CHAPTER XLVI

AN ERRAND IN VAIN, AND HOW DR. CONRAD CAME TO KNOW. CONCERNING LLOYD'S COFFEEHOUSE, AND THE BATTLE OF CAMPERDOWN. MARSHALL HALL'S SYSTEM AND SILVESTER'S. SOCIAL DISADVANTAGES. A CHAT WITH A CENTENARIAN, AND HOW ROSALIND CAME TO KNOW. THOMAS LOc.o.c.k OF ROCHESTER. ONE O'CLOCK!

"Is that you, Dr. Conrad?" It was Rosalind who spoke, through the half-open window of her bedroom, to the happy, expectant face of the doctor in the little front garden below. "I'm only just up, and they're both gone out. I shall be down in a few minutes." For she had looked into her husband's room, and then into Sally's, and concluded they must have gone out together. So much the better! If Sally was with him, no harm could come to him.

"I don't see them anywhere about," said the doctor. Sally had not been gone ten minutes, and at this moment had just caught sight of Fenwick making for the pier. The short cut down took her out of sight of the house. Rosalind considered a minute.

"Very likely they've gone to the hotel--the 'beastly hotel,' you know." There is the sound of a laugh, and the caress in her voice, as she thinks of Sally, whom she is quoting. "Gerry found a friend there last night--a German gentleman--who was to go at seven-fifty. Very likely he's walked up to say good-bye to him. Suppose you go to meet them! How's Mrs. Vereker this morning?"

"Do you know, I haven't seen her yet! We talked rather late, so I left without waking her. I've been for a walk."

"Well, go and meet Gerry. I feel pretty sure he's gone there." And thereon Dr. Conrad departed, and so, departing towards the new town, lost sight for the time being of the pier and the coast. He went by the steps and Albion Villas, and as he caught a glimpse therefrom of the pier-end in the distance, had an impression of a man running along it and shouting; but he drew no inferences, although it struck him there was panic, with the energy of sudden action, in this man's voice.

He arrived at the hotel, of course without meeting either Sally or Fenwick. He had accepted them as probably there, on perhaps too slight evidence. But they might be in the hotel. Had the German gentleman gone?--he asked. The stony woman he addressed replied from her precinct, with no apparent consciousness that she was addressing a fellow-creature, that No. 148, if you meant him, had paid and gone by last 'bus. She spoke as to s.p.a.ce, but as one too indifferent on all points to care much who overheard her.

Vereker thanked her, and turned to go. As he departed he caught a fragment of conversation between her and the waiter who had produced the brandy the evening before. He was in undress uniform--a holland or white-jean jacket, and a red woollen comforter. He had lost his voice, or most of it, and croaked; and his cold had got worse in the night.

He was shedding tears copiously, and wiping them on a cruet-stand he carried in one hand. The other was engaged by an empty coal-scuttle with a pair of slippers in it, inexplicably.

"There's a start down there. Party over the pier-end! Dr. Maccoll he's been 'phoned for."

"Party from this hotel?"

"Couldn't say. Porcibly. No partic'lars to identify, so far."

"They're not bringing him here?"

"Couldn't say, miss; but I should say they wasn't myself."

"If you know you can say. Who told you, and what did _he_ say? Make yourself understood."

"Dr. Maccoll he's been 'phoned for. You can inquire and see if I ain't right. Beyond that I take no responsibility."

The Lady of the Bureau came out; moved, no doubt, by an image of a drowned man whose resources would not meet the credits she might be compelled to give him. She came out to the front through the swing-door, looked up and down the road, and seemed to go back happier.

Dr. Conrad's curiosity was roused, and he started at once for the beach, but absolutely without a trace of personal misgiving. No doubt the tendency we all have to impute public mishaps to a special cla.s.s of people outside our own circle had something to do with this. As he pa.s.sed down an alley behind some cottages--a short way to the pier--he was aware of a boy telling a tale in a terrified voice to a man and an elderly woman. It was the man with the striped shirt, and the boy was young Benjamin. He had pa.s.sed on a few paces when the man called to him, and came running after him, followed by the woman and boy.

"I ask your pardon, sir--I ask your pardon...." What he has to say will not allow him to speak, and his words will not come. He turns for help to his companion. "_You_ tell him, Martha woman," he says, and gives in.

"My master thinks, sir, you may find something on the beach...."

"Something on the beach!..." Fear is coming into Dr. Conrad's face and voice.

"Find something has happened on the beach. But they've got him out...."

"Got him out! Got whom out? Speak up, for Heaven's sake!"

"It might be the gentleman you know, sir, and...." But the speaker's husband, having left the telling to his wife, unfairly strikes in here, to have the satisfaction of lightening the communication. "But _he's_ out safe, sir. You may rely on the yoong lad." He has made it harder for his wife to tell the rest, and she hesitates. But Dr.

Conrad has stayed for no more. He is going at a run down the sloped pa.s.sage that leads to the sea. The boy follows him, and by some dexterous use of private thoroughfares, known to him, but not to the doctor, arrives first, and is soon visible ahead, running towards the scattered groups that line the beach. The man and woman follow more slowly.

Few of those who read this, we hope, have ever had to face a shock so appalling as the one that Conrad Vereker sustained when he came to know what it was that was being carried up the beach from the boat that had just been driven stern on to the shingle, as he emerged to a full view of the sea and the running crowd, thickening as its last stragglers arrived to meet it. But most of us who are not young have unhappily had some experience of the sort, and many will recognise (if we can describe it) the feeling that was his in excess when a chance bystander--not unconcerned, for no one was that--used in his hearing a phrase that drove the story home to him, and forced him to understand. "It's the swimming girl from Lobjoit's, and she's drooned." It was as well, for he had to know. What did it matter how he became the blank thing standing there, able to say to itself, "Then Sally is dead," and to attach their meaning to the words, but not to comprehend why he went on living? One way of learning the thing that closes over our lives and veils the sun for all time is as good as another; but how came he to be so colourlessly calm about it?

If we could know how each man feels who hears in the felon's dock the sentence of penal servitude for life, it may be we should find that Vereker's sense of being for the moment a cold, unexplained unit in an infinite unfeeling void, was no unusual experience. But this unit knew mechanically what had happened perfectly well, and its duty was clear before it. Just half a second for this sickness to go off, and he would act.

It was a longer pause than it seemed to him, as all things appeared to happen quickly in it, somewhat as in a photographic life-picture when the films are run too quick. At least, that remained his memory of it. And during that time he stood and wondered why he could not feel.

He thought of her mother and of Fenwick, and said to himself they were to be pitied more than he; for they were human, and _could_ feel it--could really know what jewel they had lost--had hearts to grieve and eyes to weep with. He had nothing--was a stupid blank! Oh, he had been mistaken about himself and his love: he was a stone.

A few moments later than his first sight of that silent crowd--moments in which the world had changed and the sun had become a curse; in which he had for some reason--not grief, for he could not grieve--resolved on death, except in an event he dared not hope for--he found himself speaking to the men who had borne up the beach the thing whose germ of life, if it survived, was _his_ only chance of life hereafter.

"I am a doctor; let me come." The place they had brought it to was a timber structure that was held as common property by the fisher-world, and known as Lloyd's Coffeehouse. It was not a coffeehouse, but a kind of spontaneous club-room, where the old men sat and smoked churchwarden pipes, and told each other tales of storm and wreck, and how the news of old sea-battles came to St. Sennans in their boyhood; of wives made widows for their country's good, and men all sound of limb when the first gun said "Death!" across the water, crippled for all time when the last said "Victory!" and there was silence and the smell of blood. Over the mantel was an old print of the battle of Camperdown, with three-deckers in the smoke, flanked by portraits of Rodney and Nelson. There was a long table down the centre that had been there since the days of Rodney, and on this was laid what an hour ago was Sally; what each man present fears to uncover the face of, but less on his own account than for the sake of the only man who seems fearless, and lays hands on the cover to remove it; for all knew, or guessed, what this dead woman might be--might have been--to this man.

"I am a doctor; let me come."

"Are ye sure ye know, young master? Are ye sure, boy?" The speaker, a very old man, interposes a trembling hand to save Vereker from what he may not antic.i.p.ate, perhaps has it in mind to beseech him to give place to the local doctor, just arriving. But the answer is merely, "I know." And the hand that uncovers the dead face never wavers, and then that white thing we see is all there is of Sally--that coil and tangle of black hair, all mixed with weed and sea-foam, is the rich ma.s.s that was drying in the sun that day she sat with Fenwick on the beach; those eyes that strain behind the half-closed eyelids were the merry eyes that looked up from the water at the boat she dived from two days since; those lips are the lips the man who stands beside her kissed but yesterday for the first time. The memory of that kiss is on him now as he wipes the sea-slime from them and takes the first prompt steps for their salvation.

The old Scotch doctor, who came in a moment later, wondered at the resolute decision and energy Vereker was showing. He had been told credibly of the circ.u.mstances of the case, and gave way on technical points connected with resuscitation, surrendering views he would otherwise have contended for about Marshall Hall's and Silvester's respective systems. Perhaps one reason for this was that auscultation of the heart convinced him that the case was hopeless, and he may have reflected that if any other method than Dr. Vereker's was used that gentleman was sure to believe the patient might have been saved.

Better leave him to himself.

Rosalind returned to her dressing, after Dr. Conrad walked away from the house, with a feeling--not a logical one--that now she need not hurry. Why having spoken with him and forwarded him on to look for Sally and Gerry should make any difference was not at all clear, and she did not account to herself for it. She accepted it as an occurrence that put her somehow in touch with the events of the day--made her a part of what was going on elsewhere. She had felt lapsed, for the moment, when, waking suddenly to advanced daylight, she had gone first to her husband's room and then to Sally's, and found both empty. The few words spoken from her window with her recently determined son-in-law had switched on her current again, metaphorically speaking.

So she took matters easily, and was at rest about her husband, in spite of the episode of the previous evening--rather, we should have said, of the small hours of that morning. The fact is, it was her first sleep she had waked from, an unusually long and sound one after severe tension, and in the ordinary course of events she would probably have gone to sleep again. Instead, she had got up at once, and gone to her husband's room to relieve her mind about him.

A momentary anxiety at finding it empty disappeared when she found Sally's empty also; but by that time she was effectually waked, and rang for Mrs. Lobjoit and the hot water.

If Mrs. Lobjoit, when she appeared with it, had been able to give particulars of Sally's departure, and to say that she and Mr. Fenwick had gone out separately, Rosalind would have felt less at ease about him; but nothing transpired to show that they had not gone out together. Mrs. Lobjoit's data were all based on the fact that she found the street door open when she went to do down her step, and she had finished this job and gone back into the kitchen by the time Sally followed Fenwick out. Of course, she never came upstairs to see what rooms were empty; why should she? And as no reason for inquiry presented itself, the question was never raised by Rosalind. Sally was naturally an earlier bird than herself, and quite as often as not she would join Gerry in his walk before breakfast.

How thankful she felt, now that the revelation was over, that Sally was within reach to help in calming down the mind that had been so terribly shaken by it; for all her thoughts were of Gerry; on her own behalf she felt nothing but contentment. Think what her daily existence had been! What had she to lose by a complete removal of the darkness that had shrouded her husband's early life with her--or rather, what had she not to gain? Now that it had been a.s.sured to her that nothing in the past could make a new rift between them, the only weight upon her mind was the possible necessity for revealing to Sally in the end the story of her parentage. What mother, to whom a like story of her own early days was neither more nor less than a glimpse into h.e.l.l, could have felt otherwise about communicating it to her child? She felt, too, the old feeling of the difficulty there would be in making Sally understand. The girl had not chanced across devildom enough to make her an easy recipient of such a tale.

Oh, the pleasure with which she recalled his last words of the night before: "She is _my_ daughter now!" It was the final ratification of the protest of her life against the "rights" that Law and Usage grant to technical paternity; rights that can only be abrogated or ignored by a child's actual parent--its mother--at the cost of insult and contumely from a world that worships its own folly and ignores its own G.o.ds. Sally was hers--her own--hard as the terms of her possession had been, and she had a.s.signed a moiety of her rights in her to the man she loved. What was the fatherhood of blood alone to set against the one her motherhood had a right to concede, and had conceded, in response to the spontaneous growth of a father's love? What claim had devilish cruelty and treachery to any share in their result--a result that, after all, was the only compensation possible to their victim?

We do not make this endeavour to describe Rosalind's frame of mind with a view to either endorsing or disclaiming her opinions. We merely record them as those of a woman whose life-story was an uncommon one; but not without a certain sympathy for the new definition of paternity their philosophy involves, backed by a feeling that its truth is to some extent acknowledged in the existing marriage-law of several countries. As a set-off against this, no woman can have a child entirely her own except by incurring what are called "social disadvantages." The hare that breaks covert incurs social disadvantages. A happy turn of events had shielded Rosalind from the hounds, or they had found better sport elsewhere. And her child was her own.

But even as the thought was registered in her mind, that child lay lifeless; and her husband, stunned and dumb in his despair, dared not even long that she, too, should know, to share his burden.

"Those people are taking their time," said she. Not that she was pressingly anxious for them to come home. It was early still, and the more Gerry lived in the present the better. Sally and her lover were far and away the best foreground for the panorama of his mind just now, and she herself would be quite happy in the middle distance.

There would be time and enough hereafter, when the storm had subsided, for a revelation of all those vanished chapters of his life in Canada and elsewhere.

It was restful to her, after the tension and trial of the night, to feel that he was happy with Sally and poor Prosy. What did it really matter how long they dawdled? She could hear in antic.i.p.ation their voices and the laughter that would tell her of their coming. In a very little while it would be a reality, and, after all, the pleasure of a good symposium over Sally's betrothal was still to come. She and Gerry and the two princ.i.p.als had not spoken of it together yet. That would be a real happiness. How seldom it was that an engagement to marry gave such complete satisfaction to bystanders! And, after all, _they_ are the ones to be consulted; not the insignificant bride and bridegroom elect. Perhaps, though, she was premature in this case.

Was there not the Octopus? But then she remembered with pleasure that Conrad had represented his mother as phenomenally genial in her att.i.tude towards the new arrangement; as having, in fact, a claim to be considered not only a bestower of benign consent, but an accomplice before the fact. Still, Rosalind felt her own reserves on the subject, although she had always taken the part of the Octopus on principle when she thought Sally had become too disrespectful towards her.

Anyhow, no use to beg and borrow troubles! Let her dwell on the happiness only that was before them all. She pictured a variety of homes for Sally in the time to come, peopling them with beautiful grandchildren--only, mind you, this was to be many, many years ahead!

She could not cast herself for the part of grandmother while she twined that glorious hair into its place with hands that for softness and whiteness would have borne comparison with Sally's own.

In the old days, before the news of evil travelled fast, the widowed wife would live for days, weeks, months, unclouded by the knowledge of her loneliness, rejoicing in the coming hour that was to bring her wanderer back; and even as her heart laughed to think how now, at last, the time was drawing near for his return, his heart had ceased to beat, and, it may be, his bones were already bleaching where the a.s.sa.s.sin's knife had left him in the desert; or were swaying to and fro in perpetual monotonous response to the ground-swell, in some strange green reflected light of a sea-cavern no man's eye had ever seen; or buried nameless in a common tomb with other victims of battle or of plague; or, worst of all, penned in some dungeon, mad to think of home, waking from dreams of _her_ to the terror of the intolerable night, its choking heat or deadly chill. And all those weeks or months the dearth of news would seem just the chance of a lost letter, no more--a thing that may happen any day to any of us. And she would live on in content and hope, jesting even in antic.i.p.ation of his return.

Even so Rosalind, happy and undisturbed, dwelt on the days that were to come for the merp.u.s.s.y and poor Prosy, as she still had chosen to call him, for her husband and herself; and all the while _there_, so near her, was the end of it all, written in letters of death.

They were taking their time, certainly, those people; so she would put her hat on and go to meet them. Mrs. Lobjoit wasn't to hurry breakfast, but wait till they came. All right!