Part 65 (1/2)
Fenwick said to him, as they stood on Iggulden's threshold and doormat respectively--presuming rashly, on imperfect information, to delay farewells--”Now look here, Conrad, my dear boy (I like your name Conrad), don't you go and boil over to Sally to-morrow, nor next day.
You'll only spoil the rest of your stay, maybe.... What! well--what I mean is that nothing I say prejudices the kitten. You'll understand that, I'm sure?”
”Perfectly. Of course, if Sally were to say she knew somebody she would like a deal better, there's no reason why she shouldn't....
I mean _I_ couldn't complain.”
”Yes--yes! I see. You'd exonerate her. Good boy! Very proper.” And indeed the doctor had felt, as the words pa.s.sed his lips, that he was rather a horrid liar. But the point didn't matter. Fenwick laughed it off: ”Just you take my advice, and refer the matter to the kitten the last day you're here. Monday, won't it be? And don't think about it!”
”Oh no! I'm a philosophical sort of chap, I am! Never in extremes.
Good-night!”
”I see. _Sperat infestis metuit secundis alteram sortem bene praeparatum pectus_--Horace.” Fenwick ran this through in a breath; and the doctor, a little hazy in school-memories of the cla.s.sics, said, ”What's that?” and began translating it--”The bosom well prepared for either lot, fears....” Fenwick caught him up and completed the sentence:
”Fears what is good, and hopes for what is not. Cut away to bed, old chap, and sleep sound....” Then he paused a moment, as he saw the doctor looking a question at him intently, and just about to speak it. He answered it before it came:
”No, no! Nothing more. I mean to forget all about it, and take my life as it stands. Bother Mr. Harrisson!” He dropped his voice to say this; then raised it again. ”Don't you fret about me, doctor. Remember, I'm Algernon Fenwick! Good-night!”
”Good-night!” And then the doctor, with the remains of heart-turmoil in him, and a brain reeling, more or less, went up into what he conceived to be an empty dark room, and was disconcerted by an ill-used murmur in the darkness--a meek, submissive voice of one accustomed to slights:
”I told her to blow it out and go to bed. It is all--quite--right, my dear. So do not complain. Now help me with my things, and I will get to bed.”
”My dear mother! I _am_ so sorry. I had no idea you had not gone long ago!”
”My dear!--it does not matter in the least now. What is done, is done.
Be careful with the grease over my work. These candles drop dreadfully, unless you hold them exactly upright. And gutter. Now give me your arm, and I will go to bed. I _think_ I shall sleep.” And the worthy woman was really--if her son could only have got his eyes freed from the scales of domestic superst.i.tion, and seen it--intensely happy and exultant at this fiendish little piece of discomfort-mongering.
She had scored; there was no doubt of it. She was even turning it over in her own mind whether it would not bear repet.i.tion at a future time; and quite intended, if so, to enjoy herself over it. Now the doctor was contrite and heavy at heart at his cruel conduct; walking about--just think!--and talking over his own affairs while his self-sacrificing mother was sitting in the dark, with the lamp out!
To be sure there was no visible reason why she should have had it put out, except as a picturesque and imaginative way of rubbing her altruism into its nearest victim. Unless, indeed, it was done in order that the darkened window should seem to announce to the returning truant that she had gone to bed, and to lull his mind to unconsciousness of the ambush that awaited him.
Anyhow, the doctor was so impressed with his own delinquency that he felt it would be impossible, the lamp having been put out, to take his mother into his confidence about his conversation with Fenwick. Which he certainly would have done--late as the hour was--if it had been left in. So he said good-night, and carried the chaos of his emotions away to bed with him, and lay awake with them till c.o.c.k-crow.
As Fenwick walked back home, timing his pace by his expectation of his cigar's duration, he wondered whether, perhaps, he had not been a little rash. He felt obliged to go back on interviews with Sally, in which the doctor had been spoken of. He recalled for his justification one in particular. The family conclave at Krakatoa Villa had recurred to a remark of Rosalind's about the drawback to Vereker's practice of his bachelorhood. He was then, as it were, brought up for a second reading, and new clauses added to him containing schedules of possible wives. Fenwick had noticed, then, that Sally's a.s.sent to the insertion of any candidate's name turned on two points: one, the lady's consent being taken for granted; the other, that every young single female human creature known by name or describable by language was actually out of the question, or inadmissible in its answer. She rejected almost all applicants for the post of a doctor's wife without examining their claims, on the ground of moral or physical defect--as, for instance, you never would go and tie up poor Prosy to a wife that golloped. Sylvia Peplow, indeed! Interrogated about the nature of ”golloping,” Sally could go no nearer than that Miss Peplow looked as if she couldn't help it. And her sister was worse: she was perfectly pecky, and shut up with a click. And as for the large Miss Baker--why, you knew how large _she_ was, and it would be quite ridiculous!
Besides, her stupidity!
The only candidates that got the least consideration owed their success to their names or expectations. Caroline Smith had, or would have sometime, a thousand a year. But she squinted. Still, she might be thought over. Mrs. Pollicitus Biggs's cousin Isabella would have two thousand when her mother died, but the vitality of the latter was indescribable. Besides, she was just like her name, Isabella, and did her hair religiously. There was Chariclea Epimenides, certainly, who had got three thousand, and would have six more. She might be worth thinking of....
”Why don't you have him yourself, Sarah?” Fenwick had asked at this point. Rosalind had just left the room to speak to Ann. But he didn't want Sarah to be obliged to answer, so he went on: ”Why are all these young ladies' incomes exactly in round thousands?”
To which Sally had replied: ”They always are, when you haven't got 'em.” But had fallen into contemplation, and presently said--out of the blue--”Because I'm an unsettled sort of party--a vagrant. I shouldn't do for a G.P.'s wife, thank you, Jeremiah! I should like to live in a caravan, and go about the country, and wood fires out of doors.” Was it, Fenwick wondered, the gipsies they had seen to-day that had made her think of this? and then he recalled how he afterwards heard the kitten singing to herself the old ballad:
”What care I for my goose-feather bed?
What care I for my money oh?”
and hearing her so sing had somehow imputed to the parade of bravado in the swing of its rhythm a something that might have belonged to a touched chord. Like enough a mistake of his, said Reason. But for all that the reminiscence played its part in soothing Fenwick's misgivings of his own rashness.
”The kitten's all right,” said he to himself. ”And if she doesn't want Master Conrad, the sooner he knows it the better!” But he had little doubt of the course things would take as he stopped to look at that venturesome star, that seemed to be going altogether too near the moon for safety.
In a few moments he turned again towards home. And then his mind must needs go off to the thing of all others he wished not to think of--_himself_. He had come to see this much clearly, that until the veil floated away from between him and his past and left the whole atmosphere transparent, there could be no certainty that a recrudescence of that past would not be fatal to his wife's happiness.