"I _don't_ know, mother dear. I can do any amount of guessing, but I don't _know_."

"I think, my dear, if you will light my candle and ring for Craddock to shut up, that I had better go to bed." Which her son does, but perversely abstains from giving the old lady any a.s.sistance to saying what is in her mind to say.

But she did not intend to be baffled. For when he had piloted her to her state apartment, carrying her candle, under injunctions on no account to spill the grease, and a magazine of wraps and wools and unintelligible sundries, she contrived to invest an elucidation of her ideas with an appearance of benevolence by working in a readiness to sacrifice herself to her son's selfish longing for tobacco.

"Only just hear me to the end, my dear, and then you can get away to your pipe. What I did _not_ say--for you interrupted me--did not relate so much to Miss Laet.i.tia Wilson as to Sally Nightingale. She, I am sure, would never come between any man she married and his mother.

I am making no reference to any one whatever, although, however old I am, I have eyes in my head and can see. But I can read character, and that is my interpretation of Sally Nightingale's."

"Sally Nightingale and I are not going to make it up, if that's what you mean, mother. She wouldn't have me, for one thing----"

"My dear, I am not going to argue the point. It is nearly eleven, and unless I get to bed I shan't sleep. Now go away to your pipe, and think of what I have said. And don't slam your door and wake me when you come up." She offered him a selection to kiss, shutting her eyes tight. And he gave place to Craddock, and went away to his unwholesome, smelly habit, as his mamma had more than once called it.

His face was perplexed and uncomfortable; however, it got ease after a few puffs of pale returns and a welcome minute of memory of the bouquet of those sixes.

But his little happy oasis was a very small one. For a messenger came with a furious pull at the night-bell and a summons for the doctor.

His delirium-tremens case had very nearly qualified its brain for a P.M.--at least, if there were any of it left--by getting at a pistol and taking a bad aim at it. The unhappy dipsomaniac was half-shot, and prompt medical attendance was necessary to prevent the something considerable being claimed by his heir-at-law.

Whether this came to pa.s.s or not does not concern us. This much is certain, that at the end of six months which this chapter represents, and which you have probably skipped, he was as much forgotten by the doctor as the pipe his patient's suicidal escapade had interrupted, or the semi-vexation with his mother he was using it as an anodyne for.

CHAPTER XXVI

MORNING AT LADBROKE GROVE ROAD, AND FAMILY DISSENSION. FACCIOLATI, AND A LEGACY. THE LAST CONCERT THIS SEASON. THE GOODY WILL COME TO IGGULDEN'S. BUT FANCY PROSY IN LOVE!

Towards the end of the July that very quickly followed Rosalind noticed an intensification of what might be called the Ladbroke Grove Road Row Chronicle--a record transmitted by Sally to her real and adopted parent in the instalments in which she received it from Tishy.

This record on one occasion depicted a battle-royal at breakfast, "over the marmalade," Sally said. She added that the Dragon might just as well have let the Professor alone. "He was reading," she said, "'The Cla.s.sification of Roots in Prehistoric Dialects,' because I saw the back; and Tacitus was on the b.u.t.ter. But the Dragon likes the grease to spoil the bindings, and she knows it."

A vision of priceless Groliers soaking pa.s.sed through Rosalind's mind.

"Wasn't that what this row was about, then?" she asked.

"I don't think so," said Sally, who had gone home to breakfast with Tishy after an early swim. "It's difficult to say what it was about.

Really, the Professor had hardly said _anything at all_, and the Dragon said she thought he was forgetting the servants. Fossett wasn't even in the room. And then the Dragon said, 'Yes, shut it,' to Athene.

Fancy saying 'Yes, shut it,' in a confidential semitone! Really, I can't see that it was so very wrong of Egerton, although he _is_ a b.o.o.by, to say there was no fun in having a row before breakfast.

He didn't mean them to think he meant them to hear."

"But how did it get from the marmalade to Tishy's haberdasher?" asked Fenwick.

"Can't say, Jeremiah. It all came in a buzz, like a wopses nest. And then Egerton said it was rows, rows, rows all day long, and he should hook it off and get a situation. It _is_ rows, rows, rows, so it's no use pretending it isn't. But it always comes round to the haberdasher grievance in the end. This time Tishy went to her father in the library, and confessed up about Kensington Gardens."

Both hearers said, "Oh, I see!" and then Sally transmitted the report of this interview. It had not been stormy, and may be looked at by the light of the Professor's last remark. "The upshot is, Tish, that you can marry Julius against your mother's consent right off, and never lose a penny of your aunt's legacy."

"Legacy is good, very excellent good," said Fenwick. "How much was it, Sarah?"

"Oh, I don't know. Lots--a good lot--a thousand pounds! The Dragon wanted to make out that it was conditional on her consent to Tishy's marriage. That was fibs. But what I don't see is that Gaffer Wilson ever said a word to Tishy about his own objections to her marrying Julius, if he has any!"

"Perhaps," Rosalind suggested, "she hasn't told you all he said." But to this Sally replied that Tishy had told her over and over and over again, only she said _over_ so often that her adopted parent said for Heaven's sake stop, or he should write the word into his letters.

However, the end of the last despatch was at hand, and he himself took up the conversation on signing it.

"Yours faithfully, Algernon Fenwick. That's the lot! I agree with the kitten."

"What about?"

"About if he has any. I believe he'd be glad if Miss Wilson took the bit in her teeth and bolted."

"You agree with Prosy?" As Sally says this, without a thought in a thoughtful face but what belongs to the subject, her mother is conscious that she herself is quite prepared to infer that Prosy already knows all about it. She has got into the habit of hearing that he knows about things.

"What does Vereker say?" Thus Fenwick.

"He'll be here in a minute, and you can ask him. That's him! I mean that's his ring."

"It's just like any other ring, chick." It is her mother who speaks.

But Sally says: "Nonsense! as if I didn't know Prosy's ring!" And Dr. Vereker appears, quartet bound, for this was the weekly musical evening at Krakatoa Villa.

"Jeremiah wants to know whether you don't think Tishy's male parent would be jolly glad if she and Julius took the bit in their teeth and bolted?" "I shouldn't be the least surprised if they did," is the doctor's reply. But it does not strike Sally as rising to the height of her Draconic summary.

"You're not shining, Dr. Conrad," she says; "you're evading the point.

What do _you_ think Gaffer Bristles thinks, that's the point?" Dr.

Conrad appears greatly exhilarated and refreshed by Sally, whose mother seems to share his feeling, but she enjoins caution, for all that.

"Do take care, kitten," she says. "They're on the stairs." But Sally considers "they" are miles off, and will take ages getting upstairs.

"They've only just met at the door," is her explanatory comment, showing appreciation of one human weakness.

"Suppose we were to get it put in more official form!" Fenwick suggests. "Would Professor Sales Wilson be very much shocked if his daughter and Paganini made a runaway match of it?" The name Paganini has somehow leaked out of Cattley's counting-house, and become common property.

"I think, if you ask me," says Vereker, speaking to Fenwick, but never taking his eyes off Sally, on whom they feed, "that Professor Sales Wilson would be very much relieved."

"_That's_ right!" says Sally, speaking as to a pupil who has profited.

"Now you're being a good little General Pract.i.tioner." And then, the ages having elapsed with some alacrity, the door opens and the two subjects of discussion make their appearance.

The anomalous cousin did not come with them, having subsided. Mrs.

Fenwick herself had taken the pianoforte parts lately. She had always been a fair pianist, and application had made her pa.s.sable--a good make-shift, anyhow. So you may fill out the programme to your liking--it really doesn't matter what they played--and consider that this musical evening was one of their best that season. It was just as well it should be so, as it was their last till the autumn. Sally and her mother were going to the seaside all August and some of September, and Fenwick was coming with them for a week at first, and after that for short week-end spells. He had become a partner in the wine-business, and was not so much tied to the desk.

"Well, then, it's good-bye, I suppose?" The speaker is Rosalind herself, as the Stradivarius is being put to bed. But she hasn't the heart to let the verdict stand--at least, as far as the doctor is concerned. She softens it, adds a recommendation to mercy. "Unless you'll come down and pay us a visit. We'll put you up somewhere."

"I'm afraid it isn't possible," is the answer. But the doctor can't get his eyes really off Sally. Even as a small boy might strain at the leash to get back to a source of cake against the grasp of an iron nurse, even so Dr. Conrad rebels against the grip of professional engagements, which is the name of his cold, remorseless tyrant.

But Sally is harnessing up a coach-and-six to drive through human obligations. Her manner of addressing the doctor suggests previous talk on the subject.

"You _must_ get the loc.u.m, and come. You know you can, and it's all nonsense about can't." What would be effrontery in another character makes Sally speak through and across the company. A secret confidence between herself and the doctor, that you are welcome to the full knowledge of, and be hanged to you! is what the manner of the two implies.

"I spoke to Neckitt about it, and he can't manage it," says the doctor in the same manner. But the first and second violin are waiting to take leave.

"We'll say good-night, then--or good-bye, if it's for six weeks."

Tishy is perfectly unblushing about the _we_. She might be conveying Mr. Tishy away. They go, and get away from Dr. Vereker, by-the-bye.