CHAPTER XXIV

HOW MAJOR ROPER MET THAT BOY, AND GOT UPSTAIRS AT BALL STREET. AN INTERVIEW BETWEEN ASTHMA AND BRONCHITIS. HOW SALLY PINIONED THE PURPLE VETERAN, AND THERE WAS NO BOY. HOW THE GOVERNOR DONE h.o.a.rCKIN', AND GOT QUALIFIED FOR A SUBJECT OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH

Old Jack's powers of self-delusion were great indeed if, when he started on his short journey, he really believed the fog had mended. At least, it was so dense that he might never have found his way without a.s.sistance. This he met with in the shape of a boy with a link, whom Sally at once identified from his description, given when the Major had succeeded in getting up the stairs and was resting in the sitting-room near the old sabre on the wall, wiping his eyes after his effort.

Colonel Lund was half-unconscious after a bad attack, and it was best not to disturb him. Fenwick had not returned, and no one was very easy about him. But every one affirmed the reverse, and joined in a sort of Creed to the effect that the fog was clearing. It wasn't and didn't mean to for some time. But the unanimity of the creed fortified the congregation, as in other cases. No two believers doubted it at once, just as no two Alpine climbers, strung together on the moraine of a glacier, lose their foothold at the same time.

"I know that boy," said Sally. "His nose twists, and gives him a presumptuous expression, and he has a front tooth out and puts his tongue through. Also his trousers are tied on with strings."

"Everlastin' young beggar, if ever there was one," says the old soldier, in a lucid interval when speech is articulate. But he is allowing colloquialism to run riot over meaning. No everlasting person can ever have become part of the past if you think of it. He goes on to say that the boy has had twopence and is to come back for fourpence in an hour, or threepence if you can see the gas-lamps, because then a link will be superfluous. Sally recognises the boy more than ever.

"I wonder," she says, "if he's waiting outside. Because the party of the house might allow him inside. Do you think I could ask, mother?"

"You might _try_, kitten," is the reply, not given sanguinely. And Sally goes off, benevolent. "Even when your trousers are tied up with string, a fog's a fog," says she to herself.

"I knoo our friend Lund first of all...." Thus the Major, nodding towards the bedroom door.... "Why, G.o.d bless my soul, ma'am, I knew Lund first of all, forty-six years ago in Delhi. Forty--six--years!

And all that time, if you believe me, he's been the same obstinate moole. Never takin' a precaution about anythin', nor listening to a word of advice!" This is about as far as he can go without a choke.

Rosalind goes into the next room to get a tumbler of water. The nurse, who is sitting by the fire, nods towards the bed, and Rosalind goes close to it to hear. "What is it, dear?" She speaks to the invalid as to a little child.

"Isn't that Old Jack choking? I know his choke. What does he come out for in weather like this? What does he mean? Send him back.... No, send him in here." The nurse puts in a headshake as protest. But for all that, Sally finds, when she returns, that the two veterans are contending together against their two enemies, bronchitis and asthma, with the Intelligence Department sadly interrupted, and the enemy in possession of all the advantageous points.

"He oughtn't to try to talk," says Rosalind. "But he will." She and Sally and the nurse sit on in the fog-bound front room. The gas-lights have no heart in them, and each wears a nimbus. Rosalind wishes Gerry would return, aloud. Sally is buoyant about him; _he's_ all right, trust _him_! What about the everlasting young beggar?

"I persuaded Mrs. Kindred," says Sally. "And we looked outside for him, and he'd gone."

"Fancy a woman being named Kindred!"

"When people are so genteel one can believe anything! But what do you think the boy's name is?... Chancellorship! Isn't that queer? She knows him--says he's always about in the neighbourhood. He sleeps in the mews behind Great Toff House."

Her mother isn't listening. She rises for a moment to hear what she may of how the talk in the next room goes on; and then, coming back, says again she wishes Gerry was safe indoors, and Sally again says, "Oh, _he's_ all right!" The confidence these two have in one another makes them a couple apart--a sort of league.

What Mrs. Fenwick heard a sc.r.a.p of in the next room would have been, but for the alarums and excursions of the two enemies aforementioned, a consecutive conversation as follows:

"You're gettin' round, Colonel?"

"A deal better, Major. I want to speak to _you_."

"Fire away, old c.o.c.kywax! You remember Hopkins?--Cartwright Hopkins--man with a squint--at Mooltan--expression of his, 'Old c.o.c.kywax.'"

"I remember him. Died of typhoid at Burrampore. Now you listen to me, old chap, and don't talk--you only make yourself cough."

"It's only the dam fog. _I'm_ all right."

"Well, shut up. That child in the next room--it's her I want to talk about. You're the only man, as far as I know, that knows the story.

She doesn't. She's not to be told."

"Mum's the word, sir. Always say nothin', that's my motto.

Penderfield's daughter at Khopal--at least, he was her father. One dam father's as good as another, as long as he goes to the devil." This may be a kind of disclaimer of inheritance as a factor to be reckoned with, an obscure suggestion that human parentage is without influence on character. It is not well expressed.

"Listen to me, Roper. You know the story. That's the only man I can't say G.o.d forgive him to. G.o.d forgive _me_, but I can't."

"Devil take me if I can!... Yes, it's all right. They're all in the next room...."

"But the woman was worse. She's living, you know...."

"I know--shinin' light--purifying society--that's her game! I'd purify _her_, if I had my way."

"Come a bit nearer--my voice goes. I've thought it all out. If the girl, who supposes herself to be the daughter of her mother's husband, tries to run you into a corner--you understand?"

"I understand."

"Well, don't you undeceive her. Her mother has never told her _anything_. She doesn't suppose she had any hand in the divorce. She thinks his name was Graythorpe, and doesn't know he wasn't her father.

Don't you undeceive her--promise."

But the speaker is so near the end of his tether that the Major has barely time to say, "Honour bright, Colonel," when the bronchial storm bursts. It may be that the last new anodyne, which is warranted to have all the virtues and none of the ill-effects of opium, had also come to the end of _its_ tether. Mrs. Fenwick came quickly in, saying he had talked too much; and Sally, following her, got Major Roper away, leaving the patient to her mother and the nurse. The latter knew what it would be with all this talking--now the temperature would go up, and he would have a bad night, and what would Dr. Mildmay say?

Till the storm had subsided and a new dose of the sedative had been given, Sally and Old Jack stood waiting in sympathetic pain--you know what it is when you can do nothing. The latter derived some insignificant comfort from suggestions through his own choking that all this was due to neglect of his advice. When only moans and heavy breathing were left, Sally went back into the bedroom. Her mother was nursing the poor old racked head on her bosom, with the sword-hand of the days gone by in her own. She said without speaking that he would sleep presently, and the fewer in the room the better, and Sally left them so, and went back.

Yes, the Major would take some toddy before he started for home. And it was all ready, lemons and all, in the black polished wood cellaret, with eagles' claws for feet. Sally got the ingredients out and began to make it. But first she gently closed the door between the rooms, to keep the sound of their voices in.

"You really did see my father, though, Major?" There seemed to be a good deal of consideration before the answer came, not all to be accounted for by asthma.

"Yes--certainly--oh yes. I saw Mr. Graythorpe once or twice. Another spoonful--that's plenty." A pause.

"Now, don't spill it. Take care, it's very hot. That's right." Another pause. "Major Roper...."

"Yes, my dear. What?"

"_Do_ tell me what he was like."

"Have you never seen his portrait?"

"Mother burnt it while I was small. She told me. Do tell me what you recollect him like."

"Fine handsome feller--well set up. Fine shot, too! Gad! that was a neat thing! A bullet through a tiger two hundred yards off just behind the ear."

"But I thought _his_ name was Harrisson." The Major has got out of his depth entirely through his own rashness. Why couldn't he leave that tiger alone? Now he has to get into safe water again.

A good long choke is almost welcome at this moment. While it goes on he can herald, by a chronic movement of a raised finger, his readiness to explain all as soon as it stops. He catches at his first articulation, so that not a moment may be lost. There were _two_ tigers--that's the explanation. Harrisson shot one, and Graythorpe the other. The cross-examiner is dissatisfied.

"Which was the one that shot the tiger two hundred yards off, just behind the ear?"

The old gentleman responds with a spirited decision: "Your father, my dear, your father. That tiger round at my rooms--show it you if you like--that skin was given me by a feller named Harrisson, in the Commissariat--quite another sort of Johnny. He was down with the Central Indian Horse--quite another place!" He dwells on the inferiority of this shot, the smallness of the skin, the close contiguity of its owner. A very inferior affair!

But, being desperately afraid of blundering again, he makes the fact he admits, that he had confoozed between the two cases, a reason for a close a.n.a.lysis of the merits of each. This has no interest for Sally, who, indeed, had only regarded the conversation, so far, as a stepping-stone she now wanted to leap to the mainland from. After all, here she is face-to-face with a man who actually knows the story of the separation, and can talk of it without pain. Why should she not get something from him, however little? You see, the idea of a something that could not be told was necessarily foreign to a mind some somethings could not be told to. But she felt it would be difficult to account to Major Roper for her own position. The fact that she knew nothing proved that her mother and Colonel Lund had been anxious she should know nothing. She could not refer to an outsider over their heads. Still, she hoped, as Major Roper was deemed on all hands an arrant old gossip, that he might accidentally say something to enlighten her. She prolonged the conversation in this hope.

"Was that before I was born?"