OF DAVE WARDLE'S CONVALESCENCE. OF MRS. RUTH THRALE, WIDOW AND
OGRESS, WHO APPRECIATED HIM. HIS ACCOUNT OF HIS HOSPITAL
EXPERIENCE. HOW HE MADE THE ACQUAINTANCE OF A COUNTESS, AND TOLD
HER ABOUT WIDOW THRALE'S GRANDFATHER'S WATER-MILL. CONCERNING JUNO
LUCINA. THESEUS AND ARIADNE. HOW DAVE DETECTED A FAMILY LIKENESS,
AND NEARLY RUBBED HIS EYES OUT. HOW GRANNY MARRABLE SHOWED HIM THE
MILL AT WORK AND MR. MUGGERIDGE
If the daylight were not so short in October at Chorlton-under-Bradbury,
in Rocestershire, that month would quite do for summer in as many
autumns as not. As it is, from ten till five, the sun that comes to say
goodbye to the apples, that will all be plucked by the end of the
month, is so strong that forest trees are duped, and are ready to do
their part towards a green Yule if only the midday warmth will linger on
to those deadly small hours of the morning, when hoarfrost gets the thin
end of its wedge into the almanack, and sleepers go the length of coming
out of bed for something to put over their feet, and end by putting it
over most of their total. From ten till five, at least, the last
swallows seem to be reconsidering their departure, and the skylarks to
be taking heart, and thinking they can go on ever so much longer. Then,
not unfrequently, day falls in love with night for the sake of the
moonrise, and dies of its passion in a blaze of golden splendour. But
the memory of her does not live long into the heart of the night, as it
did in the long summer twilights. Love cools and the dews fall, and the
winds sing dirges in the elms through the leaves they will so soon
scatter about the world without remorse; and then one morning the grass
is crisp with frost beneath the early riser's feet, and he finds the
leaves of the ash all fallen since the dawn, a green, still heap below
their old boughs stript and cold. And he goes home and has all sorts of
things for breakfast, being in England.
But no early riser had had this experience at Chorlton-under-Bradbury on
that October afternoon when Dave Wardle, personally conducted by Sister
Nora, and very tired with travelling from a distant railway-station--the
local line was not there in the fifties--descended from the coach or
omnibus at the garden gate of Widow Thrale, the good woman who was going
to feed him, sleep him, and enjoy his society during convalescence.
The coach or omnibus touched its hat and accepted something from Sister
Nora, and went on to the Six Bells in High Street, where the something
took the form of something else to drink, which got into its head. The
High Street was very wide, and had more water-troughs for horses than
recommended themselves to the understanding. But they might have
succeeded in doing so before the railway came in these parts, turning
everything to the rightabout, as Trufitt phrased it at the Bells. There
were six such troughs within a hundred yards; and, as their contents
never got into the horses' heads, what odds if there were? When the
world was reasonable and four or five horns were heard blowing at once,
often enough, in the high road, no one ever complained, that old Trufitt
ever heard tell of. So presumably there were no odds.
Widow Thrale lived with an old lady of eighty, who was also a widow;
or, one might have said, even more so, seeing that her widowhood was a
double one, her surname, Marrable, being the third she had borne. She
was, however, never called Widow Marrable, but always Granny Marrable;
and Dave's hostess, who was to take charge of him, was not her daughter,
as might have seemed most probable, but a niece who had filled the place
of a daughter to her and was always so spoken of. What an active and
vigorous octogenarian she was may be judged from the fact that, at the
moment of the story, she was taking on herself the task of ushering into
the world her first great-grandchild, the son or daughter--as might turn
out--of her granddaughter, Maisie Costrell, the only daughter of Widow
Thrale. For this young woman had ordained that "Granny" should officiate
as high-priestess on this occasion, and we know it is just as well to
give way to ladies under such circumstances.
So when Dave and Sister Nora were deposited by the coach at Strides
Cottage, it was Widow Thrale who received them. She did not produce on
the lady the effect of a _bona-fide_ widow of fifty-five--this
description had been given of her--not so much because of the
non-viduity of her costume, for that was temperate and negative, as
because Time seemed to have let his ravages stand over for the present.
Very few casual observers would have guessed that she was over
forty-five. Ruth Thrale--that was her name in full--had two sons
surviving of her own family, both at sea, and one daughter, Maisie
Costrell aforesaid. So she was practically now without incumbrances, and
terribly wanting some to kiss, had hit upon the expedient of taking
charge of invalid children and fostering them up to kissing-point. They
were often poor, wasted little articles enough at the first go off, but
Mrs. Ruth usually succeeded in making them succulent in a month or so.
It was exasperating, though, to have them go away just as they were
beginning to pay for fattening. The case was analogous to that of an
ogress balked of her meal, after going to no end of expense in humanised
cream and such-like.
All the ogress rose in her heart when she saw our little friend Dave
Wardle. But she was very careful about his stiff leg. Her eyes gleamed
at the opportunities he would present for injudicious overfeeding--or
suppose we say stuffing at once and have done with it. A banquet was
ready prepared for him, to which he was adapted in a chair of suitable
height, and which he began absorbing into his system without apparently
registering any date of completion. You must not imagine he had been
stinted of food on the journey: indeed, he may be said to have been
taking refreshment more or less all the way from London. But he was one
of the sort that can go steadily on, converting helpings into small boy,
apparently without intermediate scientific events--gastric juice and
blood-corpuscles, and so forth. He was able to converse affably the
while, accepting suggestions as to method in the spirit in which they
were given. In reporting his remarks the spelling cannot be too
phonetical; if unintelligible at first, read them literally aloud to a
hearer who does not see the letterpress. The conversation had turned on
Dave's accident.
"Oy sawed the firing gin coming, and oy said to stoarp, and the firing
gin didn't stoarpt, and it said whoy--whoy--whoy!" This was an attempt
to render the expressive cry of the brigade; now replaced, we believe,
by a tame bell. "Oy sawed free men shoyning like scandles, and Dolly
sawed nuffink--no, nuffink!" The little man's voice got quite sad here.
Think what he had seen and Dolly had missed!
Mrs. Ruth was harrowed by what the child must have suffered. She
expressed her feelings to Sister Nora. Not, however, without Dave
catching their meaning. He was very sharp.
"It hurted at the Hospital," said he. That is, the accident itself had
been too sudden and overwhelming to admit of any estimate of the pain it
caused; the suffering came with the return of consciousness. Then he
added, rather inexplicably:--"It didn't hurted Dolly."
Sister Nora, looking with an amused, puzzled face at the small
absurdity, assimilating suitable nourishment and wrestling with his
mother-tongue at its outset, said:--"Why didn't it hurted Dolly, I
wonder?" and them illuminated:--"Oh--I see! It balances Dolly's account.
Dolly was the loser by not seeing the fire-engine, but she escaped the
accident. Of course!" Whereupon the ogress said with gravity, after due
reflection: "I think you are right, ma'am." She then pointed out to Dave
that well-regulated circles sit still at their suppers, whereas he had
allowed his feelings, on hearing his intelligibility confirmed, to break
out in his legs and kick those of the table. He appeared to believe his
informant, and to determine to frame his behaviour for the future on the
practices of those circles. But he should have taken his spoon out of
his mouth while forming this resolution.
He then, as one wishing to entertain in Society, went on to detail his
experiences in the Hospital, giving first--as it is always well to begin
at the beginning--the names of the staff as he had mastered them. There
was Dr. Dabtinkle, or it might have been Damned Tinker, a doubtful name;
and Drs. Inkstraw, Jarbottle, and Toby. His hearers were able to
identify the names of Dalrymple, Inglethorpe, and Harborough. They were
at work on Toby, who defied detection, when it became evident that sleep
was overwhelming their informant. He was half roused to be put in a
clean nightgown that smelt of lavender, and then curled round his hands
and forgot the whole Universe.
"What a nice little man he is!" said Sister Nora. "He's quite a baby
still, though he's more than six. Some of the London children are so
old. But this child's people seem nice and old-fashioned, although his
uncle was a prizefighter."
"Laws-a-me!" said Mrs. Ruth. "To think of that now! A prizefighter!" And
she had to turn back to Dave's crib, which they were just leaving, to
see whether this degraded profession had set its stamp on her prey....
No, it was all right! She could gloat over that sleeping creature
without misgiving.
"I've just thought who Toby is," said Sister Nora. "Of course, it's Dr.
Trowbridge, the head surgeon. I fancy, now I come to think of it, the
juniors are apt to speak of him without any Dr. I don't know why. I
shall tell Dr. Damned Tinker his name.... Oh no--he won't be offended."
Sister Nora was driven away to the mansion of her noble relative, three
miles off, in a magnificent carriage that was sent for her, in which she
must have felt insignificant. Perhaps she got there in time to dress for
dinner, perhaps not. Wearers of uniforms wash and brush up: they don't
dress.
She reappeared at Mrs. Marrable's cottage two days later, in the same
vehicle, accompanied by the Countess her aunt, who remained therein.
Dave was brought out to make her acquaintance, but not to be taken for a
long drive--only a very short one, just up and down and round, because
Sister Nora wouldn't be more than five minutes. He was relieved when he
found himself safe inside the carriage with her, out of the way of her
haughty and overdressed serving-men, whom he mistrusted. The coachman,
Blencorn, was too high up in the air for human intercourse. Dave found
the lady in the carriage more his sort, and told her, in Sister Nora's
absence--she having vanished into the house--many interesting
experiences of country life. The ogress had taken off his clean shirt,
which he had felt proud of, and looked forward to a long acquaintance
with; substituting another, equally good, perhaps, but premature. She
had fed him well; he gave close particulars of the diet, laying especial
stress on the fact that he had requisitioned the outside piece,
presumably of the loaf, but possibly of some cake. Her ladyship seemed
to think its provenance less important than its destination. She was
able to identity from her own experience a liquid called scream, of
which Dave had bespoken a large jug full, to be taken to Dolly on his
return home. He went on to relate how he had been shown bees, a calf,
and a fool with long legs; about which last the lady was for a moment at
fault, having pictured to herself a Shakespearean one with a bauble. It
proved to be a young horse, a very young one, whose greedy habits Dave
described with a simple but effective directness. But he was destined to
puzzle his audience by his keen interest in something that was on the
mantleshelf, his description of which seemed to relate to nothing this
lady's recollection of Strides interior supplied.
"What on earth does the little man mean by a water-cart on the
mantelshelf, Mrs. Thrale?" said the Countess on leavetaking. The widow
had come out to reclaim her young charge, who seemed not exactly
indignant but perceptibly disappointed, at her ladyship's slowness of
apprehension. He plunged afresh into his elucidation of the subject.
There _was_ a water-cart with four horses, to grind the flour to make
the bread, behind a glast on the chimley-shelf. He knew he was right,
and appealed to Europe for confirmation, more to reinstate his character
for veracity than to bring the details of the topic into prominence.
"That is entirely right, my lady," said Widow Thrale, apologetic for
contradiction from her duty to conscience on the one hand, and her
reluctance to correct her superiors on the other, but under compulsion
from the former. "Quite correct. He's chattering about my grandfather's
model of his mill. He doesn't mean water-cart. He means water-mill. Only
there's a cart with horses in the yard. It's a hundred years old. It's
quite got between the child's mind and his reason, and he wants to see
it work like I've told him."
"Yes," said Dave emphatically, "with water in the cistern." He stopped
suddenly--you may believe it or not--because of a misgiving crossing his
mind that he was using some of Sister Nora's name too freely. Find out
where for yourself.
However, nothing of the sort seemed to cross anyone else's mind, so Dave
hoped he was mistaken. His hostess proceeded to explain why she could
not gratify his anxiety to see this contrivance at work. "I could show
it to him perfectly well," she said, "only to humour a fancy of
Granny's. She never would have anyone touch it but herself, so we shall
have to have patience, some of us." Dave wondered who the other
spectators would be when the time came--would the Countess be one of
them? And would she get down and come into the house, or have it
brought out for her to see in the carriage?
Mrs. Thrale continued:--"I should say it hadn't been set a-going now for
twenty years.... No, more! It was for the pleasuring and amusement of my
little half-brother Robert she made it work, and we buried him more
years ago than that." And then they talked about something else, which
Dave did not closely follow, because he was so sorry for Mrs. Thrale. He
could not resist the conviction that her little half-brother Robert was
dead. Because, if not, they surely never would have buried him. He was
unable to work this out to a satisfactory conclusion, because Sister
Nora was waiting to resume her place in the carriage, and he had no
sooner surrendered it to her than the lateness of the hour was
recognised, and the distinguished visitors drove away in a hurry.
* * * * *
Although Mrs. Marrable had gone away from home ostensibly to welcome
into the world a great-grandchild, the announcement that one had arrived
preceded her return nearly a week. Other instances might be adduced of
very old matriarchs who have imagined themselves Juno, as she certainly
did. Juno, one may reasonably suppose, did not feel free to depart until
matters had been put on a comfortable footing. Of course, the goddess
had advantages; omnipresence, for instance, or at least presence at
choice. One official visit did not monopolize her. Old Mrs.
Marrable--Granny Marrable _par excellence_--had but one available
personality, and had to be either here or there, never everywhere! So
Dave and another convalescent had Strides Cottage all to themselves and
their ogress, for awhile.
The country air did wonders for the London child. This is always the
case, and contains the truth that only strong children outlive their
babyhood in London, and these become normal when they are removed to
normal human conditions. Dave began becoming the robust little character
Nature had intended him to be, and evidently would soon throw off the
ill-effects of his accident, with perhaps a doubt about how long the leg
would be stiff.
So by the time Granny Marrable returned into residence she was not
confronted with an invalid still plausibly convalescent, but an eatable
little boy, from the ogress point of view, who used a crutch when
reminded of his undertaking to do so. Otherwise he preferred to neglect
it; leaving it on chairs or on the settle by the fireplace, like Ariadne
on Naxos; evidently feeling, when he was recalled to his duty towards
it, as Theseus might have felt if remonstrated with by Minos for his
desertion of his daughter. In reinstating it he would be acting for the
crutch's sake. And why should he trouble to do this, when the other
little boy, Marmaduke, who had nothing whatever the matter with _his_
leg, was always ambitious to use this crutch, or scrutch. He was the
Dionysos of the metaphor.
However, the crutch was not in question when Dave first set eyes on
Granny Marrable. It was at half-past seven o'clock on a cold morning,
when the last swallow had departed, and the skylarks were flagging, and
the tragedy of the ash-leaves was close at hand, that Dave awoke
reluctantly from a remote dream-world with Dolly in it, and Uncle Mo,
and Aunt M'riar, and Mrs. Picture upstairs, to hear a voice, that at
first seemed Mrs. Picture's in the dream, saying: "Well, my little
gentleman, you _do_ sleep sound!"
But it wasn't Mrs. Prichard's, or Picture's, voice; it was Granny
Marrable's. For all her eighty years, she had walked from Costrell's
farm, her great-grandson's birthplace, three miles off, or thereabouts;
and had arrived at her own door, ten minutes since, quite fresh after an
hour's walk. She was that sort of old woman.
Dave was almost as disconcerted as when he woke at the Hospital and saw
no signs of his home, and no old familiar faces. He sat up in bed and
wrestled with his difficulties, his eyelids being among the chief. If he
rubbed them hard enough, no doubt the figure before him would cease to
be Mrs. Picture, even as the other figure the dream had left had ceased
to be Aunt M'riar, and had become Widow Thrale. Not but that he would
have accepted her as Mrs. Picture, being prepared for almost anything
since his accident, if it had not been for the expression, "My little
gentleman," which quarrelled with her seeming identity. Oh no!--if he
rubbed away hard enough at those eyes with his nightgown-sleeve, this
little matter would right itself. Of course, Mrs. Picture would have
called him Doyvy, or the name he gave that inflection to.
"Child!--you'll rub your pretty eyes out that fashion," said Granny
Marrable. And she uncrumpled Dave's small nightgown-sleeve the eyes were
in collision with, and disentangled their owner from the recesses of his
bedclothes. Then Dave was quite convinced it was not Mrs. Picture, who
was not so nearly strong as this dream-image, or waking reality.
"He'll come awake directly," said the younger widow. "He do sleep,
Granny!" For Widow Thrale often called her aunt "Granny" as a tribute to
her own offspring. Otherwise she thought of her as "Mother." Her own
mother was only a half-forgotten fact, a sort of duplicate mother, who
vanished when she was almost a baby. She continued:--"He goes nigh to
eating up his pillow he does. There never was a little boy sounder; all
night long not a move! Such a little slugabed I never!" And then this
ogress--for she really was no better--was heartless enough to tickle
Dave and kiss him, with an affectation of devouring him. And he, being
tickled, had to laugh; and then was quite awake, for all the world as if
he could never go to sleep again.
"I fought," said he, feeling some apology was due for his
misapprehension, "I fought it was old Mrs. Picture on the top-landing in
the hackicks."
"He's asleep still," said the ogress. "Come along, and I'll wash your
sleep out, young man!" And she paid no attention at all to Dave's
attempted explanations of his reference to old Mrs. Picture or Prichard.
He may be said to have lectured on the subject throughout his ablutions,
and really Widow Thrale was not to blame, properly speaking, when he got
the soap in his mouth.
Dave lost no time in mooting the subject of the water-mill, and it was
decided that as soon as he had finished dictating a letter he had begun
to Dolly, Granny Marrable--whom he addressed as "Granny
Marrowbone"--would exhibit this ingenious contrivance.
He stuck to his letter conscientiously; and it was creditable to him,
because it took a long time. Yet the ground gone over was not extensive.
He expressed his affection for Dolly herself, for Uncle Mo and Aunt
M'riar, and subordinately for Mrs. Picture, and even Mrs. Burr. He added
that there was ducks in the pond. That was all; but it was not till late
in the morning that the letter was completed. Then Dave claimed his
promise. He was to see the wheel go round, and the sacks go up into the
granary above the millstones. It was a pledge even an old lady of eighty
could not go back on.
Nor had she any such treacherous intention. So soon as ever the
dinner-things were cleared away, Granny Marrable with her own hands
lifted down the model off of the mantelshelf, and removing the glass
from the front of the case, brought the contents out on the oak table
the cloth no longer covered, so that you might see all round. Then the
cistern--which after all had nothing to do with Sister Nora--was
carefully filled with water so that none should spill and make marks,
neither on the table nor yet on the mill itself, and then it was wound
up like a clock till you couldn't wind no further and it went click. And
then the water in the cistern was let run, and the wheels went round;
and Dave knew exactly what a water-mill was like, and was assured--only
this was a pious fiction--that the water made the wheels go round. The
truth was that the clockwork worked the wheels and made them pump back
the water as fast as ever it came down. And this is much better than in
real mills, because the same water does over and over again, and the
power never fails. But you have to wind it up. You can't expect
everything!
Granny Marrable gave a brief description of the model. Her brother, who
died young, made it because he was lame of one leg; which meant that
enforced inactivity had found a sedentary employment in mechanisms, not
that all lame folk make mills. Those two horses were Mr. Pitt and Mr.
Fox. That was her father standing at the window, with his pipe in his
mouth, a miracle of delicate workmanship. And that was the carman, Mr.
Muggeridge, who used to see to loading up the cart.
Children are very perverse in their perception of the relative
importance of things they are told, and Dave was enormously impressed
with Mr. Muggeridge. Silent analysis of the model was visible on his
face for awhile, and then he broke out into catechism:--"Whoy doesn't
the wheel-sacks come down emptied out?" said he. He had not got the
expression "wheat-sacks" right.
"Well, my dear," said Granny Marrable, who felt perhaps that this
question attacked a weak point, "if it was the mill itself, they would.
But now it's only done in small, we have to pretend." Dave lent himself
willingly to the admission of a transparent fiction, and it was
creditable to his liberality that he did so. For though the sacks were
ingeniously taken into the mill-roof under a projecting hood, they
reappeared instantly to go up again through a hole under the cart. Any
other arrangement would have been too complex; and, indeed, a pretence
that they took grain up and brought flour down might have seemed
affectation. A conventional treatment was necessary. It had one great
advantage, too: it liberated the carman for active service elsewhere. It
was entirely his own fault, or his employer's, that he stood bolt
upright, raising one hand up and down in time with the movement of the
wheels. The miller did not seem to mind; for he only kept on looking out
of window, smoking.
But the miller and the carman were not the only portraitures this model
showed. Two very little girls were watching the rising grain-sacks, each
with her arm round the other. The miller may have been looking at them
affectionately from the window; but really he was so very
unimpressive--quite inscrutable! Dave inquired about these little girls,
after professing a satisfaction he only partly felt about the
arrangements for receiving the raw material and delivering it ground.
"Whoy was they bofe of a size?" said he, for indeed they were exactly
alike.
"Because, my dear, that is the size God made them. Both at the same
time!"
"Who worze they?" asked Dave, clinching the matter abruptly--much too
interested for circumlocution.
"Myself, my dear, and my little sister, born the same time. With our
lilac frocks on and white bonnets to shade the sun off our eyes. And
each a nosegay of garden flowers." There was no more sorrow in the old
woman's voice than belongs to any old voice speaking thoughtfully and
gently. Her old hand caressed the crisp locks of the little, interested
boy, and felt his chin appreciatively, as she added:--"Three or four
years older than yourself, my dear! Seventy years ago!" with just the
ring of sadness--no more--that always sounds when great age speaks of
its days long past.
The other convalescent boy here struck in, raising a vital question.
"Which is you, and which is her?" said he. He had come in as a new
spectator; surrendering Dave's crutch, borrowed as needless to its
owner, in compliance with a strange fascination, now waning in charm as
the working model asserted its powers. Dionysos had deserted Ariadne
again.
"This is me," said Granny Marrable. "And this is Maisie." And now you
who read probably know, as clearly as he who writes, who she was, this
octogenarian with such a good prospect of making up the hundred. She was
Phoebe, the sister of old Mrs. Prichard, whose story was told in the
last chapter. But most likely you guessed that pages ago.
* * * * *
I, who write, have no aim in telling this story beyond that of repeating
as clearly and briefly as may be the bare facts that make it up--of
communicating them to whoever has a few hours to spare for the purpose,
with the smallest trouble to himself in its perusal. I feel often that
my lack of skill is spoiling what might be a good story. That I cannot
help; and I write with the firm conviction that any effort on my part to
arrange these facts in such order that the tale should show dramatic
force, or startle him with unexpected issues of event, would only
procure derision for its writer, and might even obscure the only end he
has at heart, that of giving a complete grasp of the facts, as nearly as
may be in the order of their occurrence.
There is one feature in the story which the most skilful narrator might
easily fail to present as probable--the separation of these twin sisters
throughout a long lifetime, a separation contrary to nature; so much so,
indeed, that tales are told of twins living apart, the death or illness
of one of whom has brought about the death or similar illness of the
other. One would at least say that neither could die without knowledge
of the other; might even infer that either would go on thinking the
other living, without some direct evidence of death, some seeming
communication from the departed. But the separation of Phoebe from
Maisie did not come under these conditions; each was the victim of a
wicked fraud, carried out with a subtlety that might have deceived
Scotland Yard. There can be no doubt that it would have had the force to
obscure any phenomenon of a so-called telepathic nature, however vivid,
as proof that either twin was still alive; as the percipient, in the
belief that her sister's death was established beyond a doubt, would
unhesitatingly conclude that the departed had revisited earth, or had
made her presence felt by some process hard to understand from our side.
To see the story in its right light we must always keep in view the
extraordinary isolation of the penal settlement. All convict life is cut
off from the world, but in Van Diemen's Land even the freest of men out
on ticket-of-leave--free sometimes so long that the renewal of their
licence at its expiration became the merest form--was separated from the
land of his birth, even from the mainland of Australia, by a barrier for
him almost as impassable as the atmosphere that lies between us and the
visible land of the moon. Keep in mind the hundred-and-odd miles of
sea--are you sure you thought of it as so much?--that parts Tasmania
from the nearest point of New South Wales, and picture to yourself the
few slow sailing-ships upon their voyages from Sydney, five times as
distant. To go and come on such a journey was little else to the
stay-at-home in those days, than that he should venture beyond the grave
and return.
No!--the wonder to my mind is not that the two sisters should have been
parted so utterly, and each been so completely duped about the other's
death, but that Maisie should have returned less than five-and-twenty
years later, and that, so returning, she should not have come to the
knowledge that her sister was still living.