Part 72 (1/2)
”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 kins.h.i.+p. 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 fis.h.i.+ng-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 repa.s.sed 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 ident.i.ty 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 circ.u.mstances 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 s.n.a.t.c.hes 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 princ.i.p.al const.i.tuent--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 wis.h.i.+ng 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 circ.u.mstances 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,”