"No, dear Gerry, seriously. If I were to write out no to you in India—a great big final no—then what do you think you would do?"
"I know what I think I should do. I should throw myself into the Hooghly or the Ganges."
"You silly boy! You would swim about, whether you liked or no. And then Jemadars, or Shastras, or Sudras, or something would come and pull you out. And then how ridiculous you would look!"
"No, Rosey, because I can't swim. Isn't it funny?"
Then she recollected his friend's voice striking in with: "What's that? Gerry Palliser swim! Of course he can't. He can wrestle, or run, or ride, or jump; and he's the best man I know with the gloves on. But swim he can't! That's flat!" Also how Gerry had then told eagerly how he was nearly drowned once, and Arthur fished him up from the bottom of Abingdon Lock. The latter went on:
"It was after that we tattooed each other, his name on my arm, my name on his, so as not to quarrel. You know, I suppose, that men who tattoo each other's arms can't quarrel if they try?" Arthur showed "A. Palliser," tattooed blue on his arm. Both young men were very grave and earnest about the safeguard. And then she remembered a question she asked, and how both replied with perfect gravity: "Of course, sure to!" The question had been:—Was it invariable that all men quarrelled if one saved the other from drowning?
She sits upstairs alone by the fire in her bedroom, and dreams again through all the past, except the nightmare of her life—that she always shudders away from. Sally will come up presently, and then she will feel ease again. Now, it is a struggle against fever.
She can hear plainly enough—for the house is but a London suburban villa—the strains from the drawing-room of what is possibly the most hackneyed violin music in the world—the Tartini (so-called) Devil Sonata—every phrase, every run, every chord an enthralling mystery still, an utterance none can explain, an inexhaustible thing no age can wither, and no custom stale. It is so soothing to her that it matters little if it makes them late. But that young man will destroy his nerves to a certainty outright.
Then comes the chaos of dispersal—the broken fragments of the intelligible a watchful ear may pick out. Dr. Vereker won't have a cab; he will leave the 'cello till next time, and walk. Mr. Bradshaw wants to get to Bayswater. Of course, that's all in our way—we being Miss Wilson and the cousin, the nonentity. We can give Mr. Bradshaw a lift as far as he goes, and then he can take the growler on. Then more good-nights are wished than the nature of things will admit of before to-morrow, Fenwick and Vereker light something to smoke, with a preposterous solicitude to use only one tandsticker between them, and walk away umbrella-less. From which we see that "it" is holding up. Then comes silence, and a consciousness of a policeman musing, and suspecting doors have been left stood open.