Somehow Good Part 9

"There was a divorce, then?" we said. Terms had to be made with the cough, but speech came in the end.

"Oh yes, of course--of course! Don't mind repeatin' that--thing was in the papers at the time. What I was suggestin' holdin' your tongue about was that story about Penderfield and her.... Well, as I said just now, I don't mind repeatin' it to you; you ain't Horrocks nor little Silc.o.x--you can keep your tongue in your head. Remember, _I_ know nothing; I'm only tellin' what was said at the time.... Now, whatever was her name? Was it Rayner, or was it Verschoyle? Pelloo!...

Pelloo!..." The Major tried to call the attention of a man who was deep in an Oriental newspaper at the far end of the next room. But when the Major overstrains his voice, it misses fire like a costermonger's, and only a falsetto note comes on a high register. When this happens he is wroth.

"It's that dam noise they're all makin'," he says, as soon as he has become articulate. "That's the man I want, behind the 'Daily Sunderbund.' If it wasn't for this dam toe, I'd go across and ask him.

No, don't you go. Send one of these dam jumpin' frogs--idlin' about!"

He requisitions a pa.s.sing waiter, gripping him by the arm to give him instructions. "Just--you--touch the General's arm, and ketch his attention. Say Major Roper." And he liquidates his obligations to a great deal of asthmatic cough, while the jumping frog does his bidding.

The General (who is now Lord Pellew of Cutch, by-the-bye) came with an amiable smile from behind the journal, and ended a succession of good-evening nods to newcomers by casting an anchor opposite the Major. The latter, having by now taken the surest steps towards bringing the whole room into his confidence, stated the case he sought confirmation for.

Oh yes, certainly; the General was in Umballa in '80; remembered the young lady quite well, and the row between Penderfield and his wife about her. As for Penderfield, everybody remembered _him_! _De mortuis nil_, etc.--of course, of course. For all that, he was one of the d.a.m.nedest scoundrels that ever deserved to be turned out of the service. Ought to have been cas.h.i.+ered long ago. Good job he's gone to the devil! Yes, he was quite sure he was remembering the right girl.

No, no, he wasn't thinking of Daisy Neversedge--no, nor of little Miss Wrennick: same sort of story, but he wasn't thinking of them at all.

Only the name wasn't either Rayner or Verschoyle. General Pellew stood thoughtfully feeling about in a memory at fault, and looking at an unlighted cigar he rolled in his fingers, as though it might help if caressed. Then he had a flash of illumination. "Rosalind Graythorpe,"

he said.

There we had it, sure enough! The Major see-sawed in the air with a finger of sudden corroboration. "Rosalind Graythorpe," he repeated triumphantly, and then again, "Ros-a-lind Graythorpe," dwelling on the syllables, and driving the name home, as it were, to the apprehension of all within hearing. It was so necessary to a complete confidence that every one should know whom he was holding his tongue about. Where would be the merit of discretion else? But the enjoyment of details should be _sotto voce_. The General dropped his voice to a good sample, suggesting a like course to the more demonstrative secrecy of the Major.

"I remember the whole story quite well," said he. "The girl was going out by herself to marry a young fellow up the country at Umballa, I think. They were _fiances_, and on the way the news came of the outbreak of cholera. So she got hung up for a while at Penderfield's--sort of cousin, I believe, him or his wife--till the district was sanitary again. Bad job for her, as it turned out! n.o.body there to warn her what sort of fellow Penderfield was--and if there had been she wouldn't have believed 'em. She was a madcap sort of a girl, and regularly in the hands of about as bad a couple as you'll meet with in a long spell--India or anywhere! They used to say out there that the she Penderfield winked at all her husband's affairs as long as he didn't cut across _her_ little arrangements--did more than wink, in fact--lent a helping hand; but only as long as she could rely on his remaining detached, as you might say. The moment she suspected an _entichement_ on her husband's part she was up in arms. And he was just the same about her. I remember Lady Sharp saying that if Penderfield had suspected his wife of caring about any of her co-respondents he would have divorced her at once. They were a rum couple, but their att.i.tude to one another was the only good thing about them." The General lighted his cigar, and seemed to consider this was chapter one. The Major appended a foot-note, for our benefit.

"_Leave be_ was the word--the word for Penderfield. _You'll_ understand that, sir. No _meddlin'_! A good-lookin' Colonel's wife in garrison has her choice, good Lard! Why, she's only got to hold her finger up!" We entirely appreciated the position, and that a siren has a much easier task in the entanglement of a confiding dragoon than falls to the lot of Don Giovanni in the reverse case. But we were more interested in the particular story of Mrs. Nightingale than in the general ethics of profligacy.

"I suppose," we suggested, "that the young woman threatened to be a formidable rival, as there was a row?" Each of the officers nodded at the other, and said that was about it. The Major then started on a little private curriculum of nods on his own account, backed by a half-closed eye of superhuman subtlety, and added once or twice that that _was_ about it. We inferred from this that the row had been volcanic in character. The Major then added, repeating the air-sawing action of his forefinger admonitorily, "But mind you, _I_ say nothin'.

And my recommendation to you is to say nothin' neither."

"The rest of the story's soon told," said the General, answering our look of inquiry. "Miss Graythorpe went away to Umballa to be married.

It was all gossip, mind you, about herself and Penderfield. But gossip always went one way about any girl he was seen with. I have my own belief; so has Jack Roper." The Major underwent a perfect convulsion of nods, winks, and acquiescence. "Well, she went away, and was married to this young shaver, who was very little over twenty. He wasn't in the service--civil appointment, I think. How long was it, Major, before they parted? Do you recollect?"

"Week--ten days--month--six weeks! Couldn't say. They didn't part at the church door; that's all I could say for certain. Tell him the rest."

"They certainly parted very soon, and people told all sorts of stories. The stories got fewer and clearer when it came out that the young woman was in the family way. No one had any right _then_ to ascribe the child that was on its road to any father except the young man she had fallen out with. But they did--it was laid at Colonel Penderfield's door, before there was any sufficient warrant. However, it was all clear enough when the child was born."

"When was the divorce?"

"He applied for a divorce a twelvemonth after the marriage. The child was then spoken of as being four months old. My impression is he did not succeed in getting a divorce."

"Not he," said the Major, overtopping the General's quiet, restrained voice with his falsetto. "I recollect _that_, bless you! The Court commiserated him, but couldn't give him any relief. So he made a bolt of it. And he's never been heard of since, as far as I know."

"What did the mother do? Where did she go?" we asked.

"Well, she might have been hard put to it to know what to do. But she met with old Lund--Carrington Lund, you know, not Beauchamp; he'd a civil appointment at Umritsur--comes here sometimes. You know him?

She's his Rosey he talks about. He was an old friend of her father, and took her in and protected her--saw her through it. She came with him to England. I was with them on the boat, part of the way. Then she took the name of Macnaghten, I believe. The young husband's name I can't remember the least. But it wasn't Macnaghten."

The Major squeaked in again:

"No--nor hers neither! Nightingale, General--that's the name she goes by. Friend of this gentleman. Very charmin' person indeed! Introdooce you? And a very charmin' little daughter, goin' nineteen." The two officers interchanged glances over our young friend Sally. "She was a nice baby on the boat," said the General; and the Major chuckled wheezily, and hoped she didn't take after her father.

We left him to the tender mercies of gout and asthma, and the enjoyment of a sherry-cobbler through a straw, looking rather too fat for his snuff-coloured trousers with a cord outside, and his flowered silk waistcoat; but very much too fat for the straw, the slenderness of which was almost painful by contrast.

Perhaps you will see from this why we hinted at the outset of this chapter why Mrs. Nightingale was a conundrum we had given up in despair, of which no one had told us the answer. We wanted your sympathy, you see, and to get it have given you an insight into the way our information was gleaned. Having given you this sample, we will now return to simple narrative of what we know of the true story, and trouble you with no further details of how we came by it.

CHAPTER VIII

THE ANTECEDENTS OF ROSALIND NIGHTINGALE, SALLY'S MOTHER. HOW BOTH CAME FROM INDIA TO ENGLAND, AND TOOK A VILLA ON A REPAIRING LEASE. SOMEWHAT OF SALLY'S UPBRINGING. SOME MORE ROPER GOSSIP, AND A CAT LET OUT OF A BAG. A PIECE OF PRESENCE OF MIND

Sally Graythorpe (our Mrs. Nightingale) was the daughter of a widowed mother, also called Sally, the name in both cases being (as in that of her daughter whom we know) Rosalind, not Sarah. This mother married _en secondes noces_ a former sweetheart; it had been a case of a match opposed by parents on the ground of the apparent hopelessness of the young man's prospects. Mr. Paul Nightingale, however, falsified the doleful predictions about his future by becoming a successful leader-writer and war correspondent. It was after the close of the American Civil War, in which he had gained a good deal of distinction, that he met at Saratoga his old flame, Mrs. Graythorpe, then a widow with a little daughter five or six years old. Having then no wishes to consult but their own, and no reason to the contrary appearing, they were married.

They did not find the States a pleasant domicile in the early days following the great war, and came to England. The little daughter soon became like his own child to Mr. Paul Nightingale, and had his wish been complied with she would have taken his name during his life. But her mother saw no reason, apparently, for extinguis.h.i.+ng Mr. Graythorpe _in toto_, and she remained Sally Graythorpe.

Miss Graythorpe was, at a guess, about fifteen when her stepfather died. Her mother, now for the second time a widow, must have been very comfortably off, as she had an income of her own as well as a life-interest in her late husband's invested savings, which was unfettered by any conditions as to her marrying again, or otherwise.

She was not long in availing herself of this liberty; for about the time when her daughter was of an age to be engaged on her own account, she accepted a third offer of marriage--this time from a clergyman, who, like herself, had already stood by the death-beds of two former mates, and was qualified to sympathize with her in every way, including comfortable inheritances.

But the young Sally Graythorpe kicked furiously against this new arrangement. It was an insult to papa (she referred to Mr.

Nightingale; her real papa was a negligible factor), and she wouldn't live in the same house with that canting old hypocrite. She would go away straight to India, and marry Gerry--_he_ would be glad enough to have her--see how constant the dear good boy had been! Not a week pa.s.sed but she got a letter. She asked her mother flatly what could she want to marry again for at her time of life? And such a withered old sow-thistle as that! Sub-dean, indeed! She would _sub-dean_ him!

In fact, there were words, and the words almost went the length of taking the form known as "language" _par excellence_. The fact is, this Sally and her mother never _did_ get on together well; it wasn't the least like her subsequent relation with our special Sally--Sally number three--who trod on Mr. Fenwick in the Twopenny Tube.

The end of the "words" was a letter to Gerry, a liberal trousseau, and a first-cla.s.s pa.s.sage out by P. and O. The young lady's luggage for the baggage-room was beautifully stencilled "Care of Sir Oughtred Penderfield, The Residency, Khopal." Perfectly safe in his keeping no doubt it would have been. But, then, that might have been true also of luggage if consigned to the Devil. If the tale hinted at in our last chapter _was_ true, its poor little headstrong, inexperienced heroine would have been about as safe with the latter.

Anyhow, this club gossip supplies all the broad outline of the story; and it is a story we need not dwell on. It gives us no means of reconciling the like of the Mrs. Nightingale we know now with the amount of dissimulation, if not treachery, she must have practised on an unsuspicious boy, a.s.suming that she did, as a matter of course, conceal her relation with Penderfield. One timid conjecture we have is, that the girl, having to deal with a subject every accepted phrase relating to which is an equivocation or an hypocrisy, really found it impossible to make her position understood by a lover who simply idolized the ground she trod on. Under such circ.u.mstances, she may either have given up the attempt in despair, or jumped too quickly to the conclusion that she had succeeded in communicating the facts, and had been met half-way by forgiveness. Put yourself in her position, and resolve in your mind exactly how you would have gone about it--how you would have got a story of that sort forced into the mind of a welcoming lover; wedged into the heart of his unsuspicious rapture.

Or, if you fancied he understood you, and no storm of despairing indignation came, think how easy it would be to persuade yourself you had done your duty by the facts, and might let the matter lapse! Why should not one woman once take advantage of the obscurities of decorum so many a man has found comforting to his soul during confession of sin, when pouring his revelations into an ear whose owner's experience of life has not qualified her to understand them. Think of the difficulty you yourself have encountered in getting at the absolute facts in some delicate concurrence of circ.u.mstances in this connexion, because of the fundamental impossibility of getting any one, man or woman, to speak direct truth!

Let us find out, or construct, all the excuses we can for poor Miss Graythorpe. Let us imagine the last counsel she had from the only one of her own s.e.x who would be likely to know anything of the matter--the nefarious partner (if the Major's surmise was true) in the crime of her betrayer. "You are making a fuss about nothing. Men are not so immaculate themselves; your Gerry is no Joseph! If he rides the high horse with you, just you ask him what _he_ had to say to Potiphar's wife! Oh, we're not so strait-laced out here--bless us alive!--as we are in England, or pretend to be." We can fancy the elegant brute saying it.

All our surmises bring us very little light, though. It is not that we are at such a loss to forgive poor Sally Graythorpe as a mere human creature we know nothing about. The difficulty is to reconcile what she seems to have been then with what she is now. We give it up.

Only, we wish to remark that it is her offence against her _fiance_ alone that we find it hard to stomach. As to her relations with Colonel Penderfield, we can say nothing without full particulars. And even if we had them, and they bore hard upon Miss Graythorpe, our mind would go back to the Temple in Jerusalem, and a morning nearly two thousand years ago. The voice that said who was to cast the first stone is heard no more, or has merged in ritual. But the Scribes and Pharisees are with us still, and quite ready to do the pelting. We should be harder on the Colonel, no doubt, with our prejudices; only, observe! he isn't brought up for judgment. He never is, any more than the other party was that day in Jerusalem. But, then, the Scribes and Pharisees were male! And they had the courage of their convictions--their previous convictions!--and acted on them in their selection of the culprit.

Without further apology for retailing conjecture as certainty, the following may be taken as substantially the story of this lady--we do not know whether to call her a divorced or a deserted wife--and her little enc.u.mbrance.

She found a resource in her trouble in the person of this old friend of her stepfather Paul Nightingale, Colonel (at that time Major) Lund.

This officer had remained on in harness to the unusual age of fifty-eight, but it was a civil appointment he held; he had retired from active service in the ordinary course of things. It was probably not only because of his old friends.h.i.+p for her stepfather, but because the poor girl told him her unvarnished tale in full and he believed it, that he helped and protected her through the critical period that followed her parting from her husband; found her a domicile and seclusion, and enlisted on her behalf the sympathies of more than one officer's wife at our Sally's birth-place--Umritsur, if Major Roper was right. He corresponded with her mother as intercessor and mediator, but that good lady was in no mood for mercy: had her daughter not told her that she was too old to think of marriage? Too old! And had she not called her venerable sub-dean a withered old sow-thistle? She could forgive, under guarantees of the sinner's repentance; for had not her Lord enjoined forgiveness where the bail tendered was sufficient? Only, so many reservations and qualifications occurred in her interpretations of the Gospel narrative that forgiveness, diluted out of all knowledge, left its perpetrator free to refuse ever to see its victim again. But she would pray for her.

A subdiaconal application would receive attention; that was the suggestion between the lines.

The kind-hearted old soldier pooh-poohed her first letters. She would come round in time. Her natural good-feeling would get the better of her when she had had her religious fling. He didn't put it so--a strict old Puritan of the old school--but that was Miss Graythorpe's gloss in her own mind on what he did say. However, her mother never did come round. She cherished her condemnation of her daughter to the end, forgiving her again _more suo_, if anything with increased asperity, on her death-bed.

This Colonel Lund is (have we mentioned this before?) the "old fossil"

whom we have seen at Krakatoa Villa. He was usually called "the Major"

there, from early a.s.sociation. He continued to foster and shelter his _protegee_ during the year following the arrival of our own particular young Sally on the scene, saw her safely through her divorce proceedings, and then, when he finally retired from his post as deputy commissioner for the Umritsur district, arranged that she herself, with her enc.u.mbrance and an ayah, should accompany him to England. His companion travelled as Mrs. Graythorpe, and Sally junior as Mrs.

Graythorpe's baby. She was excessively popular on the voyage; Sally was not suffering from sea-sickness, or feeling apparently the least embarra.s.sed by the recent bar-sinister in her family. She courted Society, seizing it by its whiskers or its curls, and holding on like grim death. She endeavoured successively to get into the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic, but failed in every attempt, and was finally landed at Southampton in safety, after a resolute effort to drag the captain, who was six feet three high and weighed twenty stone, ash.o.r.e by his beard. She was greatly missed on the remainder of the voyage (to Bremen--the boat was a German boat) by a family of Vons, who fortunately never guessed at the flaw in Sally's extraction, or there's no knowing what might not have happened.

But the arrival was too late for her poor mother to utilise her services towards a reconciliation with her own offended parent. A sudden attack of influenza, followed by low diet on high principles, and uncombated by timely port wine and tonics, had been followed by heart-failure, and the sub-dean was left free to marry again, again.

Whether he did so or not doesn't matter to us. The scheme Mrs.

Graythorpe had been dwelling on with pleasure through the voyage of simply dropping her offspring on its grandmother, and leaving it to drive a coach and six through the latter's Christian forgiveness, was not to come to pa.s.s. She found herself after a year and a half of Oriental life back in her native land, an orphan with a small--but it must be admitted a very charming--illegitimate family. It was hard upon her, for she had been building on the success of this manoeuvre, in which she had, perhaps, an unreasonable confidence. If she could only rely on Sally not being inopportunely sick over mamma just at the critical moment--that was the only misgiving that crossed her mind. Otherwise, such creases and such a hilarious laugh would be too much for starch itself. Poor lady! she had thought to herself more than once, since Sally had begun to mature and consolidate, that if Gerry had only waited a little--just long enough to see what a little duck was going to come of it all--and not lost his temper, all might have been made comfortable, and Sally might have had a little legitimate half-brother by now. What _had_ become--what would become of Gerry? That she did not know, might never know.