"Of course he did, and it's quite ridiculous." By which the vulgar child meant that cla.s.s distinctions were ridiculous. She had this way of rushing subjects, eliding the obvious, and relying on her hearers.

"He told me all about it. He'd been universally provided, he said; and I promised not to tell. Miss Erskine Peel--that's Orange, you know, the soprano--went to the manager and said her mother said they _must_ get more men, though it wasn't dancing, or the rooms looked so bad; only they mustn't be fools, and must be able to say Wagner and Liszt and things. And he hoped I didn't think he was a fool."

"What did you say?"

"Said I couldn't say--didn't know him well enough. He might be, to look at. Or not, accordingly. I didn't say _that_, you know, mamma."

"I didn't know, darling. You're very rude sometimes."

"Well, he said he could certainly say Wagner and Liszt, and even more, because--it was rather sad, you know, mamma dear----"

"Sally, you've told that young man he may call; you know you have!"

"Well, mamma dear, and if I have, I don't see that anybody's mare's dead. Because, do listen!" Fenwick interposed a parenthesis.

"I don't think you need to be apprehensive, Mrs. Nightingale. He was an educated young man enough. His not knowing a French phrase like that implies nothing. Not one in a hundred would." The way in which the Major, who, of course, had come out of his doze on the inrush of Miss Sally, looked across at Fenwick as he said this, implied an acquired faith in the judgment of the latter. Sally resumed.

"Just let me tell you. His name's Bradshaw. Only he's no relation to _the_ Bradshaw--in a yellow cover, you know. We-e-ell, I don't see anything in that!" Sally is defending her position against a smile her mother and Fenwick have exchanged. They concede that there is nothing in it, and Sally continues. "Where was I? Oh, Bradshaw; yes. He was an awfully promising violinist--awfully promising! And what do you think happened? Why, the nerves of his head gave way, and he couldn't stand the vibration! So it came to being Cattley's or nothing." Sally certainly had the faculty of cutting a long story short.

She thought the story, so cut, one that her mother and Mr. Fenwick might have shown a more active interest in, instead of saying it was time for all of us to be in bed. She did not, however, ascribe to them any external preoccupation--merely an abstract love of Truth; for was it not nearly one o'clock in the morning?

Nevertheless, a little incident of Mr. Fenwick's departure, not noticed at the moment, suddenly a.s.sumed vitality just as Sally was "going off," and woke her up. What was it she overheard her mother say to him, just as he was leaving the house, about something she had promised to tell him some time? However, reflection on it with waking faculties dissipated the importance it seemed to have half-way to dreamland, and Sally went contentedly to sleep again.

Fenwick, as he walked to his lodgings through the dull February night, did not regard this something, whatever it was, as a thing of slight importance at all. He may have been only "spooney," but it was in a sense that left him no pretence for thinking that anything connected with this beautiful young widow-lady could be unimportant to him. On the contrary, she was more and more filling all his waking thoughts, and becoming the pivot on which all things turned. It is true, he "dismissed from his mind"--whatever that means--every presumptuous suggestion that in some precious time to come she might be willing to throw in her lot with his own, and asked himself what sort of thing was he that he should allow such an idea to come even as far as contradiction-point? He, a poor inexplicable wreck! What was the Self he had to offer, and what else had he? But, indeed, the speculation rarely got even to this maturity, so promptly was it nipped in the bud. Only, there were so many buds to nip. He became aware that he was giving a good deal of attention to this sort of gardening.

Also, he had a consciousness that he was growing morbidly anxious for the maintenance of his own oblivion. That which was at first only a misgiving about what a return of memory might bring to light, was rapidly becoming a definite desire that nothing should come to light at all. How _could_ he look forward to that "hypothetical" wife whom he did not in the least believe in, but who might be somewhere, for all that! He knew perfectly well that his relations with Krakatoa Villa would _not_ remain the same, say what you might! Of course, he also knew that he had no relations there that _need_ change--most certainly not! At this point an effort would be made against the outcrop of his thoughts. Those confounded buds were always bursting.

It was impossible to be even with them.

Perhaps it was on this evening, or rather early morning, as he walked home to his lodgings, that Fenwick began to recognise more fully than he had done before Mrs. Nightingale's share in what was, if not an absolute repugnance to a revival of the unknown past, at least a very ready acquiescence in his ignorance of it. But surely, he reasoned with himself, if this cause is making me contented with my darkness, it is the more reason that it should be penetrated.

An uncomfortable variation of his dream of the resurrected first-floor crossed his mind. Suppose he had forgotten the furniture, but remembered the place, and gone back to tenant it with a van-load of new chairs and tables. What would he have done with the poor old furniture?

CHAPTER XI

MORE GIRLS' CHATTER. SWEEPS AND DUSTMEN. HOW SALLY DISILLUSIONED MR.

BRADSHAW. OUT OF THE FRYING-PAN

It is impossible to make Gluck's music anything but a foretaste of heaven, as long as there is any show of accuracy in the way it is rendered. But, then, you must go straight on, and not go over a difficult phrase until you know it. You must play fair. Orpheus would probably only have provoked Cerberus--certainly wouldn't have put him to sleep--if he had practised, and counted, and gone back six bars and done it again.

But Cerberus wasn't at 260, Ladbroke Grove Road, on the Tuesday following Mrs. Erskine Peel's musical party, which was the next time Sally went to Laet.i.tia Wilson. And it was as well that he wasn't, for Sally stuck in a pa.s.sage at the end of one page and the beginning of the next, so that you had to turn over in the middle; and it was bad enough, goodness knew, without that! It might really have been the north-west pa.s.sage, so insuperable did it seem.

"I shall never get it right, I know, Tishy," said the viola.

And the violin replied: "Because you never pay any attention to the arpeggio, dear. It doesn't begin on the chord. It begins on the G flat. Look here, now. One--two--three. One--two--three."

"Yes, that's all very well. Who's going to turn over the leaf, I should like to know? I know I shall never do it. Not because the nerves of my head are giving way, but because I'm a duffer."

"I suppose you know what that young man is, dear?" Sally accepts this quite contentedly, and immediately skips a great deal of unnecessary conversation.

"I'm not in love with him, Tishy dear."

"Didn't say you were, dear. But I suppose you don't know what he is, all the same." Which certainly seems inconsecutive, but we really cannot be responsible for the way girls talk.

"Don't know, and don't want to know. What is he?"

"He's from Cattley's." This throws a light on the conversation. It shows that Sally had told Laet.i.tia who she was going to meet at her mother's next evening. Sally is not surprised.

"As if I didn't know all about this! As if he didn't tell me his story!"

"Like the mock-turtle in Alice?"

"Now, Tishy dear, is that an insinuation, or isn't it? Do be candid!"

"The mock-turtle told his story. Once, he was a real turtle."

"Very well, Tishy dear. That's as much as to say Julius Bradshaw is mock. I can't see where the mockness comes in myself. He told _me_ all about it, plain enough."

"Yes--and you know what a rage Mrs. Erskine Peel is in, and says it was an _eclairciss.e.m.e.nt_."

"Why can't she be satisfied with English?... What! Of course, there are _hundreds_ of English equivalents for _eclairciss.e.m.e.nt_. There's bust-up."

"That's only one."

"Tishy dear, don't be aggravating! Keep to the point. Why mustn't I have Julius Bradshaw to play with if I like because he's at Cattley's?"

"You may, if you _like_, dear! As long as you're satisfied, it's all right."

"What fault have you to find with him?"

"I! None at all. It's all perfectly right."

"You are _the_ most irritating girl."

"Suppose we take the _adagio_ now--if you're rested."

But Sally's back was up. "Not until you tell me what you really mean about Julius Bradshaw."

So Laet.i.tia had her choice between an explicit statement of her meaning, and an unsupported incursion into the _adagio_.

"I suppose you'll admit there _are_ such things as social distinctions?"

Sally wouldn't admit anything whatever. If sociometry was to be a science, it must be worked out without axioms or postulates. Laet.i.tia immediately pointed out that if there were no such things as social distinctions of course there was no reason why Mr. Julius Bradshaw shouldn't take his violin to Krakatoa Villa. "Or here, or anywhere,"

concluded Laet.i.tia, with a touch of pride in the status of Ladbroke Grove Road. Whereupon Sally surrendered as much of her case as she had left.

"You talk as if he was a sweep or a dustman," said she.