Friday, taking some nourishment. And there is no doubt the champagne did
her good--just a spoonful at a time, you know, not more. She isn't
halfway through the bottle yet. I thought she was on her way to pull
through, triumphantly. Then something upset her."
"Well, but--_what_?" For the doctor had paused at some obstacle,
unexplained.
"That I can't tell you. You must ask Granny Marrable about that. Not her
daughter--niece--whatever she is. Don't say anything to _her_. She is
not to know."
Granny Marrable was audible in the passage without. "Can't you tell me
what _sort_ of thing?" said Gwen, under her voice.
"It was in a letter that came to her from Snaps--Sapps Court. The Granny
wouldn't tell me what was in it, and begged I would say nothing of it to
Widow Thrale. But the old soul was badly upset by it, shaking all over
and asking for you...."
"Was she asking for me? Then I'm so glad you sent for me. I would not
have been away on any account."
"It had nothing to do with my writing. I should have written for you to
come to-morrow anyhow.... Here comes Granny Marrable." They had been
talking alone, as Mrs. Lamprey had gone outside to speak to Tom.
"Still asleep, Granny?" said the doctor. Yes--she was, said the old
lady; nicely asleep. "Then I'll be off, as it's late." Gwen suggested
that Tom might drive him home, with Mrs. Lamprey, and call back for
instructions.
Said Granny Marrable then, not as one under any new stress:--"My lady,
God bless you for coming, though I would have been glad it had been
daylight. To think of your ladyship out in the cold and damp, for our
sakes!"
"Never mind me, Granny! I'll go to bed to-morrow night. Now tell me
about this letter.... Is Ruth safe in there?" Yes, she was; and would
stay there by her dear mother. Gwen continued: --"Dr. Nash has just
told me there was some letter. But he did not know what was in it."
"He was not to know. But _you_ were, my lady. This is it. Can you see
with the candle?"
Gwen took the letter, and turned to the signature before reading it. It
was from "Ralph Thornton Daverill, _alias_ Rix," which she read quite
easily, for the handwriting was educated enough, and clear. "I see no
date," said she. "Why did Dr. Nash say it had come from Sapps Court?"
"Because, my lady, he saw the envelope. Perhaps your ladyship knows of
'Aunt Maria.' She is little Dave's aunt, in London."
"Oh yes--I know 'Aunt M'riar.' I know her, herself. Why does she write
her name on a letter from this man?"
"I do not know. There is all we know, in the letter, as you have it."
"Whom do you suppose Ralph Thornton Daverill to be, Granny?"
"I know, unhappily. He is her son."
"_The_ son.... Oh yes--I knew of him. She has told me of _him_. Besides,
I knew her name was Daverill, from the letters." Granny Marrable was
going on to say something, but Gwen stopped her, saying:--"First let me
read this." Then the Granny was silent, while the young lady read, half
aloud and half to herself, this following letter:--
"MOTHER--You will be surprised to get this letter from me. Are you
sorry I am not dead? Can't say I'm glad. I have been His Majesty's
guest for one long spell, and Her Majesty's for another, since you
saw the last of me. I'm none so sure I wasn't better off then, but
I couldn't trust H.M.'s hospitality again. It might run to a rope's
end. Dodging blood-hounds is my lay now, and I lead the life of a
cat in hell. But I'm proud--proud I am. You read the newspaper
scrap I send along with this, and you'll be proud of your son. I'm
a chip of the old block, and when my Newgate-frisk comes, I'll die
game. Do you long to see your loving son? If you don't, send him a
quid or two--or put it at a fiver. Just for to enable him to lead
an honest life, which is my ambition. You can come to a fiver. Or
would you rather have your loving son come and ask for it? How
would you like it, if you were an honest man without a mag in his
pocket, and screwpulls of conscience? You send on a flimsy to
M'riar. She'll see I get it. I'll come for more when I want it--you
be easy. So no more at present from your dutiful son:--
RALPH THORNTON DAVERILL, _alias_ RIX."
"P.S.--You can do it--or _ask a kind friend_ to help."
"What a perfectly intolerable letter!" said Gwen. "What does he mean by
a newspaper scrap?... Oh, is that it?" She took from the old lady a
printed cutting, and read it aloud. "Fancy his being _that_ man," said
she. "It made quite a talk last winter--was in all the papers." It was
the paragraph Uncle Mo had come upon in the _Star_.
"I have seen that man," said Granny Marrable. And so sharp was Gwen in
linking up clues, that she exclaimed at once:--"What--the madman? Dr.
Nash told me of _him_. Didn't he come to hunt her up?"
"That was it, my lady. And he was all but caught. But I have never
spoken of my meeting him, and she has barely spoken of him, till this
letter came yesterday. And then we could speak of him together. But not
Ruth. She was to know nothing. She was not here, by good luck, just the
moment that it came."
"And my dear old Mrs. Picture? Oh, Granny--what a letter for her to
get!"
"Indeed, my lady, she was very badly shaken by it. I would have been
glad if I might have read it myself first, to tell her of it gently."
Granny Marrable was entirely mistaken. "Break it gently," sounds so
well! What is it worth in practice?
"Could she understand the letter. _I_ couldn't, at first."
"She understood it better than I did. But it set her in a trembling, and
then she got lost-like, and we thought it best to go for Dr. Nash....
No--Ruth never knew anything of the letter, not a word. And her mother
said never a word to her. For he was her brother."
"I cannot understand some things in the letter now, but I see he is
thoroughly vile. One thing is good, though! What he wants is money."
"Will that...?"
"Keep him quiet and out of the way? Yes--of course it will. Let me take
the letter to show to my father. He will know what to do." She knew that
her father's first thought might be to use the clue to catch the man,
but she also knew he would not act upon it if his doing so was likely to
shorten the span of life still left to old Maisie. "What was he like?"
said she to Granny Marrable.
"Some might call him good-looking," was the cautious answer.
"You think _I_ shouldn't, evidently?" Evidently.
"It is not the face itself. It is in the shape of it. A twist. I took
him for mad, but he is not."
"How came you to know him for your sister's son?"
"Ah, my lady, how could I? For Maisie was still dead then, for me. I
could know he was Mrs. Prichard's son, for he said so."
"I see. It was before. But you talk about him to her now?"
"She cannot talk of much else, when Ruth is away. She will talk of him
to you, when she wakes.... Hush--I think Ruth is coming!" Gwen slipped
the letter in her pocket, to be out of the way.
No change in her mother--that was Ruth's report. She had not stirred in
her sleep. You could hardly hear her breathe. This was to show that you
_could_ hear her breathe, by listening. It covered any possible alarm
about the nature of so moveless a sleep, without granting discussion of
the point.
Gwen had told Tom Kettering to return shortly, but only for orders. Her
own mind was quite made up--not to leave the old lady until alarms had
died down. If the clouds cleared, she would think about it. Tom must
drive back at once to the Towers; and if anyone was still out of bed
whose concern it was to know, he might explain that she was not coming
back at present. Or stop a minute!--she would write a short line to her
father. Ruth and Granny Marrable lodged a formal protest. But how glad
they were to have her there, on any terms!
She had really come prepared to stay the night; but until she could hear
how the land lay had not disclosed her valise. Tom, returning for
orders, deposited it in the front-room, and departed, leaving it to be
carefully examined by the dog, who could not disguise his interest in
leather.
The only obstacle to an arrangement for one of the three to be always
close at hand when the sleeper waked was the usual one. In such cases
everyone wants to be the sentinel on the first watch, and not on any
account to sleep. A dictator is needed, and Gwen assumed the office. Her
will was not to be disputed. She told Granny Marrable and Ruth to go to
bed or at least to go and lie down, and she would call one of them if it
was necessary. They looked at each other and obeyed. She herself could
lie down and sleep, if she chose, on the big bed beside the old lady,
and she might choose. The end would be gained. There would then be no
fear of old Maisie awakening alone in the dark, a prey to horrible
memories and apprehensions, this last one worst of all--this nightmare
son with his hideous gaol-bird past and his veiled threats for the
future. That was more important than the meat-jelly, beef-tea,
stimulants, what not? They would probably be refused. Still they were to
be reckoned with, and Ruth was within call to supply them.
In the darkness and the silence of the night, a solitary, discouraged
candle in a shade protesting feebly against the one, and every chance
sound that day would have ignored emphasizing the other, the stillness
of the figure on the bed became a mystery and an oppression. How Gwen
would have welcomed a recurrence of the faintest breath, to keep alive
her confidence that this was only sleep--sleep to be welcomed as the
surest herald of life and strength! How she longed to touch the
blue-veined wrist upon the coverlid, but once, just for a certainty of a
beating pulse, however faint! She dared not, even when a heavy avalanche
of melted snow from the eaves without, that made her start, left the
sleeper undisturbed; even when a sudden faggot in the fireplace,
responsive to the snowfall, broke and fell into the smouldering red
below, and crackled into flame without awakening her. For Gwen knew the
shrewd powers of a finger-touch to rouse the deepest sleeper. But she
was grateful for that illumination, for it showed her a silver thread of
hair near enough to the nostril to be stirred to and fro by the breath
that went and came. And by its light the delicate transparency of the
wrist showed the regular pulsation of the heart. All was well.
She had plenty to occupy her thoughts. She could sit and think of the
strangeness of her own life, and its extraordinary inequalities. What
could clash more discordantly than this moment and a memory of a month
ago that rushed into her mind for no apparent reason but to make a
parade of its own incongruity. Do you remember that brilliant dress of
Madame Pontet that she tried on at Park Lane, with "the usual tight
armhole"? That dress had figured as a notable achievement of the
_modiste's_ art, worthy of its wearer's surpassing beauty, in a dazzling
crowd of Stars and Garters and flashing diamonds, and loveliness that
was old enough for Society, and valour that was too old for the field of
battle; and much of the wit of the time and a little of the learning,
trappings of well-mounted _dramatis personae_ on the World's stage. That
dress and its contents had made many a woman jealous, and been tenacious
of many a man's memory, young and old, for weeks after. Here was the
wearer, watching in the night beside a convict's relict, a worse
convict's mother, a waif and stray picked up in a London Court off
Tottenham Court Road! And the heart of the watcher was praying for only
one little act of grace in Destiny, to grant a short span yet of life,
were it no more than a year, to this frail survivor of a long and cruel
separation from one whose youth had been another self to her own.
And as for that other affair, what _did_ she really recollect of it?
Well--she could remember that tight armhole, certainly, and was far from
sure she should ever forget it.
The chance that had brought the sisters back to each other was so
strange that the story of their deception and the loss of every clue to
its remedy seemed credible by comparison--a negligible improbability.
Would they necessarily have recognised one another at all if that letter
had not come into the hands of her father? She herself would never have
dared to open it; or, if she had, would she have understood its
contents? Without that letter, what would the course of events have
been? Go back and think of it! Imagine old Mrs. Picture in charge of
Widow Thrale, groundedly suspected of lunacy, miserable under the fear
that the suspicion might be true--for who can gauge his own sanity?
Imagine Granny Marrable, kept away at Denby by her daughter, that her
old age should not be afflicted by a lunatic. Imagine the longing of
Sapps Court to have Mrs. Picture back, and the chair with cushions, in
the top garret, that yawned for her. Imagine these, and remember that
probably old Maisie, to seem sane at any cost, would have gone on
indefinitely keeping silence about her own past life, whatever
temptation she may have been under to speak again of the mill-model,
invisible in its carpet-roll above the fireplace. Remember that what Dr.
Nash elicited from her, as an interesting case of _dementia_, was not
necessarily repeated to Mrs. Thrale, and would have been a dead letter
in the columns of the _Lancet_ later on. Certainly the chances of an
_eclaircissement_ were at a minimum when Gwen returned from London, her
own newly acquired knowledge of its materials apart. But then, how about
the poor crazy old soul's daughter's new-born love for her unrecognised
mother, and her mysteriously heart-whole return for it?
That _might_ have brought the end about. But to Gwen it seemed
speculative and uncertain, and to point to no more than a possible
return to London of the mother, accompanied by her unknown and unknowing
daughter. A curious vision flashed across her mind of Ruth Thrale,
entertained at Sapps by old Mrs. Picture; and there, by the window, the
table with the new leg; and, in the drawer of it ... what? A letter
written five-and-forty years ago, that had changed the lives of both!
Gwen's imagination restored the unread letter to its place, with rigid
honesty. But--how strange!
Then her imagination came downstairs, and glanced in on the way at the
room where the mysterious fireman, who came from the sky, had deposited
the half-insensible old lady, after the cataclysm. It was Uncle Mo's
room, on the safe side of the house; and the walls were enriched with
prints of heroes of the Ring in old time; Figg and Broughton, Belcher
and Bendigo, sparring for ever in close-fitting pants by themselves on a
very fine day. She recalled how the unmoved fireman, departing, had
shown a human interest in one of these, remarking that it was a namesake
of his. Suppose that fireman had not been at hand, how would old Maisie
have been got downstairs? Suppose that she herself had been flattened
under the ruins, would all things now have been quite otherwise? See how
much had turned on that visit to Cavendish Square! No--a hundred things
had happened, the absence of any one of which might have changed the
current of events, and left old Maisie to end her days undeceived; and
perhaps the whole tale of her lonely life and poverty to come to light
afterwards, and cast a gloom without a chance of solace over the last
hours of her surviving twin....
Was that the movement of a long-drawn breath, the precursor of an
unspoken farewell to the land of dreams? Scarcely! Nothing but a fancy,
this time, bred of watching too closely in the silence! Wait for the
clear signs of awakening, sure to come, in time!
It was so still, Gwen could hear the swift tick-tick-tick in the
watch-pocket at the bed's head; and, when she listened to it, her
consciousness that the big clock in the kitchen was at odds with the
hearth-cricket, rebuking his speed solemnly, grew less and less. For the
sound we look to hear comes out of the silence, when no other sound has
in it the force to speak on its own behalf. Two closed doors made the
kitchen-chorus dim. The new faggot had said its say, and given in to
mere red heat, with a stray flicker at the end. Drip and trickle were
without, and now and then a plash that said:--"Keep in doors, because of
me!" Gwen closed her eyes, as, since she was so wakeful, she could do so
with perfect safety; and listened to that industrious little watch.
It had become Dolly reciting the days of the week, before she knew her
vigilance was in danger. Gwen was certainly not asleep long, because
Dolly had only got to the second Tundy, when a scream awoke her, close
at hand to where Dolly was seated on General Rawnsley's knee. But it was
quick work, to think out where she was, and to throw her arms round the
frail, trembling form that was starting up from some terror of dreamland
unexplained, on the bed beside her.
"What is it, dear, what is it? Don't be frightened. See, I'm Gwen! I
brought you here, you know. There--there! Now it's all right." She spoke
as one speaks to a frightened child.
Old Maisie was trembling all over, and did not know where she was, at
first. "Don't let him come--don't let him come!" was what she kept
saying, over and over again. This passed off, and she knew Gwen, but was
far from clear about time and place. Questioned as to who it was that
was not to come, she had forgotten, but was aware she had been asleep
and dreaming. "Did I make a great noise and shout out?" said she.
Ruth Thrale appeared, waked by the cry. It had not added to her
uneasiness. "She was like this, all yesterday," said she. "All on the
jar. Dr. Nash hopes it will pass off." Ruth, of course, knew nothing of
the coming of the son's letter, and regarded her mother's state as only
a fluctuation. She had a quiet self-command that refused to be
panic-struck. In fact, she had held back from coming, long enough to
make sure that Granny Marrable had slept through the scream. That was
all right. Gwen urged her to go back to bed, and prevailed over her by
adopting a positive tone. She agreed to go when she had made "her
mother" swallow something to sustain life. Gwen asked if the champagne
had continued in favour. "She doesn't fancy it alone," said Ruth. "But I
put it in milk, and she takes it down without knowing it." Probably
nurses are the most fraudulent people in the world.
Old Maisie kept silence resolutely about the letter until Ruth had gone
back; which she only did unwillingly, as concession to a _force
majeure_. Then the old lady said:--"Is she gone? I would not have her
see her brother's letter. But I would be glad you should see it, my
dear." She was exploring feebly under her pillow and bolster, to find
it. Gwen understood. "It's not there," said she. "I have it here. Granny
Marrable got at it to show to me." She hoped the old lady was not going
to insist on having that letter re-read. It made the foulness of the
criminal world, unknown to her except as material for the legitimate
drama, a horrible reality, and bred misgivings that the things in the
newspapers were really true.
Old Maisie disappointed her. "Read me aloud what my son says," said she.
Then Gwen understood what Granny Marrable had meant when she said that,
of the two, her sister had understood it the better. For as she uttered
the letter's repulsive expressions, reluctantly enough, a side-glance
showed her old Maisie's listening face and closed eyes, nowise disturbed
at her son's rather telling description of his hunted life. At the
reference to the "newspaper scrap" she said:--"Yes, Phoebe read me that
with her glasses. He got away." Gwen felt that that strange past life,
in a land where almost every settler had the prison taint on him, had
left old Maisie abler to endure the flavour of the gaol-bird's speech
about himself. It was as though an Angel who had been in Hell might know
all its ways, and yet remain unsullied by the knowledge.
But at the words:--"Do you long to see your loving son?" she moved and
spoke uneasily. "What does he mean? Oh, what does he mean? Was it all
his devil?" She seemed ill able to find words for her meaning, but Gwen
took it that she was trying to express some hint of a better self in
this son, perhaps latent behind the evil spirit that possessed him.
Her comment was:--"Oh dear no! What he means is that he will come and
frighten you to death if you don't send him money. It is only a threat
to get money. Dear Mrs. Picture, don't you fret about him. Leave him to
me and my father.... What does he mean by a quid? A hundred pounds, I
suppose? And a fiver, five hundred?... is that it?"
"Oh no--he would never ask me for all that money! A quid is a
guinea--only there are no guineas now. He means a five-pound-note by a
fiver." Her voice died from weakness. The "Please go on!" that followed,
was barely audible.
Gwen read on:--"'Just for to enable him to lead an honest life.' Dear
Mrs. Picture, I must tell you I think this is what is called _sneering_.
You know what that means? He is not in earnest."
"Oh yes--I know. I am afraid you are right. But is it _himself_?" That
idea of the devil again!
Gwen evaded the devil. "We must hope not," said she. She went on,
learning by the way what a "mag" was, and a "flimsy." She paused on Aunt
M'riar. Why was "M'riar" to act as this man's agent? She wished Thothmes
was there, with his legal acumen. But old Maisie might be able to tell
_something_. She questioned her gently. How did she suppose Aunt Maria
came to know anything of her son? She had to wait for the answer.
It came in time. "Not Aunt M'riar. Someone else."
"No--Aunt Maria. She wrote her name on the envelope; to show where it
came from, I suppose." The perplexity suggested silenced old Maisie.
Gwen compared the handwritings of the letter and direction. They were
the same--a man's hand, clearly. "From Aunt Maria" was in a woman's
hand. Gwen did not attempt to clear up the mystery. She was too anxious
about the old lady, and, indeed, was feeling the strain of this
irregular night. For, strong as she was, she was human.
Her anxiety kept the irresistible powers of Sleep at bay for a while;
and then, when it was clear that old Maisie was slumbering again, with
evil dreams in abeyance, she surrendered at discretion. All the world
became dim, and when the clock struck four, ten seconds later, she did
not hear the last stroke.
* * * * *
When Gwen awoke six hours after, she had the haziest recollections of
the night. How it had come about that she found herself in another room,
warmly covered up, and pillowed on luxury itself, with a smell of
lavender in it that alone was bliss, she could infer from Ruth Thrale's
report. This went to show that when Ruth and Granny Marrable came into
the room at about six, they found her ladyship undisguisedly asleep
beside old Maisie; and when she half woke, persuaded her away to more
comfortable quarters. She had no distinct memory of details, but found
them easy of belief, told by eyewitnesses.
How was the dear old soul herself? Had she slept sound, or been roused
again by nightmares? Well--she had certainly done better than on the
previous afternoon and evening, after the receipt of that letter. Thus
Granny Marrable, in conference with her ladyship at the isolated
breakfast of the latter. Ruth, to whom the contents of the letter were
still unknown, was keeping guard by her mother.
"We put it all down to your ladyship," said the Granny, with grave
truthfulness--not a trace of flattery. "She can never tire of telling
the good it does her to see you." This was the nearest she could go,
without personality, to a hint at the effect the sheer beauty of her
hearer had on the common object of their anxiety.
Gwen knew perfectly well what she meant. She was used to this sort of
thing. "She likes my hair," said she, to lubricate the talk; and gave
the mass of unparalleled gold an illustrative shake. Then, to steer the
ship into less perilous, more impersonal waters:--"I must have another
of those delightful little hot rolls, if I die for it. Mr. Torrens's
mother--him I brought here, you know; he's got a mother--says new bread
at breakfast is sudden death. _I_ don't care!"
The Granny was fain to soften any implied doubt of a County Magnate's
infallibility, even when uttered by one still greater. "A many," said
she, "do not find them unwholesome." This left the question pleasantly
open. But she was at a loss to express something she wanted to say. It
_is_ difficult to tell your guest, however surpassingly beautiful, that
she has been mistaken for an Angel, even when the mistake has been made
by failing powers or delirium, or both together. Yet that was what
Granny Marrable's perfect truthfulness and literal thought were hanging
fire over. Old Maisie had said to her, in speech as passionate as her
weakness allowed:--"Phoebe, dearest Phoebe, my lady is God's Angel, come
from Heaven to drive the fiend out of the heart of my poor son." And
Phoebe, to whom everything like concealment was hateful, wanted sorely
to repeat to her ladyship the conversation which ended in this climax.
Otherwise, how could the young lady come to know what was passing in
Maisie's mind?
She approached the subject with caution. "My dear sister's mind," said
she, "has been greatly tried. So we must think the less of exciting
fancies. But I would not say her nay in anything she would have me
think."
Gwen's attention was caught. "What sort of things?" said she. "Yes--some
more coffee, please, and a great deal of sugar!"
"Strange, odd things. Stories, about Van Diemen's Land."
Gwen had a clue, from her tone. "Has she been telling you about the
witch-doctor, and the devil, and the scorpion, and the little beast?"
"They were in her story. It made my flesh creep to hear so outlandish a
tale. And she told your ladyship?"
"Oh dear yes! She has told me all about it! And not only me, but Mr.
Torrens. The old darling! Did she tell you of the little polecat beast
the doctor ate, who was called a devil, and how he possessed the
doctor--no getting rid of him?"
"She told me something like that."
"And what did you say to her?"
"I said that Our Lord cast out devils that possessed the swine, and had
He cast them again out of the swine, they might have possessed
Christians. For I thought, to please Maisie, I might be forgiven such
speech."
"Why not? That was all right." Gwen could not understand why Scripture
should be inadmissible, or prohibited.
Granny Marrable seemed to think it might be the latter. "I would not be
thought," she said, "to compare what we are taught in the Bible with ...
with _things_. Our Lord was in Galilee, and we are taught what came to
pass. This was in The Colonies, where any one of us might be, to-day or
to-morrow."
Gwen appreciated the distinction. It would clearly be irreverent to
mention a nowadays-devil, close at hand, in the same breath as the
remoter Gadarenes. She said nothing about Galilee being there still,
with perhaps the identical breed of swine, and even madmen. The Granny's
inner vision of Scripture history was unsullied by realisms--a true
history, of course, but clear of vulgar actualities. Still, something
was on her mind that she was bound to speak about to her ladyship, and
she was forced to use the Gospel account of an incident "we were taught"
to believe no longer possible, as a means of communicating to Gwen what
she herself held to be no more than a feverish dream of her sister's
weakness. Gwen detected in her tone its protest against the confusion of
vulgar occurrences, in all their coarse authenticity, with the events of
Holy Writ, and forthwith launched out in an attempt to find the
underlying cause of it. "Did the old darling," said she, "tell you how
Rookaroo, or whatever his name was, passed his devil on to her husband
and son?"
"I think, my lady, she has that idea."
"It seems to me a very reasonable idea," said Gwen. "Once you have a
devil at all, why not? And it was to be like the madman in the tombs in
the land of the Gadarenes! Poor old darling Mrs. Picture!"
Old Phoebe felt very uncomfortable, for Gwen was not taking the devil
seriously. Although scarcely prepared to have Scripture used to
substantiate a vulgar Colonial sample, the old lady was even less ready
to have such a one doubted, if the doubt was to recoil on his prototype.
"Maisie is of the mind to fancy this evil spirit might even now be
driven from her son's heart, and bring him to repentance. But I told her
a many things might be, in the days of our blessed Lord, in the Holy
Land, that were forbidden now. It was just his own wickedness, I told
her, and no devil to be cast out. But she was so bent on the idea, that
I could not find it in me to say this man might not repent and turn to
Godliness yet, by your ladyship's influence, or Parson Dunage's." This
introduction of the incumbent of Chorlton was an afterthought. The fact
is, Granny Marrable was endeavouring to suggest a rationalistic
interpretation of her sister's undisguised mysticism; fever-bred, no
doubt, but scarcely to be condemned as delusion outright without
impugning devils, who are standard institutions. Good influences,
brought to bear on perverted human hearts, are quite correct and modern.
Granny Marrable's words left Gwen unsuspicious that powers of exorcism
had been imputed to her. The ascription of them might be--certainly
was--nothing but an outcome of the overstrain and tension of the last
few days, but the repetition of it in cold blood to its subject might
have been taken to mean that it was a symptom of insanity. Gwen did not
press her to tell more, as Dr. Nash made his appearance. The frequency
of his visits was a source of uneasiness to her. She would have liked to
hear him say there was now no need for him to come again till he was
sent for.
"Any fresh developments?" said he, as Granny Marrable left the room to
herald his arrival. He heard Gwen's account of her own experience in the
night, and seemed disquieted. "I wish," said he abruptly, "that people
would keep their letters to themselves. I am not to be told what was in
the letter, I understand?" For Gwen had skipped the contents of it,
merely saying that Mrs. Picture had asked to hear her letter read
through again.
Then Widow Thrale came in, saying her mother was ready to see the
doctor. Mother was with her mother, she said. The doctor departed into
the bedroom.
"How long has your mother been awake?" asked Gwen under no drawback
about the designation.
"Quite half an hour. I told her your ladyship was having a little
breakfast. She always asks for you."
"I heard that she was talking, through the door. What has she been
talking about?"
Ruth's memory went back conscientiously, for a starting-point. "About
her annuity," she said, "first. Then about the young children--little
Dave and Dolly. That's mother's little Dave, only it's all so strange to
think of. And then she talked about the accident."
"What about her annuity? I'm curious about that. I wonder who sends it
to her?"
"She says it comes from the Office, because they know her address. She
says Susan Burr took them the new address, when they left Skillick's.
She says she writes her name on the back...."
"It's a cheque, I suppose?"
"Your ladyship would know. Susan Burr takes it to the Bank and brings
back the money." Ruth hesitated over saying:--"I would be happier my
mother should not fret so about herself ... she was for making her will,
and I told her there would be time for that."
"Oh yes--plenty!" Gwen thought to herself that old Mrs. Picture's
testamentary arrangements were of less importance than tranquillity, as
matters stood at present. "What did she say of Dave and Dolly?"
"She was put about to think how they would be told, if she died."
"How would they be told?... I can't think." Gwen asked herself the
question, and parried it.
Ruth Thrale escaped in a commonplace. The dear children would have to
be told, but they would not grieve for long. Children didn't.
Gwen hoped she was right--always a good thing to do. But what had her
mother said about the accident? Oh--the accident! Well--she remembered
very little of it. She did not know why she should have become half
unconscious. The last thing she could be clear about was that Dave was
shouting for joy, and Dolly frightened and crying. Then a gentleman
carried her upstairs out of a carriage.
"No!" said Gwen. "Carried her downstairs into a carriage.... Oh no!--I
know what she meant. It was my cousin Percy, not the fireman."
At this point Dr. Nash returned from the bedroom. Gwen began hoping that
he had found his patient really better, but something stopped her
speech, and she said:--"Oh!" Ruth Thrale was outside the room by then,
far enough to miss the disappointment in her voice.
Dr. Nash glanced round to make sure she was out of hearing, and closed
the door. "I don't like to say much, either way," said he.
Gwen turned pale. "You need not be afraid to tell me," she said.
"I see you know what I mean," said he, reading into her thoughts.
"Miracle apart, one knows what to expect. I don't believe in any
miracle, though certainly she has everything in her favour for it, in
one sense."
"Meaning?" said Gwen interrogatively.
"Meaning that she has absolutely nothing the matter with her. If she has
any active disorder, all I can say is it has baffled me to find it out."
"But, then, why?..."
"Why be frightened? Listen, and I'll tell you.... We gain nothing, you
know, by not looking the facts in the face."
"I know. Go on." Gwen sat down, and waited. Some faces lose under stress
of emotion. It was a peculiarity of this young lady's that every fresh
tension added to the surpassing beauty of hers.
"I want you," said the doctor, speaking in a dry, businesslike way--"I
want you to go back to when you brought her down here from London. Think
of her then."
"I am thinking of her. I can remember her then, perfectly." And Gwen,
thinking of that journey, saw her old companion plainly enough. A very
old delicate woman, in need of consideration and care. No bedridden
invalid! "When did the change show itself?" The doctor took the image
in her mind for granted, successfully.
Then Gwen cast about to find an answer. "I think it must have been ..."
said she, and stopped.
"When did you _see_ it?"
"When I came back, first. After I told her, still more."
"After that?"
"I thought she was improving, every day."
"I thought you thought so."
"And you mean that it was a mistake. Oh dear!"
The doctor shook his head, slowly and sadly. "Yesterday, at this time,"
said he, "she could sit up in bed. With an exertion, you know! To-day
she can't do it at all." Both remained silent, and seemed to accept a
conclusion that did not need words. Then the doctor resumed, speaking
very quietly:--"It is always like this. Two steps back and one
forward--two steps back and one forward. We see the one step on because
we want to. We don't want to see what's unwelcome. So we don't discount
the losses."
Then Gwen, with that quiet resolution which he had known to be part of
her character, or he would scarcely have been so explicit, said:--"What
will she die of?"
"Old age, accelerated by mental perturbation."
"Can you at all guess when?"
"If she had any definite malady, I could guess better. She may linger on
for weeks. It won't go to months, in any case. Or she may pop off before
that clock strikes."
"Shall we tell them?"
"I say no. _No._ They will probably have her the longer for not knowing.
And, mind you, she is keeping her faculties. She's wonderfully bright,
and is suffering absolutely nothing."
"You are sure of that?"
"Absolutely sure. Go in and talk to her now. You'll find her quite
herself, but for a little fancifulness at times. It really is no more
than that.... By-the-by!..."
"What?"
"Do _you_ know what was in the letter that upset her so? The old Granny
did not say what was in it, and charged me to say nothing to her
daughter." The doctor had all but said:--"To _their_ daughter!"
"I know what was in the letter." Gwen paused a moment to consider how
much she should tell, and then took the doctor into her confidence; not
exhaustively, but sufficiently. "You are supposed to know nothing about
it," said she. "But I don't think it much matters, so long as
Ruth--Widow Thrale--does not know. That is her mother's wish. I don't
suppose she really minds, about you."
"All I can say is, I wish to God this infernal scoundrel's devil would
fly away with him. Good-morning. I shall be round again about six
o'clock."
CHAPTER XXVII
HOW SPARROWS GORMANDISE. DAVE'S CISTERN. DOLLY AND JONES'S BULL.
THE LETTER HAD DONE IT. HOW TOM KETTERING DROVE WIDOW THRALE TO
DENBY'S FARM, AND MAISIE WOKE UP. HOW DAVE ATE TOO MANY MULBERRIES.
OLD JASPER. OLD GOSSET AND CULLODEN. HIS TOES. HOW MAISIE ASKED TO
SEE THE OLD MODEL AGAIN, AND HAD IT OUT BESIDE THE BED. DID IT GO
ROUND, OR WAS DAVE MISTAKEN? THE GLASS WATER, AND HOW MAISIE HAD
BROKEN A PIECE OFF, SEVENTY YEARS AGO. HOW A RATCHET-SPRING STRUCK
WORK. WAS IT TOBY OR TOFT? BARNABY. BRAINTREE. ST. PAUL'S.
BARNABY'S CO-RESPONDENCE. OLD CHIPSTONE. HOW PHOEBE NEARLY LOST
HER EYE. OLD MARTHA PRICHARD. A REVERIE OF GWEN'S, ENDING IN
LAZARUS. MAISIE'S PURSE
Has it ever been your lot--you who read this--to be told that Life is
ebbing, slowly, slowly, every clock-tick telling on the hours that are
left before the end--the end of all that has made your fellow in the
flesh more than an image and a name? In so many hours, so many minutes,
that image as it was will be vanishing, that name will be a memory. All
that made either of them ours to love or hate, to be thought of as
friend or foe, will have ceased for all time--for all the time we
anticipate; more, or less as may be, than Oblivion's period, named in
her pact with Destiny. In so many hours, so many minutes, that unseen
mystery, the thing we call our friend's, our foe's, own _self_ will make
no sign to show that this is he. And we shall determine that he is no
more, or agree that he has departed, much as we have been taught to
think, but little as we have learned to know.
If you yourself have outlived other lives, and yet borne the
foreknowledge of Death unmoved, you will not understand why Gwen's heart
within her, when she heard Dr. Nash's words and took their meaning,
should be likened to a great stifled sob, nor why she had to summon all
her powers afield to bear arms against her tears. They came at her call,
and fought so well that the enemy had fled before she had to show dry
eyes, and speak with normal voice, to Ruth Thrale, who came in to say
that her mother was asking for her ladyship. Come what might, she must
keep her gloomy knowledge from Ruth.
"What a fuss about old me!" says the voice from the pillow, speaking
low, but with happy contentment. "Would not anyone think I was dying?"
Now, if only Dr. Nash would have kept those prophecies to himself, Gwen
would have thought her better. She could have discounted the weakness,
or laid it down to imperfect nourishment. She could not trust herself to
much speech, saying only:--"We shall have you walking about soon, and
what will the doctor say then?"
She looked across at the old sister, grave and silent, whom she had
supposed unoppressed, so far, by medical verdicts. But the invitation of
a smile she achieved, mechanically, to help towards incredulity of
Death, only met a half-response. "Indeed, my lady," said Granny
Marrable, "we shall have some time to wait for that, if she will still
eat nothing. A sparrow could not live upon the little food she takes."
What was old Maisie saying? She could live on less than a sparrow's
food--that was the upshot. The sparrow was a greedy little bird, and she
had seen him gormandise in Sapps Court. "My darling Dave and Dolly," she
said, "would feed them, on the leads at the back, out of my bedroom
window, where the cistern is." Gwen perceived the source of a
misapprehension of Dave's.
"He's to come here," said she. "Him and Dolly. And then they can feed
the cocks and hens."
"When I'm up," said old Maisie. She had no misgivings.
"When you're up."
"And Dave may go and see Farmer Jones's Bull?"
"And Dave may go and see Farmer Jones's Bull."
"But not Dolly, because she would be frightened."
"Not Dolly, then. Dolly is small, to see Bulls." Old Maisie closed her
eyes upon this, and enjoyed the thought of Dave's rapture at that
appalling Bull.
Granny Marrable indicated by two glances, one at Gwen, the other at the
white face on the pillow, that her sister might sleep, given silence.
Gwen watched for the slackening of the hand that held hers, to get
gently free. Old Phoebe did the same, and drew the bed-curtain
noiselessly, to hide the window-light. Both stole away, leaving what
might have been an alabaster image, scarcely breathing, on the bed.
"It is the letter that has done it. Oh, _how_ unfortunate!" So Gwen
spoke, to the Granny, in the kitchen: for Ruth, though attending to the
Sunday dinner, was for the moment absent. So the letter could be
referred to.
"I fear what your ladyship says is true."
"But at least we know what it is that has done it. That is _something_."
Granny Marrable seemed slow to understand. "I mean, if it had not been
for the letter, she certainly need not have been any worse than she was
last Sunday. She was getting on so well, Ruth said, on Friday, after the
champagne. Oh dear!"
"It will be as God wills, my lady. If my dear sister is again to be
taken from me...."
"Oh, Granny, do not let us talk like that!" But Gwen could put little
heart into her protest. The doctor had taken all the wind out of her
sails.
Old Phoebe let the interruption pass. "If Maisie dies ..." said she, and
stopped.
"If Maisie dies...?" said Gwen, and waited.
The answer came, but not at once. "It is the second time."
"I don't think I quite understand, Granny," said Gwen gently. Which was
meant, that this made it easier to bear, or harder?
"I am slow to speak what I think, my lady. I would like to find words to
say it.... I lost Maisie forty-five--yes!--forty-six years ago, and the
grief of her loss is with me still. Had she died here, near at hand, so
I might have known where they laid her, I would have kept fresh flowers
on her grave till now. But she was dead, far away across the sea. I am
too old now for what has come of it. But I can see what-like it all is.
Maisie is with me again, from the tomb--for a little while, and then to
go. She will go first, and I shall soon follow; it cannot be long.
No--it cannot be long! The light will come. And God be praised for His
goodness! We shall lie in one grave, Maisie and I. We shall not be
parted in Death." These last words Gwen accepted as conventional. She
listened, somewhat as in a dream, to Granny Marrable's voice, going
quietly on, with no very audible undertone of pain in it:--"It is not of
myself I am thinking, but my child. She has found her mother, and loved
her, before she knew it was herself, risen from the grave.... Oh
no--no--no, my lady, I know it all well. My head is right. Maisie has
been at hand these long years past, all unknown to me--oh, how cruelly
unknown!" Here her words broke a little, with audible pain. "Her coming
to us has been a resurrection from the tomb. It is little to me now, I
am so near the end. But my heart goes out to my child, who will lose
her mother.... Hush, she is coming back!"
The thought in Gwen's heart was:--"Pity me too, Granny, for I too--I,
with all the wealth of the world at my feet!--shall feel a heartstring
snap when this frail old waif and stray, so strangely found by me in a
London slum, so strangely brought back by me into your life again, has
passed away into the unknown." For she had scarcely been alive till now
to the whole of her mysterious affection for dear old Mrs. Picture.
Ruth Thrale came back, and the day went on. Old Maisie remained asleep,
sleeping as the effigy sleeps upon a tomb, but always with regular
breath, barely sensible, and the same slow pulse. Now and again it might
have seemed that breath had ceased. But it was not so. If the powers of
life were on the wane, it was very slowly.
* * * * *
Tom Kettering returned at the appointed time, to a minute, and took no
notice of his own arrival beyond socketing his whip in its stall, in
token of its abdication. He had been told to come and wait, and he
proceeded to wait, _sine die_. Gwen interrupted him in this employment,
by coming out to tell him that she was stopping on, and that he was to
go back to the Towers and say so. He looked so depressed at this that
she bethought her of a compensation. She knew that Ruth Thrale had cause
for anxiety about her own daughter; and, so far as could be seen, her
immediate presence was not necessary, for no change appeared imminent.
So she persuaded, or half-commanded, Ruth to be driven over to Denby's
Farm by Tom Kettering, to remain there two or three hours, and be
brought back by him or otherwise, as might be convenient. Her son-in-law
might drive her back, and Tom might return to the Towers. It would make
her mind easier to see Maisie junior, and get a forecast of
probabilities at the farm. Ruth was not hard to prevail upon to do this,
and was driven away by Tom over slushy roads, through the irresolute
Winter's unseasonable Christmas Eve, after delegating some of her
functions to Elizabeth-next-door.
Old Maisie still remained asleep, and almost motionless. With some help
from Elizabeth-next-door the perfunctory midday meal had been served,
very little more than looked at, and cleared away; then the motionless
figure on the bed stirred visibly, breathed almost audibly. At this time
of the day vitality is at its best, with most of us. Gwen, standing by
the bedside, saw the lips move, and, bending forward, heard speech.
When she said, a moment after:--"I think I must have been asleep. I'm
awake now,"--she uttered the words much as Gwen had always heard her
speak. Yet another moment, and she said:--"I was dreaming, Phoebe dear,
dreaming of our mill. And I was asking for you in my dream. Because Dave
was up in our mulberry-tree, and wouldn't come down." She showed how
perfectly clear her head was, by saying to Gwen:--"My dear, if I could
have kept asleep, I would have seen Phoebe young again. You would never
think how young she was then."
Gwen felt that she was nowise bound to dwell on the futility of dreams,
and said, as she caressed the old hand's weak hold on her own:--"Was
Dave eating too many mulberries in that tree?"
Old Maisie smiled happily at the thought of Dave. "His hands were quite
purple with the juice," she said. "But he wouldn't come down, and went
on eating the mulberries. It was the tree by itself behind the house,
near the big hole where the sunflowers grew."
Granny Marrable's memory spanned the chasm--seventy years or so! "The
biggest mulberry," she said, "was Old Jasper, in the front garden, near
the wall.... It was always called Old Jasper." This replied to a look of
Gwen's. Why _should_ a mulberry-tree be called Old Jasper? Well--why
should anything be called anything?
"I can smell the honeysuckle," said old Mrs. Picture. And her face
looked quite serene and happy. "But the pigeons used to get all the
mulberries on that tree, because they were close by."
"It stood by itself," said Granny Marrable. "And all the fruit-trees
were in the orchard. So old Gosset with the wooden leg was always on
that side with his clapper, never out in front."
"Old Gosset--who lost his leg at the battle of Culloden! I remember him
so well. He said he could feel his toes all the same as if they was ten.
He said it broke his heart to see the many cherries the birds got, for
all the noise he made. He said they got bold, when they found he had a
wooden leg...." She paused, hesitating, and then asked for Ruth.
Gwen told her how Ruth had gone to her own daughter, who was married,
and how a second grandchild was overdue. In telling this, she feared she
might not be understood. So she was pleased to hear old Mrs. Picture say
quite clearly:--"Oh, but I know. A long while ago--my child--my
Ruth--when she was Widow Thrale ... told me all that...."
"Yes, yes!" Gwen struck in. "_I_ know. When you were here at the
cottage, before ..." she hesitated.
"Yes, before," said old Mrs. Picture. "When she showed me our old
model, and did not know. That was the time she thought me mad. Phoebe--I
want you ... I want you...." Her voice was getting weaker; as it would
do, after much talking.
"What?--I wonder!" said Granny Marrable, and waited.
Gwen guessed. "You want to see the old model again? Is that it?" Yes,
she did. That was a good guess.
"Maisie dearest, I will fetch you the model to the bedside, and light
candles, so you shall see it. Only you will eat something first--to
please me--to please my lady--will you not? Then you may be able to sit
up, you know, and look at it." Granny Marrable jumped at the opportunity
to get some food--ever so little--down her sister's throat. _She_ had
not given up hope of her reviving, if only for a while. Bear in mind
that she was still in the dark about the doctor's real opinion.
The attempt at refection had a poor show of success, its only triumph
worth mentioning being the exhibition of a driblet of champagne in milk.
Almost before the patient had swallowed it, she had fallen back on her
pillow in a drowsy half-sleep, with what seemed an increased colour, to
eyes that were on the watch for it. She remained so until after the
doctor's visit at six o'clock.
The doctor admitted that she _had_ picked up a very little, and when she
awoke would probably have another spell of brightness. But.... Speaking
with Gwen alone on his way out, he ended on this monosyllable.
"What does that 'but' mean, doctor?"
"Means that you mustn't expect too much. I suppose you know that the
mildest stimulant means reaction."
"I don't know that I ever thought about it, but I'll take your word for
it."
"Well--you may. And you may take my word for this. When the vital powers
are near their end--without disease, you know, without disease...."
"I know. She has nothing the matter with her."
"You can intensify vitality for a moment. But the reaction will come,
and must hasten the end. You might halve the outstanding time of Life by
doubling the vitality. If you employ any artificial stimulant, you only
use up the heart-beats that are left. The upshot of it is--don't go
beyond a tablespoonful twice a day with that liquor."
"I don't suppose she has had so much."
"Well--don't go beyond it. There is always the possibility--the bare
possibility, even at eighty--of a definite revival. But...."
"_But_, again, doctor!"
"But again! Let it stop at that. I shall do no better by saying more. If
I foresaw ... anything--within the next twelve hours, I would stay on to
see your ladyship through. But there is nothing to go by. Quite
impossible to predict!"
"Why do you say 'to see me through'? Why not her sister and daughter?"
"Because they _are_ her sister and daughter. It's all in their day's
work. Good-night, Lady Gwendolen." Gwen watched the doctor's gig down
the road into the darkness, and saw that a man riding stopped him, as
though to give a message. After which she thought he whipped up his
pony, which also felt the influence of the rider's cob alongside, and
threw off its usual apathy.
* * * * *
Old Maisie must have waked up just as the doctor departed, for there
were voices in the bedroom, and Granny Marrable was coming out. The old
lady had an end in view. She was bent on getting down the mill-model
from over the fireplace. "My dear sister has a great fancy to see it
once more," she said. "And I would be loth to say nay to her." Gwen
said:--"Anything to keep her mind off that brute of a son!" And then
between them they got the model down, and unwrapped the cloth from it.
Elizabeth-next-door, coming in at this moment, left Gwen free to go back
to old Maisie in the bedroom, who seemed roused to expectation. The
doctor was clearly wrong, and all was going to be well. Mrs. Picture was
not quite herself again, perhaps; but was mending.
"My dear, I am giving a world of trouble," she said. "But Phoebe is so
kind, to take every little word I say."
"She likes doing it, Mrs. Picture dear. We've got down the mill to show
you, and she will get it in here by the bed, so that you shall see
without getting up. Elizabeth from next door is there to help her." So
the mill-model, that had so much to answer for, was got out from behind
its glass, and placed on the little table beside the bed.
Old Maisie's voice had rallied so much that surely her power of movement
should have done so too. But no!--she could not raise herself in bed. It
was an easy task to place her to the best advantage, but the sense of
her helplessness was painful to Gwen, who raised her like a child with
scarcely an effort, while Granny Marrable multiplied pillows to support
her. The slightest attempt on her part towards movement would have been
reassuring, but none came.
"I wonder now," she said vaguely. "Was it only Dave?"
"What about Dave, dear? What did Dave say?"
"Was it Dave who said it went round? I had the thought it went round.
Which was it?"
"I showed it to Dave," said Granny Marrable, "and then it went, the same
as new. I could try it again, only then I must take out the glass water,
and put in real. And wind it up."
Old Mrs. Picture almost laughed, and the pleasure in her voice was good
to hear. "Why, now I have it all back!" she said. "And there is father!
Oh, Phoebe, do you remember how angry father was with me for breaking a
piece off the glass water?"
Granny Marrable was looking for something, in the penetralia of the
model. "Oh, I know," said she. "It's in behind the glass water.... I was
looking for the piece.... I'll take the glass water out." She did so,
and its missing fraction was found, stowed away behind the main
cataract, a portion of which appeared to have stopped dead in mid-air.
"Oh, Phoebe darling," said old Maisie, "we can have it mended."
"Of course we can," said Gwen. "Do let us make it go round. I want to
make it go round, too." Her heart was rejoicing at what seemed so like
revival.
Granny Marrable poured water into what stood for "the sleepy pool above
the dam," and found the key to wind up the clockwork. "I remember," said
old Maisie, "the water first, and then the key!" Her face was as happy
as Dave's had been, watching it.
But alas for the uncertainty of all things human!--machinery
particularly. The key ran back as fast as it was wound up, and the water
slept on above the dam. What a disappointment! "Oh dear," said Gwen,
"it's gone wrong. Couldn't we find a man in the village who could set it
right, though it _is_ Sunday?" No--certainly not at eight o'clock in the
evening.
"I fear, my lady," said Granny Marrable, "that it was injured when the
little boy Toby aimed a chestnut at it. And had I known of the damage
done, I should have allowed him no sugar in his tea. But it may have
been Toft, when he repaired the glass, for indeed he is little better
than a heathen." She examined it and tried the key again. It was
hopeless.
"Never mind, Phoebe dearest! I would have loved to see the millwheel
turn again, as it did in the old days. Now we must wait for it to be put
to rights. I shall see it one day." If she felt that she was sinking,
she did not show it. She went on speaking at intervals. "Let me lie here
and look at it.... Yes, put the candle near.... That was the deep hole,
below the wheel, where the fish leapt.... Father would not allow us
near it, for the danger.... There were steps up, and so many nettles....
Then above we got to the big pool where the alders were ... where the
herons came...." A pause; then:--"Phoebe dearest!..."
"What, darling?"
"I was not mad.... You were not here, or you would have known me....
Would you not?"
"I would have known you, Maisie dearest--I would have known you, in
time. Not at the first. But when I came to think of it, would I have
dared to say the word?"
Gwen remembered this answer of old Phoebe's later, and saw its
reasonableness. She only saw the practical side at the moment. "Why,
Granny," she said--"if it hadn't been the mill, it would have been
something else."
"But I was not mad," Maisie continued. "Only I must have frightened my
Ruth.... I went up _there_ once, Phoebe. Barnaby took me up one day...."
"Up where, Mrs. Picture dear?" Gwen left the old right hand free to show
her meaning, but it fell back after a languid effort. The strength was
near zero, though no one would have guessed it from the voice.
"Up _there_--in the roof--where the trap comes out.... Phoebe would not
come, because of the dust.... It was so hot too.... Barnaby pulled up a
flour-sack, to show me, and would have let me out on the trap, only I
was frightened, it was so high! I could see all the way over to
Braintree.... And Barnaby said on a clear day you could see St.
Paul's.... I liked Barnaby--I disliked old Muggeridge.... Do you know,
Phoebe dear, I used to think Barnaby's wife was old Muggeridge's sister,
because her name had been Muggeridge?"
Old Phoebe threw light on the affair. Barnaby's wife was young Mrs.
Muggeridge, who had exchanged into another regiment--was not really
Barnaby's wife! that is to say, not his legal wife.
"But there now!" said old Phoebe, when she had ended this, "if that was
not the very first of it all with me, when Dr. Nash he set me
a-thinking, by telling of Muggeridge! For how would I ever have said a
word of that old sinner to our little Dave?"
Old Maisie's attention was still on the mill-model. "You would not come
up into the corn-loft, Phoebe," said she, "because of all the white
dust. It was on everything, up there. When I went up with Barnaby the
mill was not going, because the stones were out for old Chipstone to
dress their faces. His real name was not Chipstone, but Chepstow. He
could do two stones in one day, he worked so quick. So both were got
out when he came, and the mill was stopped. Oh, Phoebe, do you remember
when a chip flew in your eye, you were so bad?"
"Now, to think of that!" said Granny Marrable. "And me clean forgot it
all these years! Old Chipstone, with glasses to shelter his eyesight;
like blinkers on a horse. 'Tis all come back to me now, like last week.
And I might have been a one-eyed girl all my days, the doctor said, only
the chip just came a little out of true. To think that all these years I
have forgotten it, and never thanked God once!"
"'Tis the sight of the mill brings it all back," said old Maisie. "I
mind it so well, and the guy you looked, dear Phoebe, with a bandage to
keep out the light. It was wolfsbane did it good, beat up in water quite
fine."
"Be sure. Only 'twas none of Dr. Adlam's remedies, I lay.... Wasn't it
Martha's--our old Martha?... There, now!--I've let go her name.... 'Twas
on the tip of my tongue to say it...."
Old Maisie's voice was getting faint as she said:--"Old Martha Prichard
... the name I go by now, Phoebe darling.... I took it to ... to keep a
memory...."
She was speaking in such a dying voice that Gwen struck in to put an end
to her exerting it. "I see what you mean," she said. "You mean you took
the name to bring back old times. Now be quiet and rest, dear! You are
talking more than is good for you. Indeed you are!"
Thereon Granny Marrable, though she had never felt clear about the
reason of this change of name, and now thought she saw enlightenment
ahead, followed in compliance with what she conceived to be Lady
Gwendolen's wishes. "Now you rest quiet, Maisie dearest, as her ladyship
says. What would Dr. Nash think of such a talking?"
Ruth might not be back till very late, and as she had not reappeared it
might be taken for granted she had stayed to sup with her daughter. Gwen
suggested rather timidly--for it was going outside her beat--that the
grandchild might have chosen its birthday. The Granny said, with a
curious certainty, that there was no likelihood of that for a day or two
yet, and went to summon Elizabeth from next door, to help with their own
supper. She herself was rather old and slow, she said, in matters of
house-service.
* * * * *
Gwen was not sorry to be left for a while to her own reflections before
the smouldering red log on the kitchen fire.
The great bulldog from the lobby without, as though his courtesy could
not tolerate such a distinguished guest being left alone, paid her a
visit in her hostess's absence. He showed his consciousness of her
identity by licking her hand at once. He would have smelt a stranger
carefully all round before bestowing such an honour. Gwen addressed a
few words to him of appreciation, and expressed her confidence in his
integrity. He seemed pleased, and discovered a suitable attitude at her
feet, after consideration of several. He looked up from his forepaws, on
which his chin rested, with an expression that might have meant anything
respectful, from civility to adoration. The cat, with her usual
hypocrisy, came outside her fender to profess that she had been on
Gwen's side all along, whatever the issue. Her method of explaining this
was the sort that trips you up--that curls round your ankles and purrs.
The cricket was too preoccupied to enter into the affairs of fussy,
uncontinuous mortals, and the kettle was cool and detached, but ready to
act when called on. The steady purpose of the clock, from which nothing
but its own key could turn it, was to strike nine next, and the cloth
was laid for supper. Supper was ready for incarnation, somewhere, and
smelt of something that would have appealed to Dave, but had no charm
for Gwen.
For she was sick at heart, and the moment that a pause left her free to
admit it, heavy-eyed from an outcrop of head-oppression on the lids. It
might have come away in tears, but her tissues grudged an outlet. She
saw no balm in Gilead, but she could sit on a little in the silence, for
rest. She could hear the voices of the two old sisters through the
doors, and knew that Mrs. Picture was again awake, and talking. That was
well!--leave them to each other, for all the time that might still be
theirs, this side the grave.
What a whirl of strange unprecedented excitements had been hers since
... since when? Thought stopped to ask the question. Could she name the
beginning of it all? Yes, plainly enough. It all began, for her, at the
end of that long rainy day in July, when the sunset flamed upon the
Towers, and she saw a trespasser in the Park, with a dog. She could feel
again the unscrupulous paws of Achilles on her bosom, could hear his
master's indignant voice calling him off, and then could see those
beautiful dark eyes fixed on what their owner could not dream was his
for ever, but which those eyes might never see again. She could watch
the retiring figure, striding away through the bracken, and wonder that
she should have stood there without a thought of the future. Why could
she not have seized him and held him in her arms, and baffled all the
cruelty of Fate? For was he not, even then, hers--hers--hers beyond a
doubt? Could she not see now that her heart had said "I love you" even
as he looked up from that peccant dog-collar, the source of all the
mischief?
That was what began it. It was that which led her to stay with her
cousin in Cavendish Square, and to a certain impatience with
conventional "social duties," making her welcome as a change in
excitements an excursion or two into unexplored regions, of which Sapps
Court was to be the introductory sample. It was that which had brought
into her life this sweet old woman with the glorious hair. No wonder she
loved her! She never thought of her engrossing affection as strange or
to be wondered at. That it should have been bestowed on the twin sister
of an old villager in her father's little kingdom in Rocestershire was
where the miracle came in.
And such a strange story as the one she had disinterred and brought to a
climax! And then, when all might have gone so well--when a very few
years of peace might have done so much to heal the lifelong wounds of
the two souls so cruelly wrenched apart half a century ago, that the
frail earthly tenement of the one should be too dilapidated to give its
tenant shelter! So small an extension of the lease of life would have
made such a difference.
But if it was hard for her to bear, what would it be to the survivor,
the old sister who had borne so bravely and well what seemed to Gwen
almost harder to endure than a loss; a resurrection from the tomb, or
its equivalent? She had often shuddered to think what the family of
Lazarus must have felt; and found no ease from the reflection that they
were in the Bible and it was quite a different thing. _They_ did not
know they were in the Bible.
She helped the parallel a little farther, while the cricket chirped
unmoved. Suppose that Lazarus had died again in earnest from the
shock--and suppose, too, please, that he was deeply beloved, which may
not have been the case! How would the wife, mother, sisters, who had
said one farewell to him, have borne to see him die a second time? Of
course, Gwen was alive to the fact that it would be bad religious form
to suggest that this contingency was not covered by some special
arrangement. But put it as an hypothesis, like the lady she had ascribed
Adrian's ring to!
She could hear Granny Marrable's voice and Elizabeth's afar, in
conference. That was satisfactory. It made her certain that the
slightest sound from old Maisie, so much nearer, would reach her. Her
door stood wide, and the other door was just ajar.
But she did not hear the slightest sound. The dog did, for he flashed
into sudden vitality and attention, and was out of the room in an
instant. He was unable to say to Granny Marrable:--"I heard your invalid
move in the bedroom, and I think you had better go and see if she wants
you," but he must have gone very near it. For Gwen heard the old lady's
step come quicker than her wont along the passage, and she reached the
kitchen-door just in time to see her pass into the room opposite. "Is
she all right?" she said.
"I hope she is still asleep, my lady," said old Phoebe.
But she was not asleep, and said so. Her voice was clear, and the hand
Gwen took--so she thought--closed on hers with a greater strength than
before. If only she had stirred in bed, it would have seemed a return of
living power. But this slight vitality in the hands alone seemed to
count for so little. She wanted something, evidently, and both her
nurses tried to get a clue to it. It was not food; though, to please
them, she promised to take some. Gwen's thought that possibly she had
something for her ear alone--which she had hesitated to communicate to
old Phoebe--was confirmed when the latter left the room to get the
beef-tea, and so forth, which was always within reach if needed. For old
Maisie said plainly:--"_Now_ I can tell you--my dear!"
"What about, dear Mrs. Picture?" said Gwen, caressing the hand she held,
and smoothing back the silver locks from the grave grey eyes so
earnestly fixed on hers. "Tell me what."
"My son," said old Maisie. "I have a son, have I not?"--this in a
frightened way, as though again in doubt of her own sanity--"and he is
bad, is he not, and has written me a letter?"
"That's all right. I've got the letter, to show to my father."
"Oh yes--do show it--to the old gentleman I saw. He is your father...."
"You would like to say something about your son, dear Mrs.
Picture--something we can do for you. Now try and tell me just what you
would like."
"I want you, my dear, to find me my purse out of the other watch-pocket.
I asked my Ruth to put it there.... She is Widow Thrale ... is she not?"
Every effort at thought of her surroundings was a strain to her mind,
plainly enough.
"There it is!" said Gwen. "Soon found!... Now, am I to see how much
money you've got in it?"
"Yes, please!" It was an old knitted silk purse with a slip-ring. In the
early fifties the leather purses with snaps, that leak at the seam and
let half-sovereigns through before you find it out, were rare in the
pockets of old people.
"Six new pounds, and one, two, three, four shillings in silver, and two
sixpences, and one fourpence, and a halfpenny! Shall I keep it for you,
to be safe?"
"No, dear! I want--I want ..."
"I hope," thought Gwen to herself, "she's not going to have it sent to
her execrable son. Yes, dear, what is it you want done with it?"
"I want three of the pounds to go to Susan Burr, for her to pay eight
weeks of the rent. It's seven-and-sixpence a week."
"And the rest--shall I keep it?"
"Tell me--my son Ralph's letter ... Did it not say that he wanted
money?"
"Yes, it did. But I'm going to see about that--I and my father."
Old Maisie's voice became beseeching, gaining strength from earnestness.
"Oh my dear--do let me! And, after all, is it not his money? For I had
nothing of my own when I came back. I might have gone to the workhouse,
but for him." What followed, disjointedly, was an attempt to tell the
portion of her story that related to the miscarriage of her husband's
will.
"Very well, dear! It shall all be done as you wish it. I'll see to that.
The money shall be sent to Aunt M'riar, at Sapps Court, to give to him."
"Why is it Aunt M'riar, at Sapps Court? I know Aunt M'riar." Do what she
would, she could not grapple with these relativities. And, indeed, this
one was a mystery she could not have solved in any case.
CHAPTER XXVIII
HOW A BOOMER GOT AWAY. GRANNY MARRABLE'S THEISM. COLD FEET. HOW
GRANNY MARRABLE LOST HER HEAD. ADRIAN ON RESIGNATION. THE SHOP
OPPOSITE. HOW MAISIE HEARD HER SON'S LETTER, AND WISHED HIM TO KNOW
HE WAS POSSESSED. LADY ANCESTER'S REMONSTRANCE. HOW EMILY AND FANNY
WOULDED THAT THEIR LOVE. HOW MAISIE WANTED PETER, AND DOLLY MIGHT
NOT BE FRIGHTENED OF LAMBS. HOW SUSAN BURR WAS TO HAVE THE
FURNITURE. LAST MESSAGE TO DAVE AND DOLLY. MAISIE'S DEATH. HOW
GRANNY MARRABLE WENT AWAY TO SEE TO A NEWCOMER. HOW GWEN SLEPT, AND
WAKED, AND HOW THERE WAS SOMETHING IN THE EMPTY ROOM WHERE MRS.
PICTURE HAD BEEN, ON THE BED. HOW THE CONVICT CALLED TO INTRODUCE
HIMSELF. A DOG WHO HAD KILLED A MAN, WORTH FORTY POUNDS. HOW THE
CONVICT SAW WHAT WAS ON THE BED. THE CUT FINGER. INSPECTOR
THOMPSON. HOW RUTH HAD PASSED A TRAMP, ON THE ROAD
"Has she not talked at all about Australia, Granny?... No, thanks! I'm
sure it's a beautiful ham--but I shall do very nicely with this. One
very big lump of sugar, please, and plenty of milk, or I shall lie
awake." Thus Gwen, and the influence of Strides Cottage is visible in
her speech.
Old Maisie was again asleep, and they had left her and gone into the
front-room; as much to speak together without disturbing her as to get
their own suppers. They were doing this last, however, in a grudging
sort of fashion; for the pleasures of the table are no match for a
heartache. Gwen found it a solace to make her own toast with a long
toasting-fork, an experience which her career as an Earl's daughter had
denied to her.
"Maisie has talked many times of Australia, my lady. She talks on, so I
could not repeat much."
"You mean she jumps from one thing to another?"
"Yes, so I cannot always follow her. But she has told me a many things
of her life there. How at first she would never see a soul at the farm
from week's end to week's end, and her husband got to own all the land
about."
"Do you think she is really alive to her husband's villainy? _I_
sometimes think she forgets all about it."
"Please God she does so! 'Tis better for her she should. I would have
felt happier if she could have known me, and Ruth, and never had the
tale of his wickedness."
"But that was impossible, Granny. She _must_ have known, in the end."
"That is so, I know, my lady. But when I hear her forget it all, it
makes my heart glad. When she gets to telling of the old time, on the
farm, her mind is off it, and I thank God that it should be so, for her
sake! Friday last she was talking so happy, you could not have known her
for the same."
"About the farm and the convicts? Do recollect some of the things she
told you!"
"There was a creature they hunt with dogs, that leaps on its hind-legs
to any height."
"Oh yes--the Kangaroo."
"She called it something else--something like 'Boomer.'" This did not
matter. Granny Marrable went on to repeat how a "boomer," chased by the
dogs, had made straight for her sister's husband, whose gun, missing
fire, had killed his best dog; while the quarry, unterrified by the
report, sprang at a bound over his head and got away scathless. This,
and other incidents of the convict's after-life in Van Diemen's Land,
told without leading to the crime of the forged letter, had shown how
completely separate in Maisie's mind were the memories of her not
unhappy life with her husband in the past, and that of the recent
revelation of his iniquity. She somehow dissociated the two images of
him, and her mind could dwell easily on _his_ identity as it had
appeared to her during her thirty years of widowhood, without losing the
new-found consciousness of Phoebe's.
But Granny Marrable had taken special note of the fact that her sister
never referred to the son who had come with her from Australia, and had
herself been scrupulously careful not to do so. She did not really know
whether Maisie was alive to the possibility of his reappearance at any
moment; and, indeed, could not have said positively whether allusion had
or had not been made to her own alarming experience of him. Her own
shock and confusion had been too great for accurate recollection.
Silence about him was to her thought the wisest course, and she had
remained silent.
She seemed to Gwen a wonderful old woman, this Granny Marrable. Her
untiring patience and strength, at her great age; her simple theism,
constantly in evidence; her resolute calmness in facing a second time
the harrowing grief of a twin sister's death--for that she saw it at
hand, Gwen was convinced--were surely the material of which heroism is
made, when heroism is in the making. To Gwen's thought, the miraculous
news that had been broken to her so suddenly might easily have
prostrated many a younger person, even without that mysterious unknown
factor, the twinship, the force of which could only be estimated by the
two concerned. As the old lady sat there at the supper-table, breaking
her resumptions of her sister's Australian tales by gaps of listening to
catch any sound from the bedroom, she seemed to Gwen a duplicate of the
old Mrs. Prichard of Sapps Court, spared by time or with some reserve of
constitutional energy, grey rather than white, resolute rather than
resigned. The different inflexion of voice helped Gwen against that
perplexing sense of her likeness to her twin, which would assert itself
whenever she became silent.
It was to fend this off, in such a pause, that she said:--"You are both
just eighty this year, Granny, are you not?"
"Eighty-one, my lady. When our clock strikes midnight Maisie will have
been eighty-one years in the world, and myself with but a few minutes to
make up the tale. My mother told me so when I was still too young to
understand, but I bore her words in mind. She was dead a year when my
brother dressed those little dolly figures in the mill. I mind that he
put it off, so we should not be in black for our mother. He died
himself, none so long after that."
The foolish lines of keeping up hope mechanically to the last did not
recommend themselves to Gwen. But she could trust herself to say, seeing
the strength on the old face before her:--"Oh, Granny, do not let us
despair too soon!" The phrase acknowledged Death, and did not choke her
like the sham.
"My lady, have you felt her feet?"
"No--are they so cold?"
Instead of replying. Granny Marrable rose and, passed into the bedroom.
Gwen, whose own speech had stopped her from hearing old Maisie's
half-utterance on waking, followed, and stood beside the bed. Granny
Marrable said:--"She is not awake yet, but I heard her." As she said
this, Gwen slipped her warm hand between the sheets, and touched the
motionless extremities; cold marble now, rather than flesh. A stone
bottle of hot water, just in contact with the feet, had heated a spot on
each, making its cold surrounding colder to the touch, and laying stress
upon its iciness. "Oh, Granny," said Gwen, trying in vain to make the
living warmth of her own hand of service, "can nothing be done?
Surely--her feet in hot water?"
But old Phoebe only shook her head. _She_ knew. It would only be to no
purpose! Better let her rest! Moreover, Gwen could not fail to notice
that the feet remained passive to her touch, never shrinking. That is
not the way of feet. Was ever foot that did not shrink from mysterious
unexpected fingers, coming from the beyond in the purlieus of a private
couch?
And yet old Maisie was alive there still, and her speech was clear,
however low. If anything, its sound savoured of revival. But she was not
clear about her whereabouts and whom she was speaking to. She seemed to
think it was Susan Burr, who "would find her thimble if she looked
underneath." Thus much and no more had come articulate from the land of
dreams. The moment after she was quite collected. Was that Phoebe, and
her Lady? This was not the conventional phrase "My lady." She was
evidently in possession of a Lady she had been guided to find by some
Guardian Angel, if, indeed, the Lady were not a Guardian Angel herself.
She went on to ask:--Where was her Ruth? When would she come?
She was coming, Ruth was, very soon. Both vouched for it. Gwen
added:--"She's gone to see her daughter, who has a little boy."
Then Granny Marrable lost her head for the first time. "She's gone to my
granddaughter," said she. "And I'm looking to have another
great-grandchild there soon, before a many days are over."
For a moment Gwen was afraid the confusion of Ruth's daughtership might
make old Maisie's head whirl, and set her fretting. She began to
explain, but explanation was not necessary. The old hand she held was
withdrawn from hers, that it might make common cause with its fellow
that old Phoebe already held. "My darling," said she, "did I not give
her to you when I ran away to the great ship? Fifty years ago,
Phoebe--fifty years ago!" There was no trace of any tear in the eye that
Gwen could still see, though it looked no longer into her own. The voice
was not failing, and the words still came, clear as ever. "I kissed her
in her crib, and I would have kissed her yet once more, but I dared not.
So I said to myself:--'She will wake and never see me! But Phoebe will
be there, to kiss her when she wakes. She will kiss her for me, just on
the place we used to say was good to kiss.' Tell me, Phoebe, did my
child cry much?..."
Granny Marrable's words:--"I cannot--I cannot--my darling!" caught in
her voice, as she bent over the face that, but for its frail
attenuation, was her own face over again, touching it tenderly with her
own old lips--the same, thought Gwen, that had inherited that place it
was so good to kiss, on that baby face of half a century ago, now a
grandmother's. She rose noiselessly from where she half sat, half
leaned, beside the figure on the bed, and stole a little way apart; not
so far as to be unable to hear what that musical voice kept on saying,
though she could not catch the replies.
"I said to myself:--'Phoebe will be her mother when I am miles away
across the sea, and she will be as good a mother as I....' Was it not
best, dearest, I should go alone, rather than carry my child away and
leave all the loneliness for you?... Yes--but my heart ached for my
little one on the great ship.... I would watch the stars--the very stars
you saw too, Phoebe--and they were like friends for many a long week,
till they sank down in the sea behind us, and it was thirty years before
I saw them again.... Yes--then I knew it would be England soon and I
would know if Phoebe had any other grave than the cold sea.... Yes, my
darling, that was my first thought--to go to the little church by
Darenth Mill, and look in the south corner.... I did, and there was
mother's grave, and father's name cut on the stone, but none other. So I
thought:--They are all gone--all gone!... Oh, if I had known that you
were here!..."
The sound of lamentation barely grew in her voice, but it was there. To
turn her mind from the recollection that provoked it, Granny Marrable
thought it well to say that Nicholas Cropredy, her first husband, whom
the forged letter had drowned at sea, had not been buried at Darenth
Mill, but at Ingatestone, with his kindred and ancestors. "Did they find
his body?" said old Maisie. She knew that he was dead long years back,
but had not received any new impression of the cause of his death.
She did not even now seem to find its proper place in her mind for this
correction of its mistaken record. It could not deal with all the facts,
but held fast to the identities of her sister and child. Probably the
established memory of the false news of her brother-in-law's death
continued in possession. She only looked puzzled; then drifted on the
current of her thought. "If I had known that you were here!... Oh,
Phoebe!--such a many times my boy made me think of his sister he would
never see now.... That was before the coming of the news.... Oh yes, I
always had a thought till then the time might come before they would be
grown up, so they should be children together.... That was my elder boy
Isaac, after father--in those days little Ralph was in his cradle....
But the time never came--only the time to think it might have been....
And all those years I thought you dead, you were here!... Oh,
Phoebe--you were here!... Oh, why--why--why could I not be told that you
were here?"
"It was the Lord's will, darling. His ways are not for us to
understand." Gwen could not for the life of her help recalling some
irreverence of Adrian's about Resignation and Fatalism. But though she
almost smiled over his reprehensible impiety--"No connection with the
shop opposite"--she could and did pay a mental tribute to the Granny's
quiet earnestness. She would have done the same by "Kismet" to an old
Sheikh in the shadow of the Pyramids.
"Why--oh, why?--when my dear husband was gone could I not have found you
then, even if I had died of joy in the finding? Had I not known enough
pain? Oh, Phoebe--when I came back--when I came back ... it would have
been so much then!... I had some great new trouble after that.... Oh,
tell me--what was it?"
What could old Phoebe do but answer, seeing that she knew? "It was the
wickedness of your son, Maisie darling. We have talked of him, have we
not?" She feared to say much, as she shrank from reference to her own
knowledge of the convict. She tried to get away from him. "And it was
then you took old Martha's name, not to be known by your own, and went
to Sapps Court?" This succeeded.
"Not Sapps Court, not yet for a long time. But I did go, and I was happy
there.... I had my little Dave and Dolly, and when the window stood open
in the summer, I heard the piano outside, across the way ... and Aunt
M'riar came, and sometimes Mr. Wardle--he was so big he filled the
room.... But tell me--was it a horrible dream, or was it true, that a
letter came to me?..." Her powers of speech flagged.
Gwen took upon herself to answer, to spare Granny Marrable. "Yes, Mrs.
Picture dear, it came from your son, and I've got it here. You're not to
fret about him. I'm to show his letter to my father, don't you
know?--you've seen him--and you know what he does will be all right."
"What he does will be all right." Old Maisie repeated it mechanically,
and lay quiet, holding a hand on either side, as before; then after a
short time rallied, and turned to Gwen, saying--"My Lady--my dear--I
want you to promise me one thing.... I want you to promise me...."
"To promise you? Is it something I can do?"
The answer came with an extraordinary clearness. "That you will not let
them get him. Read his letter, that I may hear.... Yes--like that!" She
fixed her eyes eagerly on it, as Gwen drew it from her pocket. Granny
Marrable snuffed the candles, and moved them to give a better light.
Gwen read aloud as best she might, for the handwriting was none too
visible. When she came to the writer's picturesque suggestion of his
life of constant dodging and evasion of his pursuers, she softened
nothing of his brutal phraseology. Maisie only said:--"That is it. That
is what I want." Phoebe was restless under its utterance, and murmured
some protest. That such words should pass her ladyship's lips--such
lips! Gwen merely commented:--"Like a fox before the pack! That's what
he means. He's got to say it somehow, you know! Yes, tell me, what is it
about that?"
"I want you ... to save him from them. I want you to tell him ... to
tell him...."
"Something from you?--yes!"
"To tell him his mother forgave him. For I know now--I know it, my
dear--that his wicked work was none of his own doing, but the evil
spirit that had possession of him. Was it not?"
Why should Gwen stand between Mrs. Picture, dying, and something that
gave her happiness, just for the sake of a little pitiful veracity? She
was all the readier to endorse a draft on her credulity, from the
knowledge that Granny Marrable would, if applied to, be ready with a
covering security. She said quietly:--"I think it very far from
impossible."
"Then you will tell him for me, and save him--save him from the
officers?"
It seemed a large promise to make, but would its fulfilment ever be
called for? "I promise," said Gwen, "and I will tell him you forgave
him, if ever I see him.... There's Ruth back--I hear her. Now, dear, you
must lie quiet, and not talk any more. You know you don't want her to
know anything at all about her brother." Whereon Maisie lay silent with
closed eyes, her hand in Gwen's just acknowledging its chance pressures,
while Granny Marrable rose and went to the door; and then Gwen heard her
in an earnest undertone of conversation with Ruth, just alighted from a
vehicle whose horse, considered as a sound, she would have sworn to. It
was the grey mare.
Ruth's visit to her daughter was the first since the extraordinary
discovery of Mrs. Prichard's identity, and she had been very anxious
about her. Nevertheless, its object appeared equable, blooming, and
prosperous on her arrival; very curious to hear details of her
new-found grandmother, and indignant with Dr. Nash for telling her
husband that he was not, on peril of becoming a widower, to allow his
wife to travel over to Strides Cottage to see her. She mixed with this a
sort of resentment against the defection from her post of her real
grandmother--to wit, the one she had grown up under. For the young
woman's wish for her presence had been one of those strong
predispositions very common under her circumstances, and far less
unreasonable than many such. "Granny" had been all-wise and all-powerful
with her from her cradle!
But, in spite of young Maisie's confidence on the subject, her mother
could not resist the misgiving that her expected grandchild was girding
up its insignificant loins to make a dash for existence. Consider its
feelings if it had inherited its great-grandmother's scrupulous
punctuality! Widow Thrale was between two fires--duty to a mother and
duty to a daughter. An instinct led her to choose the former. Her
son-in-law affected to think her nervous; but, after whistling the
halves of several tunes to himself, put his horse in the gig and went
off to fetch the doctor. The story has seen how he caught him just
coming away from Strides.
Ruth had not yet done quite all she could. She could summon someone to
take her place beside her daughter in her absence. Preferably her cousin
Keziah from the Towers. But she must see her and know that she was
available. Tom Kettering, just departing for the Towers, was caught in
time for Ruth to accompany him. On her arrival, finding that Keziah
_was_ available, she arranged to walk with her to Denby's Farm, and then
on to the Cottage. Under six miles, all told!--that was nothing.
But there was no need for this. Tom Kettering, going up to the house to
report her young ladyship's decision to remain on another day, was told
he must wait for a letter her ladyship the Countess would write, to take
to Strides Cottage, and bring back an answer. He could easily go a few
inches out of his way to leave his Aunt Keziah at Denby's, and take Ruth
Thrale home to Strides. But he put up the closed brougham, and harnessed
the grey mare in the dogcart, as she wanted a run. He knew that Gwen
meant what she said, and would not come back.
It was about nine o'clock when they reached the Cottage, and Tom waited
for the answer to the Countess's letter. Ruth came in, to be told that
her mother had talked too much, and must lie quiet. But she _had_ been
talking--that was something! The comment was Ruth's, and the reply to it
was hopeful and consolatory. Oh yes--a great deal! And she must be
better, to be able to talk so much. However, Ruth saw no change in the
appearance of the still, white figure on the bed.
Gwen sat in the front-room and read her mother's remonstrance with her
for absenting herself in this way and leaving her ladyship alone to
contend with the arduous duty of entertaining her guests. "I think," it
ran, "that you might at least remember that you are your father's
daughter, even if you forget that Sir Spencer and Lady Derrick have come
all the way from Nettisham in Shropshire." What followed was a good deal
emphasized. "Understand, my dear, that what I say is _not intended to
hold good_ if this old lady is _actually dying_, but _for anything short
of that_ it does appear to me that your behaviour is _at least
inconsiderate_. Do let me entreat you to fix _a reasonable hour_ for
your return to-morrow, if you _adhere to your resolution_ not to come
to-night. Pray tell Kettering when he is to call for you _before twelve
to-morrow, so that you may be in time for lunch_." This last was a
three-lined whip.
In order that Gwen should not suppose that there had been too flattering
a _hiatus_ owing to her absence, the letter wound up:--"We have had some
_very nice music_. It turns out that Emily and Fanny sing '_I would that
my love_' quite charmingly." Gwen's remark to herself:--"Of course!" may
be intelligible to old stagers who remember the fifties, and the
popularity of this Mendelssohn duet at that time--notably the
intrepidity of the singers over the soft word the merry breezes wafted
away in sport. Emily and Fanny were two _ingenues_, come of a remote
poor relation, who were destined never to forget the week they were
spending at the Towers in Rocestershire. The letter was scribbled across
to the effect that General Rawnsley had said he should ride over to
Chorlton to-morrow to see if he could be of any use. "The dear old man,"
said Gwen to herself. "And eighty-four years old! Oh, why--why--could
not my old darling Mrs. Picture live only three years more?... Only
three years!"
* * * * *
Ten o'clock. The time was again at hand for those last arrangements we
all know so well, when one watcher is chosen to remain by the sick man's
couch, that others may sleep; each one to be roused from forgetfulness
and peace to the sickening foreknowledge of the hour of release for all,
when the life he has it at heart to prolong, if only for a day, shall
have become a memory to perish in its turn, as one by one its survivors
grow few and fewer and follow in its track.
A night comes always when Oblivion becomes a terror, and we dare not
sleep, from fear of what our ears may hear on waking. It had come at
Strides Cottage for Granny Marrable and Gwen, and even Ruth was
conscious of a creeping dread of Death at hand, waiting on the
threshold. But she imagined herself alone in her anticipations--fancied
that "mother" and her ladyship were cherishing false hopes. She would
not allow her own to die lest she should betray fears that might after
all be just as false. Why should her mother--her new-found real
mother--be sinking, because her limbs were cold, when her speech was
still articulate, and her soft grey eyes so full of tenderness and
light?
Gwen held a little aloof, not to take more than her fair share of what
she feared was an ebbing life, although it kept so strangely its powers
of communion with the world it was leaving behind. She could hear all
the old voice said, as she had heard it before. What was that she was
saying now?
"When the baby comes you will bring it here to show to me? I may not be
up by then, to go and see it."
"The minute my daughter is strong enough to bring it, mother dear."
"She must take her time.... Is there not a little boy already?"
"Yes. He's Peter. He's a year old. He's very strong and wilful, and gets
very angry when things are not given to him."
"Ruth darling--fetch him to me to-morrow. Is it far to bring him?" There
was hunger for the baby in her beseeching voice. She might enjoy him a
little before the end, surely! Just a brief extension of a year or so--a
month or so even.
"I will bring him to-morrow, mother. He's too heavy to carry, but John
will drive us."
Old Maisie seemed quite happy in this prospect of a great-grandson.
"They are so nice at that age," said she. Why was the child's name
Peter?--she asked, and was told that he was so called after his
grandfather, Ruth's husband. "He is dead now, is he not?" was her
puzzled inquiry, and Ruth replied:--"I buried his grandfather thirteen
years ago." To which her mother said:--"Tell me all his name, that I may
know," and was told "Peter Thrale." Whereupon she made an odd
comment:--"Oh yes--I was told. But that was when Ruth was Widow Thrale."
She never came to any real clearness about the lost history of her
sister and daughter. Having once grasped their identities, her mind
flinched from the effort to master the forty-odd blank years of
ignorance.
But out of the cloud there was to come a grandchild a year old, and in
time its mother with another smaller still, newer still. To overhear
this talk made Gwen discredit the doctor's unfavourable auguries. How
was it possible that old Mrs. Picture should be dying, when she could
look forward to a baby in the flesh with such a zest?
The prospect of this visitor had set the old mind thinking of her own
babies in the days gone by, apparently. There was her eldest, dead and
buried in England while Ruth was still too young to put by memories of
her elder brother. Then her second, who died in his boyhood in
Australia. No mother ever loses count of her children, even when her
mind fails at the last: and old Maisie's memory was still green over the
loss of these two. But the third--how about the one who survived his
childhood? When she spoke of him, his image was that of an innocent
mischievous youngster, full of mad pranks, his father's favourite, not a
trace in him of the vices that had made his manhood a curse to himself
and his mother. In some still feebler stage of her failing powers the
happier phase of his career might have remained isolated. Now, her mind
was still too active to avoid the recollection of its sequel.
"What is it, mother dearest?" So Gwen heard her daughter speaking to
her, trying for a clue to the cause of some symptom of a concealed
distress. Then Granny Marrable:--"Yes, Maisie darling, what is it. Tell
us." Some answer came, which caused Ruth to say:--"Shall I ask her
ladyship to come?"
Gwen immediately returned to the bedside. "Is she asking for me?" said
she. And Granny Marrable replied:--"I think she has it on her mind to
speak to you, my lady."
Not too many at once was the rule. Ruth made a pretence of something to
be done in another room, but the Granny kept near at hand.
"My dear--my Lady--I am so afraid...."
"Afraid of what, Mrs. Picture dear? Don't be frightened! We are all
here."
"Afraid about my son--afraid Ruth may know...."
"No one has told Ruth of him, dear. No one shall tell Ruth. I promise
you."
"It is not that. It is what I may say myself." Gwen had not heard her
speak so clearly for a long time. "It was on my lips to speak of
him--but just now. Because--is he not the same?"
"The same as what, dear? Try and tell me!"
"The same as the son that came with me in the ship. The same as the
baby I suckled the last of four, out there on the farm. It was he that I
was telling of before, and I was glad to tell my child--my Ruth--of the
brother she never set eyes on. And then it came upon me, the thought of
what he was, and what he had come to be.... Oh, my dear--my dear!..."
Gwen could not think of any stereotyped salve for a wounded heart. She
could only say:--"Don't think of it, dear. Don't think of it! Lie still
and get better now, and then I will make Aunt M'riar fetch Dave and
Dolly, and Dave shall see Jones's Bull, and Dolly shall see the new
baby."
"Suppose, my dear, I don't get better, will Dave and Dolly come all the
same; for Phoebe and my Ruth, the same as if I was here?"
It was a sore tax on the steadiness of Gwen's voice, but she managed her
assent. Yes--even in the improbable event of old Maisie's non-recovery,
Dave and Dolly should visit Granny Marrable. And so consolatory had the
assurance proved more than once before, that she repeated her
undertaking about the visit to Farmer Jones's; for Dave, not for Dolly.
"But there will be plenty for Dolly to see," Gwen said. "She won't be
frightened of lambs--at least, I think not. Because she has never been
in the country."
"No--but she has been in the Regent's Park, and is to go to Hampstead
Heath some day with Uncle Mo. She is not frightened of the sheep in the
Park, only in...."
"Only in where?" said Gwen. "Where is Dolly frightened of sheep?"
"In the street, because they run on the pavement, and the dog runs over
their backs.... There are very few sheep here, compared to what we had
in the colony.... Our shepherds were very good men, but all had their
numbers from the Governor ... they had all been convicted ... but not of
doing anything wrong...."
Oh dear!--what a mistake Gwen had made about those sheep! But how could
she have known? She knew so little about the colony--had even asked
General Rawnsley, when they were talking of Van Diemen's Land, if he
knew where "Tasmania" was! She tried to head off the pastoral
convicts--the cancelled men, who had become numbers. "When Dolly comes,
she will see the mill too. And it will go round and round by then." She
clung in a sort of desperation to Dolly and Dave, having tested their
power as talismans to drive away the black spectres that hung about.
But the mill was as Scylla to their Charybidis. "Phoebe dearest!" said
old Maisie suddenly, "when did father die?"
"When did our father die?" said Granny Marrable. "Nigh upon forty-six
years ago. Yes--forty-six."
"How can that be?--forty-six--forty-six!" The words were shadowily
spoken, as by a speaker too weary to question them, yet dissatisfied.
"How can my father have died then? That was when my sister died, and my
little girl I left behind."
"Oh, _how_ I wish she could sleep!" Gwen exclaimed under her breath.
Granny Marrable said:--"She will sleep, my lady, before very long." She
said it with such a quiet self-command, that Gwen accepted the obvious
meaning that the sleeper would sleep again, as before. Perhaps nothing
else was meant.
There had been a time, just after she first came to the strange truth of
her surroundings, when she could follow and connect the sequence of
events. Now the Past and the Present fell away by turns, either looming
large and excluding the view of the other alternately. But, that Phoebe
and Ruth were there, beside her, was the fact that kept the strongest
hold of her mind.
* * * * *
Eleven o'clock. Granny Marrable had been right, and old Maisie had slept
again, or seemed to sleep, after some dutiful useless attempts to head
off Death by trivialities of nourishment. The clock-hand, intent upon
its second, oblivious of its predecessors, incredulous of those to come,
was near halfway to midnight when Ruth Thrale, rising from beside her
mother, came to her fellow-watchers in the front-room and said:--"I
think she moved."
Both came to the bedside. Yes--she had moved a little, and was trying to
speak. Gwen, half seated, half leaning on the pillow as before, took a
hand that barely closed on hers, and spoke. "What is it, Mrs. Picture
dear? Say it again."
"Is it all true?"
What could Gwen have said but what she did say? "Yes, dear Mrs. Picture,
quite true. It is your own sister Phoebe beside you here, and your child
Ruth, grown up."
"Maisie darling, I am Phoebe--Phoebe herself." It was all Granny
Marrable could find voice for, and Ruth was hard put to it to say:--"You
are my mother." And as each of these women spoke she bent over the white
face of the dying woman, and kissed it through the speechlessness their
words had left upon their lips.
It was not quite old Mrs. Picture's last word of all. A few minutes
later she seemed to make weak efforts towards speech. If Gwen, listening
close, heard rightly, she was saying, or trying to say:--"You are my
Lady, that came with the accident, are you not?"
"Is there anything you want me to do for you?" For Gwen thought she was
trying to say more. "It is about someone. Who?"
"Susan Burr...."
"Yes--you want me to give her some message?"
"Susan ... to have my furniture ... for her own."
"Yes--I will see to that.... And--and what?"
"Kiss Dave and Dolly for me."
They watched the scarcely breathing, motionless figure on the bed for
the best part of an hour, and could mark no change that told of death,
nor any sign that told of life. Then Granny Marrable said:--"What was
that?" And Gwen answered, as she really thought:--"It was the clock."
For she took it for the warning on the stroke of midnight. But old
Phoebe said, with a strangely unfaltering voice:--"No--it is the
change!" and the sob that broke the silence was not hers, but Ruth's.
Old Mrs. Picture had just lived to complete her eighty-first year.
* * * * *
There came a sound of wheels in the road without. Not the doctor,
surely, at this time of night! No--for the wheels were not those of his
gig. Ruth, going out to the front-door, was met by a broad provincial
accent--her son-in-law's. Gwen heard it fall to a whisper before the
news of Death; then earnest conversation in an undertone. Gwen was aware
that old Phoebe rose from her knees at the bedside, and went to listen
through the door. Then she heard her say with a quiet self-restraint
that seemed marvellous:--"Tell him--tell John that I will come.... Come
back here and speak to me." She thought she caught the words as Ruth
returned:--"I must not leave her alone." And she knew they referred to
herself.
Then it came home to her that possibly her own youth and her difference
of antecedents might somehow encumber arrangements that she knew would
have to be carried out. They would be easiest in her absence. At her own
suggestion she went away to lie down in the bedroom she had occupied.
Granny Marrable followed her. She had something to say.
"Dear Lady, I have to go. God bless you for all your goodness to my
darling sister and to me! You gave her back to me...." That stopped her.
"Oh, Granny, Granny, we have lost her--we have lost her!" She could feel
that old Phoebe's tears were running down the hand she had taken to
kiss, and she drew it away to fold the old woman fairly in her arms, and
kiss the face whose likeness to old Mrs. Picture's she could almost
identify by touch. "We have lost her," she repeated, "and you might have
had her for so long!"
Said Granny Marrable:--"I shall follow Maisie soon, if the Lord's will
is. She might have died, my lady, but for you, unknown to me in London.
And who would have told me where they had laid her?"
"Where are you going?"
"I am going to my granddaughter--Ruth's daughter. It is her fancy to
have me rather than another. There might be harm to her did I stop away.
Why should I delay here, when all is over?"
Why indeed? Still, Gwen could not but reverence and love the old lady
for her unflinching fortitude and resolute sense of duty. She saw her
driven away through the cold night, and went back to her room, leaving
Ruth and Elizabeth the neighbour to make an end in the chamber of Death.
* * * * *
Sleep came, and waking came too soon, in a cold, dark Christmas morning.
Oppression and pain for something not known at once came first, like a
black cloud; then consciousness of what was in the heart of the cloud.
She wrapped herself in a warm dressing-gown, and went out through the
silent house. It was still early, and it might be Ruth was still
sleeping. Once asleep, why not remain so, when waking could only bring
cold and darkness, and the memory of yesterday? Besides, it was not
unlikely Ruth had watched half through the night. Gwen opened the door
of the death-chamber with noiseless caution, and felt as soon as she saw
that the daylight was still excluded, that it was empty of any living
occupant. Dread was in her curiosity to see the thing beneath the white
sheet on the bed--but see it she must!
The great bulldog, the only creature moving, came shambling along the
passage to greet her, and--so she rendered his subdued dog-sounds that
came short of speech--concerned that something was amiss he was excluded
from knowing. She said a word to comfort him, but kept him outside the
room, to wait for her return.
What had been till so lately old Mrs. Picture, whom she had chanced upon
in Sapps Court, and found so strange a truth about, lay under that
face-cloth on the bed. She moved the window-curtain for a stronger
light, and uncovered the marble stillness of the face. The kerchief tied
beneath the chin ran counter to her preconceptions, but no doubt it was
all right. Ruth would know.
She did not look long. An odd sense of something that was not sacrilege,
but akin to it, associated itself with this gazing on the empty
tenement. Even so one shrinks from the emptiness of what was his home
once, and will never know another dweller, but be carted off to the
nearest dry-rubbish shoot. She laid the sheet back in its place, and
went into the front-room.
Suddenly the dog growled and barked, then went smelling along the door
into the front-garden. There was someone outside. She was conscious of a
man on the gravel, through the window. A stranger, or he would enter
without leave, or at least find the bell to ring. She glanced at the
clock. It was half-past eight already, though it had seemed so early.
How about the dog, if she opened the door? His repute was great for
ferocity towards doubtful characters, but he was credited with
discrimination. Was this invariable? She preferred to take down his
chain from its hook by the window, and to use it to hold him by.
"What is it? Who are you?" She had opened the door without reserve,
feeling sure that the dog would be excited by a gap. As it was he
growled intolerantly, and had to be reproved.
"You'll excuse me--I was inquiring.... Is your dog safe? I ain't fond of
dogs, and they ain't fond of me." He was a man with a side-lurch, and an
ungracious manner.
"The dog is safe--unless I let him go." Gwen was not sorry to have a
strong ally in a leash, at will. "You were inquiring--you said?"
"Concerning of an old lady by the name of Prichard. The address given
was Strides Cottage, and I see this little domicile here goes by that
name. Next we come to the old lady of the name of Prichard. Can you do
her, or anything near about?"
"Yes--Mrs. Prichard is here, but you can't see her now. What do you want
with Mrs. Prichard? Who are you?"
The man kept looking uneasily up and down the road. "I'm a bad hand at
talking, mostly. Standing about don't suit me--not for conversation. If
you was to happen to have such a thing as a chair inside, and you was to
make the offer, I might see about telling you what I want of old Goody
Prichard."
Gwen looked at him and recognised him. She would have done so at once
had his clothes been the same as when she saw him before, in the doorway
at Sapps Court. He was that man, of course! Only with this difference,
that while on that occasion his get-up was nearest that of a
horse-keeper, his present one was a carter's. He might have been taken
for one, if you had not seen his face. Gwen said to him:--"You can pass
the dog. Don't do anything to irritate him." He entered and sat down.
"Where have you got the old woman?" said he.
"First tell me what you want with her."
"To introduce myself to her. I wrote her a letter nigh a fortnight
since. What did I say to her in that letter? Told her I was looking
forward to _re_-newing her acquaintance. You tell the old lady that,
from me. You might go so far as to say it's Ralph, back again." An idea
seemed to intensify his gaze of admiration, or rather avidity, narrowing
it to her face. "This ain't my first sight of _you_, allowance made for
toggery."
Gwen merely lifted her eyebrows. But seeing his offensive eyes waiting,
she conceded:--"Possibly not," and remained silent.
He chose to interpret this as invitation to continue, although it was
barely permission. "I set eyes on you first, as I was coming out of a
door. You were coming in at that door. You looked at me to recollect me,
for I saw you take notice. Ah!--you've no call to blaze at me on that
account. You may just as well come down off of the high ropes."
For Gwen's face had shown what she thought of him, as he sat there, half
wincing before her, half defiant. She was not in the habit of concealing
her thoughts. "I see you are a reptile," said she explicitly. And then,
not noticing his snigger of satisfaction at having, as it were, _drawn_
her:--"What were you doing at Mr. Wardle's?"
"Ah--what was I a-doing at Moses Wardle's? I suppose you know what _he_
was? Or maybe you don't?"
"What was he?"
The convict's ugly grin, going to the twisted side of his face, made it
monstrous. "Mayhap you don't know what they call a _scrapper_?" said he.
"I don't. What did he scrap?" She felt that Uncle Mo did it honourably,
whatever it was.
"He was one of the crack heavyweights, in my time."
"I know what that means. I should recommend you not to show yourself at
his house, unless...."
The man sniggered again. "Don't you lie awake about me," said he. "Old
Mo had seen his fighting-days when I had the honour of meeting him
five-and-twenty years ago at The Tun, which is out of your line, I take
it. Besides, my best friend's in my pocket, ready at a pinch. Shall I
show him to you?" He showed a knife with a black horn handle. "I don't
open him, not to alarm a lady. So you've no call for hysterics."
"I am not afraid of you or your knife, if that is what you mean."
Indeed, absolute fearlessness was one of Gwen's characteristics. "What
did you go to Mr. Wardle's for?"
"On a visit to my wife."
Gwen started. "Who is your wife?" said she. Susan Burr flashed into her
mind first. But then, how about "Aunt Maria" on the envelope, and her
readiness to act as this man's agent?
"Polly Daverill's my wife--my lawful wife! That's more than my father
could say of my mother."
"I know that you are lying, but I do not care why. Do you want to see
your mother?"
"If sootable and convenient. No great hurry!"
"She is in bed. I will get her ready for you to see her. Do not go near
the dog. They say he has killed a man."
"A man'll kill _him_ if he gives occasion. Make him fast, for his own
sake. There's money there--he's a tike o' some value. Maybe forty pound.
You tie him up!" Gwen hooked his chain round the table-leg, starting him
on a series of growls--low thunder in short lengths. He had been very
quiet.
She passed into the bedroom, and opening the shutters, threw light full
on the bed. Then she drew back the sheet she had replaced. Oh, the
beauty of that white marble face, and the stillness!
"You can come in, quietly."
"Is she having a snooze?"
"You will not wake her."
"This is one of your games." The sort was defined by an adjective,
omitted. "What's your game? What the Hell are you at?" He said this as
to himself.
"Go in. You will find your mother." Gwen took back the dog's chain from
the table-leg, and the low thunder died down.
She hardly analysed her own motives. One may have been to touch the
heart of the brute, if he had one; another to convince him, without a
long parley, of his mother's death. He might have disputed it, and in
any case she could not have refused him the sight of his own mother's
body.
She could not have restrained that dog had he acted on his obvious
impulse to strangle, rapidly and thoroughly, this vermin intruder. But
he was an orderly and law-abiding dog, who would not have strangled a
rat without permission.
Gwen did not catch the convict's exclamation at sight of his mother,
beyond the "What the...!" that began it. Then he was silent. She saw him
go nearer without fear of ill-demeanour on his part, and touch the cold
white hand, not roughly or without a sort of respect. As well, perhaps,
for him; for Gwen was quite capable of loosing that dog on him, under
sufficient provocation. She thought he seemed to examine the fingers of
the left hand. Then he came back, and they returned to the front-room.
She was the first to speak.
"Are you satisfied?"
"I couldn't have sworn to her myself, not from her face, but I made
sure." Probably he had looked for the cut finger, his own handiwork of
thirty-odd years ago. He said abruptly, after a moment's pause:--"I
don't see nothing to gain by hanging about here."
"Nothing whatever."
He said not a word more, his only sign of emotion or excitement having
been his exclamation at first sight of the corpse. He walked away
towards the village, and had just reached the point where the road turns
out of sight, when Gwen, watching his slow one-sided footsteps, saw him
turn and come quickly back. She went back into the Cottage and closed
the door, resolved not to admit him a second time.
But he passed by, going away by the road towards Denby's and the Towers,
never even glancing at the Cottage. He was scarcely out of sight when a
tax-cart with two men in it came quickly from the village and stopped.
"You will excuse me, madam. I am Police-Inspector Thompson, from
Grantley Thorpe. A man whom I am looking for has been traced here...."
The speaker had alighted.
"A man with a limp? He came here and went away. He has only just gone."
"Which way?"
"He went away in that direction...."
"What I said!" struck in the second man on the driver's seat. "He's for
getting back to the Railway. He'll cut across by Moreton Spinney. Jump
up, Joe!"
Gwen could easily have added that he had come back, and was going the
other way. But her promise to old Mrs. Picture, lying there dead, kept
her silent. If the officers chose to jump to a false conclusion, let
them! She had misled them by a literal truth. She would much rather have
told a lie, honourably. But she could not remedy that now, without risk.
Another trot sounded from the opposite direction. It was Farmer
Costrell's cart, and Ruth was in it, driven by her son-in-law. She was
bringing some evergreens to place upon the body. Too anxious to remain
in ignorance about her daughter, she had walked over to Denby's while it
was still almost dark, and had found a new granddaughter and its mother,
both doing well.