"You will guess what our wishes are. But we know quite well that their fulfilment is at present impossible. It may remain so. I have no means at present except a small salary. And my mother and sister----"

"Have a claim on you--is that it?" The Professor's voice seems to forestall a forbidding sound. But he won't be in too great a hurry.

He continues: "You must have some possibility in view, some sort of expectation."

Bradshaw's reply hesitated a good deal.

"I am afraid I have--I am afraid--allowed myself to fancy--that, in short, I might be able to--outgrow this unhappy nervous affection."

"And then?"

"I know what you mean, Professor Wilson. You mean that a violinist's position, however successful, would be less than you have a right to expect for your daughter's husband. Of course that is so, but----"

"But I mean nothing of the sort." The Professor is abrupt and decisive, as one who repudiates. "I know nothing about positions. However, Mr.

Bradshaw, you are quite right this far--that is what Mrs. Wilson would have meant. _She_ knows about positions. What _I_ meant was that you wouldn't have enough to live upon at the best, in any comfort, and that I shouldn't be able to help you. Suppose you had a large family, and the nervous affection came back?" His hearer quakes at this crude, unfeeling forecast of real matrimonial facts. He and Laet.i.tia fully recognise in theory that people who marry incur families; but, like every other young couple, would prefer a veil drawn over their particular case. The young man flinches visibly at the Professor's needlessly savage hypothesis of disasters. Had he been a rapid and skilful counsel in his own behalf, he would have at once pounced on a weak point, and asked how many couples would ever get married at all, if we were to beg and borrow every trouble the proper people (whoever they are) are ready to give away and lend. He can only look crestfallen, and feel about in his mind for some way of saying, "If I wanted Laet.i.tia to promise to marry me, that would apply. As matters stand, it is not to the purpose," without seeming to indite the Professor for prematureness. Of course, the position had been created entirely by the Dragon. Why could she not have let them alone, as her husband had said to her? Why not, indeed?

But Master Julius has to see his way out into the open, and he is merely looking puzzled, and letting a very fair cigar out--and, you know, they are never the same thing relighted. Perhaps what he does is as good as anything else.

"I see you are right, sir, and I am afraid I am to blame--I must be--because my selfish thoughtlessness, or whatever it ought to be called, has placed us in a position out of which no happiness can result for either?" He looks interrogatively into the Professor's gold spectacles, but sees no relaxation in the slightly knitted brow above them. Their owner merely nods.

"But you needn't take all the blame to yourself," he says. "I've no doubt my daughter is ent.i.tled to her share of it"--to which Bradshaw tries to interpose a denial--"only it really doesn't matter whose fault it is."

The disconcerted lover, who felt all raw, public, and uncomfortable, wondered a little what the precise "it" was that could be said to be any one's fault. After all, he and Laet.i.tia were just two persons going on existing, and how could it be any concern of any one else's what each thought of or felt for the other? It is true he lacked absolution for the kissing transgressions; they were blots on a clean sheet of mere friendship. But would the Dragon be content that he and Laet.i.tia should continue to see each other if they signed a solemn agreement that there was to be no kissing? You see, he was afraid he was going to be cut off from his lady-love, and he didn't like the looks of the Professor. But he didn't propose the drawing up of any such compact.

Perhaps he didn't feel prepared to sign it. However, he was to be relieved from any immediate anxiety. The Professor had never meant to take any responsibility, and now that he had said his say, he only wanted to wash his hands of it.

"Now, understand me, Bradshaw," said he--and there was leniency and hope in the dropped "Mr."--"I do not propose to do more than advise; nor do I know, as my daughter is twenty-four, what I can do except advise. We won't bring authority into court.... Oh yes, no doubt Laet.i.tia believes she will never act against my wishes. Many girls have thought that sort of thing. But----" He stopped dead, with a little side-twist of the head, and a lip-pinch, expressing doubt, then resumed: "So I'll give you my advice, and you can think it over. It is that you young people just keep out of each other's way, and let the thing die out. You've no idea till you try what a magical effect absence has; poetry is all gammon. Take my advice, and try it. Have some more port? No--thank me! Then let's go upstairs."

Upstairs were to be found all the materials for an uncomfortable evening. A sort of wireless telegraphy that pa.s.sed between Bradshaw and Laet.i.tia left both in low spirits. They did not rise (the spirits) when the Professor said, to the public generally, "Well, I must say good-night, but _you_ needn't go," and went away to his study; nor when his Dragon followed him, with a strong flavour of discipline on her.

For thereupon it became necessary to ignore conflict in the hinterland of some folding-doors, accompanied by sounds of forbearance and a high moral att.i.tude. There was no remedy but music, and as soon as Bradshaw got at his Stradivarius the mists seemed to disperse. The _adagio_ of Somebody's quartette No. 101 seemed to drive a coach-and-six through mortal bramble-labyrinths. But as soon as it ceased, the mists came back all the thicker for being kept waiting. And the outcome of a winding-up interview between the sweethearts was the conclusion that after what had been said by the father of one of them, it was necessary that all should be forgotten, and be as though it had never been.

And the gentleman next day, when he showed himself at his desk at Cattley's, provoked the remark that Paganini had got the hump this morning--which shows that his genius as a violinist was recognised at Cattley's.

As for the lady, we rather think she made up her mind in the course of the night that if her family were going to interfere with her love-affairs, she would let them know what it was to have people yearning for other people in the house. For she refused boiled eggs, eggs and bacon, cold salmon-trout, and potted tongue at breakfast next day, and left half a piece of toast and half a cup of tea as a visible record that she had started pining, and meant to do it in earnest.

What Laet.i.tia and Julius suffered during their self-inflicted separation, Heaven only knows! This saying must be interpreted as meaning that n.o.body else did. They were like evasive Trappist monks, who profess mortification of the flesh, but when it comes to the scratch, don't flog fair. Whatever they lost in the cessation of uncomfortable communion at the eyrie, or lair, of the Dragon was more than made up for by the sub-rosaceous, or semi-clandestine, character of the intercourse that was left. Stolen kisses are notoriously sweetest, but when, in addition to this, every one is actually the very last the shareholders intend to subscribe for, their fascination is increased tenfold. And every accidental or purely unintentionally arranged meeting of these two had always the character of an interview between people who never meet--which, like most truths, was only false in exceptional cases; and in this instance these were numerous.

Fact.i.tious absence of this sort will often make the heart grow fonder, where the real thing would make it look about for another; and another is generally to be found.

It might have been unsafe to indulge in speculation, based on the then _status quo_, as to when the inevitable was going to happen. We know all about it now, but that doesn't count. Stories, true or false, should be told consecutively.

CHAPTER XXII

IT WAS THAT MRS. NIGHTINGALE'S FAULT. A SATISFACTORY CHAP, GERRY! A TELEGRAM AND A CLOUD. BRONCHITIS AND ASTHMA AND FOG. SALLY GOES TO MAYFAIR. THE OLD SOLDIER HAS NOTICE TO QUIT

The most deeply-rooted instinct of mankind is the one that prompts it to lay the blame on some one else. Mankind includes womankind, and woman includes (for we believe she is still living) the Dragon of the last chapter. As it did not occur to this good lady that her own att.i.tude of estrangement from Laet.i.tia had anything to answer for in the rash and premature development of the latter's love-affair, she cast about for a scapegoat, and found one in the person of Rosalind Fenwick.

Some one had schemed the whole business, clearly, and who else could it be but that woman? Of course, Laet.i.tia herself was simply the victim of a plot--she was young and inexperienced; people's daughters are.

But nothing in the nefarious business had escaped the watchful eye of the Dragon. At the time of the very first appearance of "that Mrs.

Nightingale" on the scene she had pointed out her insidious character, and forewarned North and North-west Kensington of what was to be expected from a person of her antecedents. It was true no one knew anything about these latter; but, then, that was exactly the point.

"It's useless attempting to find excuses for that woman. Clarissa,"

she had said. "It's always the same story with people of that sort.

Whenever they have no proper introduction, they always turn out schemers and matchmakers. I detected her, and said so at once. It is easy for your father to pretend he has forgotten. He always does. My consolation is that I did my duty. And then, of course, it all turns out as I said. Anybody could have known what sort of person she was with half an eye!"

"And what sort of person is she?" asked Clarissa coldly. She had not forgotten the vaccination from the calf.

"The sort of person you would expect. Unless, Clarissa, you are going to take a leaf out of your father's book, and make believe you do not understand what is transparently on the surface. What interest can Major Roper have in inventing the story, I should like to know?"

"How does he come to know so much about it? Who told him?"

"Who _told_ him? Why, of course that very old gentleman--what's his name?--_you_ know----" Mrs. Wilson tries if she can't recollect with a quick vibration of a couple of fingers to back up her brain.

"Colonel Dunn!"

"Major Lund?"

"Lunn or Dunn. Yes, I remember now; it's Lunn, because the girl said when she was a child she thought Sally Lunns had something to do with both. You may depend on it, I'm right. Well, Major Roper's his most intimate friend. They belong to the same club."

The ladies then lost sight of their topic, which lapsed into a rather heated discussion of whether the very old gentleman was a Colonel or a Major. As we don't want to hear them on this point, we may let them lapse too.

It may have been because of some home anxieties--notably about the Major, whose bronchitis had been bad--that Rosalind Fenwick continued happily unconscious of having incurred any blame or taken any responsibility on herself in connexion with the Ladbroke Grove row, as Sally called it. If she _had_ known of it, very likely it would not have troubled her, for she was really too contented with her own condition and surroundings to be concerned about externals. Whatever troubles she had were connected with the possibility, which always seemed to grow fainter, of a revival of her husband's powers of memory.

Sometimes whole weeks would pa.s.s without an alarm. Sometimes some little stirring of the mind would occur twice in the same day; still, the tendency seemed to be, on the whole, towards a more and more complete oblivion.

But the fact is that so long as she had the Major invalided at Krakatoa Villa (for he was taken ill there, and remained on her hands many weeks before he could return to his lodgings) she had the haziest impressions of the outside world. Sally talked about "the row" while they were nursing the old boy, but really she heeded her very little.

Then, when the invalid was so far reinstated that he was fit to be moved safely, Sally went away too, for a change.

The respite to old Colonel Lund was not to be for long. But the rest, alone with her husband, was not unwelcome to Rosalind.

"I can never have been one-tenth as happy, Rosey darling," said he to her one day, "as I have been in the last six months. I should recollect all about it if I had."

"You're a satisfactory chap to deal with, Gerry--I must say that for you. You always beam, come what may. Even when you fly out--which you do, you know--it's more like a big dog than a wasp. You were always...." Now, Rosalind was going to say "always like that"; it was a mistake she was constantly in danger of. But she stopped in time, and changed her speech to "You're not without your faults, you know!

You never can come to an anchor, and be quiet. You sit on the arms of chairs, and your hands are too big and strong. No; you needn't stop. Go on!" We like leaving the words to elucidate the concurrent action. "And you don't smell much of tobacco."

Fenwick, however, had noticed the kink in the thread, and must needs wind it back to get a clear line. "I was always what?" said he. His wife saw a way out.

"Always good when your daughter was here to manage you." It wasn't so satisfactory as it might have been, but answered in dealing with a mind so unsuspicious. Sally's having spent Christmas and stayed on a little at a friend's in the country lent plausibility to a past tense which might else have jarred.

"I don't want the kitten all to myself, you know," said Fenwick. "It wouldn't be fair. After all, she _was_ yours before she was mine."

There was not a tremor in the hand that lay in his, the one that was not caressing her cheek; not a sign of flinching in the eyes that turned round on him; not a trace of hesitation in the voice that said, with concession to a laugh in it: "Yes, she _was_ mine before she was yours." Such skill had grown in this life of nettle-grasping!--indeed, she hardly felt the sting now. This time she was able to go on placidly, in the unconnected way of talk books know not, and life well knows:

"Do you know what the kitten will be next August?"

"Yes; twenty-one."

"It's rather awful, isn't it?"

"Which way do you mean? It's awful because she isn't _fiancee_, or awful because she might be at any minute?"