Somehow Good, William Frend De Morgan [essential books to read .txt] 📗

/> "Magnificent!" Fenwick replied, puffing at it. "How shall we return his civility?"

"Give _him_ a cigar next time you get a chance."

Fenwick laughs, in derision of his own cigars.

"God bless me, my dearest love! Why, one of the Baron's is worth my whole box. We must discover something better than that." Both ponder over possible reciprocities in silence, but discover nothing, and seem to give up the quest by mutual consent. Then he says: "I wonder why he cosseted up to us last night in the garden so!" And she repeats: "I wonder why!"

"I don't believe he even knows our name," she continues; and then he repeats: "_I_ don't believe he knows our name. I'm sure he doesn't."

"And it was so dark, he couldn't have seen much of us. But his cigar's quite beautiful. Blow the smoke in my face, Gerry!" She shuts her eyes to receive it. How handsome Sally would think mamma was looking if she could see her now in the light of the sunset! Her husband thinks much to that effect, as he turns to blow the smoke on order into the face that is so close to his, as they lean arm-in-arm on the parapet the sun has left his warmth on, and means to take his eyes off in half an hour. They really look quite a young couple, and the frivolity of their conduct adds to the effect. Nobody would believe in her grown-up daughter, to see that young Mrs. Algernon Fenwick.

"I am ferry root, Mrs. Harrisson. If I introot, you shall say I introot." It is the Baron, manifestly. His form--or rather his bulk, for he cannot be said to have a form; he is amorphous--is baronial in the highest degree. His stupendous chest seems to be a huge cavern for the secretion of gutturals, which are discharged as heavy artillery at a hint from some unseen percussion-cap within.

Mrs. Fenwick starts, a little taken aback at the Baron's thunderclap; for he had approached unawares, and her closed eyes helped on the effect. When they opened, they looked round, as for a third person. But the Baron was alone.

"Where is Mrs. Harrisson?" She asks the question with the most absolute unconsciousness that she was herself the person addressed. The Baron, still believing, presumably, that Fenwick is _Mr._ Harrisson, is not a person to be trusted with the position created. He develops an offensive waggery, shakes the forefinger that has detected an escapade, and makes of his lips the round _O_ of shocked propriety, at heart in sympathy with the transgressor. His little grey eyes glare through his gold-rimmed spectacles, and his huge chest shakes with a substratum of laughter, only just loud enough to put in the text.

"O-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho! No, do not be afraight. She is not here. We unterzdant. It is all unterzdoot. We shall be ferry tizgreet...." And then the Baron pats space with his fingers only, not moving his hand, as a general indication of secrecy to the universe.

Probably the slight flush that mantles the face he speaks to is less due to any offence at his fat, good-humoured German raillery than to some vague apprehension of the real nature of the position about to develop. But Fenwick imputes it to the former. If Rosey was inclined to treat the thing as a harmless joke, he would follow suit; but she looks hurt, and her husband, sensitive about every word that is said to her, blazes out:

"What on earth do you mean? What the devil do you mean? How dare you speak to my wife like that?" He makes a half-step towards the burly mass of flesh, still shaking with laughter. But his wife stops him.

"Do be patient, Gerry darling! Don't flare up like that. I'll have a divorce. I'll tell Sally...." a threat which seems to have a softening effect. "Can't you see, dear, that there is some misunderstanding?" Fenwick looks from her to the Baron, puzzled. The latter drops his jocular rallying.

"I saw last night you did not know me, Mr. Harrisson. That is straintch! Have you forgotten Diedrich Kreutzkammer?" He says his name with a sort of quiet confidence of immediate recognition. But Fenwick only looks blankly at him.

"He does not know me!" cries the German, with an astonished voice. "'Frisco--the Klondyke--Chicago--the bridge at Brooklyn--why, it is not two years ago...." He pauses between the names of the places, enforcing each as a reminder with an active forefinger.

Fenwick seems suddenly to breathe the fresh air of a solution of the problem. He breaks into a sunny smile, to his wife's great relief.

"Indeed, Baron Kreutzkammer, _my_ name is not Harrisson. _My_ name is Fenwick, and this lady is my wife--Mrs. Fenwick. I have never been in any of the places you mention." For the moment he forgot his own state of oblivion: a thing he was getting more and more in the habit of doing. The Baron looked intently at him, and looked again. He slapped his forehead, not lightly at all, but as if good hard slaps would really correct his misapprehensions and put him right with the world.

"I am all _wronck_" he said, borrowing extra force from an indurated _g_. "But it is ferry bustling--I am bustled!" By this he meant puzzled. Fenwick felt apologetic.

"I don't know how to thank you for the cigar Mr. Harrisson ought to have had," said he. He felt really ashamed of having smoked it under false pretences.

"You shall throw it away, and I giff you one for yourself. That is eacey! But I am bustled."

He continued puzzled. Mrs. Fenwick felt that he was only keeping further comment and inquiry in check because it would have been a doubt thrown on her husband's word to make any. Her uneasiness would have been visible if her power of concealing it had not been fortified by her belief that his happiness as well as hers depended (for the present, at any rate) on his ignorance of his own past. Perhaps she was wrong; with that we have nothing to do; we are telling of things as they happened. Only we wish to record our conviction that Rosalind Fenwick was acting for her husband's sake as well as her own--not from a vulgar instinct of self-preservation.

The Baron made conversation, and polished his little powerful spectacle-lenses. He blew his nose like a salute of one gun in the course of his polishing. When _we_ blow _our_ nose, we hush our pocket-handkerchief back into its home, and ignore it a little. The Baron didn't. He continued polishing on an unalloyed corner through the whole of a very perceptible amount of chat about the tricks memory plays us, and the probable depth of the blue water below. Rosalind's uneasiness continued. It grew worse, when the Baron, suddenly replacing his spectacles and fixing his eyes firmly on her husband, said sternly, "Yes, it is a bustle!" but was relieved when equally suddenly, he shouted in a stentorian voice, "We shall meed lader," and took his leave.

"He's a jolly fellow, the Baron, anyhow!" said Fenwick. "I wonder whether they heard him at Altdorf?"

"Every word, I should think. But how I should like to see the Mr. Harrisson he took you for!"

This was really part of a policy of nettle-grasping, which continued. She always felt happier after defying a difficulty than after flinching. After all, if Gerry's happiness and her own were not motive enough, consider Sally's. If she should really come to know her mother's story, Sally might die of it.

Fenwick went on to the ending of the cigar, dreamily wondering, evidently "bustled" like the Baron. As he blew the last smoke away, and threw the smoking end down the slope, he repeated her words spoken a minute before, "_I_ should like to see the Mr. Harrisson he took me for."

"It would be funny to see oneself as ithers see one. Some power might gie you the giftie, Gerry. If only we could meet that Mr. Harrisson!"

"Do you remember how we saw our profiles in a glass, and you said, 'I'm sure those are somebody else'? Illogical female!"

"Why was I illogical? I knew they were going to turn out us in the end. But I was sure I shouldn't be convinced at once." And the talk wandered away into a sort of paradoxical metaphysics.

But when, later in the evening, this lady was described by confidential chat at the far end of the salon as that handsome young Mrs. Algernon Fenwick who was only just married, and whose husband was playing chess in the smoking-room, and what a pity it was they were not going to stop over Monday, she thus described, accurately enough, was rather rejoicing that that handsome Mr. Fenwick, who looked like a Holbein portrait, was being kept quiet for half an hour, because she wanted to get a chance for a little chat with that dreadful noisy Prussian Von, who made all the glasses ring at table when he shouted so. Rosalind had her own share of feminine curiosity, don't you see? and she was not by any means satisfied about Mr. Harrisson. She did not acknowledge the nature of her suspicions to herself, but she would very much like to know, for all that! She got her opportunity.

"I shouldn't the least mind myself if smoking _were_ allowed in the salon, Baron. You saw to-day that I really liked the smoke?"

"Ja! when I make that chogue. It was a root chogue. But I am forgiffen?"

"It was Gerry who had to be forgiven, breaking out like that. I hope he has promised not to do so any more?"

"He has bromiss to be goot. I have bromiss to be goot. We shall be _sages enfants_, as the French say. But I will tell you, Madame Fenwick, about my vrent Harrisson your Cherry is so ligue...."

"Let's go out on the terrace, then you can light a cigar and be comfortable.... Yes, I'll have my wrap ... no, that's wrong-side-out ... that's right now.... Well, perhaps it will be a little cool for sitting down. We can walk about."

"Now I can tell you about my vrent in America that your hussband is so ligue. He could speague French--ferry well indeed." Rosalind looked up. "It was when I heard your hussband speaguing French to that grosse Grafin Pobzodonoff that I think to myself that was Alchernon Harrisson that I knew in California."

"Suppose we sit down. I don't think it's too cold.... Yes, this place will do nicely. It's sheltered from the wind." If she does look a little pale--and she feels she does--it will be quite invisible in this dark corner, for the night is dark under a canopy of blazing stars. "What were you saying about French?"

"Alchernon Harrisson--that was his name--he could speague it well. He spogue id ligue a nadiff. Better than I speague English. I speague English so well because I have a knees at Ganderbury." This meant a niece at Canterbury. Baron Kreutzkammer speaks English so well that it is almost a shame to lay stress on his pronunciation of consonants. The spelling is difficult too, so we will give the substance of what he told Rosalind without his articulation. By this time she, for her part, was feeling thoroughly uneasy. It seemed to her--but it may be she exaggerated--that nothing stood between her husband and the establishment of his identity with this Harrisson except the difference of name. And how could she know that he had not changed his name? Had she not changed hers?

The Baron's account of Harrisson was that he