Part 16 (2/2)

”If you will think over what I have told you, Fenwick, you will see that you cannot help doing so.”

”How can that be?”

”Surely! My husband sought to divorce me, and was himself absolutely blameless. How can you do otherwise than blame me?”

”Partly--only partly--because I see you are keeping back something--something that would exonerate you. I cannot believe you were to blame.”

”Listen, Fenwick! As I said, I cannot tell you the whole; and the Major, who is the only man alive who knows all the story, will, I know, refuse to tell you anything, even if you ask him, and that I wish you not to do.”

”I should not dream of asking him.”

”Well, he would refuse. I know it. But I want you to know all I can tell you. I do not want any groundless excuses made for me. I will not accept any absolution from any one on a false pretence. You see what I mean.”

”I see perfectly. I am not sure, though, that you see my meaning. But never mind that. Is there anything further you would really like me to know?”

She waited a little, and then answered, keeping her eyes always fixed on Fenwick: ”Yes, there is.”

But at this moment the first movement of Op. 999 came to a perfect and well thought out conclusion, bearing in mind everything that had been said on six pages of ideas faultlessly interchanged by four instruments, and making due allowance for all exceptions each had courteously taken to the other. But Op. 999 was going on to the second movement directly, and only tolerated a pause for a few string-tightenings and trial-squeaks, to get in tune, and the removal of a deceased fly from a piano-candle. The remark from the back-room that we could hear beautifully in here seemed to fall flat, the second violin merely replying ”All right!” pa.s.sionlessly. The instruments then asked each other if they were ready, and answered yes. Then some one counted four suggestively, for a start, and life went on again.

Mrs. Nightingale and Fenwick sat well on into the music before either spoke. He, resolved not to seem to seek or urge any information at all; all was to come spontaneously from her. She, feeling the difficulty of telling what she had to tell, and always oppressed with the recollection of what it had cost her to make her revelation to this selfsame man nineteen years ago. She wished he would give the conversation some lift, as he had done before, when he asked if what she had to tell referred to her husband. But, although he would gladly have repeated his a.s.sistance, he could see his way to nothing, this time, that seemed altogether free from risk. How if he were to blunder into ascribing to her something more culpable than her actual share in the past? She half guessed this; then, seeing that speech must come from herself in the end, took heart and faced the position resolutely. She always did.

”You know this, Fenwick, do you not, that when there is a divorce, the husband takes the children from their mother--always, when she is in the wrong; too often, when she is blameless. I have told you I was the one to blame, and I tell you now that though my husband's application for a divorce failed, from a technical point of law, all things came about just as though he had succeeded. Don't a.n.a.lyse it now; take it all for granted--you understand?”

”I understand. Suppose it so! And then?”

”And then this. That little monkey of mine--that little unconscious fiddling thing in there”--and as Mrs. Nightingale speaks, the sound of a caress mixes with the laugh in her voice; but the pain comes back as she goes on--”My Sallykin has been mine, all her life! My poor husband never saw her in her childhood.” As she says the word _husband_ she has again a vivid _eclat_ of the consciousness that it is he--himself--sitting there beside her. And the odd thought that mixes itself into this, strange to say, is--”The pity of it! To think how little he has had of Sally in all these years!”

He, for his part, can for the moment make nothing of this part of the story. He can give his head the lion-mane shake she knows him by so well, but it brings him no light. He is reduced to mere slow repet.i.tion of her data; his hand before his eyes to keep his brain, that has to think, clear of distractions from without.

”Your husband never saw her. She has been yours all her life. Had she been your husband's child, he would have exercised his so-called rights--his _legal_ rights--and taken her away. Are those the facts--so far?”

”Yes--go on. No--stop; I will tell you. At the beginning of this year I should have been married exactly twenty years. Sally is nineteen--you remember her birthday?”

”Nineteen in August. Now, let me think!” Just at this moment the second movement of Op. 999 came to an end, and gave an added plausibility to the blank he needed to ponder in. The viola in the next room looked round across her chair-back, and said, ”I say, mother”--to a repet.i.tion of which Mrs. Nightingale replied what did her daughter say? What she said was that her mother and Mr. Fenwick were exactly like the canaries. They talked as hard as they could all through the music, and when it stopped they shut up. Wasn't that true? To which her mother answered affirmatively, adding, ”You'll have to put a cloth over us, chick, and squash us out.”

Fenwick was absorbed in thought, and did not notice this interlude. He did not speak until the music began again. Then he said abruptly:

”I see the story now. Sally's father was not....”

”Was not my husband.” There is not a trace of cowardice or hesitation in her filling out the sentence. There is pain, but that again dies away in her voice as she goes on to speak of her daughter. ”I do not connect him with her now. She is--a thing of itself--a thing of herself!

She is--she is Sally. Well, you see what she is.”

”I see she is a very dear little person.” Then he seems to want to say something and to pause on the edge of it; then, in answer to a ”yes”

of encouragement from her, continues, ”I was going to say that she must be very like him--like her father.”

”Very like?” she asks--”or very unlike? Which did you mean?”

”I mean very like as to looks. Because she is so unlike you.”

<script>