won't blame me, stopping away this once. More by token, if he does miss
seeing me, he'll just think I'm at Denby's."
"But, Phoebe--Phoebe!--think of long ago, how I would try to persuade
you to stop away just once, to please me--just only once! And now ..."
She seemed to have set her heart on her sister's going; a sort of not
very explicable tribute to "auld lang syne."
Gwen caught what seemed a clue to her meaning. "I see," said she. "You
want to make up for it now. Isn't that it?"
"Yes--yes--yes! And Ruth must go with her to take care of her.... Oh,
Phoebe, why should you be so much stronger than me?" She meant perhaps,
why should her sister's strength be taken for granted?
Gwen looked at Granny Marrable, who was hesitating. Her look
meant:--"Yes--go! Why not?" A nod thrown in meant:--"Better go!" She
looked round for Ruth, to get her sanction or support, but Ruth was no
longer in the room. "What has become of Mrs. Thrale?" said Gwen.
Ruth had vanished into the front-room, and there Gwen found her, looking
white. "I saw it," said she. "And it frightened me. I am a fool--why
have I not seen it before?"
Gwen said:--"Oh, I see! You mean the likeness? Yes--it's--it's
startling!" Then she told of old Maisie's sudden whim about the service
at Chorlton Church. "As your ladyship thinks best!" said Ruth. Her
ladyship did think it best, on the whole. It would be best to comply
with every whim--could only have a sedative effect. She herself would
remain beside "your mother" while the two were away. Would they not be
very late? Oh, that didn't matter! Besides, everyone was late. Granny
Marrable and Ruth were soon in trim for a hasty departure. But as they
went away Ruth slipped into Lady Gwen's hand the accursed letter, as
promised. She had brought it out into the daylight again, unwillingly
enough.
That was how it came about that Gwen found herself alone with old Maisie
that morning.
"My dear--my dear!" said the old lady, as soon as Gwen was settled down
beside her, "if it had not been for you, I should have died and never
seen them--my sister and my Ruth.... I think I am sure that it is they,
come back.... It is--oh, it is--my Phoebe and my little girl.... Oh,
_say_ it is. I like you to say it." She caught Gwen by the arm, speaking
low and quickly, almost whispering.
"Of course it is. And they have gone to church. They will be back to
dinner at one. Perhaps you will be strong enough to sit up at table....
Oh no!--that certainly is not them back again. I think it is
Elizabeth--from next door; I don't know her name--putting the meat down
to roast.... Yes--she has her own Sunday dinner to attend to, but she
says she can be in both houses at once. I heard her say so to your
sister." Gwen felt it desirable to dwell on the relationship, when
chances occurred.
"Elizabeth-next-door. I remember her when Ruth was Widow Thrale--it
seems so long ago now!... Yes--I wished Phoebe to go to church, because
she always wished to go. Besides, it made it like _then_."
"'Made it like then?'" Gwen was not sure she followed this.
"Yes--like then, when the mill was, and our father. Only before I
married and went away he made us go with him, always. He was very
strict. It was after that I would persuade Phoebe to leave me behind
when she went on Sunday. It was when she was married to Uncle Nicholas
who was drowned. We always called him Uncle Nicholas, because of my
little Ruth."
Gwen thought a moment whether anything would be gained by clearing up
this confusion. Old Maisie's belief in "Uncle Nicholas's" death by
drowning, fifty years ago, clung to her mind, as a portion of a chaotic
past no visible surrounding challenged. It was quite negligible--that
was Gwen's decision. She held her tongue.
But nothing of the Chaos was negligible. Every memory was entangled with
another. A sort of affright seemed to seize upon old Maisie, making her
hand tighten suddenly on Gwen's arm. "Oh, how was that--how was that?"
she cried. "They were together--all together!"
"It was only what the letter said," answered Gwen. "It was all a made-up
story. Uncle Nicholas was not drowned, any more than your sister, or
your child."
"Oh dear!" Old Maisie's hand went to her forehead, as though it stunned
her to think.
"They will tell you when he died, soon, when you have got more settled.
_I_ don't know."
"He must be dead, because Phoebe is a widow."
"She is the widow of the husband she married after his death. That is
why her name is Marrable, not ... Cropworthy--was it?"
"Not Cropworthy--Cropredy. Such a funny name we thought it.... But
then--Phoebe must think...."
"Think what?"
"Must think _I_ married again. Because I am Mrs. Prichard."
"Perhaps she does think so. Why are you Mrs. Prichard? Don't tell me now
if it tires you to talk."
"It does not tire me. It is easier to talk than to think. I took the
name of Prichard because I wanted it all forgotten."
"About your husband having been--in prison?"
"Oh no, no! I was not ashamed about that. He was wrong, but it was only
money. It was my son.... Oh yes--he was transported too--but that was
after.... It was only a theft. I cannot talk about my son." Gwen felt
that she shuddered, and that danger lay that way. The fever might
return. She cast about for anything that would divert the conversation
from that terrible son. Dave and Dolly, naturally.
"Stop a minute," said she. "You have never seen Dave's letter that he
wrote to say he knew all about it." And she went away to the front room
to get it.
A peaceful joint was turning both ways at the right speed by itself. The
cat, uninterested, was consulting her own comfort, and the cricket was
persevering for ever in his original statement. Saucepans were simmering
in conformity, with perfect faith in the reappearance of the human
disposer of their events, in due course. Dave's letter lay where Gwen
had left it, between the flower-pots on the window-shelf. She picked it
up and went back with it to the bedside.
"You must have your spectacles and read it yourself. Can you? Where
shall I find them?"
"I think my Ruth has put them in the watch-pocket with my watch, over my
head here." She could make no effort to reach them, but Gwen drew out
both watch and glasses. "What a pretty old watch!" said she.
It pleased the old lady to hear her watch admired. "I had it when I went
out to my husband." She added inexplicably:--"The man brought it back to
me for the reward. He had not sold it." Then she told, clearly enough,
the tale you may remember her telling to Aunt M'riar; about the convict
at Chatham, who brought her a letter from her husband on the river hulk.
"Over fifty years ago now, and it still goes. Only it loses--and
gains.... But show me my boy's letter." She got her glasses on, with
Gwen's help, and read. The word "cistern" was obscure. She quite
understood what followed, saying:--"Oh, yes--so much longer ago than
Dolly's birthday! And we did--we did--think we were dead and buried. The
darling boy!"
"He means each thought the other was. I told him." Gwen saw that the old
face looked happy, and was pleased. She began to think she would be easy
in her mind at Pensham, to-morrow, about old Mrs. Picture, and able to
tell the story to her blind lover with a light heart.
Old Maisie had come to the postscript. "What is this at the end?" said
she. "'The tea is stood ready' for me. And for Granny Marrowbone too."
Gwen saw the old face looking happier than she had seen it yet, and was
glad to answer:--"Yes--I saw the tea 'stood ready' by your chair. All
but the real sugar and milk. Dolly sits beside it on the floor--all her
leisure time I believe--and dreams of bliss to come. Dave sympathizes at
heart, but affects superiority. It's his manhood." Old Maisie said
again:--"The darling children!" and kept on looking at the letter.
Gwen's satisfaction at this was to be dashed slightly. For she found
herself asked, to her surprise, "Who is Granny Marrowbone?" She
replied:--"Of course Dave wants his other Granny, from the country." She
waited for an assent, but none came.
Instead, old Maisie said reflectively, as though recalling an incident
of some interest:--"Oh yes!--Granny Marrowbone was his other Granny in
the country, where he went to stay, and saw Jones's Bull. I think she
must be a nice old lady." Gwen said nothing. Better pass this by; it
would be forgotten.
But the strong individuality of that Bull came in the way. Had not they
visited him together only the other day? He struck confusion into memory
and oblivion alike. The face Gwen saw, when the letter that hid it fell
on the coverlid, was almost terrified. "Oh, see the things I say!" cried
old Maisie, in great distress of mind. "How am I ever to know it right?"
She clung to Gwen's hand in a sort of panic. In a few moments she said,
in an awed sort of voice:--"Was that Phoebe, then, that I saw when we
stopped at the Cottage, in the carriage, after the Bull?"
"Yes, dear! And you are in the Cottage now. And Phoebe is coming back
soon. And Ruth."
CHAPTER XXIII
CATHERINE WHEELS. CENTIPEDES. CENTENARIANS. BACKGAMMON. IT.
HEREAFTER CORNER. LADY KATHERINE STUARTLAVEROCK. BISHOP BERKELEY.
THE COUNTESS'S VISIT REVIEWED. A CODEX OF HUMAN WEAKNESS. AN
EXPOSITION OF SELFISHNESS. HOW ADRIAN WOULD HOLD ON LIKE GRIM
DEATH. A BELDAM, CRONE, HAG, OR DOWDY. SUICIDE. THE LITTLE BOTTLE
OF INDIAN POISON. MORE SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS. GWEN'S DAILY BULLETINS.
ONESIMUS. TURTLE SOUP AND CHAMPAGNE. FOXBOURNE. HOW THEY WENT TO
CHORLTON, AND ANOTHER DOG SMELT ACHILLES
As he who has godfathered a Catherine Wheel stands at a respectful
distance while it spits and fizzes, so may the story that reunites
lovers who have been more than a week apart. The parallel, however, does
not hold good throughout, for the Catherine Wheel usually gets stuck
after ignition, and has to be stimulated judiciously, while lovers--if
worth the name--go off at sight. In many cases--oh, so many!--the
behaviour of the Catherine Wheel is painfully true to life. Its
fire-spin flags and dies and perishes, and nothing is left of it but a
pitiful black core that gives a last spasmodic jump and is for ever
still!
Fireworks are only referred to here in connection with the former
property. When Gwen reappeared at Pensham, Miss Torrens--this is her own
expression--"cleared out" until her brother and her visitor "came to
their senses." The Catherine Wheel, in their case, had by that time
settled down from a tempest of flame-spray to a steady lamplight,
endurable by bystanders. The story need not wait quite so long, but may
avail itself of the first return of sanity.
"Dearest--are you really going to stop till Saturday?"
"If you think we shan't quarrel. Four whole days and a bit at each end!
_I_ think it's tempting Providence."
"Why not stop over Sunday, and make an honourable week of it and no
stinting?"
"Because I have a papa coming back to his ancestral home, on Saturday
evening, and he will come back boiled and low from Bath waters, inside
and out, and he'll want a daughter to give him tone. He gets rid of the
gout, but ..."
"But. Exactly! It's the insoluble residuum that comes back. However, you
_will_ be here till Friday night."
"Can't even promise that! I may be sent for."
"Why?... Oh, I know--the old lady. How is she? Tell me more about her.
Tell me lots about her."
Whereupon Gwen, who had been looking forward to doing so, started on an
exhaustive narrative of her visit to Strides Cottage. She had not got
far when Irene thought it safe to return--hearing probably the narrative
tone of voice--and then she had to tell it all over again.
"When I left the Cottage yesterday at about three o'clock," said Gwen,
in conclusion, "she was so much better that I felt quite hopeful about
her."
"Quite hopeful about her?" Irene repeated. "But if she has nothing the
matter with her, except old age, why be anything but hopeful?"
"You would see if you saw her. She looks as if a puff of wind would blow
her away like thistledown."
"That," Adrian said, "is a good sign. There is no guarantee of a long
life like attenuation. Bloated people die shortly after you make their
acquaintance. No, no--for true vitality, give me your skeleton! A
healthy old age really sets in as soon as one is spoken of as still
living."
"Oh dear, yes!" said Irene. "I'm sure Gwen's description sounds exactly
like this old lady becoming a ... There!--I've forgotten the word!
Something between a centipede and a Unitarian...."
"Centenarian?"
"Exactly. See what a good thing it is to have a brother that knows
things. A person a hundred years old. I tell you, Gwen dear, my own
belief is these two old ladies mean to be centenarians, and if we live
long enough we shall read about them in the newspapers. And they will
have a letter from Royalty!"
In the evening Gwen got Adrian, whose sanguine expressions were not
serious, on a more sane and responsible line of thought. His
lady-mother, with whom this story is destined never to become
acquainted, retired early, after shedding a lurid radiance of symptoms
on the family circle; and it, as a dutiful circle, had given her its
blessing and dropped a tear by implication over her early departure from
it. Sir Hamilton had involved his daughter in a vortex of backgammon, a
game draught-players detest, and _vice versa_, because the two games are
even as Box and Cox, in homes possessing only one board. So Gwen and
Adrian had themselves to themselves, and wanted nothing more. Her eyes
rested now and then with a new curiosity on the Baronet, deep in his
game at the far end of the room. She was looking at him by the light of
his handsome daughter's saucy speculation about that romantic passage in
the lives of himself and her mamma. Suppose--she was saying to herself,
with monstrous logic--he had been _my_ papa, and _I_ had had to play
backgammon with him!
She was recalled from one such excursion of fancy by Adrian
saying:--"Are you sure it would not have been better for the old
twins--or one of them--to die and the other never be any the wiser?"
Said Gwen:--"I am not sure. How can I be? But it was absolutely
impossible to leave them there, knowing it, unconscious of each other's
existence."
Adrian replied:--"It _was_ impossible. I see that. But suppose they
_had_ remained in ignorance--in the natural order of events I mean--and
the London one had died unknown to her sister, would it not have been
better than this reunion, with all its tempest of pain and raking up of
old memories, and quite possibly an early separation by death?"
"I think not, on the whole. Because, suppose one had died, and the other
had come to know of her death afterwards!"
"I am supposing the contrary. Suppose both had continued in ignorance!
How then?"
It was not a question to answer off-hand. Gwen pondered; then said
abruptly:--"It depends on whether we go on or stop. Now doesn't it?"
"As bogys? That question always crops up. If we stop I don't see how
there can be any doubt on the matter. Much better they should have died
in ignorance. The old Australian goody was quite contented, as I
understand, at Scraps Court, with her little boy and girl to make tea
for her. And the old body at Chorlton and her daughter would have gone
on quite happily. They didn't want to be excoriated by a discovery."
"Yes--that is what it has been. Excoriation by a discovery. I'm not at
all sure you're right--but I'll make you a present of it. Let's consider
it settled that death in ignorance would have been the best thing for
them."
"Very well!--what next?"
"What next? Why, of course, suppose we don't stop, but go on! You often
say it is ten to one against it."
"So it is. I can't say I'm sorry, on the whole."
"That's neither here nor there. Ten to one against is one to ten for.
Any man on the turf will tell you that."
"And any Senior Wrangler will confirm it."
"Very well, then! There we are. Suppose my dear old Mrs. Picture and
Granny Marrable had turned up as ghosts, on the other side...."
"I see. You've got me in Hereafter Corner, and you don't intend to let
me out."
"Not till you tell me whether they would have been happy or miserable
about it, those two ghosts. In your opinion, of course! Don't run away
with the idea that I think you infallible."
"There are occasions on which I do not think myself infallible. For
instance, when I have to decide an apparently insoluble problem without
data of any sort. Your expression 'turned up as ghosts, on the other
side,' immediately suggests one."
"You can say whether you think they would have been happy or miserable
about having been in England together over twenty years, and never known
it. _That's_ simple enough!"
"Don't be in a hurry! There are complications. If they knew they were
ghosts, they might become interested in the novelty of their position,
and be inclined to accept accomplished facts. Recrimination would be
waste of time. If they didn't know ..."
"Goose!--they would be sure to know."
"The only information I have goes to prove the contrary. When Voltaire's
ghost came and spirit-rapped, or whatever you call it ..."
"I know. One turns tables, and it's very silly."
"... they said triumphantly that they supposed, now he was dead, he was
convinced of another existence. And he--or it--rapped out:--'There is
only one existence. I am not dead.' So he didn't know he was a ghost."
Gwen seemed tolerant of Voltaire, as a _pourparler_. "Perhaps," she said
thoughtfully, "he found he jammed up against the other ghosts instead of
coinciding with them.... You know Lady Katherine Stuartlaverock tried to
kiss her lover's ghost, and he gave, and she went through."
"A very interesting incident," said Adrian. "If she had been a ghost,
too, she would, as you say, have jammed. If Dr. Johnson had known that
story, he would have been more reasonable about Bishop Berkeley.... What
did he say about _him_? Why, he kicked a cask, and said if the Bishop
could do that, and not be convinced of the reality of matter, he would
be a fool, Sir. I wonder if one said 'Sir,' as often as Dr. Johnson, one
would be allowed to talk as much nonsense."
"Boswell must have made that story."
"Very likely. But Boswell made Sam Johnson. Just as we only know of the
existence of Matter through our senses, so we only know of Sam's
existence through Bozzy. I am conscious that I am becoming prosy. Let's
get back to the old ladies."
"Well--it was you that doddered away from them, to talk about Voltaire's
bogy. If they _didn't_ know they were ghosts, what then?"
"If they didn't know they were ghosts, the discovery would have been
just as excoriating as it has been here. Possibly worse, because--what
does one know? Now your full-blown disembodied spirit ... Mind you, this
is only my idea, and may be quite groundless!..."
"Now you've apologized, go on! 'Your full-blown disembodied spirit' ..."
"... may be so absorbed in the sudden and strange surprise of the
change--Browning--as to be quite unable to partake of excruciation, even
with a twin sister.... It is very disagreeable to think of, I admit.
But so is nearly every concrete form in which one clothes an imaginary
other-worldliness."
"Why is it disagreeable to think of being able to shake off one's
troubles, and forget all about them. _I_ like it."
"Well, I admit that I was beginning to say that I thought these two
venerable ladies, meeting as ghosts--not spectres you know, in which
case each would frighten t'other and both would run away--would probably
be as superior to painful memories on this side as the emancipated
butterfly is to its forgotten wiggles as a chrysalis. But it has dawned
upon me that Perfect Beings won't wash, and that the Blessed have
drawbacks, and that their Choir would pall. I am inclined to back out,
and decide that the two of them would have been more miserable if the
discovery had come upon them post mortem than they will be now--in a
little time at least. At first of course it must be maddening to think
of the twenty odd years they have been cheated out of. Really the Divine
Disposer of Events might have had a little consideration for the
Dramatis Personae." He jumped to another topic. "You know your mamma paid
our papa a visit last--last Thursday, wasn't it?--yes, Thursday!"
"Oh yes--I heard all about it. She had a short chat with him, and he
gave her a very good cup of tea. He told her about some very old
acquaintances whom she hadn't heard of for years who live in Tavistock
Square."
"Was _that_ all?"
"No. The lady very-old acquaintance had been a Miss Tyrawley, and had
married her riding-master."
"Was _that_ all?"
"No. She called you and 'Re 'the son and daughter.' Then she talked of
our 'engagement as your father persists in calling it.' My blood boiled
for quite five minutes."
"All that sounds--very usual! Was there nothing else? That was very
little for such a long visit."
"How long was the visit?"
"Much too long for what you've told me. Think of something else!"
Now Gwen had been keeping something back. Under pressure she let it out.
"Well--mamma thought fit to say that your father entirely shared her
views! Was that true?"
"Which of her views?... I suppose I know, though! I should say it was
half-true--truish, suppose we call it!" Then Adrian began to feel he had
been rash. How was he to explain to Gwen that his father thought she was
perhaps--to borrow his own phrase--"sacrificing herself on his shrine"?
It would be like calling on her to attest her passion for _him_. Now a
young lady is at liberty to make any quantity of ardent protestations
_off her own bat_, as the cricketers say; but a lover cannot solicit
testimonials, to be produced if called for by parents or guardians.
However, Gwen had no intention of leaving explanation to him. She
continued:--
"When my mother said that your father entirely shared her views, I know
which she meant, perfectly well. She has got a foolish idea into her
head--and so has my dear old papa, so she's not alone--that I am
marrying you to make up to you for ... for the accident." She found it
harder and harder to speak of the nature of the accident. This once, she
must do it, _coute que coute_. She went on, speaking low that nothing
should reach the backgammon-players. "They say it was _our_ fault that
old Stephen shot you.... Well!--it _was_...."
"My darling, I have frequently pointed out the large share the Primum
Mobile had in the matter, to say nothing of the undoubted influence of
Destiny...."
"Silly man--I am talking seriously. I don't know that it really matters
whether it was or wasn't--wasn't our fault, I mean--so long as they
think I think it was. That's the point. Now, the question is, did or did
not my superior mamma descend on your _comme-il-faut_ parent to drum
this idea into him, and get him on her side?"
"Am I supposed to know?"
"Yes."
"Then I will be frank with you. Always be frank with mad bulls who butt
you into corners and won't let you out. Your mamma's communications with
my papa had the effect you indicate, and he took me into his confidence
the same evening. He too questions the purity of your motives in
marrying me, alleging that they are vitiated by a spirit of
self-sacrifice, tainted by the baneful influence of unselfishness. He is
alive to the possibility that you hate me cordially, but are
pretending."
"Oh, my dearest, I wish I _did_ hate you.... Why?--why of course then it
would really _be_ a sacrifice, and something to boast of. As it is....
Well--I'm consulting my own convenience, and I ... I am the best judge
of my own affairs. It suits me to ... to lead you to the altar, and I
shall do it. As for what other people think, all I can say is, I will
thank Europe to mind its own business."
Then Adrian said:--"I am conscious of the purity of my own motives. I
believe it would be impossible to discover a case of a Selfishness more
unalloyed than mine, if all the records of Human Weakness were carefully
re-read by experts at the British Museum. I am assuming the existence of
some Digest or Codex of the rather extensive material...."
"Don't go off to that. I always have such difficulty in keeping you to
the point. How selfish are you, and why?"
"I doubt if I can succeed in telling you how selfish I am, but there's
no harm in trying." Speech hung fire for a moment, to seek for words;
then found them. "I am a thing in the dark, with an object, and I call
it Gwen. I am an atom adrift in a huge black silence, and it crushes my
soul, and I am misery itself. Then I hear the voice that I call Gwen's,
and forthwith I am happy beyond the wildest dreams of the Poets--though
really that isn't saying much, because their wildest dreams are usually
unintelligible, and frequently ungrammatical...."
"Never mind them! Go on with how selfish you are."
"Can't you let a poor beggar get to the end of his parenthesis? I was
endeavouring to sketch the situation, as a preliminary to going on with
how selfish I am. I was remarking that however dissatisfied I feel with
the Most High, however sulky I am with the want of foresight in the
Primum Mobile--or his indifference to my interests; it comes to the same
thing--however inclined to cry out against the darkness, the darkness
that once was light, I no sooner hear that voice that I call Gwen's than
I am at least in the seven-hundredth heaven of happiness. When I hear
that voice, I am all Christian forgiveness towards my Maker. When it
goes, my heart is dumb and the darkness gains upon me. That I beg to
state, is a simple prosaic statement of an everyday fact. When I have
added that the powers that I ascribe to the voice that I know to be
Gwen's are also inherent in the hand that I believe to be Gwen's....
Don't pull it away!"
"I only wanted to look at it. Just to see why you shouldn't know it was
mine, as well as the voice."
"I _know_ I couldn't be mistaken about the voice. I don't _think_ I
could be wrong about the hand, but I don't know that I couldn't."
"Well--now you've got it again! Now go on. Go on to how selfish you
are--that's what I want!"
"I will endeavour to do so. I hope my imperfect indication of my view of
my own position...."
"Don't be prosy. It is not fair to expect any girl to keep a popular
lecturer's head in her lap...."
"I agree--I agree. It was my desire to be strictly practical. I will
come to the point. I want to make it perfectly clear that you _are_ my
life...."
"Don't get too loud!"
"All right!... that you are my life--my life--my glorious life! I want
you to see and know that but for you I am nothing--a wisp of straw blown
about by all the winds of Heaven--a mere unit of consciousness in a
blank, black void. See what comes of it! Here was I, before this
unfortunate result of what is from my point of view a lamentable
miscarriage of Destiny, a tolerably well-informed ... English male!...
Well--what else am I?... Sonneteer, suppose we say...."
"Goose--suppose we say--or gander!"
"All right! Here was I, before this mishap, not a scrap more brutally
self-indulgent and inconsiderate of everybody else than the ruck of my
fellow-ganders, and now look at me!"
"Well--I'm looking at you!"
"Am I showing the slightest consideration for you? Am I not showing the
most cynical disregard of your welfare in life?"
"How?"
"By allowing you to throw yourself away upon me."
"It is no concern of yours what I do with myself. I do not intend you to
have any voice in the matter. Besides--just be good enough to tell me,
please!--suppose you made up your mind _not_ to allow me, how would you
set about it?"
This was a poser, and the gentleman was practically obliged to
acknowledge it. "I couldn't say off-hand," said he. "I should have to
consult materfamiliases in Good Society, and look up precedents. Several
will occur at once to the student of Lempriere, some of which might be
more to the point than anything Holy Writ offers in illustration. But
all the cases I can recall at a moment's notice are vitiated by the
motives of their male actors. These motives were pure--they were pure
self-indulgence. In fact, their attitude towards their would-be charmers
had the character of a _sauve-qui-peut_. It was founded on strong
personal dislike, and has lent itself to Composition in the hands of the
Old Masters...."
"Now I don't know what you are talking about. Answer my question and
don't prevaricate. How would you set about it?"
"How indeed?" There was a note of seriousness in Adrian's voice, and
Gwen welcomed it, saying:--"That's right!--stop talking nonsense and
tell me." It became more audible as he continued:--"You are only asking
me because you know I cannot answer. Was ever a case known of a man who
cried off because the lady's relatives thought she didn't care about
him? What did he do? Did he write her a letter, asking her to consider
everything at an end between them until she could produce satisfactory
evidence of an unequivocal _sehnsucht_ of the exactly right
quality--_premier cru_--when her restatement of the case would receive
careful consideration? Rubbish!"
"Not rubbish at all! He wrote her that letter and she wrote back
requesting him to look out for another young woman at his earliest
convenience, because she wasn't his sort. She did, indeed! But she
certainly was rather an unfortunate young woman, to be trothplight to
such a very good and conscientious young man."
"_Rem tetigisti acu_," said Adrian. "Never mind what that means. It's
Latin.... Well then!--it means you've hit it. The whole gist of the
matter lies in my being neither good nor conscientious. I am a mass of
double-dyed selfishness. I would not give you up--it's very sad, but
it's true!--even for your own sake. I would not lose a word from your
lips, a touch of your hand, an hour of your presence, to have back my
eyesight and with it all else the world has to give, all else than this
dear self that I may never see...."
"I'm glad you said _may_."
"Yes, of course it's _may_. We mustn't forget that. But, dearest, I tell
you this, that if I were to get my sight again, and your august mammy's
impression were to turn out true after all, and you come to be aware
that, pity apart, your humble servant was not such a very...."
"What should you do if I did?"
"Shall I tell you? I should show the cloven foot. I should betray the
unreasoning greed of my soul. I should never let you go, even if I had
to resort to the brutality of keeping you to your word. I should simply
hold on like grim death. Would you hate me for it?"
"N-no! I'm not sure that I should. We should see." Certainly the
beautiful face that looked down at the eyes that could not see it showed
no visible displeasure--quite the reverse. "But suppose I did! _Suppose_
is a game that two can play at."
"Very proper, and shows you understand the nature of an hypothesis. What
should I do?... What _should_ I do?"
Gwen offered help to his perplexity. "And suppose that when _you_ came
to see _your_ bargain you had found out your mistake! Suppose that
Arthur's Bridge turned out all an Arabian Night! Suppose that the ...
well--satisfactory _personnel_ your imagination has concocted turned
out to be that of a beldam, crone, hag, or dowdy! How then?"
Instead of replying, Adrian drew his hands gently over the face above
him, caressingly over the glorious mass of golden hair and round the
columnar throat Bronzino would have left reluctantly alone. Said Irene,
from the other end of the room:--"Are you trying Mesmeric experiments,
you two?"
"He's only doing it to make sure I'm not a beldam," said Gwen
innocently. But to Adrian she added under her breath:--"It's only Irene,
so it doesn't matter. Only it shows how cautious one has to be." The
Baronet, attracted for one moment from his fascinating dice, contributed
a fragment to the conversation, and died away into backgammon.
"Hey--eh!--what's that?" said he. "Mesmerism--Mesmerism--why, you don't
mean to say you believe in _that_ nonsense!" After which Gwen and Adrian
were free to go on wherever they left off, if they could find the place.
She found it first. "Yes--I know. 'Beldam, crone, hag, or dowdy!' Of
course. What I mean is--if it dawned on you that you were mistaken about
my identity ... I want you to be serious, because the thing is possible
... what would you do?"
"There are so many _supposes_. Suppose you hated me and I thought you a
beldam! Practice would seem to suggest fresh fields and pastures new....
But oh, the muddy, damp fields and the desolate, barren pastures.... I
know one thing I should do. I should wish myself back here in the dark,
with my feet spoiling the sofa cushion, and my head in the lap of my
dear delusion--my heavenly delusion. God avert my disillusionment! I
would not have my eyesight back at the price."
"Don't get excited! Remember we are only pretending."
"Not at all! I am being serious, because the thing is possible. Do you
know I can imagine nothing worse than waking from a dream such as I have
dreamt. It would be really _the worst_--worse than if _you_ were to die,
or change...."
"I can't see that."
"Clearly. I should not have the one great resource."
"What resource?... Oh, I see!--you are working round to suicide. I
thought we should come to that."
"Naturally, one who is not alive to the purely imaginary evil of
non-existence turns to his _felo de se_ as his sheet-anchor. Persons who
conceive that the large number of non-existent persons have a legitimate
grievance, on the score of never having been created at all, will think
otherwise. We must agree to differ."
"But how very unreasonable of you not to kill yourself!--I mean in the
case of my not--not visualising well...."
"Quite the reverse. Most reasonable. We are supposing three courses open
to Destiny. One, to kill you, lawlessly--Destiny being notoriously
lawless. Another to make you change your mind. A third to make me change
mine. The reasonableness of suicide in the first case is obvious, if
Death is not annihilation. I should catch you up. In the second, all the
Hereafters in the Universe would be no worse for me than Life in the
dark, without you, here and now. In the third case I should have no one
but myself to thank for a weak concession to Destiny, and it would be
most unfair to kill myself without your consent, freely given. And I am
by no means sure that by giving that consent you would not be legally an
accomplice in my _felo de se_. Themis is a colossal Meddlesome Matty
with her fingers in every pie."
"Bother Themis! What a lot of nonsense! However, there was one gleam of
reason. You are alive to the fact that I should not consent to your
suicide. Or anyone else's. _I_ think it's wrong to kill oneself."
"So do I. But it might be a luxury I should not deny myself under some
circumstances. I don't know that Hamlet would influence me. A certain
amount of nervousness about Eternity is inseparable from our want of
authentic information. I should hope for a healthy and effectual
extinction. Failing that, I should disclaim all responsibility. I should
point out that it lay, not with me, but my Maker. I should dwell on the
fact that Creators that make Hereafters are alone answerable for the
consequences; that I had never been consulted as to my own wishes about
birth and parentage; and that I should be equally contented to be
annulled, and, as Mrs. Bailey would have said, ill-convenience
nobody...."
"Do you know why I am letting you go on?"
"Because of my Religious Tone? Because of my Good Taste? Or why?"
"Because I sometimes suspect you of being in earnest about suicide."
"I am quite in earnest."
"Very well, then. Now attend to me. I'm going to insist on your making
me a promise."
"Then I shall have to make it. But I don't know till I hear it whether I
shall promise to keep it."
"That's included."
"But no promise to keep my promise to keep it's included."
"Yes it is. If you keep on, I shall keep on. So you had better stop.
What you've got to promise is not to commit suicide under any
circumstances whatever."
"Not under any circumstances whatever? That seems to me rather harsh and
arbitrary."
"Not at all. Give me your promise."
"H'm--well!--I'm an amiable, tractable sort of cove.... But I think I am
entitled to one little reservation."
"It must be a very little one."
"Anything one gives one's _fiancee_ is returned when she breaks one off.
When you break me off I shall consider the promise given
back--cancelled."
"Ye-es! Perhaps that _is_ fair, on the whole. Only I think I deserve a
small consideration for allowing it."
"I can't refuse to hear what it is."
"Give me that little bottle of Indian poison. To take care of for you,
you know. I'll give it back if I break you off. Honour bright!"
"I shouldn't want it till then, probably. And if I did, I could afford
sixpence for Prussic acid. Fancy being able to kill oneself, or one's
friends, for sixpence! It must have come to a lot more than that in the
Middle Ages. We have every reason to be thankful we are Modern...."
"Don't go from the point. Will you give up the little bottle of Indian
poison, or not?"
"Not. At least, not now! If I hand it to you at the altar, when you have
led me there won't that do?"
Gwen considered, judicially, and appeared to be in favour of accepting
the compromise. "Only remember!" said she, "if you don't produce that
bottle at the altar--with the poison in it still; no cheating!--I shall
cry off, in the very jaws of matrimony." She paused a moment, lest she
should have left a flaw in the contract, then added:--"Whether I have
led you there or not, you know! Very likely you will walk up the aisle
by yourself."
If Adrian had really determined to conceal the Miss Scatcherd incident
from Gwen, so as not to foster false hopes, he should have worded his
reply differently. For no sooner had he said:--"Well--we are all hoping
so," than Gwen exclaimed:--"_Then_ there has been more Septimius
Severus." Adrian accepted this without protest, as ordinary human
speech; and the story feels confident that if its reader will be on the
watch, he will very soon chance across something quite as unlike
book-talk in Nature. Adrian merely said:--"How on earth did you guess
that?" Gwen replied:--"Because you said, 'We are all hoping so'--not
'We hope so.' Can't you see the difference?"
Anyway, Gwen's guess was an accomplished fact, and it was no use
pretending it was wrong. Said Adrian therefore:--"Yes--there _was_ a
little more Septimius Severus. I had rather made up my mind not to talk
about it, in case you should think too much of it." He then narrated the
Miss Scatcherd incident, checked and corrected by Irene from afar. The
narrator minimised the points in favour of his flash of vision, while
his commentator's corrections showed an opposite bias.
Gwen was, strange to say, really uneasy about that little bottle of
Indian poison. Whether there was anything prophetic in this uneasiness,
it is difficult to determine. The decision of common sense will probably
be that she knew that Poets were not to be trusted, and she wished to be
on the safe side. By "common sense" we mean the faculty which
instinctively selects the common prejudices of its age as oriflammes to
follow on Life's battlefield. Hopkins the witch-finder's common sense
suggested pricking all over to find an insensible flesh-patch, in which
case the prickee was a witch. We prefer to keep an open mind about Lady
Gwendolen Rivers' foreboding anent that little bottle of Indian poison,
until vivisection has shown us, more plainly than at present, how brain
secretes Man's soul. We are aware that this language is Browning's.
* * * * *
Gwen remained at Pensham until the end of the week. Events occurred, no
doubt, but, with one exception, they are outside the story. That
exception was a visit to Chorlton, in order that Adrian should not
remain a stranger to the interesting old twins. His interest would have
been stronger no doubt could he have really seen them. Even as it was he
was keenly alive to the way in which old Mrs. Prichard seemed to have
fascinated Gwen, and was eager to make as much acquaintance with her as
his limitations left possible to him.
Gwen contrived to arrange that she should receive every day from
Chorlton not only a line from Ruth Thrale, but an official bulletin from
Dr. Nash.
The first of these despatches arrived on the Tuesday afternoon, she
having told her correspondents that that would be soon enough. It
disappointed her. She had left the old lady so much revived by the small
quantity of provisions that did duty for a Sunday dinner, that she had
jumped to the conclusion that another day would see her sitting up
before the fire as she had seen her in the celebrated chair with
cushions at Sapps Court. It was therefore rather a damper to be told by
Dr. Nash that he had felt that absolute rest continued necessary, and
that he had not been able to sanction any attempt to get Mrs. Prichard
up for any length of time.
Gwen turned for consolation to Widow Thrale's letter. It was a model of
reserve--would not say too much. "My mother" had talked a good deal with
herself and "mother" till late, but had slept fairly well, and if she
was tired this morning it was no more than Dr. Nash said we were to
expect. She had had a "peaceful day" yesterday, talking constantly with
"mother" of their childhood, but never referring to "my father" nor
Australia. Dr. Nash had said the improvement would be slow. No reference
was made to any possibility of getting her into her clothes and a return
to normal life.
Gwen recognised the bearer of the letters, a young native of Chorlton,
when she gave him the reply she had written, with a special letter she
had ready for "dear old Mrs. Picture." "I know you," said she. "How's
your Bull? I hope he won't kill Farmer Jones or anyone while you're not
there to whistle to him." To which the youth answered:--"Who-ap not!
Sarve they roi-ut, if they dwoan't let un bid in a's stall. A penned un
in afower a coomed away." Gwen thought to herself that life at Jones's
farm must be painfully volcanic, and despatched the Bull's guardian
genius on his cob with the largest sum of money in his pocket that he
had ever possessed in his life, after learning his name, which was
Onesimus.
When Onesimus reappeared with a second despatch on the afternoon of the
next day, Wednesday, Gwen opened it with a beating heart in a hurry for
its contents. She did as one does with letters containing news, reading
persistently through to the end and taking no notice at all of Irene's
interrogatory "Well?" which of course was uttered long before the
quickest reader could master the shortest letter's contents. When the
end came, she said with evident relief:--"Oh yes, _that's_ all _right_!
Now if we drive over to-morrow, she will probably be up."
"Is that what the letter says?" Adrian spoke, and Gwen, saying "He won't
believe my report, you see! You read it!"--threw the letter over to
Irene, who read it aloud to her brother, while Gwen looked at the other
letter, from Widow Thrale.
What Irene read did not seem so very conclusive. Mrs. Prichard had had a
better night, having slept six hours without a break. But the great
weakness continued. If she could take a very little stimulant it would
be an assistance, as it might enable her to eat more. But she had an
unconquerable aversion to wine and spirits in any form, and Dr. Nash was
very reluctant to force her against her will.
So said Adrian:--"What she wants is real turtle soup and champagne. _I_
know." Whereupon his father, who was behind the _Times_--meaning, not
the Age, but the "Jupiter" of our boyhood, looked over its title, and
said:--"Champagne--champagne? There's plenty in the bin--end of the
cellar--Tweedie knows. You'll find my keys on the desk there"--and went
back to an absorbing leader, denouncing the defective Commissariat in
the Crimea. A moment later, he remembered a thing he had forgotten--his
son's blindness. "Stop a minute," he said. "I have to go, myself, later,
and I may as well go now." And presently was heard discussing
cellar-economics, afar, with Tweedie the butler.
The lady of the house wanted the carriage and pair next day to drive
over to Foxbourne in the afternoon and wait to bring her back after the
meeting. The story merely gives the bold wording used to notify the
fact: it does not know what Foxbourne was, nor why there was a meeting.
Its only reason for referring to them is that the party for Chorlton had
to change its plans and go by the up-train from St. Everall's to
Grantley Thorpe, and make it stop there specially. St. Everall's, you
may remember, is the horrible new place about two miles from Pensham.
The carriage could take them there and be back in plenty of time, and
there was always a groggy old concern to be had at the Crown at Grantley
that would run them over to Strides Cottage in half an hour. If it had
been favourable weather, no doubt the long drive would have been much
pleasanter; but with the chance of a heavy downfall of snow making the
roads difficult, the short drives and short railway journey had
advantages.
Therefore when the groggy old concern, which had seen better days--early
Georgian days, probably--pulled up at Strides Cottage in the afternoon,
with a black pall of cloud, whose white heralds were already coming
thick and fast ahead of it, hanging over Chorlton Down, two at least of
the travellers who alighted from it had misgivings that if their visit
was a prolonged one, its grogginess and antiquity might stand in its way
on a thick-snowed track in the dark, and might end in their being late
for the down-train at six. The third of their number saw nothing, and
only said:--"Hullo--snowing!" when on getting free of the concern one of
the heralds aforesaid perished to convince him of its veracity; gave up
the ghost between his shirt-collar and his epidermis. "Yes," he
continued, addressing the first inhabitant of the cottage who greeted
him. "You are quite right. I am the owner of a dog, and you do perfectly
right to inquire about him. His nose is singularly unlike yours. He will
detect your flavour when I return, and I shall have to allay his
jealousy. It is his fault. We are none of us perfect." The dog gave a
short bark which might have meant that Adrian had better hold his
tongue, as anything he said might be used against him.
"Now you are in the kitchen and sitting-room I've told you of, because
it's both," said Gwen. "And here is Granny Marrable herself."
"Give me hold of your hand, Granny. Because I can't see you, more's the
pity! I shall hope to see you some day--like people when they want you
not to call. At present my looks don't flatter me. People think I'm
humbugging when I say I can't see them. I _can't_!"
"'Tis a small wonder, sir," said Granny Marrable, "people should be hard
of belief. I would not have thought you could not, myself. But being
your eyes are spared, by God's mercy, they be ready for the sight to
return, when His will is."
"That's all, Granny. It's only the sight that's wanting. The eyes are as
good as any in the kingdom, in themselves." This made Gwen feel
dreadfully afraid Granny Marrable would think the gentleman was laughing
at her. But Adrian had taken a better measure of the Granny's childlike
simplicity and directness than hers. He ran on, as though it was all
quite right. "Anyhow, don't run away from us to Kingdom Come just yet a
while, Granny, and see if I don't come to see you and your sister--real
eyesight, you know; not this make-believe! I hope she's picking up."
"She's better--because Dr. Nash says she's better. Only I wish it would
come out so we might see it. But it may be I'm a bit impatient. 'Tis the
time of life does it, no doubt."
Ruth Thrale returned from the inner room. "She would like her ladyship
to go to her," said she. Gwen could not help noticing that
somehow--Heaven knows how, but quite perceptibly--the next room seemed
to claim for itself the status of an invalid chamber. She accompanied
Widow Thrale, who closed the room-door behind her, apparently to secure
unheard speech in the passage. "She isn't any _worse_, you know," said
Ruth, in a reassuring manner, which made her hearer look scared, and
start. "Only when she gets away to thinking of beyond the seas--that
place where she was--that _is_ bad for her, say how we may! Not that
she minds talking of my father, nor my brother that died, nor any tale
of the land and the people; but 'tis the coming back to make it all
fit."
Gwen quite understood this, and re-worded it, for elucidation. "Of
course everything clashes, and the poor old dear can't make head or tail
of it! Has there been any particular thing, lately?" The reply
was:--"Yes--early this morning. She woke up talking about Mrs. Skillick,
the name sounded like, and how kind she was to bring her the fresh
lettuces. And then she found me by her and knew I was Ruth, but was all
in a maze why! Then it all seemed to come on her again, and she was in a
bad upset for a while. But I did not tell mother of that. I am glad you
have come, my lady. It will make her better."
"Skillick wasn't Australia," said Gwen. "It was some person she lived
with here in England--not so long ago. Somewhere near London. What did
you do to quiet her?"
"I talked to her about Dave and Dolly. That is always good for her--it
seems to steady her. Shall we go in, my lady? I think she heard you."
Again Gwen had an impression that concession had been made to the
inexorable, and that whereas four days ago it was taken for granted that
old Mrs. Picture's collapse was only to be temporary, a permanency of
invalidism was now accepted as a working hypothesis. Only a temporary
permanency, of course, to last till further notice!
CHAPTER XXIV
HOW GWEN INTRODUCED MR. TORRENS, AND MRS. PICTURE TOOK HOLD OF HIS
HAND. OF MR. TORREN'S FIRM FAITH IN DEVILS, AND OLD MAISIE'S
HAPPINESS THEREAT. THE DOCTOR'S MEMORY OF ADRIAN'S FIRST APPEARANCE
AS A CORPSE. THE LAXITY OF GENERAL PRACTIOTIONERS. HIS WISH TO
INTOXICATE MRS. PRICHARD. HOW GWEN SANG GLUCK TO ADRIAN, AND
ONESIMUS BROUGHT HER A LETTER. QUITE A GOOD REPORT. HOW GWEN WASN'T
ANXIOUS. OF ADRIAN'S INVISIBLE MOTHER. HER SELECTNESS, AND HIGH
BREEDING. ADRIAN'S VIEWS ABOUT SUICIDES. SURVIVORS' SELFISHNESS
TOWARDS THEM, HOW HE TALKED ABOUT THAT DEVIL, AND LET OUT THAT THE
OLD LADY HAD FLASHED ACROSS HIS RETINA. HOW HE HAD CLOTHED EACH
TWIN'S HEAD WITH THE OTHER'S HAIR
Has it not been the experience of all of us, many a time, that a few
days' clear absence from an invalid has been needed, to distinguish a
slow change, invisible to the watchers by the bedside? And all the
while, have not the daily bulletins made out a case for indefinable
slight improvements, negligible gains scarcely worth naming, whose total
some mysterious flaw of calculation persistently calls loss?
There may have been very little actual change; there was room for so
little. But Gwen had been building up hopes of an improvement. And now
she had to see her house of cards tremble and portend collapse. She
saved the structure--as one has done in real card-life--by gingerly
removing a top storey, in terror of a cataclysm. She would not hope so
much--indeed, indeed!--if Fate would only leave some of her structure
standing. But she was at fault for a greeting, all but a disjointed word
or two, when Ruth, falling back, left her to enter the bedroom alone.
It was a consolation to hear the old lady's voice. "My dear--my dear--I
knew you would come. I woke in the night, and thought to myself--she
will come, my lady. Then I rang, and my Ruth came. She comes so quick."
"And then that was just as good as me," said Gwen. "Wasn't it?"
"She is my child--my Ruth. And Phoebe is my Phoebe--years ago! But I
have to think so much, to make it all fit. You are not like that.'
"What am I like?"
"You are the same all through. You came upstairs to me in my room--did
you not?--where my little Dave and Dolly were...."
"Yes--I fetched Dolly."
"And then you put Dolly down? And I said for shame!--what a big girl to
be carried!"
"Yes--and Dolly was carrying little dolly, with her eyes wide open. And
when I put her down on the floor, she repeated what you said all over
again, to little dolly:--'For same, what a bid dirl to be tallied!'"
A gleam came on old Maisie's face as she lay there letting the idea of
Dolly soak into her heart. Presently she said, without opening her
eyes:--"I wonder, if Dolly lives to be eighty, will she remember old
Mrs. Picture. I should like her to. Only she is small."
"Dear Mrs. Picture, you are talking as if you were not to have Dolly
again. Don't you remember what I told you on Sunday? I'm going to get
both the children down here, and Aunt M'riar. Unless, when you are
better, you like to go back to Sapps Court. You shall, you know!"
Another memory attacked old Maisie. "Oh dear," said she, "I thought our
Court was all tumbled down. Was it not?"
"Yes--the day I came. And then I carried you off to Cavendish Square.
Don't you remember?--where Miss Grahame was--Sister Nora." She went on
to tell of the promptitude and efficiency with which the repairs had
been carried out. For, strange to say, the power Mr. Bartlett possessed
of impressing Europe with his integrity and professional ability had
extended itself to Gwen, a perfect stranger, during that short visit to
the Court, and she was mysteriously ready to vouch for his sobriety and
good faith. Presently old Maisie grew curious about the voices in the
next room.
"Is that a gentleman's voice, through the door, talking? It isn't Dr.
Nash. Dr. Nash doesn't laugh like that."
"No--that is my blind man I have brought to see you. I told you about
him, you know. But he must not tire you too much."
"But _can_ he see me?"
"I didn't mean _see_, that way. I meant see to talk to. Some day he will
_really_ see you--with his eyes. We are sure of it, now. He shall come
and sit by you, and talk."
"Yes--and I may hold his hand. And may I speak to him about ... about
..."
"About his blindness and the accident? Oh dear yes! _You_ won't _see_
that he's blind, you know."
"His eyes look like eyes?"
"Like beautiful eyes. I shall go and fetch him." She knew she was
straining facts in her prediction of their recovery of sight, but she
liked the sound of her own voice as she said it, though she knew she
would not have gone so far except to give her hearer pleasure.
* * * * *
Said old Maisie to Adrian, whom Gwen brought back to sit by her, giving
him the chair she had occupied beside the bed:--"You, sir, are very
happy! But oh, how I grieve for your eyes!"
"Is Lady Gwendolen here in the room still?" said Adrian.
"She has just gone away, to the other room," said old Maisie. For Gwen
had withdrawn. One at a time was the rule.
"Very well, dear Mrs. Picture. Then I'll tell you. There never was a
better bargain driven than mine. I would not have my eyesight back, to
lose what I have got. No--not for fifty pairs of eyes." And he evidently
meant it.
"May I hold your hand?"
"Do. Here it is. I am sure you are a dear old lady, and can see what she
is. When I had eyes, I never saw anything worth looking at, till I saw
Gwen."
"But is it a rule?"
Adrian was perplexed for a moment. "Oh, I see what you mean," said he.
"No--of course not! I may have my eyesight back." Then he seemed to
speak more to himself than to her. "Men _have_ been as fortunate, even
as that, before now."
"But tell me--is that what the doctor says? Or only guessing?"
"It's what the doctor says, and guessing too. Doctors only guess. He's
guessing."
"But don't they guess right, oftener than people?"
"A little oftener. If they didn't, what use would they be?"
"But you have seen _her_?"
"Yes--once! Only once. And now I know she is there, as I saw her.... But
I want to know about you, Mrs. Picture dear. Because I'm so sorry for
you."
"There is no need for sorrow for me, I am so happy to know my sister was
not drowned. And my little girl I left behind when I went away over the
great sea, and the wind blew, and I saw the stars change each night,
till they were all new. And then I found my dear husband, and lived with
him many, many happy years. God has been good to me, for I have had much
happiness." There was nothing but contentment and rest in her voice; but
then some of the tranquillity may have been due to exhaustion.
Adrian made the mistake of saying:--"And all the while you thought your
sister dead."
He felt a thrill in her hand as it tightened on his, and heard it in her
voice. "Oh, could it have been?" she said. "But I was told so--in a
letter."
It was useless for Adrian to affect ignorance of the story; and, indeed,
that would have made matters worse, for it would have put it on her to
attempt the retelling of it.
Perhaps he did his best to say:--"Lady Gwendolen has told me the whole
story. So I know. Don't think about it!... Well--that's nonsense! One
can't help thinking. I mean--think as little as possible!" It did not
mend matters much.
Her mind had got back to the letter, and could not leave it. "I have to
think of it," she said, "because it was my husband that wrote that
letter. I know why he wrote it. It was not himself. It was a devil. It
came out of Roomoro the black witch-doctor and got a place inside my
husband. _He_ did not write that letter to Phoebe. _It_ wrote it. For
see how it had learned all the story when Roomoro sucked the little
scorpion's poison out of Mary Ann Stennis's arm!"
To Adrian all this was half-feverish wandering; the limited delirium of
extreme weakness. No doubt these were real persons--Roomoro and Mary Ann
Stennis. It was their drama that was fictitious. He saw one thing
plainly. It was to be humoured, not reasoned with. So whatever was the
cause of a slight start and disconcertment of his manner when she
stopped to ask suddenly:--"But you do not believe in devils,
perhaps?"--it was not the one she had ascribed it to. In fact he was
quite ready with a semi-conscientious affirmative. "Indeed I do. Tell me
exactly how you suppose it happened, again. Roomoro was a native
conjurer or medicine-man, I suppose?"
Then old Maisie recapitulated the tale her imagination had constructed
to whitewash the husband who had ruined her whole life, adding some
details, not without an interest for students of folklore, about the
devil that had come from Roomoro. She connected it with the fact that
Roomoro had eaten the flesh of the little black Dasyurus, christened the
"Native Devil" by the first Tasmanian colonists, from the excessive
shortness of its temper. The soul of this devil had been driven from the
witch-doctor by the poison of the scorpion, and had made for the nearest
human organisation. Adrian listened with as courteous a gravity as
either of us would show to a Reincarnationist's extremest doctrines.
It was an immense consolation to old Maisie, evidently, to be taken in
such good faith. Having made up his mind that his conscience should not
stand between him and any fiction that would benefit this dear old lady,
Adrian was not going to do the thing by halves. He launched out into
reminiscences of his own experiences on the Essequibo and elsewhere, and
was able without straining points to dwell on the remarkable
similarities of the Magians of all primitive races. As he afterwards
told Gwen, he was surprised at the way in which the actual facts
smoothed the way for misrepresentation. He stuck at nothing in
professions of belief in unseen agencies, good and bad; apologizing
afterwards to Gwen for doing so by representing the ease of believing in
them just for a short time, to square matters. Optional belief was no
invention of his own, he said, but an ancient and honourable resource of
priesthoods all the world over.
It was the only little contribution he was able to make towards the
peace of mind without which it seemed almost impossible so old a
constitution could rally against such a shock. And it was of real
value, for old Maisie sorely needed help against her most awful
discovery of all, the hideous guilt of the man whom she had loved
ungrudgingly throughout. Nor was it only this. It palliated her son's
crimes. But then there was a difference between the son and the father.
The latter had apparently done nothing to arouse his wife's detestation.
Forgery is a delinquency--not a diabolism!
They talked more--talked a good deal in fact--but only of what we know.
Then Gwen came back, bringing Irene to make acquaintance. This young
lady behaved very nicely, but admitted afterwards that she had once or
twice been a little at a loss what to say.
As when for instance the old lady, with her tender, sad, grey eyes fixed
on Miss Torrens, said:--"Come near, my dear, that I may see you close."
And drew her old hand, tremulously, over the mass of rich black hair
which the almost nominal bonnet of that day left uncovered, with the
reticular arrangement that confined it, and went on speaking,
dreamily:--"It is very beautiful, but _my_ lady's hair is golden, and
shines like the sun." Thereon Gwen to lubricate matters:--"Yes--look
here! But I know which I like best." She managed to collate a handful of
her own glory of gold and her friend's rich black, in one hand. "I know
which _I_ like best," said Irene. And Gwen laughed her musical laugh
that filled the place. "No head of hair is a prophet in its own
country," said she.
Old Maisie was trying to speak, but her voice had gone low with fatigue.
"Phoebe and I," she was saying, "long ago, when we were girls.... It was
a trick, you know, a game ... we would mix our hair like that, and make
little Jacky Wetherall guess whose hair he had hold of. When he guessed
right he had sugar. He was three. His mother used to lend him to us when
she went out to scrub, and he never cried...." She went on like this,
dwelling on scraps of her girlhood, for some time; then her voice went
very faint to say:--"Phoebe was there then. Phoebe is back
now--somehow--how is it?" Gwen saw she had talked enough, and took Irene
away; and then Ruth Thrale went to sit with her mother.
* * * * *
Dr. Nash, who arrived during their absence, had been greeted by Adrian
after his "first appearance as a corpse," last summer. He would have
known the doctor's voice anywhere. "You never _were_ a corpse," said
that gentleman. To which Mr. Torrens replied:--"You _thought_ I was a
corpse, doctor, you know you did!"
Dr. Nash, being unable to deny it, shifted the responsibility. "Well,"
said he, "Sir Coupland thought so too. The fact is, we had quite given
you up. When he came out and said to me:--'Come back. I want you to see
something,' I said to him:--'Is that why the dog barked?' Because your
dog had given a sudden queer sort of a bark. And he said to me:--'It
isn't only the dog. It's Lady Gwen Rivers.'"
"What did he mean by that?" said Gwen.
"He meant that your ladyship's strong impression that the body....
Excuse my referring to you, Mr. Torrens, as...."
"As 'the body'? Not at all! I mean, don't apologize."
"The--a--subject, say, still retained vitality. No doubt we _might_ have
found out--probably _should_...."
"Stuff and nonsense!" said Gwen remorselessly. "You would have buried
him alive if it hadn't been for me. You doctors are the most careless,
casual creatures. It was me and the dog--so now Mr. Torrens knows what
he has to be thankful for!"
"Well--as a matter of fact, it was the strong impression of your
ladyship that did the job. We doctors are, as your ladyship says, an
incautious, irresponsible lot. I hope you found Mrs. Prichard going on
well."
Gwen hesitated. "I wish she looked a little--thicker," said she.
Dr. Nash looked serious. "We mustn't be in too great a hurry. Remember
her age, and the fact that she is eating almost nothing. She won't take
regular meals again--or what she calls regular meals--till the tension
of this excitement subsides...."
Said Adrian:--"It's perfectly extraordinary to me, not seeing her, to
hear her talk as she does. Because it doesn't give the impression of
such weakness as that. Her hands feel very thin, of course."
Said the doctor:--"I wish I could get her to take some stimulant; then
she would begin eating again. If she could only be slightly intoxicated!
But she's very obdurate on that point--I told you?--and refuses even Sir
Cropton Fuller's old tawny port. I talked about her to him, and he sent
me half a dozen the same evening. A good-natured old chap!--wants to
make everyone else as dyspeptic as himself...."
"That reminds me!" said Gwen. "We forgot the champagne."
"No, we didn't," said Irene. "It was put in the carriage, I know. In a
basket. Two bottles lying down. And it was taken out, because I saw it."
"But _was_ it put in the railway carriage?"
"I meant the railway carriage."
"I believe it's in the old Noah's Ark we came here in, all the while."
Granny Marrable said:--"I am sure there has nothing been brought into
the Cottage. Because we should have seen. There is only the door
through, to go in and out."
"You see, Dr. Nash," said Gwen, "when you said that in your letter,
about her wanting stimulant, champagne immediately occurred to Sir
Hamilton. So we brought a couple of bottles of the King of Prussia's
favourite Clicquot, and a little screwy thing to milk the bottles with,
like a cow, a glass at a time. Miss Torrens and I are quite agreed that
very often one can get quite pleasantly and healthily drunk on champagne
when other intoxicants only give one a headache and make one ill. Isn't
it so, 'Re?" Miss Torrens and her brother both testified that this was
their experience, and Dr. Nash assented, saying that there would at
least be no harm in trying the experiment.
As for dear old Granny Marrable, her opinion was simply that whatever
her ladyship from the Towers, and the young lady from Pensham and her
brother, were agreed upon, was beyond question right; and even if
medical sanction had not been forthcoming she would have supported them.
"I am sure," said she, "my dear sister will drink some when she knows
your ladyship brought it for her."
The reappearance of the Noah's Ark, when due, confirmed Gwen's view as
to the whereabouts of the basket, and was followed by a hasty departure
of the gentlefolks to catch the downtrain from London. As Granny
Marrable watched it lurching away into the fast-increasing snow, it
looked, she thought, as if it could not catch anything. But if old
Pirbright, who had been on the road since last century, did not know,
nobody did.
* * * * *
The day after this visit, when Gwen was singing to Adrian airs from
Gluck's "Alceste," Irene and her father being both absent on Christmas
business, social or charitable, the butler brought in a letter from Ruth
Thrale in the very middle of a _sostenuto_ note,--for when did any
servant, however intelligent, allow music to stop before proceeding to
extremities?--and said, respectfully but firmly, that it was the same
boy, and he would wait. He seemed to imply that the boy's quality of
identity was a sort of guarantee of his waiting--a good previous
character for permanency. Gwen left "Alceste" in C minor, and opened her
letter, thanking Mr. Tweedie cordially, but not able to say he might go,
because he was another family's butler. Adrian said:--"Is that from the
old lady?" And when Gwen said:--"Yes--it's Onesimus. I wonder he was
able to get there, over the snow,"--he dismissed Mr. Tweedie with the
instruction that he should see that Onesimus got plenty to eat. The
butler ignored this instruction as superfluous, and died away.
Then Gwen spun round on the music-stool to read aloud. "'Honoured
lady';--Oh dear, I wish she could say 'dear Gwen'; but I suppose it
wouldn't do.--'I am thankful to be able to write a really good report of
my mother'.... You'll see in a minute she'll have to speak of Granny
Marrable and she'll call her 'mother' without the 'my.' See if she
doesn't!... 'Dr. Nash said she might have some champagne, and we said
she really must when you so kindly brought it. So she said indeed yes,
and we gave it her up to the cuts.' That means," said Gwen, "the cuts of
the wineglass." She glanced on in the letter, and when Adrian
said:--"Well--that's not all!"--apologized with:--"I was looking on
ahead, to see that she got some more later. It's all right. '... up to
the cuts, and presently', as Dr. Nash said, was minded to eat something.
So I got her the sweetbread she would not have for dinner, which warmed
up well. Then we persuaded her to take a little more champagne, but Dr.
Nash said be careful for fear of reaction. Then she was very chatty and
cheerful, and would go back a great deal on old times with mother....' I
told you she would," said Gwen, breaking off abruptly.
"Of course she will always go back on old times," said Adrian.
"I didn't mean that. I meant call her aunt 'mother' without the 'my.'
Let me go on. Don't interrupt! '... old times with mother, and one thing
in particular, their hair. Mother pleased her, because she could
remember a little child Jacky they would puzzle to tell which hair was
which, saying if she held them like that Jacky could tell, and have
sugar. For their hair now is quite strong white and grey instead of both
the same....' She was telling us about Jacky--me and Irene--yesterday,
and I suppose that was what set her off.... 'She slept very sound and
talked, and then slept well at night. So we are in good spirits about
her, and thank God she may be better and get stronger. That is all I
have to tell now and remain dutifully yours....' Isn't that delightful?
Quite a good report!" Instructions followed to Onesimus not to bring any
further news to Pensham, but to take his next instalment to the Towers.
These things occurred on the Friday, the day after the visit to
Chorlton. Certainly that letter of Widow Thrale's justified Lady
Gwendolen in feeling at ease about Mrs. Picture during the remainder of
her visit to Pensham, and the blame she apportioned to herself for an
imagined neglect afterwards was quite undeserved.
Adrian Torrens ought to have been in the seventh heaven during the
remainder of an almost uninterrupted afternoon. Not that it was
absolutely uninterrupted, because evidences of a chaperon in abeyance
were not wanting. A mysterious voice, of unparalleled selectness, or
_bon-ton_, or gentility, emanated from a neighbouring retreat with an
accidentally open door, where the lady of the house was corresponding
with philanthropists in spite of interruptions. It said:--"What _is_
that? I know it _so_ well," or, "That air is very familiar to me," or,
"I cannot help thinking Catalani would have taken that slower." To all
of which Gwen returned suitable replies, tending to encourage a belief
in her questioner's mind that its early youth had been passed in a
German principality with Kapellmeisters and Conservatoriums and a Court
Opera Company. This excellent lady was in the habit of implying that she
had been fostered in various _anciens regimes_, and that the parentage
of anything so outlandish and radical as her son and daughter was quite
out of her line, and a freak of Fate at the suggestion of her husband.
Intermittent emanations from Superiority-in-the-Bush were small
drawbacks to what might perhaps prove the last unalloyed interview of
these two lovers before their six months' separation--that terrible
Self-Denying Ordinance--to which they had assented with a true prevision
of how very unwelcome it would be when the time came. It was impossible
to go back on their consent now. Gwen might have hoisted a standard of
revolt against her mother. But she could not look her father in the face
and cry off from the fulfilment of a condition-precedent of his consent
to the perfect freedom of association of which she and Adrian had
availed themselves to the uttermost, always under the plea that the
terms of the contract were going to be honourably observed. As for
Adrian, he was even more strongly bound. That appeal from the Countess
that his father had repeated and confirmed was made direct to his
honour; and while he could say unanswerably:--"What would you have me
do?" nothing in the world could justify his rebelling against so
reasonable a condition as that their sentiments should continue
reciprocal after six months of separation.
His own mind was made up. For his views about suicide, however much he
spoke of them with levity, were perfectly serious. If he lost Gwen, he
would be virtually non-existent already. The end would have come, and
the thing left to put an end to would no longer be a Life. It would
only be a sensibility to pain, with an ample supply of it. A bare bodkin
would do the business, but did not recommend itself. The right
proportion of Prussic Acid had much to say on its own behalf. It was
cheap, clean, certain, and the taste of ratafia was far from unpleasant.
But he had a lingering favourable impression of the Warroo medicine-man,
whose faith in the efficacy and painlessness of his nostrum was evident,
however much was uncertain in his version of its _provenance_.
As to any misgivings about awakening in another world, if any occurred
to Adrian he had but one answer--he had _been dead_, and had found death
unattended with any sort of inconvenience. Resuscitation had certainly
been painful, but he did not propose to leave any possibility of it,
this time. His death, _that_ time, had been a sudden shock, followed
instantly by the voice of Gwen herself, which he had recognised as the
last his ears had heard. If Death could be so easily negotiated, why
fuss? The only serious objection to suicide was its unpopularity with
survivors. But were they not sometimes a little selfish? Was this
selfishness not shown to demonstration by the gratitude--felt, beyond a
doubt--to the suicide who weights his pockets when he jumps into
mid-ocean, contrasted with the dissatisfaction, to say the least of it,
which the proprietor of a respectable first-class hotel feels when a
visitor poisons himself with the door locked, and engages the attention
of the Coroner. There was Irene certainly--and others--but after all it
would be a great gain to them, when the first grief was over, to have
got rid of a terrible encumbrance.
Therefore Adrian was quite at his ease about the Self-Denying Ordinance;
at least, if a clear resolve and a mind made up can give ease. He said
not a word of his views and intentions beyond what the story has already
recorded. What right had he to say anything to Gwen that would put
pressure on her inclinations? Had he not really said too much already?
At any rate, no more!
Nevertheless, the foregoing made up the background of his reflections as
he listened to more "Alceste," resumed after a short note had been
written for Onesimus to carry back over the frost-bound roads to
Chorlton. And he was able to trace the revival in his mind of suicide by
poison to Mrs. Picture's narration of the Dasyurus and the witch-doctor
who had cooked and eaten its body. This fiction of her fever-ridden
thoughts had set him a-thinking again of the Warroo conjurer. He had not
repeated any of it to Gwen, lest she should be alarmed on old Maisie's
behalf. For it had a very insane sound.
But after such a prosperous report of her condition, above all, of the
magical effect of that champagne, it seemed overnice to be making a
to-do about what was probably a mere effect of overheated fancy, such as
the circumstances might have produced in many a younger and stronger
person. So when Alceste had provided her last soprano song, and the
singer was looking for "Ifigenia in Aulide," Adrian felt at liberty to
say that old Mrs. Picture's ideas about possession were very funny and
interesting.
"Isn't it curious?" said Gwen. "She really believes it all, you know,
like Gospel. All that about the devil that had possession of her
husband! And how when he died, he passed his devil on to his son, who
was worse than himself."
"That's good, though," said Adrian. "Only she never told me about the
son. I had it all about the witch-doctor whose devil came out because he
couldn't fancy the little scorpion's flavour. And all about the original
devil--a sort of opossum they call a devil...."
"She didn't tell me about him."
"They've got one at the Zoological Gardens. He's an ugly customer. The
keeper said he was a limb, if ever there was one. The old lady evidently
thought her idea that the doctor's devil was this little beggar's soul,
eaten up with his flesh, was indisputable. I told her I thought it had
every intrinsic possibility, and I'm sure she was pleased. But the
horror of her face when she spoke of him was really...."
"Adrian!"
"What, dearest? Anything the matter?"
"Only the way you put it. It was so odd. 'The horror of her face'! Just
as if you had _seen_ it!" Indeed, Gwen was looking quite disconcerted
and taken aback.
"There now!" said Adrian. "See what a fool I am! I never meant to tell
of that. Because I thought it threw a doubt on Scatcherd. I've been
wanting to make the most of Scatcherd. I never thought much of Septimius
Severus. Anyone might have said in my hearing that the bust was moved,
and it was just as I was waking. But I'll swear no one said anything
about Scatcherd. Why--there _was_ only Irene!"
Gwen went and sat by him on the sofa. "Listen, darling!" said she. "I
want to know what you are talking about. What was it happened, and why
did it throw a doubt on Miss Scatcherd?"
"It wasn't anything, either way, you know."
"I know. But what was it, that wasn't anything, either way?"
"It was only an impression. You mustn't attach any weight to it."
"Are you going to tell what it was, or _not_?"
"Going to. Plenty of time! It was when the old lady began telling me
about the devil. Her tone of conviction gave me a strong impression what
she was looking like, and made an image of her flash across my retina.
By which I mean, flash across the hole I used to see through when I had
a retina. It was almost as strong and life-like as real seeing. But I
knew it _wasn't_."
"But how--how--how?" cried Gwen, excited. "_How_ did you know that it
wasn't?"
"Because of the very white hair. It was snow-white--the image's. I
suppose I had forgotten which was which, of the two old ladies--had put
the saddle on the wrong horse."
Gwen looked for a moment completely bewildered. "What on, earth, can,
he, mean?" said she, addressing Space very slowly. Then, speaking as one
who has to show patience with a stiff problem:--"Dearest man--dearest
incoherency!--do try and explain. Which of the old ladies do you suppose
has white hair, and which grey?"
"Old Granny Marrable, I thought."
"Yes--but _which hair_? Which? Which? Which?"
"White, I thought, not grey." Whereupon Gwen, seeing how much hung upon
the impression her lover had been under hitherto about these two tints
of hair, kept down a growing excitement to ask him quietly for an exact,
undisjointed statement, and got this for answer:--"I have always thought
of Granny Marrable's as snow-white, and the old Australian's as grey.
Was that wrong?"
"Quite wrong! It's the other way round. The Granny's is grey and old
Mrs. Picture's is silvery white."
Adrian gave a long whistle, for astonishment, and was silent. So was
Gwen. For this was the third incident of the sort, and what might not
happen? Presently he broke the silence, to say:--"At any rate, that
leaves Scatcherd a chance. I thought if this was a make-up of my own, it
smashed _her_."
"Foolish man! There is more in it than that. You _saw_ old Mrs. Picture.
It was no make-up.... Well?" She paused for his reply.
It came after a studied silence, a dumbness of set purpose. "Oh
why--why--is it always Mrs. Picture, or Scatcherd, or Septimius Severus?
Why can it never be Gwen--Gwen--Gwen?"
The attenuated _chaperonage_ of the lady of the house may have been
moved by a certain demonstrativeness of her son's at this point, to say
from afar:--"I _hope_ we are going to have some 'Ifigenia in Aulide.'
Because I _should_ have enjoyed _that_." Which carried an implication
that the musical world had been palming off an inferior article on a
public deeply impressible by the higher aspects of Opera.
CHAPTER XXV
HOW THE EARL ASKED AFTER THE OLD TWINS. MERENESS. RECUPERATIVE
POWER. HOW THE HOUSEHOLD HAD ITS ANNUAL DANCE. HOW THE COUNTESS HAD
A CRACKED LIP. HOW WAS DR. TUXFORD SOMERS? SIR SPENCER DERRICK.
GENERAL RAWNSLEY. HE AND GWEN'S INTENDED GREAT GRANDMOTHER-IN-LAW.
GWEN HAD NEVER HAD TWINS BEFORE THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. THE
GENERAL'S BROTHER PHILIP. SUPERANNUATED COCKS AND HENS. HOW GWEN
HAD DREAMED SHE WAS TO MARRY A KETTLE-HOLDER. HOW MRS. LAMPREY HAD
A LETTER FOR GWEN, WHICH TOOK GWEN OFF TO CHORLTON AT MIDNIGHT
When the Earl of Ancester came back to the Towers next day he certainly
did look a little boiled down; otherwise, cheerful and collected. "I am
quite prepared to endure another Christmas," said he resignedly to Gwen.
"But a little seclusion and meditation is good to prepare one for the
ordeal, and Bath certainly deserves the character everybody gives it,
that you never meet anybody else there. I suppose Coventry and Jericho
have something in common with Bath. I wonder if outcasts can be
identified in either. Nothing distinguishes them in Bath from the
favourites of Fortune. How are the old ladies?"
This was in the study, where the Earl and his daughter got a quiet ten
minutes to recapitulate the story of each during the other's absence. It
was late in the afternoon, two hours after his arrival from London. He
had been there a day or two to make a show of fulfilling his obligations
towards politics; had sat through a debate or two, and had taken part in
a division or two, much to the satisfaction of his conscience. "But,"
said he to Gwen, "if you ask me which I have felt most interest in, your
old ladies or the Foreign Enlistment Act, I should certainly say the old
ladies." So it was no wonder his inquiry about them came early in this
recapitulation.
Gwen found herself, to her surprise, committed to an apologetic tone
about old Mrs. Picture's health, and maintaining that she was _really_
better intrinsically, although evidently some person or persons unnamed
must have said she was worse. She started on her report with every
good-will to make it a prosperous one, and got entangled in some
trivialities that told against her purpose. Perhaps her last letter to
her father, written from Pensham on the night of her arrival there, had
given too rose-coloured an account of her visit to Chorlton, and had
caused the rather serious headshake which greeted her admission that old
Maisie was still a quasi-invalid, on her back from the merest--quite the
merest--weakness. The Earl admitted that, as a general rule, weakness
might be mere enough to be negligible; but then it should be the
weakness of young and strong people, possessed of that delightful
property "recuperative power," which does such wonders when it comes to
the scratch. Never be without it, if you can help.
The episode of the champagne was reassuring, and gave Hope a helping
hand. Moreover, Gwen had just got another letter from Ruth Thrale,
brought by Onesimus the bull-cajoler, which gave a very good account on
the whole, though one phrase had a damping effect. We were not "to rely
on the champagne," as it was "not nourishment, but stimulus." She _must_
be got to take food regularly, said Dr. Nash, however small the
quantity. This seemed to suggest that she had fallen back on that
vicious practice of starvation. But "my mother" was constantly talking
with "mother" about old times, and it was giving "mother" pleasure.
"I wish," said Gwen, as her father went back to "Honoured Lady" for
second reading, and possibly second impressions, "I wish that Dr. Nash
had written separately. I want to know what he thinks, and I want to
know what Ruth thinks. I can mix them up for myself."
The Earl read to the end, and suspended judgment, visibly. "Eighty-one!"
said he. "And how did Granny Marrable take it? You never said in your
letters."
"Because I did not see her. Dr. Nash told--at least, he tried to. But I
told you about the little boy's letter. She knew it from that."
"I remember.... Well!--we must hope." And then they spoke of matters
nearer home; the impending journey to Vienna; a perplexity created by a
promise rashly given to Aunt Constance that she should be married from
the Ancester town-residence--two things which clashed, for how could
this wedding wait till the Countess's return?--and ultimately of Gwen's
own prospects. Then she told her father the incident of Adrian's
apparent vision of old Mrs. Picture, and both pretended that it was too
slight to build upon; but both used it for a superstructure of private
imaginings. Neither encouraged the other.
Adrian and his sister were to have returned with Gwen to the Towers to
stay till Monday, which was Christmas Day, when their own plum-pudding
and mistletoe would claim them at Pensham. This arrangement was not
carried out, possibly in deference to the Countess, who was anxious to
reduce to a minimum everything that tended to focus the public gaze on
the lovers. Gwen was under a social obligation, inherited perhaps from
Feudalism, to be present at the Servants' Ball, which would have been on
Christmas Eve had that day not fallen on a Sunday. Hence the necessity
for her return on the Saturday, and the interview with her father just
recorded. The quiet ten minutes filled the half-hour between tea and
dressing for a dinner which might prove a scratch meal in itself, but
was distinguished by its sequel. A general adjournment was to follow to
the great ball-room, which was given over without reserve on this
occasion to the revellers and their friends from the environs; for at
the Towers nothing was done by halves in those days. There the august
heads of the household were expected to walk solemnly through a
quadrille with the housekeeper and head butler. Mrs. Masham's and Mr.
Norbury's sense of responsibility on these occasions can neither be
imagined nor described. This great event made conscientious dressing for
dinner more than usually necessary, however defective the excitement of
the household might make the preparation and service thereof.
These exigencies were what limited Gwen's quiet ten minutes with her
father within the narrow bounds of half an hour, leaving no margin at
all for more than three words with her mother on her way to her own
interview with Miss Lutwyche. She exceeded her estimate almost before
her ladyship's dressing-room door had swung to behind her.
"Well, mamma dear, I hope you're satisfied."
"I am, my dear. At least, I am not dissatisfied.... Don't kiss me in
front, please, because I have a little crack on the corner of my lip."
The Countess accepted her daughter's _accolade_ on an unsympathetic
cheek-bone. "What are you referring to?"
"Why--Adrian not coming till to-morrow, of course. What did you suppose
I meant?"
"I did not suppose. Some day you will live to acknowledge--I am
convinced of it--that what your father and I thought best was dictated
by simple common sense and prudence. I am sure Sir Hamilton will not
misinterpret our motives. Nor Lady Torrens."
"He's a nice old Bart, the Bart. We are great friends. He likes it. He
gets all the kissing for nothing.... What?"
The Countess may have contemplated some protest against the pronounced
ratification implied of fatherdom-in-law. She gave it up, and said:--"I
was not going to say anything. Go on!"
The way in which these two guessed each other's thoughts was phenomenal.
Gwen knew all about it. "Come, mamma!" said she. "You know the Bart
would not have liked it half so much if I had been a dowdy."
"I cannot pretend to have thought upon the subject." If her ladyship
threw a greater severity into her manner than the occasion seemed to
call for, it was not merely because she disapproved of her beautiful
daughter's want of _retenue_, or questionable style, or doubtful taste,
or defective breeding. You must bear all the circumstances in mind as
they presented themselves to her. Conceive what the "nice old Bart" had
been to her over five-and-twenty years ago, when she herself was a
dazzling young beauty of another generation! Think how strange it must
have been, to hear the audacities of this new creature, undreamed of
then, spoken so placidly through an amused smile, as she watched the
firelight serenely from the arm-chair she had subsided on--an anchorage
"three words" would never have warranted, even the most unbridled
polysyllables. "Do you not think"--her dignified mamma continued--"you
had better be getting ready for dinner? You are always longer than me."
"I'm going directly. Lutwyche is never ready. I suppose I ought to go,
though.... You are not asking after my old lady, and I think you might."
"Oh yes," said her ladyship negligently. "I haven't seen you since you
didn't go to church with me. How _is_ your old lady?"
"You don't care, so it doesn't matter. How was Dr. Tuxford Somers?"
"My dear--don't be nonsensical! How can you expect me to gush over about
an old person I have not so much as seen?" She added as an
afterthought:--"However worthy she may be!"
"You could have seen her quite well, when she was here. Papa did.
Besides, one can show a human interest, without gushing over."
"My dear, I hope I am never wanting in human interest. How is Mrs....
Mrs....?"
"Mrs. Prichard?"
"Yes--how is she? Is she coming back here?"
"Is it likely? Besides, she can't be moved."
"Oh--it's as bad as that!"
"My dear mamma, haven't I told you fifty times?" This was not exactly
the case; but it passed, in conversation. "The darling old thing was all
but killed by being told...."
"By being told?... Oh yes, I remember! They were sisters, in Van
Diemen's Land.... But she's better again now?"
"Yes--better. Oh, here's Starfield, and there's papa in his room. I can
hear him. I must go."
At dinner that evening nobody was in any way new or remarkable, unless
indeed Sir Spencer and Lady Derrick, who had been in Canada, counted.
There was one guest, not new, but of interest to Gwen. Do you happen to
remember General Rawnsley, who was at the Towers in July, when Adrian
had his gunshot accident? It was he who was nearly killed by a Mahratta,
at Assaye, when he was a young lieutenant. Gwen had issued orders that
he should take her in to dinner, when she heard on her arrival that he
had accepted her mother's invitation for Christmas.
Consider dinner despatched--the word is suitable, for an approach to
haste was countenanced or tolerated, in consideration of the household's
festivity elsewhere--and so much talking going on that the old General
could say to Gwen without fear of being overheard:--"Now tell me some
more about your fellow.... Adrian, isn't he?... He _is_ your fellow,
isn't he?--no compliments necessary?"
"He's my fellow, General, to you and all my _dear_ friends. You saw him
in July, I think?"
"Just saw him--just saw him! Hardly spoke to him--only a word or two.
Your father took me in to see him, because I was in love with his
great-grandmother, once upon a time."
"His _great_-grandmother, General? You must mean his grandmother."
"Not a bit of it, my dear! It's all quite right. I was a boy of
eighteen. I'm eighty-four. Sixty-six years ago. If Mary Tracy was alive
now, she'd make up to eighty-six. Nothing out of the way in that. She
was a girl of twenty then."
"Was it serious, General?"
"God bless me, my dear, serious? I should rather think it was! Why--we
ran away together, and went capering over the country looking for a
parson to marry us! Serious? Rather! At least, it might have been."
"Oh, General, do tell me what came of it. Did you find the parson?"
"That was just it. We found the Rector of Threckingham--it was in
Lincolnshire--and he promised to marry us in a week if he could find
someone to give the bride away. He took possession of the young lady.
Then a day or two after down comes Sir Marmaduke and Lady Tracy, black
in the face with rage, and we were torn asunder, threatening suicide as
soon as there was a chance. I was such a jolly innocent boy that I never
suspected the Rector of treachery. Never guessed it at all! He told me
thirty years after--a little more. Saw him when the Allied Sovereigns
were in London--before Waterloo."
"And that young thing was Adrian's _great_-grandmother!" said Gwen. Then
she felt bound in honour to add:--"She was old enough to know better."
"She didn't," said the General. "What's so mighty funny to me now is to
think that all that happened about the time of the Revolution in Paris.
Rather before."
Gwen's imagination felt the vertigo of such a rough grapple with the
Past. These things make brains reel. "When my old twins were two little
girls in lilac frocks," said she.
"Your _what_?" Perhaps it was no wonder--so Gwen said afterwards--that
the General was a little taken aback. She would have been so very old to
have had twins before the French Revolution. She was able to assign a
reasonable meaning to her words, and the old boy became deeply
interested in the story of the sisters. So much so that when the ladies
rose to go, she said calmly to her mother:--"I'm not coming this time.
You can all go, and I'll come when we have to start the dancing. I want
to talk to General Rawnsley." And the Countess had to surrender, with an
implication that it was the only course open in dealing with a lunatic.
She could, however, palliate the position by a reference to the abnormal
circumstances. "We are quite in a state of chaos to-day," said she to
her chief lady-guest. And then to the Earl:--"Don't be more than five
minutes.... Well!--no longer than you can help."
The moment the last lady had been carefully shut out by the young
gentleman nearest the door, Gwen drove a nail in up to the head, _more
suo_. Suppose General Rawnsley had lost a twin brother fifty years ago,
and she, Gwen, had come to him and told him it had all been a mistake,
and the brother was still living! What would that feel like? What would
he have done?
"Asked for it all over again," said the General, after consideration.
"Should have liked being told, you see! Shouldn't have cared so very
much about the brother."
"No--do be serious! Try to think what it would have felt like. To oblige
me!"
The General tried. But without much success. For he only shook his head
over an undisclosed result. He could, however, be serious. "I suppose,"
said he, "the twinnery--twinship--whatever you call it...."
"Isn't _de rigueur_?" Gwen struck in. "Of course it isn't! Any real
fraternity would do as well. Now try!"
"That makes a difference. But I'm still in a fix. Your old ladies were
grown up when one went off--and then she wrote letters?..."
"Can't you manage a grown-up brother?"
"Nothing over fourteen. Poor Phil was fourteen when he was drowned.
Under the ice on the Serpentine. He had just been licking me for boning
a strap of his skate. I was doing the best way I could without it ... to
get mine on, you see ... when I heard a stop in the grinding noise--what
goes on all day, you know--and a sort of clicky slooshing, and I looked
up, and there were a hundred people under the ice, all at once. There
was a f'ler who couldn't stop or turn, and I saw him follow the rest of
'em under. Bad sort of job altogether!" The General seemed to be
enjoying his port, all the same.
Said Gwen:--"But he used to lick you, so you couldn't love him."
"Couldn't I? I was awfully fond of Phil. So was he of me. I expect Cain
was very fond of Abel. They loved each other like brothers. Not like
other people!"
"But Phil isn't a fair instance. Can't you do any better than Phil?
Never mind Cain and Abel."
"H'm--no, I can't! Phil's not a bad instance. It's longer ago--but the
same thing in principle. If I were to hear that Phil was really
resuscitated, and some other boy was buried by mistake for him, I should
... I should...." The General hung fire.
"What should you do? That's what I want to know.... Come now,
confess--it's not so easy to say, after all!"
"No--it's not easy. But it would depend on the way how. If it was like
the Day of Judgement, and he rose from the grave, as we are taught in
the Bible, just the same as he was buried.... Well--you know--it
wouldn't be fair play! _I_ should know _him_, though I expect I should
think him jolly small."
"But he wouldn't know you?"
"No. He would be saying to himself, who the dooce is this superannuated
old cock? And it would be no use my saying I was his little brother, or
he was my big one."
"But suppose it wasn't like the Day of Judgement at all, but real, like
my old ladies. Suppose he was another superannuated old cock! My old
ladies are superannuated old hens, I suppose."
"I suppose so. But I understand from what you tell me that they _have_
come to know one another again. They talk together and recall old times?
Isn't that so?"
"Oh dear yes, and each knows the other quite well by now. Only I believe
they are still quite bewildered about what has happened."
"Then I suppose it would be the same with me and my redivivus
brother--on the superannuated-old-cock theory, not the Day of Judgement
one."
"Yes--but I want you not to draw inferences from _them_, but to say what
you would feel ... of yourself ... out of your own head."
The General wanted time to think. The question required thought, and he
was taking it seriously. The Earl, seeing him thinking, and Gwen waiting
for the outcome, came round from his end of the table, and took the seat
the Countess had vacated. He ought to have been there before, but it
seemed as though Gwen's _escapade_ had thrown all formalities out of
gear. He was just in time for the General's conclusion:--"Give it up!
Heaven only knows what I should do! Or anyone else!"
Gwen restated the problem, for her father's benefit. "I am with you,
General," said he. "I cannot speculate on what I should do. I am
inclined to think that the twinship has had something to do with the
comparative rapidity of the ... recohesion...."
"Very good word, papa! Quite suits the case."
"... recohesion of these two old ladies. When we consider how very early
in life they took their meals together...." The General murmured _sotto
voce_:--"Before they were born." "... we must admit that their case is
absolutely exceptional--absolutely!"
"You mean," said Gwen, "that if they had not been twins they would not
have swallowed each other down, as they have done."
"Exactly," said the Earl.
"And yet," Gwen continued, "they never remember things as they happened.
In fact, they are still in a sort of fog about what _has_ happened. But
they are quite sure they are Maisie and Phoebe. I do think, though,
there is only one thing about Maisie's Australian life that Granny
Marrable believes, and that is the devil that got possession of the
convict husband.... _Why_ does she? Because devils are in the Bible, of
course." Here the devil story was retold for the benefit of the General,
who did not know it.
The Earl did, so he did not listen. He employed himself thinking over
practicable answers to the question before the house, and was just in
time to avert a polemic about the authenticity of the Bible, a subject
on which the General held strong views. "What helps me to an idea of a
possible attitude of mind before a resurrection of this sort," he said,
"is what sometimes happens when you wake up from a dream years long, a
dream as long as a lifetime. Just the first moment of all, you can
hardly believe yourself free of the horrid entanglement you had got
involved in...."
"I know," said Gwen. "The other night I dreamed I was going to be
married to a young gentleman I had known from childhood. Only he was a
kettle-holder with a parrot on it."
"Didn't I object?" said the Earl.
"You were upstairs. Don't ask explanations. That was all there was in
the dream. You were upstairs. And the dream had been all my life. Don't
fidget about particulars."
"I won't. That's the sort of dream I mean. It seems all perfectly right
and sound until your waking life comes back, and then vanishes. You only
regret your friends in the dream for a few seconds, and then--they are
nobody!"
"Don't quite see the parallel, yet. These old ladies haven't waked from
a dream, that I see." Thus the General, and Gwen told him he was a
military martinet, and lacking in insight.
Her father continued:--"Each of them has dreamed the other was dead, for
half a century. _Now_ they are awake. But I suspect, from what Gwen
says, that the discovery of the dream has thrown a doubt on all the rest
of the fifty years."
"That's it," said Gwen. "If the whole story of the two deaths is false,
why should Van Diemen's Land be true? Why should the convict and the
forgery be true?"
"Husbands and families are hard nuts to crack," said the General. "Can't
be forgotten or disbelieved in, try 'em any side up!"
At this point a remonstrance from the drawing-room at the delay of the
appearance of the males caused a stampede and ended the discussion. Gwen
rejoined her own sex unabashed, and the company adjourned to the scene
of the household festivity. It is not certain that the presence of his
lordship and his Countess, and the remainder of the party _in esse_ at
the Towers really added to the hilarity of the occasion. But it was an
ancient usage, and the sky might have fallen if it had been rashly
discontinued. The compromise in use at this date under which the
magnates, after walking through a quadrille, melted away imperceptibly
to their normal quarters, was no doubt the result of a belief on their
part that the household would begin to enjoy itself as soon as
formalities had been complied with, and it was left to do so at its own
free-will and pleasure. Nevertheless, a hint at abolition would have
been blasphemy, and however eager the rank and file of the establishment
may have been for the disappearance of the bigwigs, not one of them--and
still more not one of their many invited neighbours--ever breathed a
hint of it to another.
Shortly after ten Gwen and some of the younger members of the party
wound up a fairly successful attempt to make the materials at their
disposal dance the Lancers, and got away without advertising their
departure. It was a great satisfaction to overhear the outbreak of
unchecked roystering that followed. Said Gwen to Miss Dickenson and Mr.
Pellew, who had entered into the spirit of the thing and co-operated
with her efforts to the last:--"They will be at bear-garden point in
half an hour. Poor respectable Masham!" To which Aunt Constance
replied:--"I suppose they won't go on into Sunday?" The answer was:--"Oh
no--not till Sunday! But Sunday is a _day_, after all, not a night." Mr.
Pellew said:--"Sunrise at eight," and Gwen said:--"I think Masham will
make it Sunday about two o'clock. We shan't have breakfast till eleven.
You'll see!"
They were in the great gallery with the Van Dycks when Gwen stopped, as
one stops who thinks suddenly of an omission, and said, as to herself,
more than to her hearers:--"I wonder whether she meant me."
"Whether who meant you?" said both, sharing the question.
"Nothing.... Very likely I was mistaken.... No--it was this. You saw
that rather _piquante_, dry young woman? You know which I mean?"
"Danced with that good-looking young groom?..."
"Yes--my Tom--Tom Kettering. It was what I heard her say to Lutwyche ...
some time ago.... 'Remember she's not to have it till to-morrow
morning.' It just crossed my mind, did she mean me? I dare say it was
nothing."
"I heard that. It was a letter." Mr. Pellew said this.
"Had you any impression about it?"
"I thought it was some joke among the servants."
Gwen was disquieted, evidently. "I wish I hadn't heard it," said she,
"if it isn't to be delivered till to-morrow. That young woman is Dr.
Nash's housekeeper--Dr. Nash at Chorlton." She was speaking to ears that
had heard all about the twin sisters. She interrupted any answer that
meant to follow "Oh!" and "H'm!" by saying abruptly:--"I must see
Lutwyche and find out."
They turned with her, and retraced their steps, remarking that no doubt
it was nothing, but these things made one uncomfortable. Much better to
find out, and know!
A casual just entering to rejoin the revels stood aside to allow them to
pass, but was captured and utilised. "Go in and tell Miss Lutwyche I
want to speak to her out here." Gwen knew all about local class
distinctions, and was aware her maid would not be "Lutwyche" to a
village baker's daughter. The girl, awed into some qualification of mere
assent, which might have been presumptuous, said:--"Yes, my lady, if you
please."
Lutwyche was captured and came out. "What was it I was not to have till
to-morrow morning, Lutwyche? You know quite well what I mean. What was
the letter?"
The waiting-woman had a blank stare in preparation, to prevaricate with,
but had to give up using it. "Oh yes--there _was_ a _note_," she said.
"It was only a note. Mrs. Lamprey brought it from Dr. Nash. He wished
your ladyship to have it to-morrow."
"I will have it at once, thank you! Have you got it there? Just get it,
and bring it to me at once."
"I hope your ladyship does not blame me. I was only obeying orders."
"Get it, please, and don't talk." Her ladyship was rather incensed with
the young woman, but not for obeying orders. It was because of the
attempt to minimise the letter. It was just like Lutwyche. Nothing would
make that woman _really_ truthful!
Lutwyche caught up the party, which had not stopped for the finding of
the letter, at the drawing-room door. Gwen opened it as she entered the
room, saying, to anyone within hearing:--"Excuse my reading this." She
dropped on a sofa at hand, close to a chandelier rich with wax lights in
the lampless drawing-room. Percy Pellew and his _fiancee_ stood waiting
to share the letter's contents, if permitted.
The world, engaged with its own affairs, took no notice. The Earl and
the General were listening to tales of Canada from Sir Spencer Derrick.
The Countess was pretending to listen to other versions of the same
tales from that gentleman's wife. The others were talking about the war,
or Louis Napoleon, or Florence Nightingale, or hoping the frost would
continue, because nothing was more odious than a thaw in the country.
One guest became very unpopular by maintaining that a thaw had already
set in, alleging infallible instincts needing no confirmation from
thermometers.
The Countess had said, speaking at her daughter across the room:--"I
hope we are going to have some music;" and the Colonel had said:--"Ah,
give us a song, Gwen;" without eliciting any notice from their
beautiful hearer, before anyone but Miss Dickenson and Mr. Pellew
noticed the effect this letter was producing. Then the Earl, glancing at
the reader's face, saw, even from where he sat, how white it had become,
and how tense was its expression. He caught Mr. Pellew's attention. "Do
you know what it is, Percy?" said he. Mr. Pellew crossed the room
quickly, to reply under his breath:--"I am afraid it is some bad news of
her old lady at Chorlton.... Oh no--not _that_"--for the Earl had made
the syllable _dead_ with his lips, inaudibly--"but an alarm of some
sort. The doctor's housekeeper there brought the letter."
The Earl left Mr. Pellew, reiterating what he had said to the General,
and went over to his daughter. "Let me have it to see," said he, and
took the letter from her. He read little scraps, half-aloud, "'Was much
better all yesterday, but improvement has not continued.' ... 'Am taking
advantage of my housekeeper's visit to the Towers to send this.' ...
'Not to have it till to-morrow.' ... How was that?" Gwen explained
briefly, and he said:--"Looks as if the doctor took it for granted you
would come at once."
"Yes," said Gwen, "on receipt of the letter."
The Countess said, as one whose patience is sorely and undeservedly
tried:--"What _is_ it all about? I suppose we are to know." The war and
Louis Napoleon and Florence Nightingale lulled, and each asked his
neighbour what it was, and was answered:--"Don't know." The Colonel, a
man of the fewest possible words, said to the General:--"Rum! Not young
Torrens, I suppose?" And the General replied:--"No, no! Old lady of
eighty." Which the Colonel seemed to think was all right, and didn't
matter.
"I think, if I were you, I should see the woman who brought it," said
the Earl, after reading the letter twice; once quickly and once slowly.
Gwen answered:--"Yes, I think so,"--and left the room abruptly. Her
father took the letter, which he had retained, to show to her mother,
who read it once and handed it back to him. "I cannot advise," said she,
speaking a little from Olympus. She came down the mountain, however, to
say:--"See that she doesn't do anything mad. You have some influence
with her," and left the case--one of _dementia_--to her husband.
"I think," said he, "if you will excuse me, my dear, I will speak to
this woman myself."
Her ladyship demurred. "Isn't it almost making the matter of too much
importance?" said she, looking at her finger-diamonds as though to
protest against any idea that she was giving her mind to the case of
_dementia_.
"I think not, my dear," said the Earl, meekly but firmly, and followed
his daughter out of the room.
* * * * *
Very late that night, or rather very early next day, in the smoking-room
to which such males as it pleased to do so retired for a last cigar,
sundry of the younger members of the vanishing shooting-party, and one
or two unexplained nondescripts, came to the knowledge of a fact that
made one of them say--"Hookey!"; another--"Crikey!"; and a third and
fourth that they were blowed. All considered, more or less, that Mr.
Norbury, their informant, who had come to see the lights out, didn't
mean to say what he had said. He, however, adhered to his statement,
which was that Lady Gwendolen had had alarming news about an old lady
whom she was much interested in, and had been driven away in the closed
brougham by Tom Kettering to Chorlton, more than two hours ago. "I
thought it looked queer, when she didn't come back," said one of the
gentlemen who was blowed.
CHAPTER XXVI
HOW GWEN AND MRS. LAMPREY RODE TO STRIDES COTTAGE, AND FOUND DR.
NASH THERE. OF A LETTER FROM MAISIE'S SON, AND HOW IT HAD THROWN
HER BACK. AN ANXIOUS NIGHT WATCH. IMAGINATIONS OF SAPPS COURT.
PETER JACKSON'S NAMESAKE. HOW GWEN DREAMED OF DOLLY ON GENERAL
RAWNSLEY'S KNEE, AND WAS WAKED BY A SCREAM. READ ME ALOUD WHAT MY
SON SAYS! WHAT IS CALLED SNEERING. A MAG. A FLIMSY. HOW GWEN WAS
GOT TO BED, HALF ASLEEP. OLD MAISIE'S WILL. NOT UPSTAIRS OUT OF A
CARRIAGE, DOWNSTAIRS INTO A CARRIAGE. TWO STEPS BACK AND ONE
FORWARD. BEFORE THAT CLOCK STRIKES. _THEIR_ DAUGHTER
Whoever detected a thaw outside the house, by instinct at work within,
was an accurate weather-gauge. A wet, despairing moon was watching a
soaking world from a misty heaven; and chilly avalanches of undisguised
slush, that had been snow when the sun went down, were slipping on
acclivities and roofs, and clinging in vain to overhanging boughs, to
vanish utterly in pools and gutters and increasing rivulets. The
carriage-lamps of Gwen's conveyance, a closed brougham her father had
made a _sine qua non_ of her departure, shone on a highway that had seen
little traffic since the thaw set in, and that still had on it a memory
of fallen snow, and on either side of it the yielding shroud that had
made the land so white and would soon leave it so black. Never
mind!--the road was a better road, for all that it was heavier. No risk
now of a stumble on the ice, with the contingencies of a broken knee for
the horse, and an hour's tramp for its quorum!
The yew-tree in the little churchyard at Chorlton had still some
_coagulum_ of thaw-frost on it when the brougham plashed past the closed
lichgate, and left its ingrained melancholy to make the most of its
loneliness. Strides Cottage was just on ahead--five minutes at the most,
even on such a road. "They will be sure to be up, I suppose--one of them
at least," said Gwen to the woman in the carriage with her. It was Mrs.
Lamprey, whom Tom Kettering was to have driven back in any case, but not
in the brougham. Gwen had overruled her attempt to ride on the box, and
was sorry when she had done so. For she could not say afterwards:--"I'm
sure you would rather be up there, with Tom."
"I doubt they'll have gone to bed, my lady, either of them. Nor yet I
won't be quite sure we shan't find the doctor there." Thus Mrs. Lamprey,
making Gwen's heart sink. For what but very critical circumstances could
have kept Dr. Nash at the Cottage till past one in the morning? But
then, these circumstances must be recent. Else he could never have
wished the letter kept back till to-morrow. She said something to this
effect to her companion, who replied:--"No doubt your ladyship knows!"
There was a light in the front-room, and someone was moving about. The
arrival of the carriage caused the dog to bark, once but not more, as
though for recognition or warning; not as a dog who resented it--merely
as a janitor, officially. The doorbell, in response to a temperate pull,
grated on the silence of the night, overdoing its duty and suggesting
that the puller's want of restraint was to blame. Then came a footstep,
but no noise of bolt or bar withdrawn. Then Ruth Thrale's voice,
wondering who this could be. And then her surprise when she saw her
visitor, whose words to her were:--"I thought it best to come at once!"
"Oh, but she is better! Indeed we think she is better. Dr. Nash was to
write and tell you, so you should know--not to hurry to come too soon."
Thus Ruth, much distressed at this result of the doctor's despatch.
"Never mind me! You are sure she _is_ better? Is that Dr. Nash's voice?"
Yes--it was. He had been there since eleven, and was just going.
Ruth went in to tell Granny Marrable it was her ladyship, as Dr. Nash
came out. "I'm to blame, Lady Gwendolen," said he. "I'm to blame for
being in too great a hurry. It was a blunder. But I can't pretend to be
sorry I made it--that's the truth!"
"You mean that she isn't out of the wood?"
"That kind of thing. She _isn't_."
"Oh dear!" Gwen sank into a chair, looking white. Hope had flared up, to
be damped down. How often the stokers--nurses or doctors--have to pile
wet ashes on a too eager blaze! How seldom they dare to add fresh fuel!