It is something to know that what has happened was on the pier. While young Ben is hunted up the opportunity is taken to make the change of wet clothes for extemporised dry ones. The half-drowned, all-chilled, and bewildered man is reviving, and can help, though rigidly and with difficulty. Then Ben is brought in, appalled and breathless.

The red-eyed and tear-stained boy is in bad trim for giving evidence, but under exhortation to speak up and tell the lady he articulates his story through his sobs. He is young, and can cry. He goes back to the beginning.

His father told him to run and hunt round for the life-belt, and he went to left instead of to right, and missed of seeing it. And he was at the top o' the ladder, shooat'un aloud to his father, and the gentleman--he nodded towards Fenwick--was walking down below. Then the young lady came to the top stair of the ladder. The narrator threw all his powers of description into the simultaneousness of Sally's arrival at this point and the gentleman walking straight over the pier-edge. "And then the young lady she threw away her hat, and come runnin' down, runnin' down, and threw away her cloak, she did, and stra'at she went for t' wa'ater!" Young Benjamin's story and his control over his sobs come to an end at the same time, and his father, just arrived, takes up the tale.

"I saw there was mishap in it," he says, "by the manner of my young lad with the lady's hat, and I went direct for the life-belt, for I'm no swimmer myself. Tom, man, tell the lady I'm no swimmer...." Tom nodded assent, "... or I might have tried my luck. It was a bad business that the life-belt was well away at the far end, and I had no chance to handle it in time. It was the run of the tide took them out beyond the length of the line, and I was bound to make the best throw I could, and signal to shore for a boat." He was going to tell how the only little boat at the pier-end had got water-logged in the night, when Rosalind interrupted him.

"Did you see them both in the water?"

"Plain. The young lady swimming behind and keeping the gentleman's head above the water. I could hear her laughing like, and talking. Then I sent the belt out, nigh half-way, and she saw it and swam for it. Then I followed my young lad for to get out a shore-boat."

It was the thought of the merpussy laughing like and talking in the cruel sea that was to engulf her that brought a heart-broken choking moan from her mother. Then, all being told, the fisher-folk glanced at each other, and by common consent went noiselessly from the room and lingered whispering outside. They closed the outer door, leaving the cottage entirely to Rosalind and her husband, and then they two were alone in the darkened world; and Conrad Vereker, whom they could not help, was striving--striving against despair--to bring back life to Sally.

* * * * *

A terrible strain--an almost killing strain--had been put upon Fenwick's powers of endurance. Probably the sudden shock of his immersion, the abrupt suppression of an actual fever almost at the cost of sanity, had quite as much to do with this as what he was at first able to grasp of the extent of the disaster. But actual chill and exposure had contributed their share to the state of semi-collapse in which Rosalind found him. Had the rower of the cobble turned in-shore at once, some of this might have been saved; but that would have been one pair of eyes the fewer, and every boat was wanted. Now that his powerful constitution had the chance to reassert itself, his revival went quickly. He was awakening to a world with a black grief in it; but Rosey was there, and had to be lived for, and think of his debt to her! Think of the great wrong he did her in that old time that he had only regained the knowledge of yesterday! Her hand in his gave him strength to speak, and though his voice was weak it would reach the head that rested on his bosom.

"I can tell you now, darling, what I remember. I went off feverish in the night after you left me, and I suppose my brain gave way, in a sense. I went out early to shake it off, and a sort of delusion completely got the better of me. I fancied I was back at Bombay, going on the boat for Australia, and I just stepped off the pier-edge. Our darling must have been there. Oh, Sally, Sally!..." He had to pause and wait.

"Hope is not all dead--not yet, not yet!" Rosalind's voice seemed to plead against despair.

"I know, Rosey dearest--not yet. I heard her voice ... oh, her voice!... call to me to be still, and she would save me. And then I felt her dear hand ... first my arm, then my head, on each side." Again his voice was choking, but he recovered. "Then, somehow, the life-belt was round me--I can't tell how, but she made me hold it so as to be safe. She was talking and laughing, but I could not hear much. I know, however, that she said quite suddenly, 'I had better swim back to the pier. Hold on tight, Jeremiah!'..." He faltered again before ending. "I don't know why she went, but she said, 'I must go,' and swam away."

That was all Fenwick could tell. The explanation came later. It was that unhappy petticoat-tape! A swimmer's leg-stroke may be encumbered in a calm sea, or when the only question is of keeping afloat for awhile. But in moderately rough water, and in a struggle against a running tide--which makes a certain speed imperative--the conditions are altered. Sally may have judged wrongly in trying to return to the pier, but remember--she could not in the first moments know that the mishap had been seen, and help was near at hand. Least of all could she estimate the difficulty of swimming in a loosened encumbered skirt. In our judgment, she would have done better to remain near the life-belt, even if she, too, had ultimately had to depend on it. The additional risk for Fenwick would have been small.

After he had ended what he had to tell he remained quite still, and scarcely spoke during the hour that followed. Twice or three times during that hour Rosalind rose to go out and ask if there was any change. But, turning to him with her hand on the door, and asking "Shall I go?" she was always met with "What good will it do? Conrad will tell us at once," and returned to her place beside him. After all, what she heard might be the end of Hope. Better stave off Despair to the last.

She watched the deliberate hands of the clock going cruelly on, unfaltering, ready to register in cold blood the moment that should say that Sally, as they knew her, was no more. Thomas Locock, of Rochester, had taken care of that. Where would those hands be on that clock-face when all attempt at resuscitation had to stop? And why live after it?

She fancied she could hear, at intervals, Dr. Conrad's voice giving instructions; and the voice of the Scotsman, less doubtfully, which always sounded like that of a medical man, for some reason not defined. As the clock-hand pointed to ten, she heard both quite near--outside Lloyd's Coffeehouse, evidently. Then she knew why she had so readily relinquished her purpose of getting at Dr. Conrad for news. It was the dread of seeing anything of the necessary manipulation of the body. Could she have helped, it would have been different. No, if she must look upon her darling dead, let it be later. But now there was that poor fellow-sufferer within reach, and she could see him without fear. She went out quickly.

"Can you come away?"

"Quite safely for a minute. The others have done it before."

"Is there a chance?"

"There is a chance." Dr. Conrad's hand as she grasps it is so cold that it makes her wonder at the warmth of her own. She is strangely alive to little things. "Yes--there is a chance," he repeats, more emphatically, as one who has been contradicted. But the old Scotch doctor had only said cautiously, "It would be airly times to be geevin' up hopes," in answer to a half-suggestion of reference to him in the words just spoken. Rosalind keeps the cold hand that has taken hers, and the crushing weight of her own misery almost gives place to her utter pity for the ash-white face before her, and the tale there is in it of a soul in torture.

"What is the longest time ... the longest time...?" she cannot frame her question, but both doctors take its meaning at once, repeating together or between them, "The longest insensibility after immersion? Many hours."

"But how many?" Six, certainly, is Dr. Conrad's testimony. But the Scotchman's conscience plagues him; he must needs be truthful. "Vara likely you're right," he says. "I couldna have borne testimony pairsonally to more than two. But vara sairtainly you're more likely to be right than I." His conscience has a chilling effect.

Fenwick, a haggard spectacle, has staggered to the door of the cottage. He wants to get the attention of some one in the crowd that stands about in silence, never intrusively near. It is the father of young Benjamin, who comes being summoned.

"That man you told me about...." Fenwick begins.

"Peter Burtenshaw?"

"Ah! How long was he insensible?"

"Eight hours--rather better! We got him aboard just before eight bells of the second dog-watch, and it was eight bells of the middle watch afore he spoke. Safe and sure! Wasn't I on the morning-watch myself, and beside him four hours of the night before, and turned in at eight bells? He'll tell you the same tale himself. Peter Burtenshaw--he's a stevedore now, at the new docks at Southampton." Much of this was quite unintelligible--ship's time is always a problem--but it was reassuring, and Rosalind felt grateful to the speaker, whether what he said was true or not. In that curious frame of mind that observed the smallest things, she was just aware of the difficulty in the way of a reference to Peter Burtenshaw at the new docks at Southampton. Then she felt a qualm of added sickness at heart as she all but thought, "How that will amuse Sally when I come to tell it to her!"

The old Scotchman had to keep an appointment--connected with birth, not death. "I've geen my pledge to the wench's husband," he said, and went his way. Rosalind saw him stopped as he walked through the groups that were lingering silently for a chance of good news; and guessed that he had none to give, by the way his questioners fell back disappointed. She was conscious that the world was beginning to reel and swim about her; was half asking herself what could it all mean--the waiting crowds of fisher-folk speaking in undertones among themselves; the pitying eyes fixed on her and withdrawn as they met her own; the fixed pallor and tense speech of the man who held her hand, then left her to return again to an awful task that had, surely, something to do with her Sally, there in that cramped tarred-wood structure close down upon the beach. What did his words mean: "I must go back; it is best for you to keep away"? Oh, yes; now she knew, and it was all true. She saw how right he was, but she read in his eyes the reason why he was so strong to face the terror that she knew was there--in there! It was that he knew so well that death would be open to him if defeat was to be the end of the battle he was fighting. But there should be no panic. Not an inch of ground should be uncontested.

Back again in the little cottage with Gerry, but some one had helped her back. Surely, though, his voice had become his own again as he said: "We are no use, Rosey darling. We are best here. Conrad knows what he's about." And there was a rally of real hope, or a bold bid for it, when his old self spoke in his words: "Why does that solemn old fool of a Scotch doctor want to put such a bad face on the matter? Patience, sweetheart, patience!"

For them there was nothing else. They could hinder, but they could not help, outside there. Nothing for it now but to count the minutes as they passed, to feel the cruelty of that inexorable clock in the stillness; for the minutes passed too quickly. How could it be else, when each one of them might have heralded a hope and did not; when each bequeathed its little legacy of despair? But was there need that each new clock-tick as it came should say, as the last had said: "Another second has gone of the little hour that is left; another inch of the space that parts us from the sentence that knows no respite or reprieve"? Was it not enough that the end must come, without the throb of that monotonous reminder: "Nearer still!--nearer still!"

Neither spoke but a bare word or two, till the eleventh stroke of the clock, at the hour, left it resonant and angry, and St. Sennans tower answered from without. Then Rosalind said, "Shall I go out and see, now?" and Fenwick replied, "Do, darling, if you wish to. But he would tell us at once, if there were anything." She answered, "Yes, perhaps it's no use," and fell back into silence.

She was conscious that the crowd outside had increased, in spite of a fine rain that had followed the overclouding of the morning. She could hear the voices of other than the fisher-folk--some she recognised as those of beach acquaintance. That was Mrs. Arkwright, the mother of Gwenny. And that was Gwenny herself, crying bitterly. Rosalind knew quite well, though she could hear no words, that Gwenny was being told that she could not go to Miss Nightingale now. She half thought she would like to have Gwenny in, to cry on her and make her perhaps feel less like a granite-block in pain. But, then, was not Sally a baby of three once? She could remember the pleasure the dear old Major had at seeing baby in her bath, and how he squeezed a sponge over her head, and she screwed her eyes up. He had died in good time, and escaped this inheritance of sorrow. How could she have told him of it?

What was she that had outlived him to bear all this? Much, so much, of her was two dry, burning eyes, each in a ring of pain, that had forgotten tears and what they meant. How was it that now, when that Arkwright woman's voice brought back her talk upon the beach, not four-and-twenty hours since, and her unwelcome stirring of the dead embers of a burned-out past--how was it that that past, at its worst, seemed easier to bear than this intolerable now? How had it come about that a memory of twenty years ago, a memory of how she had prayed that her unborn baby might die, rather than live to remind her of that black stain upon the daylight, its father, had become in the end worse to her, in her heart of hearts, than the thing that caused it? And then she fell to wondering when it was that her child first took hold upon her life; first crept into it, then slowly filled it up. She went back on little incidents of that early time, asking herself, was it then, or then, I first saw that she was Sally? She could recall, without adding another pang to her dull, insensate suffering, the moment when the baby, as the Major and General Pellew sat playing chess upon the deck, captured the white king, and sent him flying into the Mediterranean; and though she could not smile now, could know how she would have smiled another time. Was that white king afloat upon the water still? A score of little memories of a like sort chased one another as her mind ran on, all through the childhood and girlhood of their subject. And now--it was all to end....

And throughout those years this silent man beside her, this man she meant to live for still, for all it should be in a darkened world--this man was ... where? To think of it--in all those years, no Sally for him! See what she had become to him in so short a time--such a little hour of life! Think of the waste of it--of what she might have been! And it was she, the little unconscious thing herself, that sprang from what had parted them. If she had to face all the horrors of her life anew for it, would she flinch from one of them, only to hear that the heart that had stopped its beating would beat again, that the voice that was still would sound in her ears once more?

Another hour! The clock gave out its warning that it meant to strike, in deadly earnest with its long premonitory roll. Then all those twelve strokes so quick upon the heels of those that sounded but now, as it seemed. Another hour from the tale of those still left but reasonable hope; another hour nearer to despair. The reverberations died away, and left the cold insensate tick to measure out the next one, while St. Sennans tower gave its answer as before.

"Shall I go now, Gerry, to see?"

"I say not, darling; but go, if you like." He could not bear to hear it, if it was to be the death-sentence. So Rosalind still sat on to the ticking of the clock.

Her brain and powers of thought were getting numbed. Trivial things came out of the bygone times, and drew her into dreams--back into the past again--to give a moment's spurious peace; then forsook her treacherously to an awakening, each time deadlier than the last. Each time to ask anew, what could it all mean? Sally dead or dying--Sally dead or dying! Each time she repeated the awful words to herself, to try to get a hold she was not sure she had upon their meaning. Each time she slipped again into a new dream and lost it.

Back again now, in the old days of her girlhood! Back in that little front garden of her mother's house, twenty odd years ago, and Gerry's hand in hers--the hand she held to now; and Gerry's face that now, beside her, looked so still and white and heart-broken, all aglow with life and thoughtless youth and hope. Again she felt upon her lips his farewell kiss, not to be renewed until ... but at the thought she shuddered away, horror-stricken, from the nightmare that any memory must be of what then crossed her life, and robbed them both of happiness. And then her powers of reason simply reeled and swam, and her brain throbbed as she caught the thought forming in it: "Better happiness so lost, and all the misery over again, than this blow that has come upon us now! Sally dead or dying--Sally dead or dying!" For what was she, the thing we could not bear to lose, but the living record, the very outcome, of the poisoned soil in that field of her life her memory shrank from treading?

What was that old Scotchman--he seemed to have come back--what was he saying outside there? Yes, listen! Fenwick starts up, all his life roused into his face. If only that clock would end that long unnecessary roll of warning, and strike! But before the long-deferred single stroke comes to say another hour has passed, he is up and at the door, with Rosalind clinging to him terrified.

"What's the news, doctor? Tell it out, man!--never fear." Rosalind dares not ask; her heart gives a great bound, and stops, and her teeth chatter and close tight. She could not speak if she tried.

"I wouldna like to be over-confeedent, Mr. Fenwick, and ye'll understand I'm only geevin' ye my own eempression...."

"Yes, quite right--go on...."

"Vara parteecularly because our young friend Dr. Vereker is unwulling to commeet himself ... but I should say a pairceptible...."

He is interrupted. For with a loud shout Dr. Conrad himself, dishevelled and ashy-white of face, comes running from the door opposite. The word he has shouted so loudly he repeats twice; then turns as though to go back. But he does not reach the door, for he staggers suddenly, like a man struck by a bullet, and falls heavily, insensible.

There is a movement and a shouting among the scattered groups that have been waiting, three hours past, as those nearest at hand run to help and raise him; and the sound of voices and exultation passes from group to group. For what he shouted was the one word "Breath!" And Rosalind knew its meaning as her head swam and she heard no more.

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Chapter XLVII

WAS IT THE LITTLE GALVANIC BATTERY? THE LAST CHAPTER RETOLD BY THE PRESS. A PROPER RAILING. BUT THEY WEREN'T DROWNED. WHAT'S THE FUSS? MASTER CHANCELLORSHIP APPEARS AND VANISHES. ELECTUARY OF ST. SENNA. AT GEORGIANA TERRACE. A LETTER FROM SALLY. ANOTHER FROM CONRAD. EVERYTHING VANISHES!

Professor Sales Wilson, Mrs. Julius Bradshaw's papa, was enjoying himself thoroughly. He was the sole occupant of 260, Ladbroke Grove Road, servants apart. All his blood-connected household had departed two days after the musical evening described in Chapter XL., and there was nothing that pleased him better than to have London to himself--that is to say, to himself and five millions of perfect strangers. He had it now, and could wallow unmolested in Sabellian researches, and tear the flimsy theories of Bopsius--whose name we haven't got quite right--to tatters. Indeed, we are not really sure the researches were Sabellian. But no matter!

Just at the moment at which we find him, the Professor was not engaged in any researches at all, unless running one's eye down the columns of a leading journal, to make sure there is nothing in them, is a research. That is what he was doing in his library. And he was also talking to himself--a person from whom he had no reserves or concealments. What he had to say ran in this wise:

"H'm!--h'm!--'The Cyclopean Cyclopædia.' Forty volumes in calf. Net price thirty-five pounds. A digest of human knowledge, past, present, and probable. With a brief appendix enumerating the things of which we are still ignorant, and of our future ignorance of which we are scientifically certain ... h'm! h'm!... not dear at the price. But stop a bit! 'Until twelve o'clock on Saturday next copies of the above, with revolving bookcase, can be secured for the low price of seven pounds ten.'..." This did not seem to increase the speaker's confidence and he continued, as he wrestled with a rearrangement of the sheet: "Shiny paper, and every volume weighs a ton. Very full of matter--everything in it except the thing you want to know. By-the-bye ... what a singular thing it is, when you come to think of it, that so many people will sell you a thing worth a pound for sixpence, who won't give you a shilling outright on any terms! It must have to do with their unwillingness to encourage mendicancy. A noble self-denial, prompted by charity organizations! Hullo!--what's this? 'Heroic rescue from drowning at St. Sennans-on-Sea.' H'm--h'm--h'm!--can't read all that. But that's where the married couple went--St. Sennans-on-Sea. The bride announced her intention yesterday of looking in at five to-day for tea. So I suppose I shall be disturbed shortly."

The soliloquist thought it necessary to repeat his last words twice to convince himself and the atmosphere that his position was one of grievance. Having done this, and feeling he ought to substantiate his suggestion that he was just on the point of putting salt on the tail of an unidentified Samnite, or a finishing touch on the demolition of Bopsius, he folded his newspaper, which we suspect he had not been reading candidly from, and resumed his writing.

Did you ever have a quarter of an hour of absolutely unalloyed happiness? Probably not, if you have never known the joys of profound antiquarian erudition, with an unelucidated past behind you, and inexpensive publication before. The Professor's fifteen minutes that followed were not only without alloy, but had this additional zest--that that girl would come bothering in directly, and he would get his grievance, and work it. And at no serious expense, for he was really very partial to his daughter, and meant, au fond de soi, to enjoy her visit. Nevertheless, discipline had to be maintained, if only for purposes of self-deception, and the Professor really believed in his own "Humph! I supposed it would be that," when Lætitia's knock came at the street door.

"Such a shame to disturb you, papa dear! But you'll have to give me tea--you said you would."

"It isn't five o'clock yet. Well--never mind. Sit down and don't fidget. I shall have done presently.... No! make yourself useful now you are here. Get me 'Passeri Picturæ Etruscorum,' volume three, out of shelf C near the window ... that's right. Very good find for a young married woman. Now sit down and read the paper--there's something will interest you. You may ring for tea, only don't talk."

The Professor then became demonstratively absorbed in the Sabellians, or Bopsius, or both, and Lætitia acted as instructed, but without coming on the newspaper-paragraph. She couldn't ask for a clue after so broad a hint, so she had to be contented with supposing her father referred to the return of Sir Charles Penderfield, Bart., as a Home Rule Unionist and Protectionist Free Trader. Only if it was that, it was the first she had ever known of her father being aware of the Bart.'s admiration for herself. So she made the tea, and waited till the pen-scratching stopped, and the Sabellians or Bopsius were blotted, glanced through, and ratified.

"There, that'll do for that, I suppose." His tone surrendered the grievance as an act of liberality, but maintained the principle. "Well, have we found it?"

"Found what?"

"The heroic rescue--at your place--Saint Somebody--Saint Senanus...."

"No! Do show me that." Lætitia forms a mental image of a lifeboat going out to a wreck. How excited Sally must have been!

"Here, give it me and I'll find it.... Yes--that's right--a big lump and a little lump. I'm to take less sugar because of gout. Very good! Oh ... yes ... here we are. 'Heroic Rescue at St. Sennans' ... just under 'Startling Elopement at Clapham Rise'.... Got it?"

Lætitia supplied the cup of tea, poured one for herself, and took the paper from her father without the slightest suspicion of what was coming. "It will have to wait a minute till I've had some tea," she said. "I'm as thirsty as I can be. I've been to see my mother-in-law and Constance"--this was Julius's sister--"off to Southend. And just fancy, papa; Pag and I played from nine till a quarter-to-one last night, and he never felt it, nor had any headache nor anything." The topic is so interesting that the unread paragraph has to wait.

The Professor cannot think of any form of perversion better than "Very discreditable to him. I hope you blew him well up?"

"Now, papa, don't be nonsensical! Do you know, I'm really beginning to believe Pag's right, and it was the little galvanic battery. Shouldn't you say so, though, seriously?"

"Why, yes. If there wasn't a big galvanic battery, it must have been the little one. It stands to reason. But what does my musical son-in-law think was the little galvanic battery?"

"Oh dear, papa, how ridiculous you are! Why, of course, his nerves going away--as they really have done, you know; and I can't see any good pretending they haven't. Yesterday was the fourth evening he hasn't felt them...."

"Stop a bit! There is a lack of scientific precision in the structure of your sentences. A young married woman ought really to be more accurate. Now let's look it over, and do a little considering. I gather, in the first place, that my son-in-law's nerves going away was, or were, a little galvanic battery...."

"Dear papa, don't paradox and catch me out. Just this once, be reasonable! Think what a glorious thing it would be for us if his nerves had gone for good. Another cup? Was the last one right?"

"My position is peculiar. (Yes, the tea was all right.) I find myself requested to be reasonable, and to embark on a career of reasonableness by considering the substantial advantages to my daughter and her husband of the disappearance of his nervous system...."

"Oh, I wish you wouldn't! Do be serious...." The Professor looked at her reflectively as he drank the cup of tea, and it seemed to dawn on him slowly that his daughter was serious. The fact is, Tishy was very serious indeed, and was longing for sympathy over a matter for great elation. She and Julius had been purposely playing continuously for long hours to test the apparent suspension or cessation of his nervous affection, and had not so far seen a sign of a return; but they were dreadfully afraid of counting their chickens in advance.

"I noticed the other evening"--the Professor has surrendered, and become serious--"that Julius wasn't any the worse, and he had played a long time. What should you do?" Tishy looked inquiringly. "Well, I mean what steps could be taken if it were...?"

"If we could trust to it? Oh, no difficulty at all! Any number of engagements directly."

"It would please your mother." Tishy cannot help a passing thought on the oddity of her parents' relations to one another. Even though he spoke of the Dragon as a connexion of his daughter he was but little concerned with, the first thought that crossed his mind was a sort of satisfaction under protest that she would have something to be pleased about. Tishy wondered whether she and Julius would end up like that. Of course they wouldn't! What pity people's parents were so unreasonable!

"Yes; mamma wouldn't be at all sorry. Fiddlers are not Baronets, but anything is better than haberdashing. I'm not ashamed of it, you know." She had subjected herself gratuitously to her own suspicion that she might be, and resented it.

Her father looked at her with an amused face; looked down at these social fads of poor humanity from the height of his Olympus. If he knew anything about the Unionist Home Ruler's aspirations for Lætitia, he said nothing. Then he asked a natural question--what was the little galvanic battery? Tishy gave her account of it, but before she had done the Professor was thinking about Sabines or Lucanians. The fact is that Tishy was never at her best with her father. She was always so anxious to please him that she tumbled over her own anxiety, and in this present case didn't tell her story as well as she might have done. He began considering how he could get back to the shreds of Bopsius, if any were left, and looked at his watch.

"Well, that was very funny--very funny!" said he absently. "Now, don't forget the heroic rescue before you go."

Tishy perceived the delicate hint, and picked up the paper with "I declare I was forgetting all about it!" But she had scarcely cast her eyes on it when she gave a cry. "Oh, papa, papa; it's Sally! Oh dear!" And then: "Oh dear, oh dear! I can hardly see to make it out. But I'm sure she's all right! They say so." And kept on trying to read. Her father did what was, under the circumstances, the best thing to do--took the paper from her, and as she sank back with a beating heart and flushed face on the chair she had just risen from read the paragraph to her as follows:

"HEROIC RESCUE FROM DROWNING AT ST. SENNANS-ON-SEA.--Early this morning, as Mr. Algernon Fenwick, of Shepherd's Bush, at present on a visit at the old town, was walking on the pier-end, at the point where there is no rail or rope for the security of the public, his foot slipped, and he was precipitated into the sea, a height of at least ten feet. Not being a swimmer, his life was for some minutes in the greatest danger; but fortunately for him his stepdaughter, Miss Rosalind Nightingale, whose daring and brilliant feats in swimming have been for some weeks past the admiration and envy of all the visitors to the bathing quarter of this most attractive of south-coast watering-places, was close at hand, and without a moment's hesitation plunged in to his rescue. Encumbered as she was by clothing, she was nevertheless able to keep Mr. Fenwick above water, and ultimately to reach a life-buoy that was thrown from the pier. Unfortunately, having established Mr. Fenwick in a position of safety, she thought her best course would be to return to the pier. She was unable in the end to reach it, and her strength giving way, she was picked up, after an immersion of more than twenty minutes, by the boats that put off from the shore. It will readily be imagined that a scene of great excitement ensued, and that a period of most painful anxiety followed, for it was not till nearly four hours afterwards that, thanks to the skill and assiduity of Dr. Fergus Maccoll, of 22A, Albion Crescent, assisted by Dr. Vereker, of London, the young lady showed signs of life. We are happy to say that the latest bulletins appear to point to a speedy and complete recovery, with no worse consequences than a bad fright. We understand that the expediency of placing a proper railing at all dangerous points on the pier is being made the subject of a numerously signed petition to the Town Council."

"That seems all right," said the Professor. And he said nothing further, but remained rubbing his shaved surface in a sort of compromising way--a way that invited or permitted exception to be taken to his remark.

"All right? Yes, but--oh, papa, do think what might have happened! They might both have been drowned."

"But they weren't!"

"Of course they weren't! But they might have been."

"Well, it would have proved that people are best away from the seaside. Not that any further proof is necessary. Now, good-bye, my dear; I must get back to my work."

* * * * *

That afternoon Julius Bradshaw went on a business mission to Cornhill, and was detained in the city till past five o'clock. It was then too late to return to the office, as six was the closing hour; so he decided on the Twopenny Tube to Lancaster Gate, the nearest point to home. There was a great shouting of evening papers round the opening into the bowels of the earth at the corner of the Bank, and Julius's attention was caught by an unearthly boy with a strange accent.

"'Mail and Echo,' third edition, all the latest news for a 'apeny. Fullest partic'lars in my copies. Alderman froze to death on the Halps. Shocking neglect of twins. 'Oxton man biles his third wife alive. Cricket this day--Surrey going strong. More about heroic rescue from drowning at St. Senna's. Full and ack'rate partic'lars in my copies only. Catch hold!..." Julius caught hold, and thought the boy amusing. Conversation followed, during cash settlements.

"Who's been heroically rescued?"

"Friend of mine--young lady--fished her governor out--got drownded over it herself, and was brought to. 'Mail' a 'apeny; torkin' a penny extra! Another 'apeny." Julius acquiesced, but felt entitled to more talking.

"Where was it?"

"St. Senna's, where they make the lectury--black stuff.... Yes, it was a friend o' mine, mister, so I tell you, and no lies! Miss Rosalind Nightingale. I see her in the fog round Piccadilly way.... No, no lies at all! Told me her name of her own accord, and went indoors." Julius would have tried to get to the bottom of this if he had not been so taken aback by it, even at the cost of more pence for conversation; but by the time he had found that his informant had certainly read the paragraph, or at least mastered Sally's name right, the boy had vanished. Of course, he was the boy with the gap in his teeth that she had seen in the fog when Colonel Lund was dying. We can only hope that his shrewdness and prudence in worldly matters have since brought him the success they deserve, as his disappearance was final.

Even the Twopenny Tube was too slow for Julius Bradshaw, so mad was he with impatience to get to Georgiana Terrace. When he got there, and went upstairs two steps at a time, and "I say, Tishy dearest, look at this!" on his lips, he was met half-way by his young wife, also extending a newspaper, and "Paggy, just fancy what's happened! Look at this!"

They were so wild with excitement that they refused food--at least, when it took the form of second helpings--and when the banquet was over Lætitia could do nothing but walk continually about the room with gleaming eyes and a flushed face waiting furiously for the post; for she was sure it would bring her a letter from Sally or her mother. And she was right, for the rush to the street door that followed the postman's knock resulted firstly in denunciations of an intransitive letter-box nobody but a fool would ever have tried to stuff all those into, and secondly in a pounce by Lætitia on Sally's own handwriting.

"You may just as well read it upstairs comfortably, Tish," says Julius, meanly affecting stoicism now that it is perfectly clear--for the arrival of the letter practically shows it--that nobody is incapacitated by the accident. "Come along up!"

"All right!" says his wife. "Why, mine's written in pencil! Who's yours from?"

"I haven't opened it yet. Come along. Don't be a goose!" This was a little cheap stoicism, worth deferring satisfaction of curiosity three minutes for.

"Whose handwriting is it?" She goes on devouring, intensely absorbed, though she speaks.

"It looks like the doctor's."

"Of course! You'll see directly.... All right, I'm coming!"

Take your last look at the Julius Bradshaws, as they settle down with animated faces to serious perusal of their letters. They may just as well drink their coffee, though, and Julius will presently light his cigar for anything we know to the contrary; but we shall not see it, for when we have transcribed the two letters they are reading we shall lay down our pen, and then, if you want to know any more about the people in this story, you must inquire of the originals, all of whom are still living except Dr. Vereker's mother, who died last year, we believe. Here are the letters:

"MY DEAREST TISHY,

"I have a piece of news to tell that will be a great surprise to you. I am engaged to Conrad Vereker. Perhaps, though, I oughtn't to say as much as that, because it hasn't gone any farther at present than me promising not to marry any one else, and as far as I can see I might have promised any man that.

"Now, don't write and say you expected it all along, because I shan't believe you.

"Of course, tell anybody you like--only I hope they'll all say that's no concern of theirs. I should be so much obliged to them. Besides, so very little has transpired to go by that I can't see exactly what they could either congratulate or twit about. Being engaged is so very shadowy. Do you remember our dancing-mistress at school, who had been engaged seven years to a dancing-master, and then they broke it off by mutual consent, and she married a Creole? And they'd saved up enough for a school of their own all the time! However, as long as it's distinctly understood there's to be no marrying at present, I don't think the arrangement a bad one. Of course, you'll understand I mean other girls, and the sort of men they get engaged to. With Prosy it's different; one knows where one is. Only I shouldn't consider it honourable to jilt Prosy, even for the sake of remaining single. You see what I mean.

"The reason of pencil (don't be alarmed!) is that I am writing this in bed, having been too long in the water. It's to please Prosy, because my System has had a shake. I am feeling very queer still, and can't control my thumb to write. I must tell you about it, or you'll get the story somewhere else and be frightened.

"It was all Jeremiah's fault, and I really can't think what he was doing. He admits that he was seedy, and had had a bad night. Anyhow, it was like this: I followed him down to the pier very early before breakfast, and you remember where the man was fishing and caught nothing that day? Well, what does Jeremiah do but just walk plump over the edge. I had all but got to him, by good luck, and of course I went straight for him and caught him before he sank. I induced him not to kick and flounder, and got him inside a life-belt they threw from the pier, and then I settled to leave him alone and swim to the steps, because you've no idea how I felt my clothes, and it would have been all right, only a horrible heavy petticoat got loose and demoralised me. I don't know how it happened, but I got all wrong somehow, and a breaker caught me. Don't get drowned, Tishy; or, if you do, don't be revived again! I don't know which is worst, but I think reviving. I can't write about it. I'll tell you when I come back.

"They won't tell me how long I was coming to, but it must have been much longer than I thought, when one comes to think of it. Only I can't tell, because when poor dear Prosy had got me to[A]--down at Lloyd's Coffeehouse, where old Simon sits all day--and I had been wrapped up in what I heard a Scotchman call 'weel-warmed blawnkets,' and brought home in a closed fly from Padlock's livery stables, I went off sound asleep with my fingers and toes tingling, and never knew the time nor anything. (Continuation bit.) This is being written, to tell you the truth, in the small hours of the morning, in secrecy with a guttering candle. It seems to have been really quite a terrible alarm to poor darling mother and Jeremiah, and much about the same to my medical adviser, who resuscitated me on Marshall Hall's system, followed by Silvester's, and finally opened a vein. And there was I alive all the time, and not grateful to Prosy at all, I can tell you, for bringing me to. I have requested not to be brought to next time. The oddity of it all was indescribable. And there, now I come to think of it, I've never so much as seen the Octopus since Prosy and I got engaged. I shall have to go round as soon as I'm up. (Later continuation bit--after breakfast.) Do you know, it makes me quite miserable to think what an anxiety I've been to all of them! Mother and J. can't take their eyes off me, and look quite wasted and resigned. And poor dear Prosy! How ever shall I make it up to him? Do you know, as soon as it was known I was to,[B] the dear fellow actually tumbled down insensible! I had no idea of the turn-out there's been until just now, when mother and Jeremiah confessed up. Just fancy it! Now I must shut up to catch the post.

"Your ever affect. friend,

"SALLY."

[Footnote A: Part of a verb to get to, or bring to. Not very intelligible!]

[Footnote B: See note, p. 563.][Transcriber's Note: This footnote refers to Footnote A]

"MY DEAR BRADSHAW,

"I am so very much afraid you and your wife may be alarmed by hearing of the events of this morning--possibly by a press-paragraph, for these things get about--that I think it best to send you a line to say that, though we have all had a terrible time of anxiety, no further disastrous consequences need be anticipated. Briefly, the affair may be stated thus:

"Fenwick and Miss Nightingale were on the pier early this morning, and from some unexplained false step F. fell from the lower stage into the water. Miss N. immediately plunged in to his rescue, and brought him in safety to a life-buoy that was thrown from the pier. It seemed that she then started to swim back, being satisfied of his safety till other help came, but got entangled with her clothes and went under. She was brought ashore insensible, and remained so nearly four hours. For a long time I was almost without hope, but we persevered against every discouragement, with complete final success. I am a good deal more afraid now of the effect of the shock on Mrs. Fenwick and her husband than for anything that may happen to Miss N., whose buoyancy of constitution is most remarkable. You will guess that I had rather a rough time (the news came rather suddenly to me), and all the more (but I know you will be glad to hear this) that Miss N. and your humble servant had only just entered on an engagement to be married at some date hereafter not specified. I am ashamed to say I showed weakness (but not till I was sure the lungs were acting naturally), and had to be revived with stimulants! I am all right now, and, do you know, I really believe my mother will be all the better for it; for when she heard what had happened, she actually got up and ran--yes, ran--to Lloyd's Coffeehouse (you remember it?), where I was just coming round, and had the satisfaction of telling her the news. I cannot help suspecting that her case may have been wrongly diagnosed, and that the splanchnic ganglion and solar plexus are really the seat of the evil. If so, the treatment has been entirely at fault.

"I shall most likely be back to-morrow, so keep your congrats. for me, old chap. No time for a letter. Love from us all to yourself and Mrs. J. B.

"Yours ever,

"CONRAD VEREKER.

"P.S.--I reopen this (which I wrote late last night) to say that Miss N., so far from having acquired a horror of the water (as is usual in such cases), talks of 'swimming over the ground' if the weather clears. I fear she is incorrigible."

THE END

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Transcriber's Note

This ebook retains the spelling variations of the original text.

Advertisements from the front of the original text have been moved to the back of this ebook. Ellipses have been standardized.

The following typographical corrections have been made to this text:

Table of Contents: Changed CONRADE to CONRAD (CONRAD VEREKER'S)

Page 98: Changed heathrug to hearthrug (side of the hearthrug)

Page 110: Changed things to thing (this sort of thing)

Page 119: Changed Sallikin to Sallykin (My Sallykin has been)

Page 132: Removed duplicate word 'to' (one word to save us)

Page 169: Changed Rosy to Rosey (Rosey had found a guardian)

Page 188: Changed use to us (both of us drowned)

Page 242: Changed Simly to Simply (Simply this: to show you)

Page 270: Added missing single-quote (to come hisself.')

Page 281: Added missing word 'on' (Sally was on a stairflight)

Page 304: Removed duplicate word 'together' (talk together earnestly)

Page 342: Changed you to your (promise your mother)

Page 382: Added missing period (recollection of B.C.)

Page 383: Changed tan-laden to tar-laden (blowing the tar-laden)

Page 399: Changed explantory to explanatory (self-explanatory colloquy)

Page 413: Added missing close-quotes ("Not?--not at all?")

Page 426: Changed Rosanlind to Rosalind (breathing-space for Rosalind)

Page 433: Changed bendictions to benedictions (bed, with benedictions)

Page 437: Added missing close-quotes ("But it's awful!")

Page 449: Changed same to some (Had some flavour)

Page 459: Changed suprise to surprise (surprise-tactics)

Page 471: Changed lighting-flash to lightning-flash (decisive lightning-flash)

Page 476: Changed he to be (be determined by either landlord)

Page 491: Changed elasped to elapsed (his time had elapsed)

Page 494: Removed extraneous close-quotes (trust to anything.)

Page 500: Changed skirits to skirts (muslin skirts)

Page 505: Changed Kruetzkammer to Kreutzkammer (Kreutzkammer--he's Diedrich)

Page 520: Changed new to knew (she well knew)

Page 559: Changed recue to rescue (plunged in to his rescue)

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