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

premature and spoils all! Poor Prosy is too far gone to be a risky subject of experiment. But _he_ won't say anything--not he! "After all, you know," he continues, "it may all turn out a false alarm. Or false hope, should I say?"

No answer. And he doesn't press for one. He is in a land of pitfalls.

* * * * *


"What have you and your medical adviser been talking about all the while, there in mid-ocean?" Fenwick forgets the late event with pleasure. Sally, with her hair threatening to come down in the wind, is enough to stampede a troop of nightmares.

"Poor Prosy!" is all the answer that comes at present. Perhaps if that uncontrolled black coil will be tractable she will concede more anon. You can't get your hair back under your hat and walk quick and talk, all at the same time.

"Poorer than usual, Sarah?" But really just at this corner it's as much as you can do, if you have skirts, to get along at all; to say nothing of the way such loose ends as you indulge in turn on you and flagellate your face in the wind. Oh, the vicious energy of that stray ribbon! Fancy having to use up one hand to hold that!

But a lull came when the corner was fairly turned, in the lee of a home of many nets, where masses of foam-fleck had found a respite, and leisure to collapse, a bubble at a time. You could see the prism-scale each had to itself, each of the millions, if you looked close enough. Collectively, their appearance was slovenly. A chestnut-coloured man a year old, who looked as if he meant some day to be a boatswain, was seated on a pavement that cannot have soothed his unprotected flesh--flint pebbles can't, however round--and enjoying the mysterious impalpable nature of this foam. However, even for such hands as his--and Sally wanted to kiss them badly--they couldn't stop. She got her voice, though, in the lull.

"Yes--a little. I've found out all about Prosy."

"Found out about him?"

"I've made him talk about it. It's all about his ma and a young lady he's in love with...." Fenwick's _ha!_ or _h'm!_ or both joined together, was probably only meant to hand the speaker on, but the tone made her suspicious. She asked him why he said that, imitating it; on which he answered, "Why shouldn't he?" "Because," said Sally, "if you fancy Prosy's in love with me, you're mistaken."

"Very good! Cut along, Sarah! You've made him talk about the young lady he's in love with...?"

"Well, he as good as talked about her, anyhow! _I_ understood quite plain. He wants to marry her awfully, but he's afraid to say so to her, because of his ma."

"Doesn't Mrs. Vereker like her?"

"Dotes upon her, he says. Ug-g-h! No, it isn't that. It's the lugging the poor girl into his ma's sphere of influence. He's conscious of his ma, but adores her. Only he's aware she's overwhelming, and always gets her own roundabout way. I prefer Tishy's dragon, if you ask _me_."

At that point Sally is quite unconscious of Fenwick's amused eyes fixed on her, and his smile in ambush. She says the last words through a hairpin, while her hands take advantage of the lull to make a good job of that rope of black hair. She will go on and tell all the story; so Fenwick doesn't speak. Surprised at first by the tale of Dr. Conrad's young lady, his ideas have by now fructified. Sally continues:

"He's often told me he thought G.P.'s were better single, for their wives' sakes--that sounds wrong, somehow!--but it isn't that. It's his ma entirely. I suppose he's told you about the epileptiform disorders?" No, he hadn't. "Well, now! Fancy Prosy not telling you that! He's become quite an authority since those papers he had in the 'Lancet,' and he's thinking of giving up general practice. Sir Dioscorides Gayler's a cousin of his, you know, and would pass on his practice to Prosy on easy terms. House in Seymour Street, Portman Square. Great authority on epilepsy and epileptiform disorders. Wants a successor who knows about 'em. Naturally. Wants three thousand pounds. Naturally. Big fees! But he would make it easy for Prosy."

"That would be all right; soon manage that." Fenwick speaks with the confidence of one in a thriving trade. The deity of commerce, security, can manage all things. Insecurity is atheism in the City. "But then," he adds, "Vereker wouldn't marry, even with a house and big-fee consultations, because he's afraid his mother would hector over his wife. Is that it?"

"That's it! It's his Goody mother. I say, it _is_ blowing!" It was, and they had emerged from the shelter into the wind. No more talk!

* * * * *


As Fenwick, sea-blown and salted, resorted to the lodging-house allowance of fresh water and soap, in a perfunctory and formal preparation for dinner, his mind ran continually on Sally's communication. As for the other young lady being valid, that he dismissed as nonsense not worth consideration. Vereker had been resorting to a furtive hint of a declaration, disguised as fiction. It was a _fabula narrata de_ Sally, _mutato nomine_. If she didn't see through it, and respond in kind, it would show him how merely a friend he was, and nothing more. "Perhaps he doesn't understand our daughter's character," said Fenwick to Rosalind, when he had repeated the conversation to her. "Of course he doesn't," she replied. "No young man of his sort understands girls the least. The other sort of young man understands the other sort of girls."

And then a passing wonderment had touched her mind, of how strange it was that Sally should be one of her own sort, so very distinctly. How about inheritance? She grew reflective and silent over it, and then roused herself to wonder, illogically, why Gerry hadn't gone on talking.

The reason was that as his mind dwelt happy and satisfied on the good prospect Vereker would have if he could step into his cousin's specialist practice as a consulting physician, with a reputation already begun, his thoughts were caught with a strange jerk. What and whence was a half-memory of some shadowy store of wealth that was to make it the easiest thing in the world for him to finance the new departure? It had nothing to do with the vast mysterious possibilities of credit. It was a recollection of some resourceful backing he was entitled to, somehow; and he was reminded by it of his dream about the furniture--(we told you of that?)--but with a reservation. When he woke from the sleep-dream of the furniture, he in a short time could distinctly identify it as a dream, and was convinced no such furniture had ever existed. He could not shake off this waking dream, and it clogged his mind painfully, and made him silent.

So much so that when Rosalind, soon completed for the banqueting-board, looked into the adjoining room to see what progress Gerry was making, and why he was silent, she only saw the back of a powerful frame in its shirt-sleeves, and a pair of hands holding on each side an unbrushed head. The elbows indispensable to them rested on the window-bar.

"Look alive, Gerry darling!--you'll make dinner late.... Anything wrong, dear love?" Sudden anxiety in her voice. "Is it another...?" Another what? No need to define, exactly!

"A sort of one," Fenwick answers. "Not so bad as the last. Hardly describable! Never mind."

He made no effort towards description, and his wife did not press him for it. What good end could be gained by fidgeting him?

But she knew now that her life would be weighted with an anxiety hard to bear, until his hesitating return of memory should make its decision of success or failure. A guarantee of the latter would have been most to her liking, but how could she hope for that now?


CHAPTER XXXV


HOW A STONE THROWN DROVE THE WEDGE FURTHER YET. OF A TERRIBLE NIGHT IN A BIG GALE, AND A DOOR THAT SLAMMED. THE WEDGE WELL IN

The speculative weather-wisdom of the tattooed capstan-driver was confirmed when three in the morning came, and the full of the tide. The wind must have gone round to the southward, or to some equally stimulating quarter, to judge by the work it got through that night in the way of roofs blown off and chimney-pots blown down; standing crops laid flat and spoiled for reaping; trees too full of leaf to bear such rough treatment compelled to tear up half their roots and fall, or pay tribute to the gale in boughs snapped asunder in time to spare their parent stem. All these results we landsmen could see for ourselves next day, after the storm had died down, and when the air was so delightful after it that we took walks in the country on purpose to enjoy it. But for the mischief it did that night at sea, from sportively carrying away the spars of ships, which they wanted for their own use, or blowing a stray reefer from the weather-earring, to sending a full crew to the depths below, or on jagged rocks no message from the white foam above could warn the look-out of in time--for the record of this we should have belated intermittent newspaper paragraphs, ever so long after.

But the wind had not reached its ideal when, at the end of a pleasant evening, Sally and her belongings decided that they must just go down to the beach and see the waves before going to bed. Wasn't there a moon? Well--yes, there was a moon, but you couldn't see it. That made a difference, certainly, but not a conclusive one. It wasn't a bad sort of a night, although it certainly was blowing, and the waves would be grand seen close. So the party turned out to go down to the beach. It included the Julius Bradshaws and Dr. Conrad, who had looked in as usual. But the doctor found out that it was past eleven, and, recalled by duty, returned to his Octopus.

The waves, seen close, would have been grand if you could have seen them from the beach, or as much of it as they had left you to stand on. But you really could only guess what was going on out in that great dark world of deep thunder, beyond the successive rushes of mad foam, each of which made up its mind to tear the coast up this time; and then changed it and went back, but always took with it stones enough for next attempt. And the indignant clamour of the rushing shoals, dragged off to sea against their will, rose and fell in the lulls of the thunder beyond. Sally wanted to quote Tennyson's "Maud" about them, but she couldn't for the tremendous wind.

The propensity to throw stones into the water, whenever there are stones and water, is always a strong one, even when the water is black mountain ranges, foam-ridged Sierras coming on to crush us, appalling us, even though we know they are sure to die in time. Stones were thrown on this occasion by Sally and her stepfather, who